House Karstark. Their sigil is a white sun on
black. The sun, of course, is a
powerful symbol in the North, because whenever winter descends
on Westeros, the North bears the brunt of that.
So the sun is very welcome and necessary, and they'd be rather
screwed without it. And Carhold, home of the
Karstarks, is among those closest to the Wall, so they
need it more than most. They're not a new house, but
they're nowhere near as ancient as most of the known houses of
the North. Yet they are among one of the
more powerful. So despite being a bit newer on
the block and newer on the block is still 1000 years old or so.
But they're the a rare example of the Starks allowing a house
with their blood to be created right a a a complimentary a
cadet branch of House Stark, in a way.
But they're the only one to still survive in current times.
There's been a few other cadet branches, but this is the only
one still around. This connection is maintained
over the years. They've intermarried with the
Starks and remain loyal all the while.
The events of Asang of Ice and Fire saw that trend continue at
first, but since the and in part because of House Karstark split
from House Stark, the Kingdom of the North fell and a succession
battle, not a battle out in the fields, but a battle
nonetheless. A struggle for Car Hold began
behind the backdrop of the War of 5 Kings, near the end of A
Dance with Dragons. Alice Karstark appears on the
scene as well, after Melisandre predicted her coming, but
thought it was Arya. It's not exactly unusual for
Melisandre to misinterpret a vision.
In fact, that's exactly what she said to John.
She's like the vision was right, I just got interpreted it wrong.
But still, maybe she was more right than we thought.
Because Alice really, really reminds John of Arya so much
that at one point it almost makes his heartbreak.
So the kinship between Stark and Karstark is very much worth
exploring. And that subsequent fallout is a
major part of this episode, but not the only part.
That's right. We've got all that and more on
this episode of History of Westeros Podcast.
Hello and welcome, everybody. We're back with another episode
every week just about. We have a live stream at 3:00
Eastern on YouTube, and you can catch the edited version of that
U on Spotify or anywhere you catch podcasts, whatever
platform you use. How's it going, Sean?
It's going well. I I wish that one of the car
Starks have been executed by hanging rather than beheading,
so that when you're talking about them being new on the
block, I could have made some kind of hanging tough joke.
New car Starks on the chopping block.
Yeah, there's still the chopping block.
We could still. There you go.
There's a couple of examples of that going, yeah, yeah, that's a
that's a thing. We noted that the car Starks
have a one of their recurring features of A Song of Ice and
Fire is getting executed by kings that they were supposed to
be loyal to. Yeah, that's that's not the best
thing to be known for. But it's not their fault there's
so many kings. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, right. How do you or is it.
Yeah, well, in part it's they play a role in that.
You know, they definitely, as we'll see they they had a big
role in getting the Kingdom of the North started.
So yeah, we've got a lot to talk about with that regard.
It's one of our longest episode documents in a little while that
doesn't always correspond directly to length.
That's what she said, but it often at least approximates
that. Shout out to our good friend
Nina, who added a lot of helpful notes as per usual to this
episode. She has some great thoughts on
the Karstarks, on Alice, and some things yet to come, but if
you go to her blog you will find which is good Queen Ally with
1l.tumblr.com you will find the latest post, which is how do you
think Melisandre will react when she discovers that Stannis isn't
actually Azora High Reborn? And what about the Queen's men
and yeah, the Queen's men. That's a great question.
It isn't just about Melisandre, it's about the followers that
she's convinced that Stannis is Azora.
All these people are going to react to that coming, you know,
turning around or whatever. Nina, that's a loaded question
that presumes the standards is not azoral.
I don't know about that, right, So we'll have to see how that
goes. And you want to read a good
queenalley.tumblr.com to see what Nina thinks.
If you have questions for us, send them to
westeroshistory@gmail.com if you're hearing this episode or
watching it beyond not live. But if it's live, why not just
type your question in the chat box there?
At the end of this one, I'll mention some episodes that
relate to the topics we discuss here, because you might just
want to stay immersed and have fun staying within Westeros or
Essos as your interest may take you.
Also at the end will be the answer to this trivia question,
which is what is Harry and Karstark's nickname as given to
him by his sister. This is, like I said, this is
one of the longer ones we've had in a while, so let's get right
to it. First mention.
We always like to do a first mention to kind of settle
ourselves and anchor ourselves to how this topic was intended
to be presented to us in the books, rather than just our full
view of their history and all the detailed look that we're
taking. So it comes in brand six of the
Game of Thrones as the northern armies are gathering at
Winterfell. The Karstarks came in on a cold,
windy morning, bringing 300 horsemen and near 2000 foot from
their castle at Carr Hold. The steel points of their Pikes
winked in the pale sunlight as the column approached.
A man went before them, pounding out a slow, deep, throated
marching rhythm on a drum that was bigger than he was.
Boom, boom, boom. Bran watched them come from a
guard turret atop the outer wall, peering through Maester
Lewin's bronze far eye while perched on Hodor's shoulders.
Lord Ricard himself LED them, his sons Herion and Edard and
Torin riding beside him beneath night black banners emblazoned
with the white sunburst of their house.
Old Nan said they had Stark blood in them going back
hundreds of years, but they did not look like Starks to Bran
and. That's a very interesting line
that they don't look like Starks to Bran because the Starks have
a look. This isn't just like oh like
this isn't just the perspective of a 7 year old kid who's like
oh they don't look like me. Which you might think And that
that would be if if that was the case, it would be a a thing for
a 7 year old to think and an easy line to just kind of toss
aside and you know, OK, that's the seven-year old's
perspective. But with existing theories put
forward by folks like us about looks being maintained over
thousands of years and how there might be a magical element to
that. And how that might be related to
weirwoods, which is in our Weirwood episode from long ago,
we talked about that specific thing.
Yeah, that's a really interesting point that they
don't look like that to Bran. I think it's actually meant to
tell us something. And yeah, what do you think,
Sean? It might be, but it might be
multifaceted. And it might be something that
George didn't have fully worked out at the time, either.
What I wonder is if it's not so much to tell us that the
Karstarks don't look like the Starks as it is to tell us that
the Starks have a look. Because he also wants to make it
clear to us that the Lannisters have a look.
Yeah, Baratheons have a look. And those things can matter when
it comes to like, who the real parents of Joffrey are.
And maybe the idea that the others are looking for John and
so when? They know what Starks look like.
Waymar, yeah. You're right.
Yeah. He looked like John.
Oh, but it wasn't him after all. But does that make sense?
I think it's. It does, Yeah.
It can play into a lot of different.
Things. Yeah, you're right.
It's it's indirect, but it tells you a lot of things.
It's kind of partly where your mind is at the moment, but it
can mean a lot of things. Yeah, that's a good point.
So those his sons, of course, are a big deal.
And Lord Rickard himself will have a huge role in both the
formation of the Northern Kingdom and it's collapsed.
As I said in the intro, his sons as well will play a big role in
that, mostly in tragic form. They're mostly it's mostly their
deaths that are a trigger rather than the actions they take
during life. Not mentioned are quite a few
other car Starks who gained prominence and entered the story
after Lord Rickard's execution, A Feast for Crows or Dance with
Dragons. The expansion of the story there
of course, includes us meeting a lot of less prominent members of
a lot of houses, you know, and just more houses in general
become part of the story. So they're they're part of the
story very early on and it stays that way.
Like they are a big part of the story at the end of the Dance
with Dragons. They're a big part of the story
early, and it's consistently that way.
The only time they're not really a part of the story is when the
North isn't a part of the story, which isn't a feast for crows.
So other than that, they're around.
Even then they're around because of they're in the South.
There's Broken Men and hunting Jamie and just survivors from
the battles. And yeah, it's there's a lot.
So 2300 Men is what Lord Rickard brings.
It's one of the larger contingents.
It's not the largest one, but it's very big.
And of course, these men will do a lot of damage at first to
Lannister armies, but eventually to, as I said, a lot of them
become Broken men, a lot of them become just bandits in the
Riverlands. It's like the number one house
that supplies the Broken men is House Karstark, which is pretty
sad. And you know, we've talked about
the Broken Men a lot. Septon Meribald has that
incredible speech. And then there's another speech
by Elder brother, which is also pretty moving.
And in both cases, the car stocks are either directly or
indirectly referred to because they're such a big part of that.
Like I said, probably #1. Another interesting piece of
that not to take away from, you know, the the struggles that
their life would be full of at this point.
But it's probably better to be going through that in the
Riverlands and just South of the Wall, right?
Like these guys. But but that also means that
they're far, far from home. Probably farther than almost
anyone else involved in this story.
Right. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good point. You're right.
There's there's thinking about how far away from home they are.
I hadn't really thought about that.
They do travel an awful long way.
The north is remote. They have to crash all the way
through the neck, and it's dangerous.
And yeah, you're right, it's a long way.
It's hard to get back once you're down there, too.
Nina says. Maybe not read too much, or
reads a different way into the the look of the Karstarks.
Maybe a little more young boy should be included in this take,
which is that he's lost his family.
They're not dead yet, It's just they've all gone.
They've all gone South or gone elsewhere.
John went to the Wall being the exception.
So he is lonely, but they don't seem like family to him.
So that is a that is AI think that's another way to take it
and it's an accurate way. I think that's a good read and
not one that pushes aside the other takes.
I think all the all these takes we've we've listed off about
this I think are pretty valid. You know, another thought I
didn't have till just now thinking about how Nina put it.
Is it? I don't know.
It would be too negative, but it might be a little bit of
privilege on Brand's part. His car starts probably look a
little more haggard. Yeah, they're from Farther N
They're probably living tougher lives.
They just went on a long journey.
Whereas John and Rob, they're all young and chipper and clean
shaven and everything. You know it's.
A good point, yeah. And.
That might add to his viewing them differently.
It also shows us that there are cultural differences between
different areas. In the north, the closer the
wall to the wall you get, the closer you are to the older
ways. That's more they're like they
think of themselves as more northern, like the the free folk
think of themselves as more northern than people South of
the wall. And that same sort of attitude
extends. Like, we all know that a lot of
the Northerners look at the Manderleys like a little bit
less than Northern. You know, like, it's not like a
big overwhelming prejudice, but it's like, yeah, they're not as
far to the South. They don't have to deal with
Free Folk or Ironborn. Like, yeah, their lives are
easier, no doubt, Like, they're still in the North.
They still hit these nasty winters.
But yeah, there is a difference in in what they have to deal
with. And that's going to show up.
And. Yeah, And like cultural things,
which in turn shows up and how they look and how they dress and
how they groom themselves. But to come back to what I said
at the intro, yeah, Bran doesn't see them as looking like Starks,
but Alice, Karstark, and Arya are like, Jon is blown away by
how similar they are. Not just in the way they look
too, but in mannerisms. It's it's crazy, right?
And then there's Melisandre seeing her in a vision and
thinking she's Arya. So all the stuff just this is
like, Oh yeah, that's that's a rich vein of of characterization
there. So it's it's during her wedding
by the way that he she's so much like him that her heart that his
heart breaks because she's just so ready.
She's like he's like are you scared to get married.
And she's like let him be scared of me and smiles like Ari, he's
like, oh man, Ari. And from the expression on
Sigourn's face during the the ceremony.
Yeah, he does look more scared. He she's like ready and he's
like, Oh my God, I'm getting married.
The sigil, their white sun on black.
Shay is putting up a a version of this.
There's a lot of variations on this and the fandom, but they
all, they're all just white Suns on black.
There's not a lot of ways to vary that, you know, like
there's one version that has a face on it, you know, sun with a
face on it. But mostly it's just black
background, white sun. You can have some variation with
the number of points. OK.
Yeah, the. Flare of the sun so.
That's a good point. Seven might be, might say
something versus, you know, not 7.
Nine is the traditional number for like, that's how many points
are on Rob's crown and that's how many was on Torrance crown,
apparently. So I didn't count the.
It's a hell of a lot more. It's like double.
That's like 8. Oh wow.
That's a lot. Of a lot of of.
Pointy sun there, Yeah. So Car Hold is in the east where
the sun rises. So that might be a little part
of it. That's part of what Nina thinks
as well. We both kind of landed on a
similar answer for why that might be there.
Also, they both descend from a Son of the King of Winter in a
sense that's maybe a little bit of a pun.
And this comes up interestingly. I like, I think it might be it's
kind of like a weirwood sun, you know, like a white sun is kind
of weirwood sun. I don't know.
That's one thing that came to mind for me.
Also, it comes up interestingly in this cadet branch scenario
with Magnar Sigor in the Magnar Fen and Alice getting married.
They they adopted a, you know, bronze sun with red flames on
white, which is even more like the weirwood colors, red and
white. So ultimately, whatever their
sigil actually means, it's something from their history
which you know what we're going to turn to next.
Even though it's not going to answer that particular question,
it will answer some other questions.
Let's have a quote about where they come from.
Their origin quote, we'll call it.
The Karstarks traced their descent to Karland Stark, a
younger son of Winterfell who had put down a rebel Lord 1000
years ago and been granted lands for his valor.
The castle he built had been named Karl's Hold, but that soon
became Karl Hold, and over the centuries the Karhold Starks had
become Karstarks. So they didn't take the name
Karstark. It was kind of a nickname given
like a sensible, like, it's such an obvious linguistic
shortening, you know, like, oh, that Karstarks.
That makes sense. Yeah, it's already Karl's hold,
car, hold. All these shortenings happened
over time. It just kind of makes sense.
But it is kind of nowhere did. If they didn't name themselves
differently. They were still Starks for a
while, but eventually, like naming.
I wonder if they didn't like that.
Like, no, we like being called Starks.
We don't want to be called car Starks.
We're Starks. But.
Some of them wanted to be named Truck, Starks or Motorcycle.
Starks. Boat Starks.
Yeah, right. Perhaps the older brother of
Karl and Stark was incapable of leading men into battle.
We wonder why this younger son of Winterfell was the one that
accomplished this task. It must have been a major
campaign given the reward was so large, I mean thousands of years
of Stark history, and the only other cadet branch we know of is
the Gray Starks at the intro. I kind of assumed there's others
by saying there have been others, but we only know of this
one, so it was rare, even if there.
I definitely do assume there's others, even though we don't
know the names, but clearly it was not common thing.
And as I also said before, this is the only one to survive.
Gray Starks have been extinct for a long time.
I just can't. I like your theory about how
this might have come up come about given the timing of things
right, The Boltons. Yeah.
So it really changed the geopolitical situation.
It may have been not just a reward, it may have been like a
strategic long term plan to box the Boltons in, which is if you
look at the map, it's going to pull this up in a minute and
shake and pull it up now. Instead you got to get a view of
it just to see the region because it's all it's nice to
have a visual representation of what I'm talking about.
We don't want to take the phrase 1000 years ago too literally and
we we can't because it's clearly isn't meant to be literal.
But roughly 1000 years ago is when White Harbor was built
also. So we got somewhere around the
year 700 BC before the conquest, that's roughly 1000 years ago.
White Harbor was built sometime around 600 BC to 1000 BC, so in
that range. And it was also a quote 1000
years ago that the Boltons bent the knee and agreed to give up
flaying. Yeah, sure they did, but that
aside, they did bend the knee. Whether they kept to that
promise or not is a different topic.
Point being, it may have been the Boltons that this Karl and
Stark defeated. It all lines up very well and
after within 100 years of this defeat, you've got car hold up
North East of the Dread Fort, Winterfell West of the Dread
Fort and White Harbor South of it.
Whereas before that, thousand years ago, everything east of
the Dread Fort was just kind of unclaimed or claimed by lesser
houses. So they would have been able to
dominate that whole region. And as a part of defanging the
Boltons, who have always been the Starks biggest enemies in
the north, giving land, giving away some of those sort of
unclaimed lands to people that became the the two most loyal
vassals of the Starks according to at least some Take some
traditions. I think that's meaningful.
You know, I think that was intentional and I think it
worked for the most part. Like the Boltons have been
pretty passive until the events of A Song of Ice and Fire.
It was, you know, if you look at why Rob fell for Roose Bolton,
despite their history, it's because they had behaved for
like like 1000 years. People still scared of them, but
they hadn't done anything like blatant that they got caught
for. They did things.
They just. Bruce Bolton is very sneaky,
right? He's good at keeping it on the
down low. And or being local about.
Yeah, yeah, they're. Not interfering with the other
houses around them or anything so.
And there's a certain sense to new houses, creating new houses
and expecting more loyalty from them.
Because you, as the Starks, as the King of Winter, you created
them. You said, hey, I'm allowing you
to start this new house, giving you a castle.
Of course you're loyal to that house, the guy that gave you all
that, right? That's the Manderley's position.
That's has had been the Karstarks position.
So maybe the Glovers and the other houses, yeah, they're
loyal to the Starks, but they had to be conquered in the 1st
place, they had to be brought in.
