Hello my fellow historians, Happy Sunday or Monday or
whatever day you choose to listen to this episode.
Hope you're having a good day wherever you are.
I hope we can help with that a bit.
We are here to talk about the trouble with tourneys, but it's
no trouble for you. It's trouble for the people
holding them. It doesn't always go the way
they intended, doesn't always have the impact they intended,
and sometimes the intention is entirely everything but what it
seems to be. All the games and battles and
fun often masks quite a few other agendas, hidden or
otherwise, known or otherwise, and we're here to discuss that
general something. Is very true.
Yes Sir, you are correct. I see you've got your hedge
knight shirt there, your Duncan egg sigil, your well dunk sigil,
not egg sigil. But yeah, Sir, Duncan the Tall.
Sir Duncan the Tall, that's right, I've got a Green Man
shirt myself today. It is not a green shirt, though,
says Green Man. But it is decidedly Gray, so I
don't know about that. Shout out to our friend Nina,
Good Queen Alley with 1l.tumblr.com.
She provided, as almost always is the case, some excellent
notes for us to talk about and on her blog, Good
queenalley.tumblr.com. The latest post is a discussion
whether Viserys could have abdicated to Rainiera rather
than just waiting till he was decrepit and unable to actually
rule personally. And well, short answer is yes,
he could have. But as to why and other factors,
well, you'll want to read the blog post.
We'll be at the Game of Thrones convention in Los Angeles, all
three of us plus others. But maybe we'll have some fun
content. We did a vlog when we went to
San Diego Comic Con, so I don't know, maybe we'll think of
something. We'll see what's going on and
and maybe post whatever happens the the Khan's a little bit
disorganized at this point, but we're now going to have a good
time. We're now we're going to see
some some stars and see what happens.
So we'll report on that whatever is worth reporting on.
This episode was voted on by patrons as usual.
It beat out the life of Harwin, the baseless Guiles and under
the Dragons, the Riverlands. Those were the three other
topics that were available and this was the winner.
Our trivia question to start off, which night?
When's a joust against a Knight in the Hands tournament, As in
the one held in honor of Ned Stark?
So this person defeated a knight and then actually killed them
for real later. Which knight did that?
As far as I know, that only happened once in this
tournament. There may be.
It's possible there's another one, but I think there's just
the one. If you can name them, you get
it. You get to pat yourself on the
back. Bonus points meaning bonus pat
on the back if you can name the victim as well.
Though I suppose if you know one, you probably know both.
Sean picked out a good quote for us to start with.
Let's hear it. Let me ask real quick, by the
way, is the trouble with tournaments, is that a plan?
The trouble with tribbles is that a little bit.
Reference. You're trying to?
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.
Little Star Wars Reference. That was the first Star Trek.
Star Trek. Oh, my bad.
Yeah. Whoops.
Heresy. I call it Star Trek.
Star Wars. My goodness.
Start the whole podcast over I and I mean the whole like, I'll
delete all the episodes Start Yeah, Trouble with troubles.
That was the first Star Trek episode ever, wasn't it?
I think it was number. I don't think so.
I I think it was in the first season is.
The 15th episode of the second season.
It was. It's not even.
Close. Damn, where did I get that from?
All right, I'm just wrong I suppose.
Anyway, well, again, burn down the whole podcast.
Start over. It's the Hands tourney that's
the cause of all the trouble, my Lords, The commander of the City
of Watch complained to the King's Council.
The King's tourney? Ned corrected, Wentzing.
I assure you, the Hand wants no part of it.
Ned is an important bellwether for tournaments here.
He kind of gets that they don't really serve the purpose that
they that they intend. They don't really accomplish
much. They cost a lot of money.
There's a lot of extra effort that goes into them that aren't
isn't necessary. Ned doesn't.
Yeah, there's a lot of things about them Ned doesn't like.
He he has a bias too. Like maybe at least sometimes
they do serve a good purpose or they are worth their money, but
they don't really have them in the North, you know?
So Ned's not really accustomed to this in the 1st place and
this tournament has some particular.
Trouble. Yeah, he definitely doesn't want
to honor him. He's like, no, I like Robert.
Just wanted it as an excuse. Here's a little bit I wrote to
start us off. There's a lot of aspects to
tournaments. We're not going to cover all of
them. Not all of the tourneys,
certainly. There's so many, as you'll see
as we go through this. There's just an inordinate
number. They're really constant thing
that don't always get like a special title or the tournament
of this or that. There's sometimes they're just a
tournament and it happened and it was small, but they're
really, there's a lot of unnamed ones basically, especially in
certain eras, like during the era of Viserys, we got the idea
that there was lots of them. House of the Dragons showed a
couple or one and talked about others.
But if we were if they were really to show all the
tournaments that had actually happened in that era, it would
have been literally dozens, like many per year it seems like.
So not to mention ones that Viserys didn't throw himself,
there would have been other ones.
But yeah, it really just emphasizes how much of a party
Viserys reign was for for a lot of people when really there were
problems going on. So we'll, we'll be focusing on
how tourneys show the state of the realm.
As we saw a lot of times, you can tell a lot by how people
behave during them or what they bring to the table or how
aggressive or not aggressive they are or what they're trying
to prove or not prove or things like that.
You have something you wanted to say, Sean?
I just want to be an apologist for Thesaurus.
There might have been more troubles if not for the
tournaments. And maybe that gave people some
focus, some something to use their time and energy on that
kept them from doing other worst things.
That's. A good point.
Yeah, maybe, maybe, yeah. So what we'll.
So we'll be focusing on whether that is a good thing or bad
thing or both. Sometimes it's it shows
satisfaction or unrest. Anything in between tournaments
provide cover for like minded Lords and Knights to meet
without suspicion. If a couple of storm Lords are
all meeting, you know, undercover of darkness are all
hanging out together, someone might start to get suspicious,
they plotting rebellion or they're doing what is going on.
They keep meeting like this and that.
And but if you're all gathered for a tournament, I mean,
there's no suspicion, at least not automatically, right?
You're supposed to be there. You're supposed to be hanging
out. It it.
So it provides cover for conspiracy theories or actual
conspiracies 'cause sometimes it is just paranoia.
Like, what are those guys doing hanging out?
Well, you're getting someone like Aries.
Sometimes Aries was right, like Aries was right about the
Fredman in Harrenhal, but he was obviously paranoid about a lot
of other things that didn't happen.
It provides fodder for conspiracy theories cover for
our conspiracy. Yeah, there you go.
That's a better way to put. And there's other of course, in
cases like Duncan Egg and the Mystery Night, they're they
think there's no suspicion. They were like no one knows
we're meeting here. That's clever Black fire when
actually, no, they they figured you out.
But it was that was one of the more stark examples, Blackfyre
examples really, But of a tournament, that's not what it
seems. They went way too far on leaning
into the. We can use this as a cover
store. It's like, yeah, it's not that
much of a cover. So the tournament Herron Hall,
of course, is probably the most famous tournament of All in all
of A Song of Ice and Fire. And there's a lot of reasons for
that. We'll we'll get into it
specifically, but we're not going to be able to cover
everything about the tournament of Harrenhal because it really
did have like everything, right? It it's probably it, it is
probably the most important tournament in all of the fandom.
We're not going to talk about Brandon and Ned and Ashara and
Barristan and all that fun drama, but we're going to we
acknowledge that it happened and that wouldn't have happened
without this, with this tournaments setting the stage
for that. It it's something that also
obviously affects the story deeply.
And it's hard to draw a line exactly where the overlap for
what's what counts as tournament conspiracy and what counts as
just stuff that happens at tournaments.
It's not a clear distinct line we can draw because obviously
that had a big effect on politics.
What happened with Ned and Char and and and Brandon and etcetera
still got to draw the line somewhere.
For the same reason, we won't have to say about things like
tournaments where Joro won and married Lyness that politics
mattered. And there was probably stuff
happening at that tournament. There were probably Lords and
ladies talking, maybe even doing deals.
But but everything we know about the tournament is from Joro's
perspective. Like he wasn't involved in any
of that. He was just stars in his eyes,
trying to do his best and headed the favor of Lyness on his arm.
And he was, that's all he was thinking about, right?
He wasn't thinking about anything else.
So he's not exactly our window to political goings on at that
tournament, whatever they may or may not have been.
On the other hand, we're still wondering to this day why Lord
Hightower consented to marry her.
To him of all people. That was unusual.
And maybe politics was involved. So we can even say there
probably was some under the radar stuff going on there.
We just don't know what it was. All we can do is kind of point
to and say there's more to that story, but we don't know what it
is. There's a lot of being results
oriented too, right? There might be a lot of
intriguing these different tournaments that didn't come to
fruition, didn't make the history books.
So the ones that did, we focus on more and that makes sense.
One example that does fall well within our wheelhouse is Tywin
wanting to marry Cersei to Rhaegar at the tournament for
Viserys's birth. It was the whole point of that
tournament. He held his.
Yes, it was Viserys's birth that was the the reason for the
celebration, But the purpose was to marry Cersei to Rhaegar.
The whole thing was a failure because that didn't happen.
Right. Like, ultimately Taiwan's like,
I wish I hadn't done this because he told me I'm his
servant. Yeah.
So this is a good example of how the tourney is often a facade
for the maneuvering of power players or for some other
agenda. Taiwan's is as good as it gets
as far as showing us an example like that.
If if not say the Black Second Black Fire Rebellion.
So here's another quote. This is where Sansa after she
lost some of her naivete. This is a clash of King's Sansa
2. King Robert had staged it in her
father's honor. High Lords and fabled champions
had come from all over the realm to compete, and the whole city
had turned out to watch. She remembered the splendor of
it. The field of pavilions along the
river with a Knight's shield hung before each door, the long
rows of silken pennants waving in the wind, the gleam of
sunlight on bright steel and gilded spurs.
The days had rung to the sounds of trumpets and pounding hooves,
and the Knights had been full of feasts and song.
Those had been the most magical days of her life, but they
seemed a memory from another age now.
Yes, we agree. We too have learned that they
are much more than glory and splendor.
It's rather the point of this episode to dig beneath that.
Sansa was disabused with that notion very quickly.
And she's speaking for us here. So thanks, Sansa.
Sansa. And that's what she says.
This would seem like a memory from another age now.
I mean, it's like it's like a year, like a year has passed.
But it but she did. That's a that was a long year.
It was a lot of growing. She 10.
Percent of her life, 10%. Yeah, you're right.
And especially the first few years of your life, you don't
really have memories or control in the 1st place.
So, you know, maybe 20% of. Her life, your your life moves
quickly when you're learning. Yeah.
When you're a teenager, when you move from one Kingdom to another
and live in an entirely different place.
Yeah. I think you would pick up a few
things, yeah. On a sort of a metal level meta
level, it's sort of an age ago. For people who read the book
when it first came out, or even the first season of Game of
Thrones, that seems like a different time ago.
Yeah, yeah, right. Like I, I think about the first
time I read the Game of Thrones and I definitely had no idea
like what else could happen at tournaments.
That was just, that's why I tried to liken myself to Sands.
I'm like, yeah, it's pretty exciting.
There's banners and clashing horses and Shields and lances.
It's pretty cool. You know, I was closer to Sansa
than Ned when it when I ran. No Ned.
It'll be a downer. I want to see the tournament.
Man, that's pretty cool. But now, like, I still want to
see the tournament, but I'm, you know, I'm, I'm looking out for
different things. That's different reasons, right?
So here's a, a sampling of tournaments we'll discuss today.
Harrenhal, of course, that was in 281.
Ashford Meadow will come up. That's the hedge night.
White Walls, that's the mystery night.
The Hands Tournament, very early at Game of Thrones.