And their loyalty is more of a it's been in place for a long
time rather than like we've always been this way since the
start. I think there's a little bit of
a different vibe there. And even after a long time, it
still might be a little contingent.
Like, yeah, we're doing it because one of our ancestors
said we had to. I guess we'll keep doing it,
right? Yeah.
And for the most part, people seem to like the Starks.
The Starks have been good rulers.
So you know, there's probably not too many times where they're
like, God, those Dang Starks. But it definitely happens.
I mean, we're seeing it happen in the current timeline, like
Lady Dustin was unhappy with Ned Stark, blah blah blah.
Lots of other examples. Brandon Stark slept around to
bed. He probably made some people
unhappy. You know, there's there's plenty
of examples. It's just.
We're looking at 1000 years instead of, you know, a couple
of years. So car hold is, as we said,
north and east of Winterfell. It's it's on some forested river
whose name we don't have, but at the headwaters of that river,
which often is how things these things are done.
It's not that far from the sea but the coastline is not easily
accessible. The area in this region, the the
shoreline is called the Gray Cliffs.
So it's hard to get down like you can't it's it's not
accessible very easily and I'm sure there's like ways down like
steps and and ravines and all that.
But it's not just like you walk east and you hit the shore
eventually you when you walk east and you hit a big Cliff is
what what'll happen. We're told fishing is really
good down there if you can get down there.
So you know it's a little bit of a little bit of extra work to do
it. But now the northern coast
apparently isn't like that. If you see kind of a that that
part of the north juts out where car hold is on in the the
southern and eastern parts are where the great cliffs are, the
north is not, which is too bad for them because that's where
the Raiders come from. Such if they had those cliffs
there they could be protected a little more.
But unfortunately, and maybe that's why it took so long for
this region to get settled. And maybe that's maybe it's a
really tough place to build. And it took someone tough like a
Carlin Stark who had proven himself in battle against
whoever it was, possibly the Boltons, someone important and
someone strong. It took them to to get this
going. And once it was going, you know,
they they had a castle and and that that helps keep things in
place. But yeah, you got free folk that
can hit that area. You got Skagosi, which
definitely back in the day that was a more risky thing than it
is now. So yeah, and whoever lived in
that region, there would have been people there.
Maybe they were. They weren't necessarily closely
sworn to some lore, but it wouldn't have been completely
empty is my point. It's not the most eastern point
in the north, but they are the farthest east of any major
northern house. I think maybe Widow's Watch
might be a little farther out there, but that's also a lot
farther South in the north. They're not.
Also, they're not quite the most northern.
They're pretty close, So they're almost the farthest east and
almost the farthest N the scene where we meet them in that quote
where Bran is saying they don't look like northern or don't look
like Starks, they're the last army to arrive to join Rob, and
that's probably because of that distance.
Somehow the Umbers beat them there, who are even farther.
But whatever, it's close. And the winters, of course,
would be horrible there. It'd be one of the worst places
to to be out, other than not in their castle in the same region,
you know. Do we know how many troops the
Umbers brought, by the way? No, but pretty sure it was less
than that because Rob had 12,000 when he marched at first before
adding Riverlands armies to his men.
And I I think it was 4000 men from the Dreadford, so that's
already like that's 6300 of them right there.
Not even counting Winterfell men.
So I It's kind of hard for the Umber Men to have brought more
than the Carhold men. It's possible the Umberlands are
tighter together. Or maybe they got the message
first. There's a lot of yeah, we can't
read into it too much, but. Just bringing 1000 men versus
2300 men could be the difference in how long it takes.
It's a lot longer to gather them together, equip them, move them
and so on so. Agree.
Yeah, so I suspect, and Speaking
of the Umbers, I suspect prior to the building of Car Hole,
these lands that were that are now the Karstark lands were
often contested by the Umbers and the Boltons.
They'd have been the two most powerful houses in the region.
So they would have been where exactly is the border of their
lands? Right.
Like, I'm sure this is always an issue for all these old kingdoms
and houses. Like, you don't necessarily have
a clean board. Sometimes you have like a stream
that marks it quite nicely, but that's not going to circle the
entire region. You know, like you don't.
You often have issues of exactly where borders are, and sometimes
you put stones down to mark. There's different ways to mark
these things, but these things get argued over and fought over
sometimes. You know we talked about it
later that that kind of compare and contrast Karstark and Umber.
This is another example that kind of fits that the Umber
might have been a little bit quicker to move, like he's a
little bit more like Outspoken and and.
Aggressive. Yeah.
A brash? Yeah.
Works. That works.
Karstark is starts off a little slower.
He, like he might in the end be just as serious or just as
dangerous, but isn't is immediately reactive.
Yeah, he's more like they are sort of like a left and right.
They do function sort of as Rob's left and right hands in a
lot of scenarios, especially early on, and one of them is the
more loud, angry, bold, blustery where the other is.
Yeah, the other is more quiet and intense, but just as
dangerous. But you I can also imagine that
might get him there faster because like, all right, I got
we got to go. Yeah.
And he might have brought less men than he could have if he
slowed down and planned it a little better.
And Karstar took his time, wasn't as quick but maybe did a
better job. I don't, I don't know.
But. For the record, both houses
complain that too many men were taken.
Both houses suffered, bringing in the Harvest, Umber and
Carstock. Probably other northern houses
too, but in particular those two are mentioned in particular.
So they were very eager to support their king at the cost
of winter and cost of feeding their people.
So it was it was it was a problem.
It was a big problem. So when the Dread when Car Hold
was built, I suspect it was a problem for both the Dread Ford
and Last Hearth, but probably a bigger problem for the Bolton's
because they were the ones who had rebelled so many times and
they were probably who this was somewhat aimed at.
But there were also likely lots of marriages between these
neighbors. Like I'm sure there have been
many kar Stark Umber marriages and kar stark Bolton marriages.
Maybe that I'm not as sure about there had like apparently there
haven't been Stark Bolton marriages until the non the fake
Aria Ramsay marriage. Well, it's a real marriage, but
not a real, not a real Stark. That's my question is, in a in a
culture that's so against Kinsling, is there a certain
understanding that maybe you shouldn't marry some of these
folks 'cause you don't want to then just lock your your
descendants into Kinsling? Interesting.
Well, you. Know, like, maybe someone's
like, I want to make nice with the Boltons, but maybe they're
like, hey, we fought them for eons.
Maybe we don't want our houses to be united as one.
Yeah, you're right to not to say.
Maybe we shouldn't assume the Boltons and Karstarks have
married. It's that's a that's a good
potential exception, but I wouldn't assume it.
We do know the Starks and Karstarks have married.
That probably didn't start right away because of the the
proximity. And you know, that's that's
pretty incestuous, even though we've seen like even the current
Starks have a first cousin marriage.
This would be even closer to that, at least if they did it
right away. You know, if you wait a few
generations then you know it's all it's very different, but.
That idea though, O'Shea is, I mean, it could go either way.
It's it is a double edged sword. But that is the reason you want
to have these marriages, because it stops the canceling, it stops
the warring, right. So yeah, Hope.
You I. But if you don't.
Want to stop the warring? If you want to be able to hold
your grudges, then don't get married to them.
Well, it's like 1 if you don't want to stop the warring, 2 if
you are a realist and you realize that it might not stop
the warring and it means that your line is going to be doomed,
you know to ignominy will continue.
And you will have this new blight on your honor or.
Whatever. It's kind of a rock and a hard
place kind of situation. I can see why.
It might just depend on current circumstances because yeah, both
of these there's some severe downsides to either approach.
So returning to the topic of how northern these guys are now,
they're farther N make some sort of more northern than a lot of
other houses. Like Alice Karstark was worried
that Jon Snow would turn her away from Castle Black because
she was. She thought she was concerned
there would be a blood feud between their houses because of
Rob's execution of her father and then what came after which
was all sorts of nasty business that we'll get into.
But it's a reasonable thing like yeah like if if apparently
that's a normal attitude that some northerners would have
would have had she was worried that John would have done
something relatively common but he didn't and he's like well I'm
nights watch we give away our he didn't say no we don't have
blood She's like I get you know I'm nights watch we don't have
blood fuse he didn't say that the conditions weren't met.
He's like, I my situation Trump's any of those
considerations. So, you know it was it was sort
of a dodge. But he, of course, he's not
actually like mad at her or anything.
I don't think he like feels he he might be mad at the
Karstarks, but he's not mad at her, 'cause I do think he has
that loyalty to Rob and probably is probably would hate Lord
Rickard if he met him, but if he obviously that's not possible.
But you know, you see what I'm saying.
I think there probably is a little wariness there, but it's
not personal. I I got the idea too that she
was being. I don't know how to say this.
She was like leveling with him. She's like we've got bigger
concerns, right? Like you're not going to get
hung up on. I'm not hung up on this.
You're not right. Like we're better than this,
right. You know, that's that's how I.
Yeah, she was. You're I I appreciate that too,
'cause she's very direct. She's like, look, do we have a
problem? Like let me just address this
now, the elephant in the room and he's like, Nah, we don't
have a problem. So it also has a role in how
they view the South. Like the more northern you are,
the different your view of the South.
Like the more things you hear from rumor and the more like the
cultures are just different. Just look at how the culture
clashes of Beyond the Wall are and and whatever you'd see from
like the car starts be just that.
But like a smaller version, it wouldn't be quite so distinct.
And Bran notes, they're larger. He's like, these are bigger
guys. And that's also a thing about
being from the farther N you know, the farther N you go, the
larger a lot of the people are, which is pretty much true in the
real world. The largest people in on earth
are Norwegians, if I remember correctly in Dutch.
Like they're, you know, like in it depends on weight and height
and things like that. But yeah, at least currently
that's the study I saw. Maybe that's not true, but I've
read that recently and it's the same thing in the animal
Kingdom. Like larger cold weather animals
are bigger because layers of fat protect your internal organs
from all that, all that cold. So yeah.
And it also another superstition that that Alice's mother had.
We don't know who Alice's mother was, but she believed snow
during a marriage meant a cold marriage.
Like, that's not a Southern superstition.
I don't think. Maybe it is, but it sounds
northern to me. So, like, I and I never heard of
that from, like Sansa or anyone else.
So that's maybe something that is is a belief that's held
farther north than than even Winterfell.
I don't know. Now moving on to the Targaryen
era, because we just unfortunately we don't know a
lot about that time period for most of Westeros, let alone
House, Car, Stark. It's kind of an empty period.
Honestly, if someone wants to write future stories in
Westeros, it's a pretty good time period to pick up because
it's pretty untouched even by George.
And I wonder about things from that area as we're moving past
it. I still would guess that there's
like had some car, stark skin changers and maybe a green
dreamer or two and you got to wonder how that would have
played out. I'm sure they have heart trees
there. I mean that's a a given that
they built their castle around a heart tree.
We don't know that for a fact, but it's 99.
We think we can assume it with a 99.9% rate there.
And the Gray cliffs being nearby, there's probably caves
there. It might have been some, like if
I was a person growing up, a car hold, that might be a thing you
go do is go explore the caves, you know, and maybe you find
Obsidian, maybe you find things left behind by the children, old
bones, who knows? Runes, carvings, cool stuff like
that. Access to the greater depth
caves that we see bran have access to beyond the wall.
Who knows? Not that I expect they connect,
but maybe they do really far down.
Not in a way that would affect the story.
But you know, if we were had a full map of all the caves,
they'd probably connect somewhere.
There's been 3 Stark car, Stark marriages that we know of.
There's probably been more, especially because the three
that we know of have all been within the last 180 years during
that dead zone of history that we don't know much about.
There's probably been a few more.
The difference there is those would have been marriages in the
time of Stark kings. This is now Stark Lord.
So a little bit more prominent back then.
Carhold existed for roughly 7 centuries before the coming of
the Dragons. There were Shirley Kar Stark men
in King Turen's host. It was a much bigger host than
what Rob brought South, and there were Karhold men in that
one, so pretty likely they were Kar Stark men.
In the in Torrent Starks host as well You might.
You might understand though, why you know, like early on the
Starks didn't marry the Kar Starks because they were still
Starks, but they hadn't even probably become Kar Starks yet.
They're still probably called Karhold Starks, but over time,
you know, who knows when. But some at some point, they
were like, you know what? This isn't so incestuous.
You've got a whole new name. We can go ahead and do this
right? Yeah.
And we want to keep those dread. We want to keep that dread for,
you know, boxed in, you know, like we said.
Maybe there weren't that many marriages before, but once the
target Targaryens took over, like, yeah, incest isn't so bad,
I guess. It all that's the real trickle
down effect, right. It's not trickle down economics,
it's trickle down behaviors like that.
Trickle down incestonomic. Yeah.
So the first one of these people of the Stark bride would be
Margaret Karstark, A surprisingly earthbound name.
There's no like, he didn't put like, AY in there to change it
slightly. It's not like murgaret.
That sounds like something George would do.
Margaret, you know. But no, it's Margaret Karstark.
And so married to Bernard, who is the second son of Winterfell,
kind of like Carlin Stark. But this Bernard was not someone
that made other Starks proud. So Margaret was born somewhere
between 100 and 112 AC, roughly around the time of Viserys.
The first around King Viserys the you know, inactive or
whatever all the many different names we called him.
And the great Council you know, was in one O 2 and all that.
So that was it's all that region.
She might have been born just before the old King's death or
maybe right after it some sometime around then.
Anyway. I.
I just wanted to make a joke. We we talked about Herrin's
nickname. Yeah, I'm wondering if Bernard's
nickname was Bernard Dog. Yeah, you can't.
You had anger issues. Yeah, you have Bernard and
Benjen and like 2 Ben's like how you going to?
And of course there was a Brandon next cause of course
there was And then an Elrick. That one's not as common like,
all right, an Elrick that's probably named after Elrick of
Melnabone, a fantasy series that has influenced so many.
But they all three of those sons and Bernard were imprisoned by
Lord Kragen Stark when he came of age because Bernard was
Regent for Kragen. And when Kragen turned 16, he
was like, yeah, I'll give you your Lordship next week.
I'll give it to you next week. It just kept pushing it off.
And eventually Craig and, like, got some dudes together and and
took his title back by force and put those dudes in jail.
I don't know what happened to them, whether he sent them to
the wall or whether they were let out eventually.
No idea how that ended. I doubt he executed them because
that would be Ken slaying. And it's not like they were that
bad to him. You know, holding him out of
power is not, you know, they they it was dishonorable.
But it's not like they tried to murder him or something.
So I I don't. I think they probably settled it
all without violence, as far as we know.
Knows what else went on in the background?
Yeah, many of these little tips of the iceberg that we find out
about that you could probably have a three season adventure
drama about. It yeah, this is the dance of
the dire wolves right here. It's a miniature version of the
Dance of the Dragons for sure. I've given it that name before.
And of course we discussed this in our Kragen episode, AKA the
Old Man of the North. They got a whole episode on him
and you might even you might see some Karstarks in the House of
the Dragon since it's going north.
Margaret's identity is a Karstark that may have driven
Craigen to become close to Aranori.
Remember Craigen? That was his childhood like
close person, close friend and married her.
But then she died. So between Margaret Karstark and
Bernard's mother who is Lysa Locke, if again, if you're
taking a quick look at the map, you see the eastern and
northeastern part of the north. Like that's a big power block of
traditional Northerners, whereas Kragen the Nori's aren't that
powerful by comparison, they're one of the Hillclan houses.
So that might have been why Bernard felt comfortable making
this move, as he felt like he had all this backing whereas the
actual Lord of Winterfell didn't.
So he thought he could pull this off, but Kragen was able to get
some support from here and there and yeah.
And sorry, I got to follow up with another I wonder if Bernard
Dog talked much about the Karstark Sun God.
He probably shut up about the sun.
Yeah, he probably did. He probably did.
He loves that sun. It's his favorite.
You know, I doubt there were any marriages between this
generation of star guitar star, given Kragen was not on good
terms of these. But even if it didn't come to
blood, though it might have, I I doubt there was.
You know, they were. They solved things to the point
that there were marriages, but maybe there were.
You never know that that's often a tool to build peace.
So maybe that's they specifically did that in order
in order to settle things. Either way, it didn't cause a
long term problem with Car Hole because as we see at the
beginning of A Song of Ice and Fire, Rickard's all about it.
He's all about the North, you know, and about the Starks.
Now Alice Karstark is the next one.
Not to be confused with current timeline Alice Karstark, it was
a different Alice Karstark, just like that's a different Brandon
Stark and a different Benjin Stark and all that.
We don't know what relation Alice and Margaret are, but
they're not super far apart in age.
I don't mean they couldn't be sisters, but Craigen's youngest
son, Brandon, his fifth son, well, his fifth with that wife
was married. This Alice, Carstark and all
current Starks descend from this marriage.
Now, Brandon's older brother Barthegan, who never had kids.
That's why the Lordship passed from Barthegan to Brandon.
Barthegan's nickname was Barth Blacksword.
I'm sure some of you have heard that before.
He was killed during a rebellion of the Skagosi.
So that's how Brandon became Lord, because his older brother
died without issue fighting the Skagosi.
Alice's brothers, uncles and cousins, this Alice Carr shark
also likely fought against the Skagosi as well.
I mean, they are very close to Carhold, you know, in terms of
northern geography. So it's very likely the Carhold
men were a big part of that, putting down the Skagosi, and
they may have had to travel to had two Skagos to do that.
They also had Alice and Kragen's youngest Brandon.
They also had Rodwell, Baron and Arsa.
Rodwell is my favorite Stark name 'cause it just sounds like
a porn star name. It seems out of place where I'm
not, even though Starks would be so serious.
And then Devino and it's like this guy supported him.
And who says he can't be serious?
Yeah, he's a serious porn star. And his he used his Blair and
Steel sword very well. The line continued through Baron
after that. So we have Brandon marrying
Alice, and they had Rodwell, Baron and Arsa.
Rodwell was killed and Baron was also killed, but he had kids
first. And Arsa, you know, I don't
know. We don't really know what
happened to Arsa, but the line also can enter through Baron.
Baron married Laura Roy, so they had seven children.
Nina thinks that Alice Carstark, this Alice Carstark will
absolutely be in the She Wolves of Winterfell.
Whatever the final title for that comes, which is was
originally going to be the 4th Duncan Egg novella is now going
to be the 5th. And the original description of
it was five Lady Starks running Winterfell with four of them
widows of a bunch of fairly recent former Lord Starks.
Alice was would have been the recent would have been the widow
of the late Lord Brandon, who is the second most recent of those
widows, the most recent being Baron, who died, who's dying.
As the story starts, assuming George keeps it that way.
So that's just a great option. Like George Loves Athena points
out, George loves characters like Olena and and Barbary,
Dustin and characters like this kind of older and confident
sassy types. He, he could go off with that
here. There could be like five of
them, you know, of varying ages, like of like the oldest to
people, you know, like a 40 year old or even younger than that.
Yeah, just all of them interplaying with each other and
a little bit of a power struggle there through their children.
That'd be pretty interesting. So it was their second son,
Willem, who continued the line of Lord Lee Starks by having Ed
while. Right.
So Willem is one of those seven children through that, through
the descent of Alice Karstark. Willem was killed at the battle
of 226 in Long Lake Long, The Battle of Long Lake Rather in in
the year 226 by Raymond Redbeard, whose descendants are
still around, that's who. Stannis and Queens at least try
to make King of the Wildlings, 'cause they're like they're all
stuck on bloodlines and things like that.
But Raymond Redbeard in turn, at the same battle, was slain by
Artos, the implacable Willem's brother, Grandma Alice Karstark
was probably still around. She probably would have mourned
Willem, but been proud of Artos. That's a pretty straightforward
reaction to your grandchild dying and your other grandchild
being the hero. Artos went on to become Regent
for young Lord Edweil, his nephew, and unlike Bernard,
there was no shenanigans, no clinging to power.
When the time came, he gave power up to Lord Edwild.
And again, that's Ned's grandfather.
And and we can be pretty sure of this because Artos was given a
statue in the crypts. Like, you don't get that if
you're remembered poorly and you know, and if you forcibly do
that, they're like to just take it out after your death.
Like. It's a really bad statue.
It's a bad likeness. He looks ugly and it was an
insult. They gave him a clown face.
Yeah, it's like, what is that? You know, you're like going
through the crypts and it's all scary.
You're like, oh, bearded men with their fierce wolves and
like, wait, that guy, is that a clown?
You think that makes it less scary?
OK, good point. That might be scary.
You're right. That might be the scariest Stark
statue of all. I should pick something less
scary than a clown. So yeah, Arthas has a statue
despite not being a Lord, and he was given the hand of a daughter
of car hole. That's why this, this line, this
line continues, this story just we don't have to start over to
talk about a different Karstark, a different Stark.
It just follows the pattern here.
So yes, Lysara Karstark married Arthas.
So we've got another Karstark marriage right then very close
together, relatively speaking. This is why I guess there were
more Karstark Stark marriages back before the time when our
histories tell us what was going on at all, because these three
all happened in relatively close succession.
So you kind of guess that it didn't just start all of a
sudden and you know, probably were some before.
And then Ricard Karstark tried to marry Alice to rob, like when
they were young. He he maybe was too aggressive
about that. He tried to get them friendly
when not like hooking up obviously when they were six and
eight. But he wanted them to become
friends. He thought Alice could charm rob
like when she was six, you know, like, all right.
I mean she's does seem charming so you know I wouldn't put it
past her. She could have it's yeah, like
you're right. Like it definitely.
Like he might have been on to something there.
But you know I guess Ned didn't sign on to that or catelynd and
they weren't up for that. But, like, if you look at their
pattern, they weren't. They hadn't betrothed any of
their kids, even seven years later.
So. Yeah, I think Nita points this
out too. They weren't necessarily
shutting down Car Stark. They might not have just been.
We're holding off on all marriages.
Yeah, yeah. Which is I think a better.
You're right, that's a better point.
Nita says that she's right because it wasn't the car.
Stark specifically. They they didn't do any
marriage. No betrothals.
They were waiting longer for that probably because of the
entanglements and what's, you know, there's no reason to rush
into it. And a lot of a lot of things
that have gone bad for them by by those such entanglements.
So they're like, let's not put our kids through that.
See, I think if they were real cunning with it, they wouldn't
have pushed it as a pairing for Rob at all.
They would have said Sansa needs a little friend.
They would have just. Ingratiated Alice by sending her
for Sansa and Aria. Of course, sounds like Alice
would have gotten along better with Aria.
Yeah, sounds been like no, you're too.
You're too much like Aria. Like who would end up being like
she they were trying to get get her to romance Rob and she'd
just fall for John and you know? George could have done that, the
triangle that way and said because OK, so y'all, if you
remember the original original way, long ago 1993 plan was for
there to be a love triangle with John, Aria and Tyrion, right?
Yeah, Tyrion was going to love Aria.
It wasn't really a triangle then, because no one was going
to love Tyrion in. That group, John.
Yeah, yeah, John, it wasn't a triangle.
Tyrion was going to love Ari. Ari was going to love John and
whatever. Not a triangle.
Some sort of weird trapezoidal. I think we're creation go that
way, yeah. There's enough, yeah.
There's enough incest elsewhere in the story.
We don't need that from from our characters that we most see as
the most heroic, although plenty flawed.
So yeah, I agree that it wasn't because of it was a car Stark
suggestion. It was because of their ages and
and just waiting in general. Like Ned was shocked to the
Joffrey Sansa marriage. He was like, oh, I don't want to
do that. But he didn't.
He couldn't really say no after they'd talked about it.
I was like, no, if you say no, then they might think you're
something's up and it might cause problems within our
houses. And that's a bigger problem.
So let's talk about recent history, as in the last like. 30
By the way, Hindsight 2020. But what bigger a problem could
there have been? Yeah.
Were you? Worried a civil war might break
out? Yeah, that's definitely.
SAMSA might get taken prisoner or what?
Yeah, they would have if they just said no to robber like no,
yeah, it would have definitely gone back.
Like it's hard to imagine it going worse.
You're right. So Rickard has been lured at
least the time or at least since the time of Aries because he
raised his banners for Ned at during the Roberts rebellion, so
we know he was there for that. So he's between Ricard and he's
rather between Ricard and Ned and age, meaning Ricard Ned's
father because Lord Ricard Carstark was named for Lord
Ricard Stark. So obviously he's younger than
him because he couldn't have been named for him if they was
born before him. So maybe, I would think maybe
Ricard was around the age of Brandon, Ned's older brother,
but he's fully Gray by the time of A Game of Thrones, so he's
probably a little older than that.
So I'm guessing he may have been in his late 40s also because
this is an intense guy, This is an intense, gloomy man.
He may have gone Gray a little prematurely, you know, it
doesn't seem like he lived a low stress lifestyle kind of guy
that really clings to grievances.
To be fair, the things that happened to him are really
nasty, like he does suffer intense losses.
So, but it seemed like he was kind of like you could see the
way he handles it, that this is just the kind of way, the kind
of guy that holds grudges in the 1st place, the kind of guy that
holds to revenge and won't forget an insult.
So he he we assume he was at the battle to try that.
He may have seen Rhaegar die. He might have been close, but
probably not, because Ned came up on that a little bit later
and he was probably closer to Ned than he was to Robert.
Given which army he would have Army group he would have been a
part of, he would have been part of the Northern army.
I think at one point he says he stood with Eddard at the
Trident. Yeah, yeah, I believe so.
Yeah. So he, his history with the
Northern, with the Starks, goes back quite a ways is he had a
history of loyalty. He was a good Lord that
supported Winterfell like there was no reason to doubt him at
1st, and the Great John's been Lord for a while as well.
I don't know if he's been at Lord for as long as Lord Rickard
has. I think Rickard's a little older
than Great John, but they were also just.
They've known each other for a while.
They've been neighboring Lords for a good amount of time and it
just shows up in their relationship as the sort of left
and right hands of of Rob. Now other kin of Rickard we
mentioned like Arnulf Karstark and his son Craig and and his
other son Arthor who are going to come up in the second-half of
this episode. They may have also fought in the
War of 5 Kings or not the War of 5 Kings, but the Robert
rebellion, Arnulf certainly old enough.
He's older than Rickard, he's the brother to Rickard's father
and Craig and Arthur are around Rickard's age.
I think Arthor is younger, but I mean still not so young that he
would wouldn't have, would have been too young for Robert
Tribellion. So his loyalty, this is a long
term thing, like there's every reason not to doubt him, every
reason to think he would be a good warrior at the side of Rob
for a long time. We saw his arrival in our first
quote. Rob and him and the great John
make plans in private, the the upper Lords go talk in private
and Bran is left to act as host while Rob is off doing Lowe's
lordly duties. And this is when we meet the
three Karstark sons quote. I welcome you to our fires, Fran
said stiffly. And offer you meet and meet in
honor of our friendship. Harry and Karstark, the oldest
of Lord Rickard's sons, bowed, and his brothers after him.
Yet as they settled back in their places, he heard the
younger two talking in low voices over the clatter of wine
cups. Sooner died and live like that,
muttered one his father's namesake, Eddard and his
brother, Tauren said. Likely the boy was broken inside
as well as out to Craven to take his own life now.
It's not like Bran has like super hearing or something and
this is like a crowded room. So these two brothers Karstark
were not being very careful with their volume.
This is very rude and insulting and does not reflect well on
them. So when Bran, this is when Bran
had first has the thought Am I broken?
Am I Bran the broken? Remember, he never says that out
loud. He never once says Bran the
broken out loud. No no one ever says that title
out loud except for the TV show. But in the books he never says
that. It's only something he thinks.
So, so, so they named Bran the Broken.
We have the Karstarks just to think.
Yeah. So they kind of did.
Yeah, Indirectly, yeah. So at least the older brother,
Harrien, does not participate in that.
He doesn't seem to remark on that cruelly like his younger
brothers do, so it doesn't reflect on him.
Not that he's necessarily a good guy, but he's not.
I'm not that these two guys are necessarily bad guys, but that
certainly reflects poorly on him.
That's a very rude, insulting, cruel thing to do.
At least keep your voice down if you're going to say that.
You know, soon after they all marched S with the Host Rob's
army. And Lord Ricard claims one of
the towers at MO Kalin. There's only a few towers there,
which means he kind of shows how he's sort of got, he's pretty
high up, you know, great John gets one of them.
And later Alice Karstark confronts Jon Snow about her
father's execution. She's like, what the heck you
know, he he killed Lannister as he gets executed for killing
Lannister. So it's clear she doesn't have
the whole story. And John requires John, you
know, tells her he's like, look, he killed unarmed prisoners.
They were boys. Unarmed boys in prison quote.
The girl did not seem surprised. My father never bellowed like
the great John, but he was no less dangerous in his Roth.
He is dead now, too, though so is your brother.
But you and I are here, still living.
Is there blood feud between us, Lord Snow?
So not only did I bring that up earlier to point out that this
might be a northern value that's held more tightly the farther N
you go about blood feuds, but she's the the daughter of a man
that is clearly believes in these things.
So she was raised in a household where blood feuds are a thing,
you know, and that that matters. So it's it makes sense that
would come to mind for her. And I love this comparison to
Great John here. It keeps coming up.
It's like, again, this, this sort of left right pairing of
Robb Stark's men. Of course he has other advisors,
Blackfish being a big one, but Blackfish isn't a northerner.
Blackfish isn't there at the beginning, You know, he's
arguably a better advisor. Actually, I'd say it's a safe
bet that he's a better advisor, but nevertheless, there's
differences in in cultural separation there, and he's just
not in the story yet at that point, you know.
You know another, you know, nuance.
But I think important note to make here, the idea that she was
probably confused about the idea that her dad was executed for
killing Lannisters like that. That was the whole what it It
doesn't make sense to her, but think where she got the
information. From right they.
Come through her through this biased lens and she's probably
not the only one. Think how many other people out
there have this skewed perspective of what happened and
what it would take to actually change the the knowledge that
the false knowledge that has been spread out there.
The nature of even modern times, but but back then Especially how
stories and rumors could spread and spark feuds and and ruin
alliances and whatnot else through something that just
isn't even true. Yeah.
And we see a lot of examples of this, like both people not doing
something because they're afraid of how it'll be perceived often
correctly or things that are. Like there's a rumor in Westeros
that Danny killed her own brother.
Like, she obviously didn't do that, Drogo did that she had
nothing to do with it, you know. And so that's a perfect example.
And there's lots of examples like that later.
There's one that John doesn't take a certain action towards a
car Stark because of how he thinks it'll be perceived.
So we'll see that in the second-half.
Coming back to this, another perfect example of their
personalities is when they approach the twins for the first
time and see how well defended it is.
The great John starts cursing and swearing.
He's like damn it look at and Ricard quote glowered in
silence. Perfect like left and right.
You know night and day example of of how they handle discomfort
or frustration or or things that make them mad.
Now this gets under the radar a bit, which is that Lord Ricard
was one of the first people to suggest adding, linking up with
the River Lords, making them allies, and doing all that.
The great John wanted to go straight for Tywin.
Let's just go attack Tywin right now.
And he's like, we don't have enough men.
We need allies. They're being attacked by the
West. They're they're they would
clearly join with us because we have the same enemy in common.
And we already have this connection between Stark and and
Tully. So and here's where we get
another suggestion of just how. Like, let me use the example,
the Red Wedding. If you didn't catch the Red
Wedding, the foreshadowing for it on your first read, well,
you're like me. I didn't catch it either.
Like there were certain ominous decisions that were made, but I
didn't catch the dark. All the things when you're
looking for it, like, wow, there's a lot of build up to
this. The same thing is true for Lord
Rickard. It's a it's a smaller case, but
it's there. There's a lot of little things
about how vindictive he is, about how dangerous he is, about
how violent he might get. It's just little hints, and
here's a good one. Here's one of them right here
Quote. Be certain, Catelyn told her
son. Or go home and take up that
wooden sword again. You cannot afford to seem
indecisive in front of men like Roose Bolton and Rickard
Karstar. Make no mistake, Rob.
These are your banner men, not your friends.
Like in retrospect, you wouldn't.
Like in your first time through you don't notice that he's she's
comparing if she's lumping Roose and Rickard together, like,
well, you're lumping someone together with Roose.
That's like, oh, that's a red flag.
But like this early in the story, you don't know Roose is
danger. He hasn't done a single betrayal
thing. He hasn't done anything dirty to
this point, other than suggest that Bariston Selmy should have
had his throat slid after the Robert Rebellion.
You know, it's just by itself. That's not a whole lot to go.
On it's maybe a little dark or tough, but not he must be a
traitor, right? That's not where you go.
Yeah, exactly. So Rob later becomes worried
about what the Karstark men with ruse will do after they hear
he's executed. Their Lord ironically thinks
I've got to warn Roose Bolton about what this car just like,
about. No, actually, you're the one who
needs the warning because those men are going to join him
because Ruse is going to turn and they're going to turn with
him. And they're like, yeah, we're
turning. Yeah, yeah, let's do that.
Indeed. There are Karstark men.
This is, this is also an under the radar thing.
Karstark men are on Ruse's side. During the Red Wedding, Karstark
men kill their other Northerners.
They're with him. Yeah, not all of them.
By no means all of them, but a large contingent of them.