The Rainbow Guard Tournament, which was very early.
Fairly early at Clash of Kings. Tournament of Viserys's
Ascension where Kristen Cole beats everyone and wins
Rainier's favor. That's going to come up.
House of the Dragon Episode 1 Turning, which was really an
amalgam of the many tournaments early in Viserys's reign.
There was like there took a few pieces of a couple of different
ones and mashed them together, which is a typical and
understandable thing for ATV Show to do.
Viserys slash Allison's fifth anniversary tournament, which
was portrayed on TVA little differently, but basically
accomplished the same thing. It was the blacks and greens
tournament, so things kind of essentially ended up in the same
spot. So that's a really good one for
us to discuss. I already mentioned Viserys's
birth, meaning Danny's brother Viserys as Tywin's vehicle to
get Cersei to marry Rhaegar. We'll talk about that one and
the upcoming tourney of the Wing at Knights.
We'll avoid spoilers because that's AT Wow chapter, but I
know a lot of you are aware of it.
We'll, but we'll at least acknowledge it.
And what's interesting about that one, while avoiding
spoilers, is it shows that there is still at least one more
tournament going to happen in this in in a Song of Ice and
Fire. If not, maybe after the war is
over, maybe they have some sort of celebratory tourney.
It would seem a little weird to have more battle after all that,
Like that's the last thing we need is to do more fighting.
But martial society? Maybe they'll just have pillows
at the end of their lances or something.
But anyway, it goes to show that even with winter coming, Civil
War having rage, people are still having tournaments.
You know, the tournament of the Wing Knights coming up.
So that'll be the one we finish with.
Note as well how often George uses them early on.
They're at the there's one at the start of all the books and
shows, not counting the history books, right?
The history books start before tournaments even existed.
So, so you can't quite start there with them, but they do
have lots of tournaments in them.
They're just not like right at the beginning.
And the history books came out after all the other material
when the, you know, the the tournaments are a really good
device for introducing characters, setting the stage
for things. You know, we're going to go on
and talk about this a lot, but it it makes sense to have them
early on, similar to like weddings and funerals, other
events that like bring your key characters all together at once.
But it's a little more difficult to start off with a wedding or a
funeral. A tournament starts off a little
bit of action. You don't necessarily need the
build up of the relationship to have the wedding or you know,
mean as much. You need less excuse to hold the
tournament. You need more Maybe you need
more money or space, but but you don't a a a wedding requires
well, two people need to be getting married and you need.
Yeah. And in the case of nobility,
which is usually what we're talking about here, there's
that's a big deal. But yeah, so tournament you just
need naming a new hell. Also as a as a writing device.
So you want to care more about the people getting married or
the person that died, right. So like it's, you need some
build up to that. But the tournament can introduce
people whether you care about it or not.
It can make you care about them. That's the point.
Yeah, exactly. A warrior, they get screwed or
they have a plan or whatever else.
Yeah. So Duncan Egg starts with one
the hedge Knight. I mean it is a tournament, the
whole thing is a tournament. So the trial by combat, which is
an extension of that. The Game of Thrones, the Neds
tournament is pretty early on. It's the fourth episode of the
TV show is when that happens, the equivalent episode 1 of
House of the Dragon tournament right away, right?
So that was almost instantaneous.
Season 2 of Game of Thrones starts with Jos Name Day
tournament, which is a little weak because of the wars
happening. They don't have all the people
there, but it is also right away in A Clash of Kings.
And then episode 3 of Season 2 of Game of Thrones is the
Rainbow Guard Tournament, which is, you know, a few chapters in
for Catlin's Ark. I doubt we'll see another one in
House of the Dragon during the Dance era.
When they shift eras eventually, certainly we will.
I would think, though they understandably, like I said,
skipped over a bunch during Desseris's reign.
There were actually a lot more. So we'll see.
And Sean, you brought up another thing as you brought up how
introducing characters is a really important thing and how
valuable tournament can be for that because it's not just
showing you the characters, it shows you a little bit what
they're capable of as practice for war.
They function well to get the reader primed for more severe
violence later. We've seen tournaments can be
pretty violent. People die, people get severely
injured, but accepting Greg or Clegaine, people usually aren't
trying to kill their opponent in a tournament.
So it but it helps you see like who's mad at who?
Like you see Gregor and Loris already they have an issue with
each other because of that more Gregor towards Loris than the
other way around. But that establishes that shows
grievances, reminds people of existing grievances.
That one Loris and Gregor was a new one that happened right
there. But there were prior grievances
established and revealed to show red flags about character
behavior. People gambling on the
tournament, maybe not a big deal.
Gambling on a tournament, no big deal by itself.
But it might indicate someone has a gambling problem.
It might. Someone might have debts.
Debts can be exploited, right? Someone comes along and say,
we'll pay your debt off if you do this underhanded thing for
us. Like the mafia coming to collect
their favor, You know, like Littlefinger doing kind of
things like that. Or maybe even virus.
It also shows personality traits.
Like, again, with Gregor, we see that this guy is a murderous
rage head. They have an impact on whatever
community they're in, too, right?
Whether it's a castle grounds, a city or a village, there can be.
You're bringing in a bunch of people that don't have a lot of
care for the common folk, and that can result in a lot of
murder, rapes, looting, bad stuff, destroying the local
economy, things like that. So yeah.
You know, again, sort of on a middle level as a writing
device, it's it's not as contrived at a tournament,
people get announced and people are going to be identifying each
other. And you know, especially in
this, it's in this world of Martin, we're going to get like
the sigils. You know, it's a good excuse
rather than having someone say hello, Jamie, my brother, how
are you going to perform, you know, like it?
It makes more sense in the context of a tournament for
people to be getting introduced to each other and pointed out to
each other and stuff like that. So it's, again, it's a really a
good writing device for more natural conversation, but to
also convey a lot of information to the audience.
Yeah, they're really fitting to from a world builder
perspective. Obviously they were a part of
the real world from about the 12th to 6th century in in
Europe, other military games that evolved into this.
It's not, this isn't the first example of military style games
or war games or practice. There's a that's another thing
that's kind of an overlapping practice and gaming.
If you're legitimately wielding weapons and swinging them at
each other, they can call it either, but they're both
practice. They're both forms of practice
in a sense. They just have a little
different presentation. Yeah, apparently there's this
term. I think I'm saying it right,
Hestalude. Hestalude was sort of a general
term for competitive combat, you know, like just testing skills
of war and A tournament was one form of hestalude.
I guess sometimes it might just be like soldiers training, or
might be, you know, testing 1, you know, just jousting or
whatever else. But eventually the idea of
people coming together for a tournament evolved out of these
hestaludes. And and also originally it was
mostly melees. Jousting was something that came
like way later into it. And it the melees would involve
like large numbers of people. It wasn't just like 8 or 10.
And it wasn't this free for all. They basically got formed into
like, basically locals and not locals.
Yeah, like people from this area and people that came into this
area. Good fighting into teams.
And the word tournament comes from the the verb to turn
'cause, you know, usually you have this charge and you bust
through and then there might be, you know, a mesh of different
combat happens, like you move forward to the next line or get
killed or whatever. But in a tournament, once you
like pass, you turn around and reface.
Yeah, that's where the word tournament came from.
Yeah. They in a tournament, you're
going to constantly pass or return and.
Remember that show Norseman where they're talking about like
how they know how to fight each other?
And he's like, I don't know if they're facing me, they're the
enemy. And I, we, I killed them, you
know, we're facing each other. They were ripping on How do you
tell? How do you feel like they're not
dressed? It's all Norsemen.
It's like I'm picturing in these, in this scenario, you're
saying I'm like, OK, well, the locals have a real leg up
because they know each other. They know not to attack each
other. But if you don't know your other
the other people on your team. Yeah.
By the way, that is a legit part of Comet.
That's why you have the standards, the banners, the
coats, the the sigils, all that stuff.
That is because it really is a part of Comet.
Even a modern war, A little bit less in modern modern war.
But I mean, it was like a huge number of casualties in Vietnam
were just friendly fire. Just it's hard to know.
You have a word to shout to, to indicate what side you're on,
but that that was easily suborned by the enemy.
Like if they learned your word, like they had real flaws to it,
but it was better than nothing. So yeah, that's where colors and
livery and things like that. Like you got to have like teams
wearing colors. It's the same logic.
Like you got to get a tell. Tackling the wrong player would
be is a disaster, right? Like.
Being at the wrong basket or whatever.
Yeah, I like that. Yeah.
That was another thing that evolved in tournaments by the
way, like over time it it got to be more of like an A social
event and and it was a lot more about the play of it all, if
that makes sense. Like sometimes people like come
costumed to certain characters or there would be directions for
attendees to all wear like the Queen's colors.
So everyone's supposed to wear blue, different things like
that. It really, it did become
elements to the tournament beyond just the people fighting
each other really did grow in importance to the course of it.
And it was, by the way, the melees, our vision is usually
like there's some stands and a little field and they kind of
fight. It would spread out over miles
for these melees. It would last all day.
And part of it was you would take ransom, you would capture
people ransom like back. That was part of.
Just like in motivations. Who attend?
Not. Similar anyway.
Yeah, similar at least, yeah. To to make yeah, to make
yourself and make money, yeah and.
And sometimes it would get a little too real, you know, like
the idea of having blunted swords or whatever that didn't
come till deep. End.
Oh yeah, they're for real weapons isn't that wild?
Like any just without referees, people just probably just out
there killing each other like, yeah, like we talk about people
with grudges against each other. There's no one there to witness
it. Like, yeah, it's, it's just.
It didn't seem to happen too often, but it wasn't.
It couldn't have like it never. Yeah.
I couldn't have moved to. I don't know.
I don't know what. Somewhere between common and,
you know, a surprise, a, a tragedy when it happened, but
still kind of common, you know, and.
Eventually they there was efforts to ban it, right, But it
always came for a while it came back and it was difficult to
ban. I think people liked it.
Yeah, at one point, the Pope, the king of England, the king of
France all tried to ban it at different points.
But because, for one, what happens is the people who are
supposed to be keeping peace in town or whatever, they like,
leave to go to this man. Like, well, hey, you're supposed
to be doing gardening tomorrow. And sometimes on the way there,
they would, like, attack people, pillage.
It's hard to, like, regulate. No one knows you're going into
foreign land. That's just.
Cancelled culture Run them up trying to end tourneys Like
where will they stop? They could take our gladiatorial
games next. Yeah, I read that.
I read, I read that there was one was going to be held in some
town in France and. And, and bless the French for
pushing back against authority. They're so good at it.
They went, they were like, no, no tournament.
It cost too much. It destroys the local area.
They revolted. And that was like, that was the
last time they ever tried to have one because it was like
they had enough. Yeah.
And then that goes to show. Yeah.
It's like it's fun for the nobility, but a lot of people,
for the lower end people, for the commoners, for people who
don't have that kind of money, a lot of times it's it's real bad.
Not just an annoyance, but like, destructive.
Yeah. Sometimes it's especially in the
beginning, it could be fun or exciting.
But when it's over and they ate all, they killed all the cows
and ate them and took, you know, the, the, the fields of crops
that were trampled over by all the tents and horses that came
through and like, man, don't do that again, please.
If you've ever lived in a city that, like, hosted the World Cup
or the Olympics or the Super Bowl, you know you've seen it,
especially if you've seen the long term afterwards like
Atlanta had the. It was the World Cup in 9496.
What was that? No, it was the Olympics.
Olympics. Yeah.
And that it was such a mess afterwards.
It was a mess for a long time, decades.
Like the things, what they had to do with that And.
And the city felt fleeced. Yeah.
So anyway, think of those. A lot of money on infrastructure
with taxes from Atlantans. Yeah, that for stuff that just
didn't get used after those three months or whatever.