And of course, the ambush of Jamie's army at the Whispering
Wood. That was a that was a big
victory. But it was came at a very high
cost. Especially to the topic we're
discussing today. Rob was shocked.
He wasn't elated after his victory.
Theon was. Theon was like woohoo.
We won. Yeah.
What a great battle. It was so glorious.
Rob is has the attitude you want you you know you you kind of
want to see you know he shouldn't be all like yay we won
bloody victory. You know he's concerned about
what happened about their losses.
You know he's thinking of the losses first and not of you.
That's something we we appreciated at the time.
But then we find out so much is happening at once.
We find out that Jaime Lannister needs to be kept from Lord
Karstark because he'll want his head on a Pike And and Catelyn,
who is our POV for this is like, wait, what?
Why? What's?
What's going on? So they give her the bad news
quote. Lord Karstark's sons, Galbart
Glover explained. Both of them said Rob Torn and
Eddard and Darren Horn would as well.
No one can fault Lannister on his courage, Glover said.
When he saw that he was lost, he rallied his retainers and fought
his way up the valley, hoping to reach Lord Rob and cut him down,
and almost did. He mislaid his sword and Eddard
Karstark's neck after he took Torin's hand off and split
Darren Hornwood's skull open, Rob said.
Looking back, it's ominous that they were already worried about
what Lord Karstark might do to a prisoner.
Right. Like, that hits pretty hard when
you're looking back like, Oh yeah, they were worried right
away that he would go after a prisoner.
This one was an adult and it was the person that actually killed
his son. So it makes a little more sense.
It's like, OK, this is the actual villain here.
When he kills boys later, you're like, well that's you lose it
like it doesn't you you've lost sight of like you know we this
is not OK. Like this is clearly beyond the
pale. Like I can kind of understand
him wanting to do get the man that actually did it.
You know, the actual guy who killed his sons.
But just murdering boys later as a way to get revenge is just
almost no reader's gonna be like, yeah, that was the right
thing to do. You know and murdering your own
guards, your own forcing guards to get to them, to murder them.
I like in no way I do. I wouldn't justify this.
But I I don't know. I I had I I don't want to use
the word understand, but like he feels like he has to do
something. Does that make sense?
His values, yeah. Does he has no other options.
I'm not saying it's correct. I think he's arguably insane.
But yeah, it's it's it's so wrong.
And even if somehow you could justify it or understand it, you
still can't let it go. Rob can't just let this go.
Yeah, yeah, I think insane is about right.
Maybe mad with grief 'cause I think that's the actual phrase
that gets used. And that seems about right,
'cause it is grief. It is, that's it.
Is what's driving him more so than anything, but also his his
northern values as yes, that's you get revenge on people that
do that to your family, no matter the circumstances.
It doesn't matter whether they were justified or you were
justified. It's purely comes down to the
basic he killed one of mine or two of his.
In this case I got to kill one or two of them and it was in
fact two that he killed plus plus the guards.
There's another quote later that it makes it easier for him to
rationalize this when Caitlyn let Jamie go.
Yeah, right. Like, how can it be wrong for me
to kill them and not wrong for her to let one go Like this
doesn't make make sense, you know, Like there's other parts
that also don't make sense, but you can see how he's
rationalizing. It yeah, I agree.
And we'll we'll get to that in a minute.
But you're totally right. There's a lot of things that
just don't add up for him and you can kind of, as you put
yourself in his shoes, Yeah, it doesn't seem fair, right?
Not, not that his answer was was.
His answer was even less fair. But.
But we're we're not being fair, all right?
We're not being fair, right. That's that's where he's gone.
Exactly. Yeah.
So and it's actually a little worse than this, yes.
He loses both of his sons. He also loses his son-in-law to
be. Darren Hornwood is the other one
that was mentioned. That was his daughters
betrothed. So that just killed his two sons
and his son-in-law to be. So that was even like that part
kind of gets lost in the shuffle a little bit because, I mean the
two sons. That's enough, but it was more.
So, I mean, it wasn't your son. Yeah, so Green Fork, meanwhile,
was happening at the same time of the Whispering Wood, and now
Harry and the Other Son was the only car.
Stark, not there. You had Torn and Eddard and
Darren Horde, and so these are Rob's personal guard.
That's part of why they were in Jamie's way there.
As an aside, we don't know. We never do here.
Who actually takes Jamie down? You know, it's probably a group
effort, but it isn't like not a single person is credited with
disarming or capturing Jamie. It's just we hear about the ones
who died helping that happen, but not the ones who succeeded.
Interesting detail that we never ever given.
So Harrien is given command of the Karstark infantry, and that
is placed under the command of Roose Bolton, which that's bad.
As we find out later, Ruse isn't betraying anyone yet.
He's still trying to win. He's still trying to be a
Northerner. He's like, well, if my king does
well, then I'm going to be like second or third command or
highest up in a new Kingdom rather than just one of the most
powerful Lords in a Kingdom that's ruled from the South.
So he was in it, but he was also wary of their chances when was
willing to switch sides, which is, you know what he did.
So he took a high risk, high reward strategy here, making a
night attack either. He comes out looking amazing and
beating a larger force, beating Tywin Lannister, and the only
way he's going to do that is with some sort of subterfuge,
because going ahead on is just not going to work.
But Tywin has more men and better men, so he had to do
something. He had to take a risk.
The risk didn't pay off, but a lot of people think that ruse,
this was ruse immediately tanking the North's chances when
it was definitely not the case. I'm adamant about that.
But what's interesting about this battle, this is something I
never noticed before, is that we see the battle through Tyrion's
point of view and it's mostly Karstarks that he's fighting
that his army that he's arrayed against.
And here we go. Here is a very bloody action
moment from very early on in that battle close.
A Crescent of enemy Spearman had formed ahead, a double hedgehog
bristling with steel waiting behind tall oaken Shields marked
with the sunburst of Karstar. Gregor Clegane was the first to
reach them, leading a wedge of armored veterans, half the
horses shield the last second breaking their charge before the
row of Spears. The others died, sharp steel
points ripping through their chests.
Tyrion saw a dozen men go down. The mountain's stallion reared,
lashing out with iron shod hooves as a barbed spearhead
raked across his neck. Maddened, the beast lunged into
the ranks. Spears thrust at him from every
side, but the shield wall broke beneath his weight.
The northerners stumbled away from the animal's death throes
as his horse fell, snorting blood and biting with his last
red breath. The mountain rose untouched,
laying about him with his two handed great sword.
I mean, Yikes. His two handed great sword
wielded one handed. I should say Herion would have
been nearby. These are all Karstark men
there. He's in control of this unit.
So maybe even just 100 feet from that.
Maybe even less from what we just saw.
That nasty. It's like bloody scene of Gregor
just rampaging through the Spearman there.
So yeah, we we see that these were all faceless soldiers.
We don't know any of their names.
Tyrion doesn't know them. Tyrion didn't know Harry and
Karstark personally, he just knew that sigil.
But if we had seen this from a different perspective, there
would have been, you know, more names given to us and and
probably Harrien would have been pointed out.
But yeah, the battle was a ruse. Of course, while this is
happening, a ruse run directed by ruse.
No, not really. Rob was directing to ruse, but
Bruce was directing his army and that part worked out really
well. So already early on the
Karstarks are paying pretty heavily for their loyalty.
We have Harrien wasn't killed, but he was captured and probably
a lot of car hold men died in that battle.
I mean, they were at the bloodiest part.
They were facing Gregor Clegane's men.
They we know that that was also a trap laid by Tywin.
Tywin expected the soldiers on that side to run, and he would
wheel his men and push them up against the lake.
And Tyrion's men were right by the lake.
So those men, when Tywin wheeled his Pikes toward the lake, it
was the Cardstark men that would have taken the brunt of it.
So not good. And the so the Cardstarks
suffered a lot and they were left under the command of ruse
who you know withdrew with the survivors of that army and and
pulled back and was wary for a while until he took Harrenhal.
So Ricard doesn't know what happened to his son.
He just knows that the Green Fork battle did its job but
wasn't a rousing success otherwise.
You know they didn't win. It enabled them to win at at the
Whispering Wood. But he doesn't know what
happened to his son. He knows two sons are dead.
His son in law's dead and his other son no word at all.
But it's probably like he's has reason to doubt that his son
survived. And we see here in this next
quote what's happening. Lord Rickard Karstark, gaunt and
hollow eyed in his grief, took his seat like a man in a
nightmare, his long beard uncombed and unwashed.
He had left two sons dead in the Whispering Wood and there was no
word of the third his eldest, who had led the Karstark Spears
against Tywin Lannister on the Green Fork.
Then things get very confusing for the Northerners because
Stannis and Renly both declare themselves King and Ned is
executed by Joffrey. A lot happens in a short period
of time. We see the reaction to the
Northern Lords to Ned's death. Obviously that through Captain's
point of view, Rob is a very upset.
There's a lot of people praying at River Run, including Lord
Rickard, Lord Blackwood, a bunch of others.
They're praying at the Heart tree.
And as we'll see, though, he becomes more concerned with
vengeance for Torin and Eddard than he has concern for his
living children. He does things that put them
very much at risk. And the death of Ned Stark
clearly doesn't calm him down, and he makes him more, you know,
vindictive from his POV. It's even more about blood.
There's even less chance for peace now.
I mean, they not only killed his sons, at least that was in
battle, but this, this execution of Ned, this was dishonorable
and unplanned, and even the Lannister didn't want to do it.
It was, you know, Joffrey going rogue.
Probably at the advice of Littlefinger, but still reason
to be upset. Yeah, not just more vindictive,
but more nihilistic. OK, yeah, he.
He feels like what's the point of anything anymore, right?
Yeah, Like Ned's dead. Caitlin will let Jamie go.
Like my sons are dead. Like.
One foot in the grave. Nothing of your matters.
Yeah. 1 foot in the grave, basically.
Yeah, and here comes one of until this example, until this
comes forward. And then all of a sudden Rick
Hart's got something to live for again.
In one of the many examples of him and Great John being the
left and right hands, they are the spearhead for the new
Kingdom. Catelyn gives her speech about
peace and alliance. And you know it's not going to
bring Ned back. It's not going to bring back
Torin and Eddard. None of these people are going
to like we can't. All we're going to have is more
blood and death. And Lord Karstrok says a man has
a need for vengeance. That's his basics.
His short one sentence reply, some more than others.
Clearly he's clearly at the top there of a need for vengeance.
And he adds, what did my Torin and Eddard die for if I'm to
return to Carhold with nothing but their bones?
And then the great John stands up and gives that really rousing
speech, which he's very good at this sort of thing.
This is why you imagined him doing this when war was declared
in the 1st place. Sean.
And this is how he was probably back at last Hearth.
He's like we should be done with the South.
They don't know anything about the North.
Even their Gods are wrong quote. He reached back over his
shoulder and drew his immense 2 handed great sword.
Why shouldn't we rule ourselves again?
It was the Dragons we married, and the Dragons are all dead.
He pointed at Rob with the blade there sets the only king I mean
to bow my knee to melords. He thundered the king in the
North, and he knelt and laid his sword at her son's feet.
I'll have peace on those terms, Lord Karstark said.
They could keep their red castle in their iron chair as well.
He eased his long sword from its scabbard.
The king in the North, he said, kneeling beside the great John.
From Gregor to Great John, both with their huge swords.
But Lord Rickard doesn't want his son's lives to have been
wasted. But forging a new Kingdom, a new
Kingdom of north, he can live with that.
That is a thing. That's something that they died
for. You know that that's that's but
it's still, as we learn later, it's still 2nd place to
vengeance for him. He's still, that's still more
important to him than anything else.
But this is something he can get behind.
And to be fair, from this point on, Karstark is one of his most
important Lords and advisors. Until he isn't.
Until that all falls apart. At that moment when they're
declaring for Rob, did they know yet that Renly and Stannis had?
A Yes, also, that's part of why they did it, because they were
like, well, who? Because that was one of the
arguments. It's like, which king do we?
Who are we for? We're not for the Lannisters,
clearly. But should we pick Renly and
should we pick Stannis? And that's why Gretchen's like,
screw them all, let's be our own kings again.
And they're like, yeah, great idea.
Yeah. Which is the odd part being the
north, the, the Riverlanders are in it and they're like, yeah,
we're joining you. And like, wait, Riverlands is so
we're this is the Kingdom of the north.
And this Riverlands, that's that's not as clear there.
This is from Catlin's point of view 'cause she's and houses who
had never been ruled from Winterfell led their swords at
his feet. So it was also, that's another
thing that probably makes Rickard a little proud is that
it's not only a new Kingdom, but it's a a bigger Kingdom of the
than the prior Kingdom of the North was.
So yeah, that's that's something.
That's definitely something. OK, let's take a little break
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Eastern. Let's get back to it.
Theon, like Bran, sees Karstark men through the telescope after
he's taken Winterfell, though not many since most went South.
So there there's Car Stark men in the group gathered by
Roderick Cassell and Clay Serwin who are trying to take
Winterfell back from Theon. And of course those men are
betrayed by Ramsay Bolton. And however, this is one of
those battles. You know when the we talked
about this at the time when we did Val Arubitis it was like 200
cavalry sneak attacking 600 infantry.
Now you would even despite the numerical superiority, 200 men
on horseback is probably going to beat the 600 men on the
ground because the horseback gives you a huge advantage.
Not to mention the fact they were it was a surprise attack
and these were probably better fighting men too because this
was Bolton Garrison and Ruse probably is more cautious about
who he leaves behind. Rob, who was very aggressive
about taking his best dude S along with most of the other
houses. So this is still this is one of
those battles. It's hard to believe everyone
was killed. There's got to be a few
witnesses to this to what Ramsay did here.
A few car sharks are probably among those who these people
are. Where they are now is
impossible, if not to say like, I just don't know, but they
probably just went back to car hold, you know like where else
would they go. So still there could be the
point being there could be eyewitnesses amongst the car
Starks, just some of The Dirty things that Ramsay and others
did. Like somebody could say no, that
was Ramsay, not Theon, because that's the lie that their bolts
are pushing that the the Theon did this, which is easy lie to
make. It's a it's a smart, cunning lie
because Theon did do a lot of it like he did do most of it.
He just didn't burn the castle and kill everyone in it.
He just killed, you know some of them and didn't do any of the
burning. So a lie mixed in with a bunch
of truths is much more believable.
Exactly. A perfect example was a very
that's why what made it a cunning lie was was very
believable, but but there are potential witnesses to undo that
later. Meanwhile, of course, while
that's happening with Theon, the War of 5 Kings is raging.
And before the Northern has learned that Rob has lost
Winterfell, you know there's there's some other things going
on. First, he offers peace with the
Iron Throne. Now the terms aren't friendly,
they're designed to be rejected. But Lord Rickard is so mad that
there's even an offer being made that he storms out of the hall
before even hearing the terms. If he had listened to them, he'd
be like, Oh yeah, that's they'd never going to accept that.
It's it was a strategy. It wasn't, it was optics.
It wasn't of like, this is a genuine offer.
But that goes to show just how in his head Ricard is.
He won't even just the notion of peace is so offensive to him
that he walks out. And then Ed Muir adds to this
unease that comes from Lord Ricard storming out quote.
All wager there were others who felt the same as Lord Karstark,
her brother Ed Muir declared. How can we talk of peace while
the Lannisters spread like a pestilence over my father's
domains, stealing his crops and slaughtering his people?
I say again, we ought to be marching on Harrenhal.
Rob answers that like we don't have enough soldiers.
Like logistically it's just not going to happen.
It's it's just we can't. And so unfortunately, though
it's not the only time Rob's intent isn't made clear to his
subordinates. In this case, he might have been
trying to conceal that he doesn't necessarily want his
army to know that they're too small.
But he doesn't have to tell the whole army, just some key
leaders. If you just told Ed Muir and
like three other people and and it is part of like the modern
military, at least American military commander's intent is
something to talk about a lot. Because if you just have these
blanket orders, and if something happens, like communications are
cut off or the group is split or the commander dies, the soldiers
need to know what they're supposed to do next.
So if you say, you know, we have to capture this hill so the
helicopters can land, but then you see the helicopters get shut
down and the commander dies, like, oh, well, maybe we don't
capture the hill now, right? Like that.
You understand? We're not going to have these
sacrifices if we can't land in helicopters anyway.
So but Rob didn't let let his intent be known.
He just kept it all secret, trying to be tricky.
Maybe it would have worked. But you got to.
You got to trust and communicate with your subordinates, you
know? So he does say he's going to go
speak to Lord Karstark to to kind of explain the deal to him.
He says it would be really bad to lose him.
Sigh. Yeah, it would be really bad to
lose him, Rob. Indeed it would be.
So yeah, that's that's ominous. So Lord Rickard.
But Despite that, you know, it's it's still a while before things
really come to a head. Lord Rickard stays with Rob
throughout all these campaigns in the South.
He's credited with personally killing Sir Stafford Lannister
at the Battle of Camps. Drives a Lance through his
chest. And this is the one where they
sneak up on that host in the east or in the West where they
have no centuries 'cause there's they're so deep in the West that
they have there's the it's insane to them that a northern
army would show up and attack them.
But thanks to Grey Wind and getting around some barriers,
they're able to sneak up and do that.
And after this battle, there's further talk by Rob of ransoming
Jamie back to Tywin and Ricard loudly objects.
He's like no giving back Jamie, no way.
And they begin to the plan to draw Tywin West by raiding up
and down the coast. It's a brutal plan.
We we criticized it at the time because it's just you're just
attacking villages and stuff. This is, this is gnarly, this is
this is cruel. And you got to think that Lord
Ricard was not pulling any punches when he was sack in
Lannister villages. He was probably the most brutal.
He was probably, maybe not Vargo Hodish, maybe not, you know, as
bad as Gregor. But he might have been.
He might have been that bad. I mean, what's one of the worst
things Gregor did Killed the Targaryen kids?
Yeah, yeah. Unarmed kids that were basically
prisoners murdered him. OK, what does Carstark end up
doing? Right.
Same. Yeah.
I mean, now in this case Gregor also tortures people would be
like, where's your money hidden? And he does that regularly and
rapes people. I don't know that Carstark is is
torturing people for money, but he's probably letting his men
rape and and that not stopping them.
I doubt. I don't.
There's no reason to think
otherwise. I would hope he's not, but I
cynically would think he probably would.
They they're doing that, and he's not telling them not to.
I would be curious how many Lords leading armies in this
world stop their men from raping.
Well, the only one we hear about that is Stan.
Like like Santa stands out for that.
Like, I guess I wouldn't think Ned would allow that, but it's
not like we're told. That I wouldn't think Ned, for
example. Not everyone would.
I think they would allow it, but not everyone do.
I think they have like, they're micromanaging their troops
enough that they're aware of everything happening.
Yeah, I wonder how much people are like, yeah, I'm not
encouraging it, but it happens. And they're not like it's a.
It's a Gray area like Tywin encourages it all kind of under
the radar, whereas someone like, I guess, I would guess like Ed
Muir is against it, you know, because Ed Muir really cares
about the the the peasants, like he tried to bring them into
River Run to protect them and stuff like that.
Like, I would guess that Ed Muir would be against it, but I would
also think that he might be one of the ones that people could
just be like, oh man, I didn't know, boss.
You know anybody? Blind guy.
Yeah, he might be. Yeah, you're right.
He might let it slide. You want to think that some of
the more protagonistic characters, like if Ned found
out that his troops are doing it, he might execute them.
And so his troops sounds better. Yeah.
But maybe, maybe I'm being too optimistic about Ned or his
subordinates, or his awareness of what's happened in the
battlefield. Stan has definitely gelded some
of his men after the battle of the Wall for for raping.
So we know. We know what he does to people
who do that and it's not enough. It didn't like he he had an
existing policy and it still didn't stop.
Like they thought they could get away with it.
Most likely they thought they wouldn't be caught or they're
just insane. I don't know what they.
I don't know what was in their heads.
That's not a place I want to be in the mind of a rapist.
But it doesn't work though this plan.
They certainly have no trouble with the villages and and
causing destruction and devastation.
But again the lack of communication causes problems.
Ed Muir is like, I'm going to stop Tywin from crossing.
You know, we're not going to give up one inch of ground here,
and that's unfortunate because Rob wanted.
Him to get past so that he would spend the winter in the West.
You know using up their resources instead of the
Riverlands resources. But yeah, didn't work.
Davin Lannister who we don't meet till I guess it's I forget
if it's a feast for Crows or Dance with Dragons.
He swears an oath of vengeance that we don't find out till
later because that's his father. Stafford Lannister was his dad.
So he's he's like I'm not going to cut my hair until I kill Lord
Rickard. When Jamie meets him, his hair
is like, just crazy. But he's like, I won't be able
to get that oath of vengeance because Rob killed him first.
You know, he reminds me of Yoke was saying he wasn't going to
cut his hair till winds came out.
I just cut his hair. I haven't seen him in a minute.
I wonder if he's still keeping that oak, though.
Yeah, he's no more like a yoke boy.
He's hair boy. So let's talk about Lord
Ricard's betrayal. It all goes S after they go
South so badly so after the capture of Winterfell, Catlin
has her own moment of being overcome like Ricard had and
makes her desperate play, releasing Jamie at the end of
The Clash of Kings. Rob and his army are in the West
when this when this happens, but they learn of it soon enough
early in A Storm of Swords. It causes a lot of uproar, but
Lord Ricard is the most upset of all and says this in response to
Catlin's grief quote. Lord Rickard Karstark pushed
past the great John like some grim specter with his black male
and long ragged Gray beard, his narrow face pinched and cold.
And I have one son who once had three.
You have robbed me of my vengeance.
Catelyn faced him calmly. Lord Rickard, the Kingslayers
dying would not have bought life for your children.
His living may buy life for mine.
The Lord was unappeased. Jaime Lannister has played you
for a fool. You bought a bag of empty words
no more. My Torn and my Eddard deserve
better of you. That's hard to kind of see
Ricard's point here. You know, Catlin's play was
desperate and not likely to work.
And it didn't, you know, I mean, it kind of did.
It kind of did, but it kind of didn't, you know, like, it
worked better than Rickard would have thought, but it still
didn't really work. This is also a brutal irony,
like it says, like some grim spectre.
Well, who becomes an even grimmer Spectre?
Of the two of them, Catelyn does, she becomes even more
vindictive and even true, truly undead.
Unlike, she's not like a grim spectre.
She pretty much is a spectre's more like a, you know, a shadow.
But still, like, it's close enough.
She's a revenant. You know, by by the undead
classification, she's more of a revenant, but still, it's closer
to what? Closer to undead than than
Ricard Carstar. So and then Rob's relative
leniency, like you brought it before Sean, he caught Ricard
just loses it. He's like, what?
How can it be a crime to kill Lannister as if it's a crime,
not a crime to free them all. Like all you're doing is putting
her in a tower cell and saying bad mother.
You know like I kind of get where he's coming from like he's
not going to execute his own mother.
But this is it's not even justice.
And and the Starks are supposed to be known for their even like
his he's he's very absolutist with Rickard's punishment but
not with this. You know and I agree with him.
Ricard did deserve to be executed.
Maybe strategically it wasn't the right call as we'll discuss.
But he did deserve that based on the laws of the land.
But Catelyn deserved more than just a talk, a stern talking to.
Like that's. I don't know what you're
supposed to do with your. Roster What are you supposed to
do with Catelyn? What?
What do? You think I don't know?
Could be. Yeah, that's you're right.
Like I don't know what it should have been, but I.
Feel like that was probably the harshest punishment he could
have given her. Actually, maybe.
Maybe she's not around any of her kids now.
She's just locked away. I don't know.
He can't send her back to Winterfell.
It was captured by Theon. So, like, she can't.
You know what? She's supposed to, Yeah.
She's already at River. Run.
That's kind of a reward. She used to just see her other
sons, you know? Like, it's not really a real
punishment. Like just being kept completely
alone, Yeah. Say, say, that was the harshest
punishment he could have given her.
All right, give that same thing to me.
That's what Rickard's thinking. Yeah, and he he throws that back
in Rob's face, like when when things come down.
But unfortunately that's not the only crime he's committed, so
it's not quite that simple. So.
But he doesn't before he does kills those children, before he
takes his seven retainers and murders the two guards and then
kills the two Lannister boys, he tells all his men that whoever
brings me Jaime Lannister gets my daughter's hand in marriage.
This is an awful, awful, awful thing to do for a number of
reasons. One, it's a total betrayer of
his betrayal of his daughter. It's also a betrayal of his
living son, because thousands of people now can claim his
daughter. Now, of course it's not so easy
to capture Jaime Lannister. Let's let's let's add that in
there. It's not exactly an easy thing
to do that he's putting out. But whoever peasant commoner
lore, whatever, whoever pulls this off, it could be Vargo
Hought who is, who almost does. Pull it off So it just gives you
an example of the type of men who he's opening this up to.
This offer extends to the worst people.
Like what if Greg or Clegane had given him the head of Jamie
Lancer? Are you going to give Greg or
Clegane your daughter's hand? Really.
Like, is that really what you're setting yourself up for here?
So. And This is why it's a betrayal
of his son too. Because anyone it's it's it's
succession law. One O 1, kill the son, the
daughter inherits. You're married to the daughter,
all of a sudden you've like, this is what Braun does to the
Stokeworths. Like they sort of incite him and
he just, he's like, you're going to you're going to pick a fight
with me. In that case, I'm going to take
your castle. But it's the same thing.
You kill the guy, kick out the the lady wife, take the castle
you've got. You marry the the someone with
the bloodline of that castle and it's yours.
And that's what Vargo Hope was going to do.
That's what other people were planning on doing.
A bunch of different car, random car Starks got this idea in
their head. They went off in groups of 10 or
12, like whoever the leader of that group is.
Each of these batches of 8/10/12 car Starks running off in
different directors trying to find Jaime Lannister.
Every single one of these groups is like one guy who's like the
in charge of that group. They're all like, I'm the guy
who gets the girl. All the other guys are like,
haha, that's what you think you? Know like I'm going to kill,
stab you in the back and take her for myself.
Which is probably true in a few cases, but most of them are
like, no, once I marry her, all you guys, I bring you all in.
I hire you as my staff. You guys are my personal guard
at Carr Hold. We're all going up, you guys.
My you guys become my entourage, you know?
Yeah, you'll be my Castellan, You'll be the master of our own.
And there you walk to other, you know, sub Lords, daughters in
the the realm and yeah. You guys just have to keep in
mind, we've said it before, this is a important part.
To remind ourselves again, lordship in Westeros is like
godhood. It's like a being a lesser
deity. You're so powerful a different
sets of laws apply to you, different sets of standards
apply to you. You have wealth undreamed of,
and and I remember seeing this from a medievalist.
It's more it's far more realistic to see a black person
in a medieval show than is to see a blacksmith rise to a
knight, rise to to knighthood. Get that.
Let that settle not social mobility is is more unrealistic
than people from Africa being in Europe, which shouldn't be that
rare anyway. We have Moors in Spain.
I mean, if they're already in Africa, you have a land you can
walk to Europe from from Africa, you know, like not over the
Mediterranean, but around, right.
You know it's it's it's it's land, right.
It's not the same thing. So anyway, and there are ships,
by the way, you know, so it's. Not that far to sail.
Yeah, so social. So this is I I bring that up
just to show Rickard's offer of not just upward mobility,
massive mobility upward is unheard of.
It's so, so rare to get this, like when they're giving out
rewards after the Battle of the Blackwater, this guy, this guy
that like saved his Lord, killed a bunch of people.
It was a hugely heroic all they did was made him a knight like
that, Like that's still big. He got money and a little bit of
land, but he's still not noble, you know, For that, for great
service like that, for saving like a a really high Lord is so
hard. I would say he probably.
It would. It wouldn't save him from the
Gregor Clegane of the world but he probably should have said any
noble, any Lord. You know maybe and you know not
that I'm against upward mobility and that, but I am against Vargo
Hoats of the world and whatever. Marrying Alice Carstark and
becoming Lords. I'm against the bronze of the
world doing it too, to be honest.
Yeah. So I I I don't know.
But I I he still could have faced plenty of terrible Ramsay
Bolton's and Gregor Clegane's and there's terrible Lord things
that could have done it. But the the pool would have been
slightly smaller. Yeah.
Yeah, agree. Yeah, so it was just insane.
Like this was just a bad. Like I think when this happens
you can see it's a bad idea, but I'm not sure it registers with
the average reader, or even a dedicated reader, just how
insane this is, just how what a big deal it is, and just what
what a chaotic thing to do it is.
There is a flip side of this coin that you know, I don't
know. I think it's worth it.
I don't think it was correct to do, but some of the best might
also be inspired. There might be some loyal car
Starks who want to avenge Rick Hard.
You know, someone who maybe already was in love with Alice,
or, you know, whatever. You know, you could see that
that it wouldn't only completely always be the worst people.
There might be some noble hero who thinks Jamie should die
anyway, and it Rob's not doing his job and I'll just do it
myself, you know? And maybe that's what Rick Art
was hoping for, you know, dreaming of optimistically in
his mind when he's already not thinking straight, but but
clearly that that there's all these negative things he was not
thinking about that did happen. So.
Yeah. And there's these contradictions
in his decree and his attitude because, which which is makes
sense because he's in grief and in rage and not necessarily
thinking these things through. One of which is like, well, he
doesn't expect to be executed or punished severely for what he
does. Yet when it comes time for it,
he's so, like, he's so aggressive about it.
It's like he's mocking Rob. It's like he almost wants to be.
It's like he's taunting Robin to killing him almost.
It's like he is so lost a sense and so bereaved that he just
doesn't care because he can't fulfill this offer if he's dead.
And that's what ends up happening.
He gets his head chucked off and he's like, well, how are you
going to give car hold to give someone your daughter's hand in
marriage if you're not alive to do that?
Yeah, I think it goes back to my The way I was putting it earlier
is he's become kind of nihilistic.
He thinks just nothing else matters.
He thinks that everything I thought would happen a certain
way isn't happening in that way. So I should be killed for this,
but I don't think I will. Like, he's almost like outside
of himself, right? And he just, I think he
literally doesn't think Rob will kill him.
I think if you're going to let Caitlin do this, then you're
not. I don't know what you're going
to do, but I don't expect you to do the right thing.
And I'm going to goad you into doing it, even if it means my
own death. But he doesn't even think it'll
mean his own death. You know, yeah he he or or maybe
he does. It's it's unclear.
Like I go back and forth on that like I'm not sure but he's
saying things that are so rude, so lost a sense.
So just like vindictive and and just aggressive and not not
logical. Insulting that even great John
has had enough and hits him while he's just kneeling and and
bound and this is the response. Lord Karstark spit out a broken
tooth. Yes, Lord Umber lead me to the
king. He means to give me a scolding
before he forgives me. That's how he deals with
treason. Our king in the North?
He smiled a wet, red smile. Or should I call you the King
who lost the North, Your Grace? Yeah, Like, this is not what you
say when you're trying to save your own life.
You know, he's clearly now a minute later when he does not a
minute later, 'cause it's the next day that he's executed.
Rob thinks about it, and they argue for it like Edmure's like,
maybe just hold him captive, you know, and you know, that'll keep
the other Karstarks loyal. And Edmure's like, yeah, you
know, maybe we can't afford to lose if you execute him, like
we're going to lose them all. Like we can't afford to lose
them. You said yourself we can't look
forward to lose this, these men and then Rob is like, Nope, I
got to do it. You know he killed my honor as
well as I have no choice. He's like I disagree with you
Rob. I think a lot of people disagree
with you Rob. There you had a choice.
Entering to another point like about Karstark whether he wanted
to live or wanted to die is he could have asked taken the black
he didn't like. He's lives close to the wall and
Rob would definitely not have said no to that.
Rob would have said OK, yeah, that's that's what Northerners
do. Like you take, you ask for the
black, especially a noble you, you let him have it, you know?
Was it brought up the idea of Rob just sending him to the wall
that anyone suggest that even I wonder if that had come up, if
it would have been considered. And on some level I still think
it was a mistake. But I don't think it's this
obvious mistake that Rob made, because you might lose just as
many men by not executing him. You people, even if you don't,
even if they don't, like, immediately abandoned your army,
you might just lose their their their loyalty, their commitment,
their dedication. You know, they when things start
going rough, they remember, like, I don't know about this
Rob guy anyway, Like let's himself be insulted in front of
everyone. Like what kind of man?
What kind of? I can just see the other the the
other way it would have gone if he didn't isn't just this
perfect solution either. He is.
You're right. He's very much caught in a rock
and a hard place here and it's it's he gets.
He gets really. This is his most frustrating
moment as king. He takes his crown off.
He's like, why would anyone ever want to be King?
You know? He's very upset, and I have.
A question Do you all think that sending him to the wall would
have been the right choice or he just also has flaws?
I think if Rob knew the severity of things on the wall and the
importance, I think he would have done it.
I think he would have seen we need every man.
I I think it just shows that he doesn't really know how
important the wall is. If he's just killing men.
I think you send him, send him up there.
Yeah, maybe. I mean, I don't know.
I don't know. 'Cause trot problems for John.
He could have refused. He might have been like, no, I
don't want to go, you know, but but he does at least, you know,
yeah, it's it's unclear what he would have done.