Yeah. And and then those were sold to
rich people afterwards to like turn into condos or something.
Yeah, it's really the similar energy at tournaments like
there, there isn't condos afterwards, but but there is.
The money flows upwards and things like this a lot more than
it flows downwards or sideways. It flows from one rich person to
another. Nina says Hastelude is in the
books. Here it is.
It was nine years past. At Storm's End.
Lord Baratheon held a Hastelude to celebrate the birth of a
grandson. The lots made Sir Arlen my
opponent in the first tilt. Yep.
Arlen, a penny tree. So that would be Baylor
Brakespear speaking, I believe. Anyway.
So, yeah. So there.
So they have. As we see, there's a lot of
reasons to hold a tournament. Marriage, birth, ascension to
hand. Like in Ned's case, peace deals.
But of course, Westeros also has its unique qualities and some
things that don't exist elsewhere that we should
acknowledge here. At the beginning, during the era
of Jaheris, tournaments were more about the splendor and just
keeping the peace because there was less intriguing going on
during such a successful, powerful reign.
There weren't a lot of efforts to remove him from the throne
after the early days. Like early on there were.
But once it was going different things.
So, but when all the Targaryens gather, it's a very interesting
thing and here we go, quote. The Great Tourney held at King's
Landing in 98 AC to celebrate the 50th year of King Jaharis's
reign, surely gladdened the Queen's heart as well, for most
of her surviving children, grandchildren and great
grandchildren returned to share in the feasts and celebrations.
Not since the Doom of Valyria had so many Dragons been seen in
one place at one time. It was truly said.
Yeah, so there there probably was some intrigue at this
tournament, but it would have been probably on the lower
level. We got 50 years of Jairus ruling
and I guess no one's thinking about removing him.
The the the person of course, is being referred to the XI, of
course, is Alice Anne here. And the reason being, not since
the Doom of Valyria had so many Dragons been seen in one place
at one time. It's just a reminder.
That's why no one's trying to overthrow the Targaryens, except
the other Targaryens is the Dragons, Right.
Like you're just not going to go up against that lightly,
especially after people in the early days tried that and proved
how it's not a good idea. There could be intrigued there
beyond overthrowing the Targaryen.
So there's probably still people maneuvering to weather kids each
other or to like overtake someone's good point bridge to
the river or something like that and or even things that maybe
take longer to play out. I I was I was reminded doing
research for this episode that I don't know that we hear anything
else about this tournament. But Walter Frey, when he's
talking to Caitlin, talks about a tournament he went to that
John Aaron had at King's Landing.
I'm, I'm guessing it was a hands tournament too, I guess.
And his sons were competing and went to see when his son's all
too crappy and was upset that he went.
But he also proposed a marriage and he wanted, he wanted to
award Robin Aaron. Yeah.
Right. That's when that's that's how we
get some of that plot line going.
Yeah, yeah. And he was laughed off and and I
get, you know, nothing at that tournament, I don't think came
of this, but it led to to Walter Frey doing and steaming and felt
leftover by all these other Lords and he was just looking
for this opportunity to screw them over it.
I think that probably planted the seed for the Red Wedding.
It did, it helped set up Rob, him siding with Rob, which then
helped set up him turning on Rob.
Yes, because he wants to be recognized amongst those high
level Lords. He's very prickly about that.
Very good call there Shawn. The first ever known tournament
is considered somewhat legendary, but it's it's
recorded as 50 Lords competing for the Hand of Maris the maid,
the daughter of Garth Greenhand, Argoth Stoneskin won the melee.
It would have been a melee, not a tournament, not a joust
rather. But Uthor of the Hightower ran
off with her. Argoth, whose other nickname
apart from Stoneskin was the Grey Giant, was mad about it for
the rest of his life. Hello Robert and Rhaegar and
Liana Parallels. Hello dance slash House of the
Dragon parallels. We got a high tower running off
with the bride. We've got a big guy who beats
everyone mad about someone taking his woman away, which is
Robert and Liana and Rhaegar, right?
That's all similar stuff. We even have the guy named Uther
Uther, which is almost certainly a riff off of Uther Uther
Pendragon, which translates to chief or head dragon or chief or
head warrior. And well, he was the Lord of the
Hightower at that time. So there you go.
We'll mostly go through these tournaments in chronological
order, so we'll start with some of the Dance of the Dragons era,
or prior to it. The Tournament of Viserys
Ascension. That Maidenpool, that's where it
happened. Of course, in the show, it
happened at King's Landing, and the books happened at
Maidenpool. Maidenpool's not far away.
Not a big difference. Here's the quote.
The Saris 1 Targaryen had a generous, amiable nature and was
well loved by his Lords and small folk alike.
The reign of the young King, as the Commons called him upon his
ascent, was peaceful and prosperous.
His Grace's open handedness was legendary, and the Red Keep
became a place of song and splendor.
King of Asaris and Queen Emma hosted many a feast and tourney
and lavished gold offices and honors on their favorites.
At the center of the merriment, cherished and adored by all, was
their only surviving child, Princess Rainiera, the little
girl the Court Singers dubbed the Realm's Delight.
So the tournaments had a purpose.
Not that this was like the saris and Emma plotting this, but it
certainly served as purpose to help popularize Rainier.
Which was very important because at first they didn't plan on her
being queen, but when that became the plan, it gave her a
big head start on already being a public figure.
She was already known and quite popular.
The show didn't quite show that level of popularity that she
had, but regardless, she had popularity just being the
Princess, being part of a a popular regime and the book.
So it was even more emphasized that she was very well loved,
very popular, very liked all around.
Just they liked her. The short quote at table
attorney and at court King Viserys thereafter was seldom
seen without his daughter by his side.
So just a constant they're constantly together, whether
it's at tournaments, court, table, etcetera.
So her visibility, very important associated with the
king would have helped ease the transition of power had other
things not happened in between now and then.
So in this time in the book version, let's parse this a
little bit. In the book version is when we
have Kristen Cole making his appearance just like he didn't
show, but we'll we'll talk about that separately.
So in the book version, he beats everybody in the melee,
including Damon. So there's a melee, he wins then
he almost wins the joust. He doesn't win the joust, he
just beats almost everybody. He beats Eric and Eric, he beats
Damon, but he loses to Lord Mallister, which they didn't.
They didn't have that in the show.
They had said the Mallister on show got his head chopped in by
an axe. What they're all fighting after
like whoa. And here's a here's another
tape. Yeah, I really liked that Nina
pointed out that attorneys in general and in this case
specifically are really great opportunity for like upward
movement in society. They provide a lot of
opportunities for these up and coming nights like Christian
Cole, who don't have any built in family fame or court
connection. And so with big wins like this,
they're able to kind of catapult and vault themselves onto the
public eye. So yeah, we see that even if
Kristen didn't win every single event at the tourney, in the
book, he still distinguishes himself and shows himself as
talented, and that sticks with people.
Yeah, enough to win her favor. Like, that's a big deal.
Like he Yeah. Like, boom.
Talk about a boost to his his chances at life.
I could bring up Sir Duncan the Tall.
That guy has a similar move. Start it off true.
Very true, very true. And in fact, interesting point
about Ashford that we'll come back to is only Knights were
allowed to compete there. So if Dunk hadn't been
recognized as a knight, if he hadn't gotten proof of that, he
wouldn't have let him compete. That's usually not the case
though. Like here, Kristen Cole was a
knight. But usually it's just open to
anyone who wants to sign up. You can sign up.
Just you want to hazard your life, your your body at this
contest. You got the right equipment,
you're allowed to. Two of the other people that
Nina brought up too as examples of this were Lukamore Strong,
who was a landless aristocrat who won the melee to celebrate
the opening of the Dragon Pit and then was named to the Kings
Guard a year later. Or Ryan Redwine who was only a
third son who won the 10th anniversary tourney named Queen
Alison the Queen of love and Beauty and was then named to the
Kings Guard shortly afterwards. So it's really a great way to
become a member of the Kings Guard is to.
Yeah, who you choose as a queen of love and beauty is a big
deal. Like whether you're trying to
make a statement like he named the queen.
So he's obviously not trying to like hone in on her and try to
hook up with her. That's that's an honor.
And and like when Kristen Cole in the book version gives gets
the favor from 7 year old Rainier, that's obviously just
celebrating the young Princess. That's obviously there's nothing
going on there either. But sometimes like Rhaegar
giving the Laurel to Liana is like, what the heck is going on
here? You know, like usually you
celebrate your wife or maybe the maiden who like a a marriageable
age woman that everyone's trying to impress, then it's kind of
obvious. But so there's a lot it's
there's a lot of, a lot of interesting things can be done
here. Even if in most tournaments
anyone can compete. Yeah, go to anybody that has a
suit of honor and a sword and a horse and like, it's still a
little exclusionary. Yeah.
I mean it's. Just like, you know, like trying
out for a pro sports team, like you could go to their open
tryouts and you don't need the equipment, but it's the same
thing. Like you don't have the physical
capability there, you know. Well, I don't.
Maybe you do no. Like even some of the physical
capability, like if Dunk didn't have a horse in his sword, he'd
still couldn't join that tournament.
You know that's. True.
That's true. So you're right, Oprah, mobility
is really important because you don't want people to have to
prove themselves in war only. Well, we needed to know he was
good before the war so we can put him in an important
position. You know, like that would have
been more helpful anyway. So yeah, in the show version of
that, we have Damon beating Gwain Hightower, Cole beats 2
Baratheons and Damon and then beats Damon on foot, sort of
bringing in the melee aspect of it.
That's how they handled that. And they both still got these
favors that Damon gets Allison's favor, which doesn't happen in
the in the book, but of course Allison's much older in the book
as well. Yes, the Damon wouldn't have
gotten her favor. Sorry, Zing she.
Would have been too wise to give her favorite.
That's what I'm saying. No, sorry, Damon Stan, I'm just
making a singer. What?
Was Allison even doing then because Emma was still alive.
So Emma in the in book Allison would have been she's.
Just sitting there looking at Emma.
Yeah, she's just chilling. Like I'm just hanging out.
I'm. Not married yet, I'm an old
maid. In the show version, the
participants are extremely violent.
We talked about this a bit at the time, but this is another
time to talk about it under a different light.
They don't know how bad war is. They're partly they're so eager
for it because none of them have lived through real wars.
There's been, there's been so much peace.
The realm has been at peace for a long time.
And as Rainies and Corlees, the two like smartest people in the
room basically are talking about it.
They give us the sword. I mean, in the room meeting in
the box up there, meeting in the in the viewing box.
Not like everyone there. I don't know about the crowd.
There's probably some smart people there too.
But they're like the window into like an intelligent discussion
of like this is we're just having all these people just
kill each other. Like what is this doesn't seem
right, you know, but it shows because they're ready to fight.
The realm is itching for a fight.
There's a lot of people that better want to prove themselves
or have unexpressed angst or they don't know what they're
getting into. Killing a maluster at A
tournament is going to start a blood feud like a bracken kill
in a black one. You don't have to already have a
previous feud to to start one up.
If a member of a family kills another in a spot like that,
they're going to call for justice or redemption or
something and people seem to have forgotten that.
I bet a lot of grudges started or blood feud started because of
episode 1, but we weren't shown that because House of the Dragon
in part is a picture of Royals that aren't paying attention to
much of what's going outside of their circle.
So it's not that those things didn't happen, it's that they
were ignorant of them. That's how I see it anyway.
And that they were less relevant to the the massive battle of
Dragons that's coming, right? It's it's a squabble between two
houses. That's not set up a story,
right, Right. Yeah, I remember when I first
watched it being like, I don't know, almost taken out of it,
like I just had a hard time swallowing that this would
happen. But I've come around quite a bit
because one, I think they were trying to show us that this
wasn't managed very well, that thesaurus wasn't making wise
decisions and other people and leadership positions weren't.