I'm not really sure. Sitting into the wall might not
'cause all the car Starks to leave, just some.
So it might have been better than that angle.
It might have been better in that he or or another trouble
would be he can't just send him to the wall.
He's got to send people with him to get him to the wall.
Yeah, well, that would only be a few people and not necessarily
if you force him, he takes the oath, he'll go do it.
I mean, they would probably trust him to do that, but maybe
not. And I don't know if Rob or
anyone thought this through, but like, let's just say 5.
What if some of the car starts, like, let's go free him, let's
go catch him on the road. We'll get our Our Lord back.
That's possible, yeah. That's happened before.
Right. I think they're you're gambling
on his honor. Really.
Yeah, which they might not trust anymore.
Guy, it is not a good gamble right now.
I agree. Yeah.
It might not have been a good gamble.
You're right. Anyway, so let's move forward
here. There's there's a parallel here
with Catelyn and Ricard in that the way they react to what's
happened to their children. And part of Rob's leniency is
because, as we discussed, there's not a lot of things he
can do to his mother. But the other part of it is that
she actually owns up to it. She's like, yeah, I did it.
I did, here's why I did it, and it might work.
Ricard argues he's like, no, I what I did was write, you know I
I killed those two guards. That's fine.
Like they were. Who stands between a man and his
vengeance. That was I had the right of
vengeance for that. He just acts like vengeance is
like this pass to do whatever. And it's like no vengeance.
Not vengeance. No, no, It's like play the
vengeance card and like vengeance.
Okay. Go right through, Sir, you know.
And you know, it'd be critical because in another scenario, if
guards had abandoned their post, he would have thought the guard
should be executed. Yes, he wants vengeance.
He thinks the guard should get out of his way.
Yeah, Yeah. Like what?
Guards. Just step aside like, oh, yes,
go ahead, kill the prisoners. Yes.
My, if you had just said vengeance up front, you know,
that would have been fine, you know, But where's your vengeance
pass, You know, So and these are, again, these are children.
These are not men. It still would be bad if they
were men or women. But these were children, right?
These were like 12 year olds or something like that.
And so they know it was wrong. And it's think also of at the
end of this book, Storm of Swords, where there's a similar
moment where Barristan and Jorah are brought before Danny to
apologize for what they've done, for their deception, for the
things they've done. Barristan apologizes.
He owns up to what he's did. Jorah is like, no, it wasn't me
I had to like. It was his fault.
Did you think of this guy? Like, why not blame him?
He's just like, I've done everything for you.
He just expects to be forgiven. Doesn't it's a bad look.
He handles it very badly and and Barristan handles it very well
and Danny responds accordingly. She forgives Barristan and sends
Jorah away. You know if he had, if he had
groveled properly he's at the grovel.
But if he had apologized properly she would have probably
been moved because she was on the fence.
We're in her head and we see that and I'm we're not in Rob's
head. But I feel like if Carstark had
said the right things, and certainly not just throwing it
back in his face and mocked him for losing the North like that's
that's not much coming back from that, I think.
Also, a lot of that was public too.
If they were in a private room and Carstark did these
disrespectful things, maybe Rob can let him get away with it.
Yeah, but not when everyone is a witness to it.
Yeah, yeah. And so when it comes to the
moment, you know, the morning it's raining and it's cold and
it's dreary and the execution's about to happen, Rickard finally
softens a bit. It's been, it's the next day
he's had. He's slept on it, I guess, and
here's what he says. I was named for your
grandfather. I raised my banners against King
Aries for your father, and against King Joffrey for you.
At Ox Cross in the Whispering Wood and in the Battle of the
Camps, I rode beside you, and I stood with Lord Eddard on the
Trident. You're Akin, Stark and Karstark.
That quote we read earlier that Asha read about the history of
Karstark the car hold and Carlin Stark and all that.
That is a thought. Catlin has right at this moment.
Right in response to that the declaration that we are kin and
catlin's like, yeah, he's not wrong.
Blah, blah, blah goes back 1000 years and it's still it's still
a stretch. This is still not this wouldn't
be considered kinslang. It certainly wouldn't be
considered incest for their children to marry which he was
pushing for. In fact he was pushing for his
daughter to marry Rob. So you know specifically Rob.
So it's not this is this is to me.
He is actually trying to save his life here.
Whereas the night before he was so bereft and and mad that he no
matter what happened he wouldn't have cared for.
Now he's like, you know, I kind of want to live.
He's not going to. He's too honorable, too like,
proud to push for it too much. He's not going to beg.
He's not going to cry, but he's going to make an argument.
I don't know if I completely agree with you, OK?
For one, I don't even know if he knows what he wants or expects
or saying but. But I think he's still.
I don't know how to say this. He's trying to make it seem like
Rob's making a bad decision. He's like, I'm this close, loyal
ally and you're going to kill me.
I don't think he. I don't even think he's
necessarily expecting him to not kill him.
He's trying to make it more clear to everyone around that
Rob is making a mistake, that I was justified.
You should have let me do this. I'm your close ally.
You can kill me, but he's almost hinting at.
But you'll be a Kinslayer. Oh, he doesn't hint at it.
He says it. He says kill me then and be
cursed. Because when Rob says no, he's
like no, he's like, well you're this kinship didn't stop you
from. I think he's still, yeah.
And now Rob has the correct argument back, but I think that
he's still trying to argue that Rob is making errors.
Yeah, and I think he's right. Rob had Rob did not handle the
situation well. It was, it was he put like his
father. He put honor above like winning.
But he's still not apologizing. That's the thing.
None of this is. That's why I don't think he's
like, softening per SE. He's not saying like, you're
right, I shouldn't have done this.
He's not saying that. He's still trying to rub it into
Rob. 'S Yeah, you're right.
He never does apologize. Yeah, I mean, he's also, if he
actually cared about the stability of the realm and about
the success of the North, he wouldn't badmouth him up to his
grave. I would want Rob to have
stability, right? He wouldn't do that.
So yeah, he's not thinking about anyone else but him and his
close kin. Only that's why I made the point
earlier that he is clearly more concerned with his dead sons
than his living children. He's his actions, put them at
risk. His house, his Kingdom, all
those things, and it's all about vengeance.
Yeah, I was going to say that's part of.
I think what he's doing here is more so than, like, hoping that
Rob will suddenly change his mind.
He's trying to make sure everyone around goes to get
Jamie. Rob's messing up.
You need to go get Jamie. Yeah, I think that's at least
part of what's happening here. Is like I was justified in this.
Jamie needs to die. You can kill me if you want.
You're a Kinslayer or whatever, but I want everyone to hear I
was justified. You need to get vengeance for
me. Yeah, yeah.
And that does sort of happen. The Karstark men, as soon as
he's executed, they start leaving right away.
And Blackfish tells them and this is the conversation they
have quote. Will they reform away from River
Run? Asked Rob.
No, they've scattered hunting. Lord Karstark has sworn to give
the hand of his maiden daughter to any man, highborn or low, who
brings him the head of the Kingslayer.
So that's Rob finding out about this decree that that Karstark
had issued before he was executed and before, even before
he was condemned. It was before he went to go kill
the prisoners. He did this.
So again, yeah, really huge deal.
Like consider just to return to this topic for briefly the the
idea of what he's offering. Consider that you are a car hold
person. You're born there, you've lived
there all your life. People not only don't have much
social mobility, they don't have much mobility, period.
In terms of like moving and living under a different Lord.
So the idea like that you could ever marry into your Lord's
family is just unthinkable. Like you wouldn't even, just
wouldn't even cross your mind. I mean, it's almost like the
modern equipment is like, I don't know, some famous pop
stars, like whoever brings me the head of this guy or brings
me something that would be a little, little much for modern
times. Bring me the head of somebody.
But like, like, I don't know, Lady Gaga is like, whoever does
this will marry me. I I will marry them, you know,
And she's serious, completely serious about it.
It'd be like the the rush to accomplish this task, whatever
it is, would be immense and insane and chaotic.
And yeah, it would be something. Wasn't that like that Owen
Wilson movie that happened or? Was there something, was there a
movie like this where that really.
Yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah, it was the movie
with. It was that movie with Jlo and
Owen Wilson. It says the pop superstar Kat
Valdez is about to get married before an audience of her loyal
fans. Seconds before the ceremony, she
learns about her fiance's cheating ways and has a
meltdown. And so she sees an A total
stranger, Owen Wilson, in the crowd and she marries him on the
spot. She picks him out and marries
him. Apparently.
I haven't seen this movie. I just.
That's so funny. Yeah, it's like.
That. How lucky for Jennifer Lopez?
Yeah, yeah, right. Owen Wilson.
What a catch. He's a big movie star.
It's not. I was really lucky like it was.
Anyway, how does she not know who he was?
Anyway, So there's one Carhall, daughter of this generation.
Like the idea that you some to to use Stannis's language.
Later some base born man Jack thinks he has a chance to marry
Alice Karstark. Hell no, it's not even on the
table. But actually it is on the table.
You know, like wow. And she was first betrothed to
Darren Hornwood, right. The guy that a Lord Ling, the
heir to Hornwood like this is you would expect her to marry
someone of that rank. And this, this letter, there's
there's a little bit of a confusion here because Alice
finds Alice tells John that that after Darren Hornwood's death
Rickard sent her a letter saying we'll find you a good Southern
Lord to marry you too. So this just deepens the
betrayal that he goes back on that promise.
Like you know what? I'll find you some person to
marry. It won't be a sovereign Lord.
It might be a Lord, but the odds aren't good 'cause I opened it
up to anyone. Yeah, maybe Ricard just assumed
it would be a Lord. Like who else is going to
capture Jamie? Like some?
It could have been a random person, but he just again, we're
not going to scrutinize this plan that he clearly didn't
think through very much, 'cause he clearly didn't think it
through very much. Let's talk about these hunters
and and broken men. They appear everywhere.
It's not just Car Starks, but it's mostly car sharks because
they're the ones who received the offer initially, and then by
the time probably word gets out, word is also going to have
gotten out that Car Stark is dead and unable to fulfill the
terms of that contract. So folk who lived for
generations in Car Stark lands are now like just rampaging all
over the South looking for Jaime Lannister.
Just everywhere they might go, a group of 10 or 20, a group of 10
or 20, like I said, it's all over the place.
It's card Stark men who show up at Acorn Hall.
Remember, Arya goes to goes around the Riverlands and then
one of those places she goes is Acorn Hall.
That's where the woman dresses her up and says, you know, I had
a, a daughter your age who died young and all.
It's very sad. And she says, yeah, some some
dudes and White Sons and Black Cloaks showed up and we sent
them, we sent them on their way with some crossbow bolts, you
know, And they were like, they were asking if we had Jaime
Lannister in there. He's like, well, he's not in my
bed, you know, But she all that stuff.
And that brings us to Vargo Hote, right, 'cause we know
these. This is just one example.
This is the example George gives us of these roving bands of men.
But it's implied. Well, not just implied.
We know there's lots more of these this happening, this, this
sort of thing was happening all over the Riverlands.
So Hote himself specifically tries to claim this offer.
When the Brave Companions capture Jaime, it kicks off kind
of a confusing series of events that George recognizes as
confusing, so he basically has ruse explain it kind of
straightforwardly. At dinner with Jamie and
Brienne, he tells Jamie that Marco Hote would never have
ransomed you back to your father because he needed safety, and
that's what Carhold was going to get him.
He was going to trade Jamie for marriage to Alice and then go
flee N where Tywin couldn't get him.
He was actually going to double cross Tywin, collect the ransom,
and then not deliver Jamie. Which is like, whoa, what a
what? A what?
A planned heist that is. You're going to abscond with
money from Tywin. You think he's going to forget
about that? He just really expects that
distance to protect him, which it might have, but I don't know
about that. But he he of course, it never
came to pass. So yeah, the point being, he
needed safety more than he needed money, but he was going
to try to get both. So I don't know that he expected
someone quite so terrible as Vargo to try to take up this
offer. But if he had thought about it
for like 10 seconds, it would have been obvious.
But it was also something Vargo didn't realize.
Vargo Tell basically tells his men in front of Ruse that he's
going to do this. He's like, I'm going to cheat
Tywin and give the hand, you know, to Lord Kar Stark and get
car hold and ruse is like a fine plan.
However, Rob already cut Lord Carstar's head off.
So you're not collecting anything.
And he's like, oh, Robert doesn't have a response to that.
So you're like, well, what am I going to do?
Well, I'll tell you what he's going to do.
He's going to forcibly marry Alice and kill Harian.
That's the plan. That's the plan that I outlined
before. It's a pretty straightforward
plan for anyone who has the lack of scruples enough to pull it
off. And guess where.
Harry and Karstark was in prison for a while at Harrenhal, but
before Vargo could like, kill him or put all this together,
Ruse had taken control and Ruse set Harry and free, seemingly to
continue the war. But what does Ruse do?
He's like, take most of the car hold men, take these other men
that belong to houses that I want to weaken and go attack
Duskendale. And then he later pretends that
he had nothing to do. It's like, yeah, it was, it was
more grief. It was, it was House Telhart,
right. Of course.
Yeah. Yeah.
That they were too lost a sense and just wanted revenge and did
that. And yeah, it just didn't.
They all got slaughtered. They got, they got, they got
attacked by Gregor and Randall Tarly.
They were slaughtered. It was really bad.
And Harrien survived, though. He was captured, so he was in
prison in Harrenhal, got out, went to this fight, this Battle
of Duskindale was captured again and is at Maidenpool under
'cause remember Randall Tarly also conquered Maidenpool and
that's when Brienne goes there, he's in charge and it doesn't
come up that that Harry and Karstark is there when Brienne
is there, but we know that's the case.
So honestly, had Lord Rickard not been executed, The Who, this
this same thing might have happened.
He might have tried to kill him, You know, like, well, I I want
to kill you and your son so I can pee.
Lord of Carl, it's like, thanks for thanks for your daughter.
Now I'm going to kill you so I can rule this place ruse.
When he's talking to Jamie, he's like, I hope nothing.
I'll befell Harry in a Duskindale like as if he wasn't
sending him into a trap And and then that makes Jamie nervous
because he's like, well, what's stopping you from marrying Alice
and claiming car hold you who are neighbors to car hold.
It would make a lot of sense for you to.
He's like, well, I already married Fat Walda.
He's like, well, he says I already married a Fred.
He's like fare Walda. Nah, Fat Walda.
He said I could have weight in silver.
So I chose accordingly. I was like, OK then, yeah,
nothing wrong with that. So yeah, it just shows you how
awful people flood in when the opportunity for power is there.
It's not like an even distribution of good guys and
bad guys that will take up this offer.
It's mostly it turns neutral people into bad guys too, 'cause
it's like, well, I, I. What are you willing?
What are you going to do? What would you do for a Klondike
bar? What would you do for Car hold?
You know, like I wouldn't do evil for a Klondike bar.
I might do evil for Car hold. I don't know.
How. How much evil are we talking
about here? I'm not killing children, but
like, maybe I'll kill some bad guys, you know?
I don't know. I don't know.
So, yeah, Winterfell attracted
Boltons and Ironborn. Car Hold attracted worse.
Karstarks like Arnolf and Dragon and and well, Ricard turned bad,
I guess. I don't know.
And and Jaime Lannister had roles in both of these
scenarios, right? He he threw Jaime, he threw Bran
from tower, which is throwing off the Stark succession, and he
killed Torin and Eddard Karstark, which kicked off all
this other stuff. So Jamie, you're such a pivotal
character, aren't you? He had a hand in both those
things, but it was the same hand because you couldn't have one
hand in each. That's.
True. Yeah, that's.
That's true. He can put his gold hand in one
of them, you know. So, Harian, let's talk about
Harian. Karstark, this is a guy who went
through a lot, as I said, he, he led the Green Fork army, which
didn't go well. It was meant to be a ruse.
It was meant to be difficult. And they were expected to lose
again. He was captured.
Now, I, like I said, he was taking to Harrenhal, but we
actually have a quote. Arya sees him, doesn't know who
he is, but we do. And here it is quote.
No one ransomed the North men, though.
One fat Lord Ling haunted the kitchens, Hoppite told her,
always looking for a Marcel. His mustache was so bushy that
it covered his mouth, and the clasp that held his cloak was a
silver and sapphire Trident. He belonged to Lord Tywin, but
the fierce, bearded young man who liked to walk the
battlements alone in a black cloak patterned with white Suns
had been taken by some hedge knight who meant to get rich off
him. Sansa would have known who he
was, and the Fat One too, but Arya had never taken much
interest in titles and sigils. Fat one's obviously Willis
Manderly, who also has a really horrible time of it.
Or that's Wait, is that Wendell Nuts?
Yeah, it's Willis, I think. Yeah, it's Willis.
And he has a really horrible time of it.
He's forced into cannibalism later and very bad, very bad.
Harry and Karstar, Interesting guy walking the battlements
alone, captured by a hedge knight.
That's a little embarrassing for him, I suppose.
I wonder if Ruse just was like, just took him.
Like, screw your head Tonight you get nothing because Ruse let
him free. We don't, we don't hear like any
other circumstances. He was freed by Ruse but after
Arya and Jacquin pulled off the weasel soup incident and there
were Karstark met among the false prisoners.
So they were part of the whole attack from within.
But then they were sent into that trap, a dust can tail by
Ruse. So it's like they pulled off
this great maneuver and then they were sent to their deaths
and Rob worries that executing Lord Rickard has made him an
enemy of Harry and Karstar. But Blackfish says don't be so
sure. Not all sons like their father.
You liked yours cause your father was a good man.
But, you know, don't be so sure that Harry and was a big fan of
his dad. And he might thank you, not
publicly, but he might be grateful that you just made him
the Lord. Aaron may be more upset with his
dad than he would have been after this decree about his
sister. Right.
Yeah, Yeah. So.
And of course now Rob's dead anyway, so he might have an
issue with the Starks, but he doesn't have an issue with.
I mean, he might have an issue with Rob, but he doesn't
necessarily. That doesn't necessarily mean
he's like blood feud against, you know, Sansa or something
like that. And and Speaking of Sansa, when
Brienne is at Duskendale looking for Sansa, she sees armor and
clothing for sale that by looters who looted that
battlefield. She sees Karstark gear for sale
used and bloody and you know, dented battlefield stuff.
So those are the guys who fought beside Harian.
Yeah. So we don't know if Harry what
what Harian's whereabouts are. He's probably still at
Maidenpool. But Randall Tarly went to King's
Landing and might have brought him along, which is interesting
because Randall Tarly is a guy that might switch sides or
probably will switch sides to Aegon.
So like, how does that factor in?
Is he going to keep Harry in as a way to keep maybe Carhold on
Egon's side, or I don't know. That's an interesting
consideration. I don't know.
I haven't really considered the North all that much in terms of
Egon, 'cause it's so chaotic right now.
Stannis is up there and I don't know that they're going to be
fighting the South so much if they're so busy.
I haven't thought this about this very much either, but it
might not matter much to have Carhold on his side, like all
the men went South and got killed and scattered.
I don't know. It's something for down the road
maybe then something that is immediately important.
Maybe. But yeah, like having the
support of Car Whole just in name might be beneficial, but
like, can they provide material support?
Yeah, probably not. Either way, it's interesting
that he's in the hands of someone who might switch sides
and that could change his outcome.
Now, I doubt he's in any any more of danger being executed
now, but that was the idea. The reason Arnold Karstark
declares he's on Stannis's side is not because he wants to
support Stannis. It's not because he thinks
Stannis is going to win, it's because he by taking sides with
Stannis, he expects the Lannisters to execute Harian.
Doesn't work, does not work, but that's why he does it according
to Alice. And Arnold's behavior later
really makes it pretty clear that yes, Alice was telling the
truth there. He's he's actually tries this
multiple times. He's like a couple times where
he tries to get them to execute Harry and tries to get them to
execute Harian at Harrenhal. And then again it yeah, it just
doesn't work. Now remember, Jamie actually
orders all prisoners taken at the Red Wedding, and they're
about to be sent to King's Landing, which includes the
Great John. Now, we don't know if this has
actually happened yet. It probably hasn't yet and the
the phrase might say no, they might try to and then they try
to delay or hold on to him longer, but they might just say,
OK, fine, here he is. Which that opens up a whole can
of worms there because the Brother Without Banners could
free him on the way as they're trying to maybe free Alice
Westerling and Ed Muir. So all sorts of possibilities
there. And if Greatshawn does make it
to King's Landing is in prison there, maybe Herring is too.
And it'd be kind of an odd reunion of Karstark and Umber
and in the black cells of of King's Landing that would be
kind of strange and very very far ahead of looking ahead.
If Herring gets out of this, Greatshawn gets out of this, if
they ever get to return N we know what they'll be doing.
It won't be any easier. They'll be fighting the others
most likely. So if they survive to that
point, they it doesn't get, you know, the road ahead will be
well snowed in, we'll say. It is such a daunting tragedy.
This whole thing, all the struggles everyone's gone
through, is just the beginning. I can't even know how much worse
it's going to. Be Yeah, yeah.
Alice likes her brother. She calls him Harry.
You know she's calls her other brothers by nicknames.
So she there's no bad blood there as far as we know.
So that that builds on what we were saying about maybe she'll
he'll be upset about what his father did to her and to him
that might soften his stance towards the Starks, which, you
know, Alice isn't mad at the Starks, you know.
So anyway, so she's still a target for those reasons, or at
least was until the events of A Dance of Dragons.
Let's talk about her. The girl in grey, that's what
Melisandre sees her on in her vision, it's a girl in grey on a
dying horse. Melisandre says it's got to be
Arya, you know. And as I said at the start, this
adds this really nice layer of depth because she is a lot like
Aria. Even though John's like that
wasn't Aria. You were wrong.
You know, I don't feel great
about Arian's chances for survival made in part because I
think it might make the story more interesting if he dies and
Alice becomes Lady of Carr Hold because a, it would be notable
for a number of reasons. There's, as far as we know,
there's never been a Lady of Carr Hold, just like there's
never been a Lady of Winterfell. Carr Hold is much younger.
So this is a longer, a shorter period of time for that to have,
you know, taking place or not taking place, really.
And if she and Sigorne's children inherit, that'd just be
so interesting. It'd be kind of bail the Bardian
ish. We have a a free folk marriage
to a major house and it's just accepted.
And what if, what if the story ends in Sansa's Lady of
Winterfell and Alice's Lady of Carr Hold.
You have like, this new, brave new world of women in charge of
they won't be in charge of every house.
But it also does make sense because so many of the men have
been killed. It's not just about the rise of
women just because it's they're capable And the men, or half of
them are dead, or more than half of them.
I don't know. It was a piece of World War 2.
You know, it's all the men going off to war and more work needed
to be done to, you know, manufacture the war machine.
So women went to work. And that was like a big movement
that still took generations and we're still not there yet when
it comes to equality. But it was a a big step, you
know. But it's also the type of thing
that it's so neat to think about.
But like, George can't write this story as generations
forward, right? Like maybe we can have this
moment where a few women are left in charge at the end of the
book. But what we want to see, and I
know what George wants to write, is how that plays.
Yeah, He wants to keep going, yeah, Yeah.
So let's take a quick look at this new house then of car hold
their their new sigil or new arrangement etcetera quote.
Like so much else, heraldry ended at the Wall.
The Thenes had no family arms, as was customary amongst the
nobles of the Seven Kingdoms, so John told the stewards to
improvise. He thought they had done well.
The bride's cloak, Sigourne fastened about.
Lady Alice's shoulders showed a bronze disk on a field of white
wool, surrounded by flames made with wisps of Crimson silk.
The echo of the Karstark sunburst was there for those who
cared to look but difference to make the arms appropriate for
house, then. Yeah, all right.
It's funny though, our our, you know, Google Sheets doesn't
recognize the word differenced as a valid word.
George used the word different. Didn't either.
At first I was like surely it doesn't differentiate it is what
I thought they meant to say. There's no difference.
I was like no. I see why George doesn't use
Word or Google Docs. He uses something St.
Writer or WordPress I think it is.
Word. Yeah.
Not something that doesn't tell him.
We're perfect. We're perfect.
Yeah, Old school word perfect. You know, I wonder, by the way,
if those flames were influenced by or meant to influence Stanis
Sandra Melisandre? Probably, yeah.
The the marriage was done like she was the one who officiated
the wedding, you know, and and yeah, the Queen's men are there
and yeah, it's a marriage. Yeah.
Yeah, I I agree. I think that's part of it.
Yeah. So it's a it's interesting
because car, hold the car. Starks, that's a cadet branch.
This is now a cadet branch of a cadet branch, although right now
it has no lands, so if it never gets lands, it won't.
It won't survive, it won't last into the future.
But as we've shown, there wouldn't take much for Alice to
inherit car hold because Harrians life is very much in
peril. And even without his own kin
trying to get him killed to steal car hold, he's still in a
lot of danger. So, and that danger seems to
have passed, as we'll explain in terms of his own family trying
to get him killed, since it's clear that Alice doesn't.
Although who knows about Sigourin?
I don't know what like this guy seems like he might be decent
despite being the son of the the former Magnar Fencedeer who was
not decent. But we really don't know like
this guy. We know very little about him.
Do we know how old he is? Even he's a teenager.
No, he's he's losing his hair. So he's you can lose your hair
young, but that kind of implies he's a little older than that,
maybe maybe 20. He's late 20s.
Like, yeah, his hair is receding.
He's got a receding hairline. That's one of the only
descriptions we have of him. He's a big guy, you know.
I don't think he might not have a beard yet, though.
I think, yeah. I think he's youngish but not.
But not young, young, not like John's young.
You know, not as young as Alice, who's 15 or 16 in that scene.
So the current Karstarks, I don't know the way they keep the
if they keep behaving the way they have been, it might just
give, it might give the house a bad name, you know, for a while.
Maybe it's something they can live, you know, get past or you
know, rise above eventually. But yeah, like kinslang.
Trying to kinslay, maybe not successful kinslang.
And then what Lord Rick Hart did was treasonous.
A lot of people see that negatively, but after him
there's there's Arnold and Kragen who we'll we'll talk
about here. They're they're a big part of
this last bit. They don't do much to make up
for Ricard. No, they they're worse.
They're worse than him. I'd say at least Ricard was
loyal for a while and was a good soldier and fought beside Rob,
you know, he like, had good ideas for a while.
He was good till he wasn't right.
These guys were never good. And when he wasn't, it was like
under awful, terrible circumstances.
Yeah. Bereaved.
Yeah. His grief was that was real,
right? Like you can you wouldn't do the
things he did but you would get you get why he's just so bereft
and. He wasn't doing the things he
did out of some sort of greed or, you know, manipulation or
something. He was just emotionally
distraught and driven insane with vengeance, yes.
A very different look than what Arnulf and Craig and who are
driven by ambition and greed and as far as we can tell, that's
all. So they're definitely, with
these guys coming to the forefront.
It's it's a, it's a quite a bad look now.
So Craigen shows up at the wall wanting to marry Alice, but it's
too late. Alice has already married
Sigourn because she's told John what's happening.
He's like, we got to get this. Well, I know what to do.
Let's get you married and then it'll be too late.
And he's smart. He meets Craigen down on the
road, so he can't ask for guest, right.
He's like, I'm going to I'm going to go walk a mile down the
road and and get you as you're coming up rather than let you
arrive and and ask guess right Would be hard to say no to that.
So it was pretty smooth move by John.
But before that other people are trying to marry Alice.
They're like Alice Karstark. Huh.
Karstark you say, you know other people sniffing around like how
far down the line of succession is she?
Oh, really? Only an imprisoned brother ahead
of him in the line of succession you say?
Or her, rather and interesting. So like even Sir Patrick of
King's Mountain, the guy that tries to kill 11 to get Val,
that doesn't go well. He tries to marry Alice.
He's like, I lost my lands in the South.
I lost King's Mountain, presumably.
And which by the way, I think I pointed this out a few times.
Shay and I passed King's Mountain many times.
Driving you drive north on, I think it's I-85.
You pass King's Mountain from, I think it's in North Carolina
anyway. And this and George didn't name
it off this person because Sir Patrick is like a real person, a
friend of his, that he lost a bet with or won a bet with.
I forget what it was. I think he won the bet.
And that's why Patrick is in the, in the book getting killed.
Yeah. John and Alice get along really
well, which is it's partly because of the Aria vibes.
Like that's part of why they get along.
He wants to get along with her. He likes her right away and she
likes him right away. And you know, under other
circumstances, maybe they could have gotten married, but
obviously that's not a a possibility for the Lord
Commander of the Nights Watch. And she's got 200 thins now,
'cause that's what Sigourn had with him.
So she's got a little small army now, so she's no longer, you
know, threatened by 6 car Starks.
They're going to come try and kidnap her.
That won't happen. She's there when he gets the 1st
letter from Cotter Pike, the letter that says I'm going to
Hardhome, but not the letter that comes describing how awful
it is and the big fallout of John getting stabbed and all
that. She's gone by then.
It's it's almost too bad she's gone by then and almost, and
also a good thing, 'cause we do not need any more people there
to throw off the confusion of what's everybody going to do.
Like a whole nother group of people with 200 pens.
Like a whole nother, you know, factor.
Tendency of Yeah, who might? Have, but they would have
probably been on John's side, so maybe that would have been good
for him. So yeah, anyway, and she thinks
that they're going to open the gates to her.
She's like, I'm going to car hold.
I think they'll open the gates to me, 'cause I'm the lady of
car hold. They might not like these sends
with me. I might have to prove that I'm
not being forced into this. But this is my husband, you
know, all this stuff. And yeah, Craig and himself
doesn't think so. He's like, they won't.
They'll cut his head off and send it, you know, and turn it
into a drinking cup or something.
And this brings us to this next part, which is Kragen, who was
chasing after her. It's also going to come down to
the people inside Carhold who they side with, whether they're
like, yeah, we'll side with Alice or yeah, we'll side with
Kragen. Kragen says no, they'll kill.
He'll cut his head off and kick him out, like with his 200
soldiers with him. You think they're going to do
that? Like, do you have that many
warriors that still at Carhold after all this time?
I don't think so. That might be a good instinct
that Kragen has, but it might not come to fruition when
there's 200 men there to guard him, and he might not be
analyzing the makeup of who's there.
I I don't know either. But ostensibly, all the young,
strong, loyal soldiers went off to war, and so the ones behind
are probably a lot of women who are maybe more likely to side
with Alice, right? Maybe, yeah.
Maybe even more the more, you know, senior, educated, wise men
that are still there might not want war or battle or be able to
conduct it with these young thin warriors you know.
But some of them don't want would would just die before
letting free folk into their castle.
Some of them. Would have these prejudices
against the wildlings. Yeah, so yeah, it is tricky
conflict. But but Nina points out that
clearly someone helped her. She didn't saddle that horse and
get away by herself. If everyone was on Kragen's side
or everyone, you know, she definitely has allies in car,
like some people are on her side.
We we don't know who, but definitely someone.
So yeah, she was the when Melisandre sees that vision of
her on a dying horse fleeing, it's from Kragen.
Now he according to her, he was going to marry her and then kill
her after getting kids off of her because that's kind of what
he already did to his first two wives.
And he's over 50, so he's been around.
She's having plenty of time to learn his personality.
She's only 15, but she's obviously known him and it looks
like he has three sons of his own, but we don't see them.
I'm not sure what the deal is because we find out Arnulf, his
father, has six grandsons and Craig and has a brother, Arthor,
and there's three sons with Arthor.
We assume those are Arthors. So anyway, it's not important,
but there's there are more Karstarks and Nina points out
how the vibes of Craigen's arrival trying to kidnap Alice
is is a little bit like Rhaegar Liana.
You know, fleeing alone on horseback to escape an unwanted
marriage to go to the person that she wants to marry instead.
Of course, it's John who finds her husband, rather than the
actual person that's going to marry her.
But John is the son of Rhaegar, so that's what that vibe is
really there. And Alice looks like Arya, who
looks like Liana. So yeah, the vibes are very
strong here. It's really good.
And just like Alice's furious uncle comes to demand her back,
just like Brandon furiously demanded Rhaegar come out and
die. Give me back.
You know my sister? Yeah, very similar that.
You know, sometimes these things, just it's happenstance
and it works out that way. But if George did design this
all, you know, he'd be like, yeah, that was good.
He sat back and, you know, like had a sip of his drink.
Like I wrote a good one there. He can be proud of himself.
So John just locks Kragen in an ice cell, throws him in an ice
cell and he's stubbornness, seems to run in the family,
'cause this guy is like, Nope, he refuses to do anything.
Like they they try to move him from 1 cell to another and he's
like trying to bite people and and it doesn't go very well
because it's like young strong men and he's a 50 year old man
that's been in a cold cell all this time not eating, you know,
but he throws like frozen poop at them.
Like he's so like it's so pathetic, you know like like
what are you going to? It's sourceful.
Yeah, it's sourceful. It's frozen.
That's like that's hard. And you know I got to hurt
somebody with that. No, not really.
He just grossed them out. But with John getting stabbed
and people looking for allies, maybe someone lets him out to to
put him on their side. Like we need allies against the
the free folk that are attacking us 'cause what we did to John.
You know maybe the maybe Bowen Marsh lets him out and says hey
help us. You know maybe some of the
Queen's men let him out and say hey you want to join with us.