And it's even more believable having researched some real
world tournaments, it the rules weren't very well defined and
that people often did get killed and so on.
So even though I think big troubles would have come from
this, it doesn't mean it wasn't bad.
People get themselves into big trouble all the time by think
thoughtless violence. I mean, that's plenty of history
of that in the real world. Yeah.
And so then it festers. They're not paying attention to
the grudges that are building amongst powerful houses around
the realm. And that is going to have a big
impact on who takes whose side. There's sometimes some people
won't take a certain side because their enemy took that
side. Like, well, if the Brackens are
on this side, I'm taking the other side.
I want a chance to take out Brackens or Blackwood or
whatever, you know what I'm saying?
That's their motivation, not the justice of either side's 'cause
they're like, well, which side is going to allow us to do the
worst to our, our, you know, our long standing enemies?
That's that's they're more of in line with their thinking.
Another, I don't know a little element of this is it a lot of
times when people or organizing something and haven't really
thought it all through. Like you can think of 1,000,000
examples how someone like identifies a little weakness and
exploits it. You know that the people running
this tournament. I can even imagine some
discussion about like what weapons might be allowed and all
one assertive person just says like, I should be able to use
whatever weapon I want. OK, fine, use whatever you want,
but a warning star is going to kill somebody.
You know what I mean? You should not.
You should not be allowed in the tournament and or if literally
still. Sorry.
Yeah, and, and, and people cheat, you know, there's ways to
cheat. Like we see like the
manipulation kind of behind the scenes and one of the dunk
tournaments and, and again, even in real life, remember how I
said in like the melees, it would be like hundreds of people
and they would like have a charge Calvary and infantry and
turn and fight back. And some people would chase down
smaller little battles would ensue over the course of the
day. There's this one guy who would
show up with his team and do this first charge and then sit
back and just wait for everyone else to get tired and then swoop
in to capture people for ransoms after the fact.
It's like, and like, no one thought to make a rule about
that. It just seemed like everyone
would just do the right thing. But obviously everyone isn't
just always going to do the right thing.
Yeah. Totally jumping forward to the
Blacks and Greens tourney. King's Landing in the year 111.
So this is 7 years later. This it would be Viserys and
Allison's 5th wedding anniversary in the books.
In the show would be slightly different.
The timing starting with the book version, Cole beats.
He's still fighting for the blacks at this point.
Cole beats every green champion sent against him.
She just dominates. Totally unbelievable.
Like total the Warrior himself, as they might say in Westeros,
including Gwen Itower again, who remember his book version, a
younger son of Otto show version he's Otto's eldest son.
Nina points out how this tournament illustrates how in a
highly politically charged atmosphere, even ceremonial and
potentially unconscious courtly decisions can carry political
weight. She points out that at no point
does fire and blood say Allison wore green to be provocative or
to make a statement. Nor does did does it said that
Rainiera wearing Targaryen red and black was meant to be.
I mean, a Targaryen wearing red and black Targaryen colors is
pretty normal, right? Like that should definitely not
Whoa, Rainier is wearing Targaryen colors.
But for some reason, maybe for reasons of National Enquirer or
the other, you know, other types of situations like that, people
just want to read in something that wasn't there history
records that as well. They were taking they were
declaring their allegiance and defining blacks versus greens.
That may not have been their intent.
It just may have gone that way. Like Allison's, like I like
green. And but then everyone took it as
a lesson or as a as a thing to do from now on.
And all of a sudden we've got blacks and greens, you know, and
it that may not have been anyone's intent.
It just kind of like, whoa, everyone just.
We must raise our sandals above our left hand.
Gather shoes. How much for the gourd?
You know this is his gourd? Yes, It all comes back to Monty
Python. It always does.
But for what it's worth, in the show, Allison never said she was
wearing green to make a statement either.
You know. No, it was Lorius was like, what
is that, a green bore? Huh.
Yeah, Lori. It it there that it was Lori?
Yeah. She it was very clear that it
was. Yeah.
Yeah, it did. The show did seem to imply that
she was making a statement and, and the way it was presented in
the show, it did make more sense for people to realize this is a
way for me to, yeah. Oh, Bear came up to her and was
like, oh I've doubted you, but now I see proof.
So like 2 people and we had to, you know, she made it clear that
it was a statement. Totally.
Yeah. So you're you're right.
Like that was conscious. What Allison did in that TV show
scene was conscious. But the book version, we don't
really know whether that's just the the maestros just adding
flair, adding drama to it after the fact, it just kind of worked
out that way. Or because it doesn't seem all
that likely. They were like, OK, I'm going to
go in green, It's going to make a big statement and then from
then on we're all going to wear green.
It was like, I don't know if they planned that, you know, it
doesn't. Also, even if Allison did do it
consciously, it was still on everyone else to pick that up.
You know she didn't send out some directive for if you're on
my side, you better wear green. She never said that.
People just did it. They.
Do they want to do be like the queen?
They want to be like their leader, You know, like it's,
it's like fashion statements made by their leader are often
followed. It trickled down effective the
fashion choices. It's not easy being green
though. It's not easy being green.
Maybe it is if if you look like Emily Carey though, or Kermit
the Frog or Kermit the Frog, Yeah.
Anyway, also moving on in the show, what happened was Cole's
switch from black to green sort of played out in the moment as
he's stewing over Rainier's offer and feeling rejected.
He sort of switches during that first event in the books.
It's a little slower that change by the tournament three years
later, which is Rainier and Lanor's wedding in the book.
So that lines up again. Cole has switched to the greens
at that point. And here's a quote to take us
into that. In 114 AC, Princess Raniera and
the newly united Sarah Laynor were wed and as is the custom,
attorney was held in celebration.
At this tourney. Raniera had a new champion in
Break Bones, while Sarah Kristen for the first time, wore the
favor of Queen Allison. So I noticed the phrase there as
was the custom. So yeah.
So I guess like which custom are they referring to?
The when the Princess or the the heir to the throne takes the
gets married. I'm not sure.
I mean they celebrate so many weddings with tournaments, so
I'm not exactly sure which custom they're referring to.
But still. A tourney is the custom is what
they're saying here, and I can't exactly pinpoint it, but it's
still very telling. So Cole again dominates.
This is when he breaks Harwin's bones and mortally wounds
Joffrey. So Kristen Cole's nickname
nickname should be Break Bones. Yeah, exactly.
You got it. Yeah.
BBBB. So.
Many BS yes, Nina writes. Kristen's actions speak to how
the violence inherent attorneys can be useful for covering up
politically, dynastically or personally motivated woundings.
The the Peck says he fought in a black fury trying to kill people
on Team Black basically and and succeeding.
He didn't kill Harwin. He may have wanted to, but he
did kill Joffrey. But yeah, like no one could call
him out. This was We would discuss how
Kristen got away with what he did on the show.
It was not quite so simple. But here it's easy to understand
because it happened in a tournament where people get hurt
all the time. It's hard to say that, oh, he
tried too hard. Like what?
I mean, what law did he break? What rule did he break?
Blood feud could happen against house coal, but house coal is is
nothing right? They're they're not A and blood
feuds against Kristen Cole mean fighting him.
It's just not a you don't really want to do that either.
I mean, some people are willing to, but it's not a not a simple
thing to endeavour. So a lot happens there too, like
that. That's that's obviously a big
deal. There's the, the politics is
playing out like so much of what we saw set up the war that
happens in the Dance of the Dragons is stuff like this.
And it happens when they all come together.
And one thing we kept seeing repeatedly on House of the
Dragon is like every time the two families come together, bad
stuff happens. And afterwards they're like, we
need to separate again. I need to go back to dragon
stone or we need to keep these kids apart.
I just just, it just keeps not working.
And but it was already happening with these people.
These non family members were already fighting each other like
over Rainier or over homophobia or whatever was motivating them.
Something I meant to say when we did that episode about Viserys
is it That's one thing that he should have done when these
conflicts happen, instead of get everyone in the same room
together when they're all at odds and tensions are high, get
them in separate rooms. Talk to them individually.
That's really funny, by the way, it mentions that Sir, Sir Lanor,
newly knighted. Yeah, because they, he, he
wasn't a warrior. Book version of Lanor isn't a
warrior. And so they were like, well, we
don't want him. We don't want the Princess to
marry someone who isn't a knight.
So we'll just give him a knighting real quick.
He did nothing to earn it. But to clarify a little bit, the
show versus book version there the rather than one event,
there's 2 versions, 111 and 114, two different tournaments where
these things played out. And of course, as you may
recall, the show version, there was planned to be 7 days of
feasting and tournaments that was interrupted by the killing
of Joffrey and all that was cancelled.
And that had a pretty big impact as well.
It really changed the trajectory of the Targaryen Valerian
alliance. Like it was going to be a very
locked down, like Viserys envisioned the second age of
Dragons, all these big plans for what this alliance would mean.
And then it kind of just like, yeah, I guess we're, I guess
we're allies now. We're married together.
And it just didn't, it didn't really proceed like they didn't
really proceed as friends from there.
Like they weren't enemies, but they weren't like hanging out a
lot and having each other's backs.
And it's like, uh, we're narrow now.
We have in laws we're not very happy with.
So that eventually did come around, but it started off real
bumpy. And it was because of these
extracurricular things happening at what wasn't exactly a
tournament book version was, but it was a tournament environment
where people were brought together and A tournament was
expected to happen. Let's go to Ashford Meadow in
the year 2 O 9. Jumping forward quite a bit.
Now remember, Lord Ashford had a purpose here.
He wanted to find a husband for his daughter.
He wanted to get the highest rank person he could for his
daughter. And he also wanted to get in
good with the Royals, which may have implied that's who he
wanted to find a husband for his daughter from.
If not then, but maybe a future marriage down the line for his
family. Because in the reach in this
era, there wasn't a lot separating a lot of these
houses. It was just a lot of pretty
powerful mid range houses. And the times had changed.
The Black Fire Rebellion had happened.
The Dragons weren't around anymore.
Deron the Second was a different sort of king.
He was trying to do things less Targaryen.
Y right he was. He didn't like the incest
marriages. He he was a follower of the
seven pretty devoutly. He took a lot of lessons from
Bay Lord the Blessed, but he was getting up there in age.
So amidst all these changes, there was opportunities for the
ambitious Lord, which Lord Ashford seemed to be.
He's thinking, all right, when Daron dies, there's going to be
a new king. A new king means fresh
alliances, fresh offices, fresh counselors, all this other
stuff. He wants to be a part of that
Lord Ashford did. He wants his family to be a part
of this new wave, of this new period, this new era.
Whenever the new king takes over.
He wants to be a part of that new swing of power.
You basically to have the king slash Prince as a captive
audience. You're hosting the tournament.
You get to talk to them. You get to bring your business
to their attention. It's not so simple to do that.
If you're someone like Tywin, you've got that King's ear
because you're his hand, right? But like, how often, good Lord,
did Ned talk to Robert? Like, hardly ever.
If he'd wanted to talk to him, he could have made a, you know,
gotten to him. But if he sends a letter to him,
like it's going to go through myself's hands and then maybe
Cersei sees it it, it's a pretty big deal.
We take these things for granted in our era because we have
phones and stuff. But like, it's hard for nobles
to talk to each other without attracting attention.
Especially hard to talk to the king who's being pulled in a lot
of directions at once. So spend a lot of money, invite
the the Princess, get a chance to talk to them, you know, try
to get in good with them, befriend them.