We'll help you do. We'll help you do your thing if
you help us do our thing. You know I don't I don't know.
But there's there's ways he can get out.
Like his fate might not just be freeze to death in an ice cell
because everybody forgot about him.
Though that is possible. We could get a Craig in white.
Yes. We could get him that way.
Yes. So I don't know.
Yeah he he's hard to say but but his father, it's a lot easier to
say what's going to happen to his father because his father is
in a pickle and very, very unlikely to get out of it.
So he he's the last character we'll discuss.
This is also kind of the echo. The succession battle over
Carhold is kind of like the succession battle over
Winterfell. There's no actual Arnold
equivalent among the Starks. There's no one that's just this
dirty, this evil. But they're I guess the
equivalent of trying to claim Winterfell on on this from this
character is the Boltons. So you know, there, there's no
uncle, there's just neighbors that are that are that evil.
Arnold was left behind as the castellin by Ricard.
We don't know if he was already the Castellin prior to Ricard
going South. Good chance he was, but it may
have been a new thing given Ricard was going South.
Like, I need someone to be Castellin while I'm gone.
Go ahead. Arnold in his 60s, he's walked
with a cane. He's definitely not capable of
going to war, but he's certainly capable of plotting an intrigue.
Alice tells him, tells John about why he declared for
Stannis, which is just as ironic as Rob.
I got a warn Bolton about the Karstark man.
No, you need to warn yourself, the same thing happens here,
Stannis asked. John, is Arnold Karstark the
only man of honor in the North 'cause?
He's the only one that declares for Stannis, and he's like,
actually, he might be the least honorable man.
And for a while, Stannis is like, all right, well, you won't
accept Winterfell from me, John. The closest thing we have is
this guy Arnulf Karst, the closest thing we have to a
Stark. I'm going to give it to him.
Yikes. No, that's not that wouldn't be
good. No longer is that a thing that
will happen. So no worries there.
Let's, let's talk about why. So yeah.
As to repeat what we said before to remind ourselves he joins
Stannis because he wanted to get the Lannisters to execute Harry
and making him Lord a car hold. If he could follow through on
all this, he would have been Lord of Winterfell and car hold.
Maybe just giving car hold to his son Kragen through Alice or
whatever. Flying too close to the sun.
Good one. Yes, indeed.
Aren't all flying too close to the sun.
That's a good point. The Karstark white sun.
Yes. Yeah, I guess that's what you
were trying to say. I I'm a little slow on that one.
All right, So on top of that, he was conspiring with the Bolton.
So, like the A Dance with Dragons Theon's first chapter,
when Theon gets LED out of prison and paraded in front of
these Lords, it's Hoth or Umber and Arnolf Karstark.
And here's something I didn't catch before.
Arnolf doesn't recognize Theon at first.
He's like, who the heck is this guy?
And Umber's like, stares at him for me.
He's like, oh, it's him look again and he's like, oh, the
Ward's always smiling. He recognizes him because of
Theon's cocky smiles that he was known for.
And Theon, meanwhile, thinks Arnolf looks like a vulture,
which is appropriate for how he behaves here, circling over the,
you know, the corpses of his family members and trying to
claim what's theirs. You know, so he looks again,
recognizes him, and then in Theon's Wins the Winter chapter,
we see Stannis turned the tables on him.
So, slight spoilers here, by the way.
Warning, Theon's the Wins the Winter chapter is going to get a
little bit of discussion here, so he learns.
Stannis learns of the betrayal of Arnolf.
That's coming thanks to John sending a message.
He's like because Alice tells him and he he warns Stannis and
the way he warns him is the banker.
The banker's like, hey, I got to find Stannis to give him loans
and get all this stuff settled. He's like, well, here's where
Stannis is and give him this message.
While you're at it, tell him about Karstark.
He's like, all right, sure, I'll tell him about that.
And he does. And this is because of that he
turns the tables on Karstark. Arnolf is expecting to lead
Stannis into a trap. In fact, he tries to lead
Stannis into several traps, none of which work.
John foils two of them. If if Karstark only knew that
John has foiled 2 of Karstark's plots.
He says OK, so remember, Stannis is going to attack the Dread for
he's like Arnold. Karstark tells me that there's
only like 50 men at the Dread Fork.
We could take it, and he's like, you shouldn't do that and I'll
do that. He doesn't suspect the trap.
He's just like, it's not a good strategic play.
It's probably going to be harder to take than you think.
The Dread fork's really strong. Those fifty men will give you a
lot of trouble. And what if there's a little
more than that? What if it's not 50, blah blah
blah. Anyway, so he talks him out of
that plan, and then he tells him about Arnold betrayal.
It allows him to turn the table. So Arnoff is planning on
betraying Stannis has no idea he's been alerted.
And then Arnold walks into the Hut where Stannis is holding
court. And at first, he's like, who's
that? And then he realizes who it is,
just like he didn't realize who it was at first.
When he sees him at the beginning of A Dance of Dragons,
the beginning of The Winds of Winter, it's going to be the
same thing. He's like, oh, who's that?
Then he realizes who it is, and his face goes pale.
And he also realizes that there's no chairs.
It kind of all happens at the same time, like, he's a man with
a cane. Stannis would have given him a
chair, except for he's getting ready to kill him.
So, But prior to this, Stannis thinks ahead.
He's like, OK, they got 400 men, which is it might be more than
you might have expected the car starts to have.
At this point, it's actually more than that.
It's 400 infantry plus some Bowman and some horsemen.
Stannis says, OK, before they wake up, surround them and, you
know, take, you know, box them into their huts and all that and
keep them in, keep them in hand. Don't let them get armed and all
that. And they do that.
A couple of them resist. A few of them die, but mostly
they're just confused. They're like, what happened?
So Stannis hopes to bring them over on his side.
That's 400 men. We could really use those, You
know, there's their car hold men and we'll tell them what
happened. You know, he's a little, there's
a little concerned that, well, aren't they in on the plan to
betray you and say this is like, probably not.
Why would he, why would he tell them?
And here's here's the response. It's a great line quote.
Karl Stark could never have hoped to keep his treachery a
secret. If he shared his plans with
every baseboard man Jack in his service, some drunken Spearman
would have let it slip one night whilst laying with a whore.
They did not need to know they are car hold men.
When the moment came, they would have obeyed their Lords as they
had done all their lives. Yeah.
That's just the the Stannis cuts to the chase.
They will obey the orders they're given, even if the
orders are like really we're betraying that's they follow
orders. Yeah.
So they didn't need to know in advance.
It's it's. I completely agree.
And this is another perfect example of something I I've been
frank, UN quote I give all the time is 3 people can keep a
secret if two of them are dead. Yes, that quote, but that's the
idea of it. Like he wouldn't have told the
whole army, you know? And now here's Stannis probably
not making a mistake. Rob dead.
He has them all LED away. Well, first of all, two of the
grandsons try to fight back. They're like he says okay,
understand this. You are dead men.
The only thing left to be determined is how.
And he's like, basically he's saying if you don't cooperate,
you're going to burn to death. If you do cooperate, you'll have
it, You know, it'll be quick and painless.
Arnulf and Arthor never say a word.
They just freeze and they're like, Yep, OK, then two of the
two of the grandsons try to fight and it goes poorly for
them, Although maybe not because they might die easier this way.
Yeah, it might be. They might not get.
Poor, but not as poor as being burned.
To death. But they might not get burned to
death, so we'll see. But anyway, so they're in prison
like Craig and there's no scheduled execution.
And that brings I should have mentioned that at the time.
Remember I said John didn't want to execute Craig and cause of
how it would look it would look like he's killing northern Lords
to give it to free folk because it's Sigour.
He had just married Sigour into Alice.
So he's like I can't really do that.
It looks it'll look really bad. I'm already he's already going
too far as Lord Commander of the Wall in some other ways.
You know the optics are already kind of like sketchy so I don't
want to you know this one guy we can just keep locked up for now
like he's it's not a big deal. So.
So Santis has them all LED away and he doesn't have them killed
right away. And I suspect that's because
like unlike Rob, he wants to keep them alive to keep the
soldiers loyal. Maybe he only needs one of them
for that. Maybe he'll execute like four of
them and just keep one of them. But these car Starks making a
habit going against their king getting executed, whether or or
just Lord Commander, you know. I like to think that Stannis
will take a page out of Robert's book, right?
Yeah. Forgive these people.
Get them on your side, you know. Maybe not Arnoff, but maybe some
of the others like Kill the Lord, but keep, keep, keep one
of the grandsons, Maybe, you know, keep at least one of them
alive. So these soldiers are going to
be with Stannis at the Battle of Ice yet again, a really
difficult job for some Karstark soldiers.
First they got to fight in the Battle of Green Fork and they're
going to fight in the Battle of Ice.
They got to fight and there's all these other battles, tough
job for them. Some of them are still in the
South though some of them are probably with the Brother
Without Banners, the Lady Stoneheart LED Brother Without
Banners, which is the darker, eviler version of that group.
Some of them are just random bandits here and there, Broken
men still just operating in the South, just thinking about their
trying, how they're going to eat their next meal and lost to any
sense of honor or ethics. Nina also mentions Stannis's
plans for the car Starks involve their recent loyalty to the
Bolton's. Ramsay obviously doesn't know
Stannis is out of the car Starks and the car Starks show up if if
the car Starks show up and say, hey, don't worry boss, we got
Stannis, we killed him, and here's his sword to prove it.
That might be the origin of Pink Letter Ramsay claiming we
already beat Stannis. I already got his sword because
the car Starks are like, well this is Stannis is going to make
us do this or we die. He's got us.
He's got us by the by the balls. So we have to do what he says.
Yeah. So I don't think he's it's not
it's not only him just keeping them alive to keep the car
stark, man. They're probably going to be
useful for more subterfuge, which Stannis is quite good at
and willing to use. And this would be a really good
way to sneak to like, yeah, we won, here's maybe they're
wearing like Bath, the Battle of Ice.
There might be a lot of frozen deaths, So they can just take
their gear and wear it. You know, like, hey, we're
phrase, we're on your side. You know, there's lots of ways
for this to go. Lots of good theories about how
this could play out into Stanish tricking the Boltons.
Kind of parallel to how Ramsay and Ruse have used Theon too.
Yes, yes. And they don't know that Theon
is now in Stannis possession, which, if they knew that, they
would definitely do things differently.
Like, OK, so we can assume Theon's told them all these
things. So we have to act differently
now. And, you know, Yeah, so a
surprise attack on Winterfell, some sort of surprise, some sort
of trick, it explains a lot. It would explain why the pink
letter has some of those things that it says in them without
them being wise. Like, obviously Ramsay could
just be lying. That's also a possibility.
And there's also the less less likely possibility in my mind
that someone else wrote that letter.
But that's also possible. But again, whatever.
Even even after Stannis takes Winterfell, it brings us back to
this Dang old problem. Even after the car Starks were
settled, even after Winterfell settled, there's still the
others. There's still winter.
That's the north for you. You know, we're pretty sure the
Wall is going to fall. We're pretty sure it's all going
to get a lot worse. The houses closest to the Wall
are in the greatest peril. So I'm extremely curious how the
situation with Alice and Sigourn and his men and Harriet and all
that's going to play out, because however that's settled,
they're going to have to fight the others, like maybe those
10s, those 200 tens. They could fight against
Kragen's men or other car Starks, but they should be
fighting the White Walkers, right?
As OSHA said, they're marching the when Rob's army marched S
he's like she says they're marching the wrong way.
Well, there were 2300 car Starks in that army marching the wrong
way with Rob with a similar name.
So they even if they survive these other ones, they have to
survive the greatest foe of all. And as an ominous footnote, John
says, hey, how's the food situation at Carhold?
And Alice says not great, not great at all, because the
soldiers marching S took a lot of supplies with them, and there
were too many of them for us to bring in the harvest.
So not all the harvest got brought in.
And we already talked earlier about how it's even though
they're near the coast, it's not easy to bring food up because
there's no port, there's no harbor, there's cliffs.
Carhold is in great peril from Winter, if not from the White
Walkers as well. But perhaps this is also a
silver lining. Perhaps this is what will
reunite Karstark and Stark. Right now, things aren't great
between those two houses, but the greater foe might bring them
back together. John and Alice showed it can be
done. It showed that you know, they
can work together. They can get along really well
and and do some good. He tells her to send If he says,
hey Alice, if your stores are running low and your men are
starving, send them to us. We'll put them on the wall.
You know, we'll put them to use here.
You know, rather than the snow death March, you know that the
thing that Northerners do when there's no food, the men, the
older men will just leave and say I'm going out hunting.
And then with their intent being to freeze themselves to death so
that they're no longer a a mouth to feed.
Alice specifically points out that that is definitely a
tradition to car hold. It's it's not just a thing in
the north, it is a thing in the north.
But like a lot of things in the north, the farther N you go, the
more common these northern traditions are.
And as we've said many times, car hold is about as far as it
gets. They're only like second or
third farthest away from the wall.
So if both houses survive, what's to come?
It will likely be because they work together.
We saw how badly events turned out in the South when they split
apart. Stark and Karr Stark need to be
together for the others to be defeated, I think.
And that's our episode folks. Cannibal the Dragon says, could
this be a clue of things to come?
You have the winter sun in the beginning and now you have the
sun that looks like the warmer sun.
It could be a little like little evolution of the sun's role in
the north. And you know the black sun kind
of sounds like white. Sun over black is like the long
night, the sun in the midst emerging from the long night.
But this is even better. This is a little farther down
the the road. Good call.
Cannibal the Dragon. It is a little more summer.
It is more summary that sun than the winter sun.
The trivia question was again, what is Harian's nickname
according to Alice? Harry.
As simple as that. Yeah.
Harry the air just, you know, different air.
He is air of the air. Well, no, actually, he's air of
the Lord. He just hasn't inherited, hasn't
achieved his inheritance yet because he's stuck in the South.
Yeah, he sure is. All right folks.
Next week we're going to do another of our topic Smoot
episodes, but I'm not going to tell you which one yet.
And we've got we're getting close to House of the Dragons
Season 2 season, which means we'll time which means we'll be
doing some episodes that deal with that era and have topics
that are related to that. So we're getting soon into that
point. But for now we'll keep doing
what we're doing some episodes that relate to this one that
might want to check out next to keep you immersed our Weirwood
tour. There's two of them.
Two episodes, weirwoods, part one and two that includes our
everywhere. Would we know of discussion of
it and theories on our genetic component to the looks, which we
explained in that one? Of course Theon's Wins a winter
chapter is a chapter we've reviewed actually twice over the
years. So at one time, way back when it
came out and another time a few years ago, The Battle of Ice
with Jeff Hartline AKA Brendan B.
Fish, there was a three episode set we did back in I think 2014.
That's still pretty darn relevant.
So if you want to hear more about Stannis's plans and the
Karstark's role in that, as well as the other houses like the
Frays and Bolton's, definitely check that out.
And our episode Battle of the Trident, less Karstark in there
than most, but certainly was relevant to what we talked about
today given the North rising up and fighting for Robert.
Talking about the time of Aries, Battle of Trident is one of our
one of our more popular episodes of the last half year or so.
If you didn't catch it well, do so now and see what the fuss is
all about. Thanks to you all for checking
us out. We really appreciate your
support. We are an independent podcast.
We cannot survive without help of our fans, our listeners.
It is vital to our existence and we're appreciative of those of
you who pitch in. Thanks as well to those of you
who helped the show. Nina, great help.
Again, amazing notes. Check her out at good
queenalley.tumblr.com Joey, Jesse and Bran and Michael
Klarfeld for all their work on our music and videos.
I'm so excited for you all to see brands new House of the
Dragon intro that he's doing for US Season 2.
His first one was great. This one is built off of that
greatness. And like this map behind me, you
can find Michael Klarfeld's work at KLARADO x.de That's Clara
docks.de. You can pay for the file,
whatever map you want and then go take it to your local print
shop. Have it sized however you want.
It gives you a lot of options and that's it you.
Could take that file. You could print it on clothes.
You could print it on a blanket. You could print it on fabric.
You know what I mean when he says take that file, print it
however you want. You have a lot of options.
Yeah, saying. Help Michael out.
Show him you appreciate his art. We don't get a cut of that.
We're just Michelle done so much for us.
We wanna try to do a little for him.
We're friends, as simple as that.
It's a drop in the bucket for what he deserves, for the sheer
amount of maps he's created for this fandom.
I mean it's it's a steal of a product.
Yeah, they're like 25 bucks. They're really, they're really
affordable. So yeah, go check that.
Of course, having a printed cost a little more, but still the
actual cost to Michael, yeah, we're spending from him, very
much worth it. And until next time you know
what to do, my friends, LR reread us.