It's it's an in route. Even Ned talking to Robert like
they're friends, right? Like imagine how many letters
the king gets. Robert might say, all right, let
me read Ned's. But most other Lords, he just
doesn't care. He just doesn't want to hear it.
He'll just send it off to someone else, you know?
You're totally right. Yeah.
So that's one thing that maybe we need to keep in mind, that
you may have a tournament just to speak to one or two specific
people. The whole thing might just be
about getting one or two particular visitors and getting
to talk to them. He probably didn't expect Darren
to come. Like we said, Darren was up
there in age. He'd given him a lot of the rule
over to Baylor. But he did expect Baylor to
come, and Baylor did come. Of course, it all backfired
horribly because Baylor died but didn't go the way he wanted at
all. But that you can see that is
what he wanted. Nina's the one who reminded us
that Lord Ashford was trying to impress Baylor by being strict
about the entrance thing, which probably Baylor didn't care
about that Baylor was more Baylor's not all highfalutin, so
I don't think he that meant anything to him.
Positive. It may have even been a
negative. Maybe he just didn't care, but
it wasn't a plus. So trying to make it more fancy
was not something was not a good way to impress Baylor, but he
was trying to impress Baylor. That was still, that was his
intent. That was his ambition.
And it's all trying to get embroil himself with the royal
family or, or to make those connections, Nina writes.
It may have seemed like a good means of reinforcing royal
authority in the Reach. From Baron's point of view, it
seems likely the Damon Blackfyre may have drawn some or much of
his support from the Reach. The Reach was a place where
Damon had his the core of his support.
So paying attention to this realm, paying attention to the
Reach and keeping, you know, being friendly with it, making
sure this doesn't happen again, probably good policy saying,
yeah, keep these guys married and so even, which might be what
Lord Ash was thinking is like playing 3D chess, right?
OK, They need to play nice with the Reach, which might mean they
want to marry some Reach houses. Why not mine?
Right? And they've only got so many
Princess and princesses. There's only so many
possibilities here. So get ahead of the game, get
involved once again. Obviously backfired horribly,
but wasn't the worst plan. You know, from his perspective.
It's, it's an interesting thought, like how you said that
you might hold a tournament just to be able to get in touch with
one or two people, especially the king or some important
person that might be otherwise very difficult.
And kind of how Nina's also pointing out that the king maybe
wanted to have a presence at this tournament.
It goes both ways. Like they get to go have contact
with other people at the tournament and not just the
person running the tournament and the person they're trying to
get in contact with, but other separate people get to have
interactions they wouldn't normally have.
It becomes more and more justifiable for people to come
and visit and have these meetings and make these I I
mean, I can even imagine like, you know, smaller Lords and
houses and whatnot still want to arrange marriages and still, you
know, but maybe have debts owed and yeah, etcetera, etcetera.
You. Know or like Kyle the cat was
looking to find a new Lord to swear his sword to.
Like that's another plan that backfired horribly.
His plan was terrible, but you know, Dunk was there to make a
name for himself and he ended up meeting Egg.
You know, that's very likely event, but Dunk meeting, What's
his name? The the.
Glendon. Ball you met him like that's
more that kind of meeting his name right?
Glendon London flowers dash Ball he it's like the third time I've
forgotten his name. I have a mental block against
Glendon Ball's name Glendon flowers.
So he like, but that kind of meeting where two hedge nights
come friends, that kind of thing would a lot more likely to
happen at something like a tournament like like Ashford
Meadow or or even white walls where you just wandering around,
you're not likely to find a whole bunch of like minded
people all at once. Like hedge Knights are all out
in the world. They got to go find work here
and there. They can't be congregating at
places where there isn't work. But that's why they're there.
They're there to maybe find work or or elevate their status.
The reason is a good writing device because it's in addition
to like introducing characters without contrived dialogue and
setting up setting a stage for stuff.
But it also can like, get pairings.
You know it can. It can launch new stories.
Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about White Walls,
which happened three years later.
This is when the intrigue component of a tournament is
turned up to 11. As we know, this was commonly
referred to as the second Black Fire rebellion.
Really, it was just a tournament, though.
It's not a good look when your rebellion is really more in the
category of tournaments. It's the second Black Fire
tournaments, yeah, had really introduced to us to a lot of
different things about tournaments that we have maybe
thought about a lot. The the cheating and gambling
aspect of it. That Sir Uthor under Leaf, the
underside for under Leaf, yes, introduced us to the the losing
on purpose, things like that, which totally makes sense that
that's going to happen. Like, Oh yeah, of course that
happens, you know, But if you hadn't thought about it, you may
not have, your brain didn't go there.
It may not have occurred to you and this is something that I
find really interesting. One thing this may have already
occurred to some of you all as we're talking about why people
gather and finding like minded individuals and making friends.
It's like, yeah, tournaments are kind of like conventions.
They're really other you. You gather people together.
They're all like minded in a lot of ways.
They come together to to meet people or to do business.
You make unexpected connections. Some people have other agendas
while they're there. Some conventions have mock
tournaments fighting like with foam noodles and you know, like
sets setting up athletic events or competitions or.
Or, you know, like the SCA, if you don't know the Society of
Creative Monetarisms, they have like tournaments in it.
It's the whole thing. And it's like all since we
there's sort of like recreating these old tournaments from the
old day. But really, the tournaments from
the old days are more similar to these modern things than you
might think, that there is this sort of role-playing element
involved in them. And they weren't really trying
to kill each other. And you are getting together for
social reasons, not just to practice combat.
And the costumes are all part of it and on and on.
So. Yeah.
And the. Costumes are all willing to get
into that too, because, yeah, not just a convention, but a
convention where cosplay is prominent.
Because, for example, at White Walls you have Damon.
The second Blackfire cosplaying is John the Fiddler and a couple
other people who is, who are not what they say they are.
Right. And a bunch of people cosplaying
as loyalists when they're really blackfires, etcetera.
But no. Bloodravens guy his.
Bloodraven cosplaying is the remaining plum.
You're totally right. Yeah, right.
So there's all these examples of people doing that or depending
on who you think Glendon's father is, Is he cosplaying as a
ball or is he really? Is he really a ball?
Yeah, Anyway. His name is Glendon Ball.
He will have justice. So it shows this, a lot of these
elements there of all at once at a tournament that's not really a
tournament that the people on the outside know what's really
going on there. And what I discovered, this is
something we've talked about tournaments off and on a few
different times. But what I didn't realize is
over time, like you said, Sean, jousting wasn't how they
started. They started as more of a melee,
right? And then it became jousting
became the more popular aspect of it.
As tournaments became more fancy, more money became pumped
into them. They became more and more about
the nobility. They became more and more about
the nobility. So which is which is, you know,
they kind of took it over. They became like a big party
where they literally did cosplay.
They would celebrate legendary eras or figures.
People would dress up like historical figures at these
tournaments. Edward the third of England had
lots of tournaments, more than one of which in which people
dressed up like Knights of the round table.
So you got Knights showing up as Lancelot and King Arthur and
Galahad. And you might think, well,
that's, that's funny that they did that.
That wasn't even that long ago. No, actually, I, I say Edward
the 3rd, that's like 13 hundreds.
So King Arthur was 700, seven, 800 years old by that time.
So it was already a old thing already a legend already.
Well, way relegated to legend by that point, not to past history,
Nina writes. And 1 Edward was very fond of.
He named his second surviving son Lionel after Sir Lionel,
cousin of Lancelot, a role he himself had played in
tournament. And he created the still extant
Order of the Garter, inspired by the Round Table.
Yeah, the Order of the Garter still exists as a social thing
in England, I guess. I don't know much about it, but
yeah, so, yeah, totally cosplay conventions.
It's so, so funny. The thing about it, the more
things change, the more they stay the same.
Like mythology and storytelling, we're big parts of these things
and. I've forgotten that the the
characters involved, but there was even one tournament where
someone had like constructed like a wooden tower.
It was rolled out that they could come out of and do like a
tower challenge or something or Yeah, yeah.
Tower defense back in the day yeah.
So Nina also writes as well as allegorical themes like Henry
the Eighth jousting as quote Sir loyal heart supposedly sent by
the queen, noble renown from the fictional Kingdom of noble
Hearts during the 1511 11 tournament to celebrate the
birth of Henry, Duke of Cornwall, who this had a bit of
a Viserys vibe where Henry, Duke of Cornwall, the son didn't see
his. I forget how when he died, he
didn't die as an infinite, I don't think, but he didn't live
very long. So then there's the first, the
first ever round table tournament was held by John
Diblin of Cyprus. You know, Cyprus is that island
in the Eastern Mediterranean. This is a there's a little bit
of a funny connection here. He was the son of Baillian of
Ebelin AKA Legolas. Yes, Orlando Bloom played
Baillian of Ebelin in Kingdom of Heaven, a movie a lot of y'all
have seen. Baillian was also known
historically as Berrison the Younger.
Well not quite Barristan Berrison.
John the Ebelin son of Baillian AKA Legolas took Templar vows
when he was in ill health knowing he was going to die.
So he wanted to enter heaven as a Templar. 80 years later, the
last Templar Grandmaster was burned at the stake by King
Philip the Fair, and then there were no more Templars.
King Philip the Fair was also known as the Iron King.
King Philip the Fair was cursed supposedly by this Templar
Grandmaster as he was being burned at the stake, giving us
the accursed King's novels, which George R Martin and myself
and Nina have recommended many, many times, written by Maurice
Drewan, because it kind of did seem like they were cursed the
way it went. It may have been just something
they because it may have been. It's probably more retrospect
thing. We're like that.
Those descendants were cursed. Let's insert a curse into the
mouth of this temple, our grandmaster.
Anyway, it's great though. That's a really great story and
any excuse to bring that one back around.
And there was a very politically charged tournament in the 6th
book of that novel called The Lily and the Lion and gives
another example of politics and tournaments coming together.
Of course, we talked about tournaments a lot in our Dunkin
Egg coverage as well, so I'll re recommend that.
One last little interjection here.
When we're talking about some real life tournament stuff, it
wasn't all fun and games. There was one tournament in
Germany where 80 people died from heat exhaustion.
What? Good.
They're all stuffed in this hot armor and there's a hot day and
a run around doing combat and they're probably a bunch of
idiots. 80 people died. Yeah, so y'all, when people die
in tournaments in the TV shows, I don't think they've shown
anything in a tournament that rises to the level of violence
in real world tournaments. Let's put it that way.
Like we haven't had 80 people die in a tournament on Game of
Thrones TV. We have heard of the of 80
people dying in a melee in the North.
So that level does exist. But that's because George
understands that you can't have that many people wailing on each
other not have people die. Yep, Yep, Yep.
Especially if they're using real weapons.
Yes, yes, there's so many small examples of things that happened
at tournaments that we could throw out there as examples that
don't require us to discuss the entire tournaments, but it still
shows how many. Once again, I prefer the term
extracurricular activities because extracurricular is such
a wide umbrella. It describes so many things,
whether it's murder, whether it's underhanded, or whether
it's a case like this where aiming the Dragon Knight entered
the tournament, as is Mystery Knight, to declare his sister
the Queen of Love and Beauty because he knew his brother
Aegon the Unworthy was going to name one of his mistresses the
Queen of Love and Beauty to embarrass their sister, so he
entered just to protect her honor.
Good man, that Aimon the Dragon Knight.
That didn't do anything to curb the rumors that Aimon and Nerys
were sleeping together, which Aegon was happy to foist on the
realm and push the idea that Darren wasn't really his son.
But that also is another story and goes well outside the
auspices of tournaments. But it spills over into the
tournaments too, as we see they take their drama everywhere,
even in the fun times. I like thinking about the idea
of Queen of Love and Beauty. Did you read anything about
this? Not that particular title,
although that particular title is also apparently been used
historically in a few spots where women became a greater
part of tournaments as time, as the chivalry and pageantry
elements of tournaments increased over time, became a
part of real world tournaments. As well as naming like a maid of
honor or the bad Different terms for it.
But did you read anything wrong about this, Sean?
I did and they're understandable.
There's not quite as much knowledge on this because
history tends to be a little more male centric, especially
when it comes to like combat games, you know, but it the idea
that the tournaments were growing beyond just these guys
practicing with their weapons, that it was just sort of court
being held and it was this opportunity for socialization
and even the same type of thing we see in Game of Thrones that
there's what someone wears, you know, like signals are being
sent and deals are being made, you know, friendships are being
formed. This happens among the women as
much as the men and maybe even is more of an opportunity for
the women than relatively than the men, because even otherwise,
the men still do have opportunities that women don't
get sense when it comes to traveling and interacting and
making a name for themselves on a battlefield and stuff like
that. It it just became maybe, you
know, as important to women as men that as a social event,
that's. Interesting.
Yeah and, and and now that you mentioned it, thinking about
House of the Dragon, it was very much framed, more so than anyone
through the eyes of Rainier and Allison's.
And then occasionally we we went over to Corliss and Rainey's and
the saris gets whispered to or we see the combatants up close,
but really the combatants are just focused on each other.
They're not having any dialogue. The people talking about it more
so than anyone was Allison and Rainier.
So it was kind of through their eyes and.
And frankly, at the episode 4 and Season 1 of Game of Thrones,
a lot of it's through Santa's point of view.
I mean, certainly Ned's sitting there and little fingers trying
to talk to her. And Ned's like, take your hand
off my daughter, you know, all this other stuff, gambling and
talking about that. But yeah, anyway, we're coming
to that tournament later, so we'll talk about it when we get
to it. But yeah, the Queen of Love and
beauty is very interesting. It's also, it also really puts a
face on an important event, especially if it's like a peace
deal or an alliance where they're where both sides have a
lot invested in this working out, getting the public to buy
in on it is a pretty big part of that.
Like they're like, yay, we're happy about this alliance.
And we all know that putting a pretty face on something can
help with that. There's a reason why newscasters
and people like spokespeople are often more attractive than the
average person. This is very much like that.
They want to put their hopes on a person.
You want to attach some beauty and charisma to an idea that you
have a lot of hope in. You know, it helps, I think to
attaching. It's like attaching a symbol to
an event like Santa Claus to Halloween or to Halloween.
I'm thinking of dressing up like Santa Claus to Christmas, for
example. Like that puts a a friendly face
on it, right? Like even not everybody believes
in Christmas or Santa, but that is kind of the point of Santa
Claus is to besides to sell toys, it's also there to.
I'm just listening to an NPR bit about how insurance is kind of
like a boring, even kind of dark topic business or whatever.
And so they're one of the most think of think of all the
different characters attached to.
You know Gecko? And Gecko and the Mayhem guy and
that insurance is like made a big effort to attach, quote UN
quote, a friendly face or a humorous element to this
business that they're trying to market, you know?
Yeah. I maybe, maybe Boeing and
Raytheon should start putting, making pink missiles and you
know, like putting rainbow flags on there.
Let's talk about Viserys's birth.
Let's jump forward to a Song of Ice and Fire time period.
Now, I went into marry Cersei to Rhaegar.
We established that that's well known.
But remember folks, this was also the Maggie the Frog
incident happened here and Cersei went to see Maggie
because her aunt Jenna spilled the beans and told her you're
going to be marrying Rhaegar. Get ready, get ready, young
youngster. Shouldn't have told her that one
because this didn't happen and she had to be disappointed.
But she because she got so excited, she went to Maggie and
was like, all right, tell me how many kids I'm going to have with
the king. And that led to all this awful
stuff. And then she murders her own
friend, which can't blame anyone but her for that one, even
though she's just a kid. It's like, damn, Cersei killing
people when you're 10. Yikes.
Now Tywin is very open about this.
He he doesn't use wealth on the down low and say it's being
sneaky. He's like, no, we put our wealth
in people's faces and show off as much as possible because it
shows how wealthy we are and reminds him how powerful we are.
He he flat out says this multiple times.
It's not subtle from him and he doesn't want it to be subtle.
The point is to shove it in people's faces.
So that's that's not very subtle.
So this is likely what happened here.
We we talked about this a while back.
Nina suggested that sure is interesting that Rhaegar, all of
these Knights that were in Tywin's service and Tywin's
uncles are, are brothers rather all of them lost to Rhaegar.
Now, Rhaegar was good at jousting, but did they lose?
They really try their hardest, you know what I mean?
Like, I don't know about this. Rhaegar did eventually lose to
Arthur Dayne because no one's going to tell him to lose on
purpose, and I don't know that he would.
It might have tipped, it might have tipped, tipped the hat,
tipped the can't given away the fact that things are being
thrown to him since Arthur Dayne lost him.
Like the others are believable, but if you throw in an
unbelievable one then you start to question the others.
And of course, it's unlikely Tywin could have gotten Arthur
to lose on purpose anyway. But maybe, I don't know, you
know, So he was just all in on this.
It's like I said, the whole point of this tournament was to
was to win this over. And well, here's The funny
thing, though, the turn just to prove how much this wasn't about
what it says. It's about the tournament to
celebrate the saris's birth in 276 AC.
You know who didn't go? The saris?
The baby who was just born. He was not there, nor was his
mother. And Aries didn't want to go at
first. Aries was had to be convinced to
go, like, they're holding this this event for their family and
like, none of them wanted to go. So he goes.
And, you know, it goes a certain way.
And a lot of people probably figured this out.
Like Tywin didn't say the point of the tournament was to marry
Cersei to Rhaegar, but anyone in his inner circle would have
known that a lot of other people from afar would have been like,
OK, we see, we see what's happening here.
He's got a 10 year old daughter, Rhaegar's unmarried.
We see this, we know what's going on.
It's pretty straightforward. Anyone who bothered to think
about it at the time could probably have sussed that out,
which means that a lot of people would be showing up with other
plans. I mean, they know.
They know this is some an event that is even more than a lot of
other tournaments, not about what it's says it's about,
especially when the the object of celebration isn't even in
attendance. They were very happy, surely,
that Tywin was spending all this money on this big event.
But a lot of people probably showed up with other plans in
mind. Like all right, we're going to
meet with these guys, meet with these guys.
Keep in mind, this was an era of conspiracy.
We'd already had the defiance of Dusk and Dale.
This is part of why Tywin was part of why Viserys wasn't
excited about going right and Aries was getting progressively
worse and worse. He wasn't to his Oh my God, this
guy is a mess that he was at Harrenhal, where just looking at
him was frightful because his hair was uncut, his nails were
freakishly long, and clearly something wasn't right.
It made it, it made him look worse.
This stage. He didn't quite look so gnarly
yet, but he was getting there and the the rumors were
starting. He had burned a few people.
He'd lost a lot of children, so his insanity was growing every
day. So people were concerned it's
five years later when they start planning maybe to overthrow him,
having the great counsel to Harrenhal.
But you got to think the talk and certainly the sentiment,
people are thinking it if they weren't saying it had already
begun at this point. So I'm sure if we learn more
about this event one day, I'm sure that's going to be a part
of it, that we're going to hear what people were saying about
Aries as well as what they're saying about Tywin and and the
other bigwigs. But Harris is the one that I
think would would generate the most like nervous discussion or
like, what's the king going to do next or like, maybe it's
better if you just let him alone and don't invite him to places,
you know, things like that. So do you have much impression
of this event, of this event, Sean?
It's kind of, it's a little bit of a deep cut, but I know we've
talked. About No, I I.
In fact, there was even something I think Nina put in a
document about how Court had been moved to Casterly Rock at
one point in the past. What?
What's the story with that? Is that too much of A tangent?
No, it's not too much of A tangent.
Basically a while ago when there was a it had been before this
when they were on better terms, when Tywin and Aries still got
along really well. Aries Tywin went back to
Casterly Rock to take up the lordship.
He was still Hand, but he had to go settle stuff because his
father had died. He was Hand before his father
died. So when his father.
So when Titus died, he had to go back, take up the lordship, set
a few things in in line and then go back to King's Landing.
But Eric's is like, hey, let's just move court to Casualty Rock
for a while. You can take your homework home
with you. It's like, I'm going home to do
work, you know, It's like, yeah, but you can do both there.
And I'm like, all right, I'll do.
Yeah. As much as I don't like Tywin,
that dude had a lot of work to do.
He had a lot of like keeping up with Aries and running the West,
yet that that wasn't easy. Let's play, you know, I'll give
him I'll give him a little bit of credit for that.
So they had familiarity with that.
The court like people had familiarity with with this
scenario of Aries going West of things being ruled from the West
a little bit. So that probably set people to
talking too. It's like, again, court moving W
it's like, is this going to be like especially with the idea of
Cersei Mering Rhaegar, I bet you most people thought he would say
yes, or at least a lot of people expect that he would say yes.
A lot of people probably did not see the rejection coming, least
of all Tywin and Cersei, right? Or, or Jenna, like Jenna
Lannister thought it was going to happen too.
She basically told Cersei, get ready, you're going to be the
Princess. You know, they all thought it
was going to work. So probably a lot of people made
plans based on Cersei becoming Princess that those plans were
dashed as well. It wasn't just Tywin's plans.
It was, it's like, OK, let me use a modern example.
When a Walmart opens in a in a remote rural area, a bunch of
businesses open around them. It's like a whole mall opens
around them. Like a bunch of satellite
businesses open size. Food restaurants and gas
stations and and you got to build a parking lot.
There's going to be construction work and there's.
Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.
It's kind of boring, but a lot of logistical stuff comes along.
I can imagine the second time of Aries coming over to the West
and are expecting a wedding to be arranged.
I can imagine someone's like, all right, we really need to get
that bridge repaired. Yeah, yeah, just make it look
nicer if there's. Going to be a wedding, they're
going to need, all right, let's get set aside some extra pigs
for the feast. And, you know, I imagine a lot
of business and workings. It might not be as exciting
enough for the intrigue of a book, but still would be part of
the lives of the people involved.
Now imagine that Walmart closes down.
What happened to the satellite business?
A lot of them go die out as well.
So the same thing happened. Like the people made their plans
based on expecting Tywin to have a greater place at the table.
Even more so they already had and expect the Lannisters to be
part of the royal family going forward.
That's a huge change. But then that didn't happen.
Well, it did just hence hilarious was dead.
Yeah, you'd all know the term. That's right, lot of room there,
quite a lot of room there. The Tywin held another
tournament in the year 295. So that's 20 years later
roughly, and probably others in between because again, showing
off his wealth, he wanted to. This is the thing he values.
But after the rebellion, it's notable that that he's holding
tournaments after the rebellion, after he is now part of the
royal family because he didn't get in with the Targaryens, but
he was on the winning side of Robert Rebellion and Cersei
married Robert. So he did become part of the
royal family, which is a little ironic.
He was hand for Aries but not for Robert because John Aaron
was and and then he became hand after Robert died for for
Joffrey basically. So he wasn't able to marry his
daughter to the king when he was hand, but when he was able.
When he had. Yeah, I don't think I have
anything else to say about that tournament, as cool as it is.
But isn't that neat? We just talked about a whole
bunch of stuff and almost none of it had to do with the
tournament. But the tournament, like kicked
so much of it off. The tournament was like the tip
of the spear, the event that set it all up, the event that fell
apart, so the rest of it fell apart.
Yeah, I like this comment from guilty undertaker in the chat
who says every second wasn't so bad he was willing to let his
hand work from home. You know what employers is
really willing. To he's willing to work from
home as long as his boss was there.
So you can work from home. But I'm going to come.
Yeah. Can you imagine?
Your boss is like OK you can work from home but only if I'm
there too. I can't imagine living with my
boss. That's why Sean moved out.
It's like I'm going to another state y'all.
Imagine if we had come with. Yeah, It's like, OK, you can
move to Denver. We're moving with you.
All right? We can make it worse.
All right, let's go to Harrenhal.
Only five years forward, this time we'll start off with a
quote. Even if all the conspiracies of
this and and things that were happening, side quests and
extracurricular activities that happen in Harrenhal, so much of
it happened that it's a legend. It has legendary status for how
much of the sort of stuff happened, even though half of it
isn't documented. Many tales have grown up around
Lord Wen's tournament. Tales of plots and conspiracies,
betrayals and rebellions, infidelities and assignations,
secrets and mysteries, almost all of it conjecture.
The truth is known only to a few.
Some of them have long passed beyond this mortal veil and must
forever hold their tongues. Now that there's still a chance
that, you know, maybe Bran or some other supernatural means
gives us more insight into what happened here.
And, and maybe while there's plenty of other things Bran
could be looking at, we should point out that Bran is the
biggest source on the tournament of Harrenhal.
Well, technically Jojen and Mira, who tell him the story of
this, the tournament in Herrenhal that his father never
told him. And that was interesting to them
that that Ned had never told him this or that your father hasn't
told you any of this. And they're like, he's like, no.
And we're like, oh, well, that itself is interesting, but also
a separate topic from this the tournament Herrenhal is of all
these tournaments we've discussed, pretty much the only
one we don't see first hand. Well, I guess the tournament,
this last one we didn't see first hand.
We see it through some people's memories.
Cersei was there, but Bran has doesn't have memories of it.
He's told it, so he doesn't have memories of it.
Ned thinks about it very little. Barristan thinks about it a
little, but he mostly only thinks about a little bit of it.
He mostly thinks about Ashara Dane and how someone dishonored
her and a little bit about Jamie and then about how he was in
love with the char himself. So like, his thoughts are very
narrow in terms of how many things were going on at this
tournament that Barristan wasn't even aware of, let alone
something that comes up in his chapters or in his memories.
So it's definitely the tournament we have the most
sources of. Danny's heard about it, Jamie
thinks about it, Bran has his story time for obviously
Barristan on Ned. And then and there's historical
mentions of it and I'm probably missing something.
It's well known that Aries had a lot of paranoia over Rhaegar and
his position. He was gradually learning or
hearing whispers that maybe Rhaegar was going to replace
him. And heck, if you're an insane
man on the throne and have a moment of lucidity, you might
think they should probably replace me.
You know, so you would be you would be thinking about that,
maybe even yourself, which might fuel you're more paranoid
moments like, Oh my God, they're going to replace me.
You know, like you go from the the salient.
You know, I should be replaced too.
What are they they're coming for me to replace me.
Like both of these thoughts quite possibly entered his mind
in different states of of manic or not manic or whatever, using
stronger terms as well. Whatever was going on in his
head, let's put it that way. People like Virus were feeding
this paranoia, possibly for a fact, possibly not just to do
their job. Like Virus may have had things
in mind here. In fact, he probably did.
Scaring Aries or planting seeds in his head was probably
intentional. We don't know.
It's not clear exactly why Virus wanted to do that, but we know
he had big long term plans that started way back then.
So it's easy to see how that he may have thought exposing
Aries's insanity or driving a wedge between the two Targaryen
sides might have been a civil war they wanted to start back
then as compared to the civil war they have helped start 15
years later or 20 years later. Let's have the quote that
describes some of Aries's thinking and the associated
thoughts. In such a climate, it was scarce
surprising that Lord Wentz great Tournament excited much
suspicion. Lord Chelstead urged His Grace
to forbid it, and Lord Staunton went even further, suggesting A
prohibition against all attorneys.
Such events were widely popular with the Commons, however, and
when Lord Merriweather warned Aries that forbidding the
tournament would only serve to make him even more unpopular,
King chose another course and announced his intention to
attend. It would mark the first time the
Aries the second had left the safety of the Red Keep since the
defiance of Duskindale. No doubt His Grace reasoned that
his enemies would not. Not dare conspire against him
under his very nose. Grand Maester Piselle tells us
that Aries hoped that his presence at such a grand event
would help him win back the love of his people.
Now that is a wild expectation given Aries had the long ass
fingernails and the uncut hair and it's like how is this guy
going to inspire loyalty or anything?
Confidence that remotely resembles confidence And we're
like Oh my God what the hell. And this is probably why they
didn't think he would go. They're like, he hasn't left the
Red Keep since Dusk and Dale. He looks like that.
It must have been a huge surprise that he attended.
They were like, oh, crap. All right.
Well. Heisel was probably just telling
him what he wanted to hear. I bet Heisel didn't really want
him to go either, but wasn't going to tell him that.
Yeah, maybe once Aries made-up his mind, Heisel's like, Oh
yeah, I guess that's a good idea.
That's yeah, you're, you might be right.
And isn't that wild like the way they were thinking?
One guy's like, just ban all tournaments, like, all right,
Like, yeah. And then the other guy's like,
no, well, you're already unpopular.
Maybe let's not do things to make you more unpopular.
But it goes to show why did he want to ban tournaments?
Why was that even on the table? Because people were conspiring
against him. It goes to show he's like, I
don't want to post or allow events where people are all the
different Lords are going to gather and have a good excuse to
talk about me. And then he did.
But he has more foolish notice, like, well, if I'm there, they
won't do that. They'll talk about you more, you
know everyone. Will talk about it instead of
just the Lords. The Commons are going to start
talking about you too. Yeah, I'm pretty sure this
backfired horribly. Like Rhaegar and the other Lords
looking around, seeing how the Commons like, it'd probably help
them Like if, if, if they're going to try to be the popular,
like have as much support he can.
But being as popular as he can be, Rhaegar was very well
regarded. Rhaegar was very liked.
So if he's like, I want to make sure I have enough support and
popularity and and political clout to make this move as soft
as it can be. This transition is so we don't
want to have a civil war. We want to just remove on my dad
without any acrimony, without any bloodshed.
The best way to do that is to from a position of strength, be
like Aries has no allies. Wanting to stand up from Aries
doesn't have people that are going to take his side and fight
against Rhaegar. He wants people to just go,
yeah, it's better for the realm. Let's just side with Rhaegar,
peacefully put this dude away, let him retire, don't give him
any authority anymore, treat him with dignity, but don't let him
make any more decisions. You know, that kind of thing.
That that's, I think that's what they were aiming for.
They, they, they certainly weren't aiming to overthrow him
via blood if they didn't have to.
There's no indication of that that I'm aware of.
They wanted it to be peaceful, but this did throw a monkey
wrench in their plans. Like it definitely became harder
for them to talk about their plans with Aries there with
because Aries isn't there by himself.
He brings his retinue, he's got spies are probably there,
virus's men are probably there. So they had to keep it on the
down low a little more. So it did probably impact there.
It did 'cause the Commons to start talking.
So it may have built popular support for Rhaegar's side.
It may have had more people go like, yeah, we'd rather have the
sun as king for sure. Especially seeing this dude in
his insanity, Like, yeah, time to make a switch.
We're OK with that, but. It made it harder for them to
hammer out the details. Yeah, and it became and, and
just none of this was part of the plan.
They just didn't. They couldn't have seen this
coming. Almost certainly.
Secondarily, there is a big question about the money.
How swift? What do we, what do you
associate with Harrenhal in the latter stages?
You don't associate great wealth, right?
You associate them having too much land to upkeep.
They don't have enough money to pay for it.
All right. And that was intentional because
Harrenhal was built to be this dominant region.
So and one of the ways future rulers kept it from being
dominant was by limiting the amount of supporting lands owned
by Harrenhal. If it if it has all this wide
tracts of land supporting it, it can, it can tax all that and
support itself. But if you keep it low, you keep
it supporting land small. It can't, it stays house poor.
It can't feed itself. And so it's no threat to
overthrow the bigger powers, which was again, that was
intentional. They don't want Harrenhal to be
too powerful. So they have to keep it muted,
keep it nerfed. So where did House went get the
money for this? What's said to be 3 times
grander than the one Tywin threw for Viserys that he was trying
to arrange Cersei to marry Rhaegar?
Where did they get that money? Big question.
There's really only one person that people suspect.
Tywin would be someone to suspect given he has that kind
of money. But Tywin didn't attend, no
Lannisters attended. Rhaegar is the one that people
suspect. He's the one who paid far.
And it's possible that Tywin sent money to him and and then
he paid for it through Rhaegar like multiple intermediaries.
But Rhaegar is the one it all seems to point at the
spotlight's on. And it's it's obvious why, given
all the things we just said. He's the one that's trying to
steer this ship peacefully away from his father, towards
himself, towards his reign. Obviously that didn't happen.
But to add to the conspiracy, Sean, you may not have been
aware of this. The tournament was announced in
280. It was held in the year after,
but it was announced right after Lord Went got a visit from his
Kingsguard brother, Oswell Went. Oswell Went was one of the three
Kingsguard who died at the Tower of Joy, defending Rhaegar's
child to their last breath, along with Arthur Dayne and
Gerald Hightower. So Oswell went was tight with
Rhaegar. He was one of his tight, tight
buds, right? It makes sense that Rhaegar
might have sent him with this message, this plan.
To broach this opportunity. It also makes sense that Tywin
might have been excited for this to happen, it might have even
contributed money. But he it also makes sense for
him to not just. To stand aside and maybe take a
like jump in with the winners like he did with Robert
Rebellion. Just wait to see, wait for it to
be decisive. So, yeah, this is this is
something about the tournament that makes it so special.
And that implies both the grand wealth and that there was the
fact so much was going on is because they wanted so many
distractions. They wanted it to be the huger
the event, the more smokescreens they have to hide what's really
going on. That that makes sense, doesn't
it? Yeah, I was going to use the
word smoke spring. You took that?
Nice. It had like all the add-ons.
If it were a pizza, it had every topping.
If it was a game, it had all the DLCS.
An apple. Even pineapple, it had night
nights watch recruiters there to to try to win people to the
nights watch. It had Jamie's white cloak
ceremony, which was very dramatic because Aries told him
to go home afterwards. He's like, wait, I was going to
enter the tournament. No, you're mine now if you go.
That's what he said. He's mine now.
You go back to the Red Keep. You can't even watch.
No. Damn, that's rough.
That helps set up some of the the Dane plot too, because like
I said, with with Barristan thinking about Arthur Dane, not
Arthur Dane, but Ashara Dane and Ned and all that business that's
added here. That all happened here.
Obviously the Rhaegar Liana stuff happened here.
Some of it started before this, but it came to a head here with
the Night of the Laughing Tree and Howland Reed getting beat up
by the Squires and Liana helping him and maybe supernatural stuff
going on with them, and Aries demanding saying the night of
the Laventry is no friend of his.
It was just all this stuff that is above the tournament, you
know? And a side of it.
Super cool. Rhaegar's win, of course, capped
off a long string of victories and near victories, meaning it
was really emphasized what a great warrior he was.
Even if people were losing to him sometimes.
He actually did beat Barristan. We know that pretty clearly
because Barristan thinks about it.
He thinks, man, if only I had won, then he wouldn't have given
the Queen of Love and Beauty prize to Lyanna and that might
like that would have might have avoided a lot of problems.
So he, it's a good man that blames himself for something
that's not his fault. He's like, if I only if I had
one. So one of the reasons we like
Barristan so much is he's taking responsibility for thinking it's
entirely not his fault. Just what more could I have
done? That's a question that good
people ask. And this is kind of funny too.
Barristan reading the history of tournament wins, which isn't
exactly what we're out here to talk about today, but I want to
throw it in because it's fun. Barristan won a bunch of
tournaments in the two 50s and then a bunch in the two 90s and
a bunch in between. He just just wins.
Like it just can't be stopped really.
And that too is a message. So it is kind of on brand here.
It is kind of part of this. It's the message was don't mess
with Aries's Kingsguard. Like that was a huge problem.
They're like, OK, we're going to overthrow Aries.
We can get a lot of Lords to detach themselves from him
because they don't want to be part of a sinking ship.
But his Kingsguard, what are we going to do about them?
Those guys are bad asses. How are we going to set?
Like what if if they if he says no and starts telling them to go
out and kill people or bring me the heads of this and that and
like, what's going to happen? We have to fight Arthur Dayne
and Barristan Selmy and crap. Like what are we going to do
about that? So this is a real problem and
something that tenuously was emphasized throughout Aries's
reign because they kept winning tournaments.
It was like there was basically 3 recurring tournament winners
in this era, Arthur Dayne, Barristan Selmy and Rhaegar.
Jamie was constantly getting like second and third and 4th.
He won a couple but mostly he was in that winner's circle
without winning. He was also a little younger in
this era. Like that's another thing.
He was an up and Comer where the others were established.
But still that's a big deal. Like you, if you're going up
against Aries, you're going up against these guys.
And then of course Jamie becomes one of those Kings card and this
moment is like OK and the next great warrior is also a part of
that Kings card. Now, his loyalty wasn't as
dependable, but in Erius's mind, put a white cloak on someone and
they belong to him, so he didn't think that through entirely.
But also also a side top. Yeah.
So wow, big, big tournament, big things happening so much at
once. And very little of it has to do
with the actual tournament, but even the tournament itself sent
a message who the baddest warriors were.
And it doesn't take a genius to see all those guys are on the
same team. But if if King's Guard were to
flip, if Arthur Dayne were to switch to Rhaegar's side, if
Gerald Hightower to switch to Rhaegar's side, it would also
have a huge impact, just like Barristan taking sides did have
a huge impact during during the war of 5 Kings.
Renly was like, we want we saved this place for Barristan.
We wanted him so badly that we saved a spot for a Tywin called
it stupid that they sent him away just like that was dumb as
hell. Y'all, why did you do that?
Like for Sandor Clagaine, like, why?
Like he he's the same guy with or without a white cloak.
You know, you could have had both of them, you know, like,
that was dumb, guys. Yeah.
All right, so let's move on to the hands tournaments.
In light of talking about topics like funding and how where did
this money come from and how tournaments can cost too much,
we have. Back to our initial quote that
you picked, Sean of Ned not wanting to spend money on things
like this or waste time on things like this when there's
ruling to be done. We have a quote from SEPTA
Mordane, someone with a totally different perspective on this
event, a completely different type of thinker, a character
whose position is not well represented usually.
So I thought it'd be good to throw her in here.
Right. Princess Marcella will be there,
my Lord, and her younger than Lady Sansa.
All the ladies of the court will be expected at a grand event
like this, and as the tourney is in your honor, it would look
queer if your family did not attend.
Ned was grumbling so hard but that he was thinking that Santa
and Arya wouldn't go. He's like, I don't even want you
to go. And Santa's like, what?
For once it's up to Mordain had her back there.
I was like, my Lord, it would look queer if you didn't go, you
know? And he's like fine.
And Ari's like, I don't care. Ari's like I don't care.
And since it's like the tournament will be very nice,
you won't be welcome, you know, because you're not you're not
you're not upscale enough for it.
And that's like, This is why I don't want to deal with any of
this. But it was huge for sure.
Like you said, Shawn at the beginning, like we danced around
like we set up. It introduced so many of the
most important characters we just mentioned.
Sandor is a big introduction to him.
We kind of knew who he was already, but we didn't have a
full idea of his prowess. Gregor as well.
Loris, Jamie, George LED readers astray a little bit with that
hue of the veil plot. He tricked us a bit, but the
idea was there. The reason we fell for it was
that a fake accident in a tournament where someone
murdered someone and made it look like an accident.
It made sense to us, like getting rid of a loose end.
We've seen that plot in other stories where this guy can can
out us, so we have to kill him to clear up to make sure that
we're safe. That's not what happened, but it
looked like that, so George used it effectively as misdirection.
Was it also on his turn when we got introduced to Littlefinger?
I believe we had met him briefly, but we learned a lot
more about him. He was, he taught, he he sort of
outs Renly's sexuality in the show version and in the book
version, I don't think he has much to say other than he he
yells out of bets and that matters too.
He talked to Sansa. He definitely like put some fear
in Sansa about the Hound. Yeah, the show version, you did
that. Yeah.
Yeah, totally. He took her.
He took. He got the Hound's origin story
and told him, which we're all like, that should have been his
story to tell. But still.
The book version, I think he may have said one or two other
things, but he definitely, like, yelled out a bet and then that
came back later. The betting came back later
because Tyrion gets infuriated when he finds out that Catlin's
evidence against him was a bet told to him by little, told to
her by Littlefinger. He's like your evidence is, is
Littlefinger told you I bet against my own brother?
Doesn't that sound wrong to you? Like I didn't lose this dagger
betting against Jamie. That's 'cause he says he got the
dagger betting against Tyrion Lannister, the cat's paw dagger.
So again, I think people forget that that's part of the
tournament. That's all.
I like this was this is all wrapped up in there.
And another lesson from the Sir Hugh of the Veil thing is, a
person with no allies at court is in a lot of danger.
Sir Hugh the veil had nobody, no allies.
He was a Squire to John Aaron, who was no longer there, right.
And John Aaron's court went back to the veil.
The people who were in his retinue have gone back to the
veil and he didn't go with them, sucker.
And so he gets he's If you're alone at court, someone will use
you. You will be used because you
have no allies. No one will protect you whether
you're Sansa without your family around you, they're too far away
to help, or you're someone that doesn't have a family.
Of of note, in terms of the nobility, like Sir Hugh, it
turned out to be the simplest thing of all.
Gregor used him to satisfy his bloodlust.
It wasn't some big conspiracy. It wasn't any of that stuff.
It was just Gregor likes killing Sandor was like, I could have
told you that, but he did tell them that.
In fact, he did tell Santa that no one believed him.
He's like, no, Gregor saw that guy's gorge.
It wasn't fastened properly. That's what he saw.
He didn't see gold in his palm. He saw an opportunity to kill
someone. By the way, I think we mentioned
this once, but Hugh of the Veil was the same actor of Jason and
Tylen Lannister. That dude's done some work.
Jefferson Hall, yeah, for. His many faces, you know, even
if you do ostensibly have allies in King's land and you're still
going to get used. Like Ned wasn't there all by
himself and he's still got manipulated left and right.
Yeah, as part of it is just are you the type that can be
manipulated? Are you manipulatable?
You're the you're what are you the you're the the meat or the
butcher? That analogy kind of fits here.
And the tournament personally has a huge impact on Santa, on
her character, disabusing her of the what's really happening.
She learns indirectly, but starting at the tournament of
things aren't as they seem. It's kind of the beginning of
her naivete falling off. And again, we like to point out
that it does fall off quickly. She learns pretty fast, but
there was a lot to learn. She she had a lot of naivete to
start with. Yeah, I also want to point out
that it's not like Sansa is this weird, naive character, like
anyone at 10 years old, you know, you, you you'd think that
these Knights are heroes and you realize they're killers.
It's, you know, it's part of why George is writing this book.
You know it's. Bran had the same view.
Bran's like remember 1 of Bran's first quotes that we read like
from his 2nd chapter. I think it is not his first
chapter when they're doing the direwolf, but when he's like
brand new, all the stories and he's talking about the kings
guard. He's like Barris and the bold
Ryan Redwine, Eric and Ark remember that?
Like that's like his second or third chapter chapter or
something like that. So yeah, he's entranced by all
that too. And he would have been there
sitting right next to his sister, enjoying it all if it
hadn't been for his fall. He was this much looking forward
to all that as hers. Those two would have been of one
mind about the tournament, at least at 1st, and it shows the
state of the realm. Some of these tournaments aren't
able to judge that because we don't have a close enough view
of it, like we do with, say, House the Dragon Episode 1,
where we see it's openly discussed the state of the realm
and how that reflects that. Other times we kind of have to
read between the lines, like here, but Robert Sherman,
there's a lot of people that there's a lot of undertones of
unrest. We already, we find out later,
people are already plotting to maybe marry, to remarry Robert
to Marjorie. People kind of the word was out
that Robert's daughters or Robert's children weren't his
like people. A lot of people knew that.
And anytime people are gathering, people can talk about
that. And Robert's getting older, he's
getting less healthy. There's more and more plots up
in there. A lot of people out there going
to be thinking, well, how much longer is this guy going to be
king, preparing for the inevitable of unrest when
Joffrey ascends, if people object to him based on his true
parentage. So a lot of people are probably
worried about that or thinking about that or what's going to
happen. So a lot of people on edge,
maybe. And this tournament, I think
reflects in some ways, but it's presented us to us mostly
through the naive eyes of Sansa. So we're not seeing that.
Sansa's not out here looking around.
I wonder who's plotting, you know, I wonder this Lord over
here whispering in his ear. She's not taking note of things
like that, you know, That's not her POV, isn't now she is in the
veil. She's.
Going to say creates a good juxtaposition for her character
down the line. That's why I can't all.
Differently. She looks at things, yeah.
That's one of the reasons I can't wait for the tournament.
The Wing Knights through her point of view is we're going to
see what she saw at the Tans tournament compared to her much
more wizened view at the tournament.
The Wing Knights, I can't wait to see like the difference
there. That's going to be so cool.
Thoros and Angai are in this tournament.
Thoros wins the melee. Great, great way to introduce
Thoros and Angai wins the archery contest and got the
Archer. So these characters that were
introduced well before they're both in the Brotherhood without
Banners. It's like, whoa, the Brotherhood
got some pretty good fighters there on their side.
And we also just see the state of the realm in this in this in
terms of Ned complaining about the money, Robert, Robert
beggared the realm. Ned was like, wow, even Aries
was better with money. You know, like damn, even
Roberts that that really depressed him a bit.
And he was and and sent him at first he was in disbelief.
He was like, he couldn't believe that Robert was worth with
money, especially because John Aron was in charge for a while
than Aries. But he's like, yeah, John Aron
gave him good advice, but Robert didn't listen.
That's what I think Varus said. That put it very diplomatically,
But so here we go. And what does that mean?
He this, this next quote really tells you, gives you a sense of
how much all this costs and how much, how much problems it
causes for people who aren't directly involved, for people
who aren't the participants, for the people in the viewing
stands. Here we go.
Nights have been arriving from all over the realm and for every
night we get 2 we get 2 free riders, 3 Craftsman, 6 men at
arms, a dozen merchants, two dozen whores, and more thieves
than I dare to guess. This cursed heat had half the
city and a fever to start. And now with all these visitors.
Last night we had a drowning, a Tavern riot, three night fights,
a rape, 2 fires, robberies beyond count, and a drunken
horse race down the street of the Sisters.
The night before, a woman's head was found in the Great Sept,
floating in the Rainbow Pool. No one seems to know how it got
there or who it belongs to this. Is one of the few times Geno
Slint is worth quoting, because this is who we're talking about
and. You know, this makes me think of
Damon Targaryen in House of the Dragon when he's talking about
like, getting ready for the tourney and you want, how do you
want the city to be when they show up?
Because if we're going to party. That's a very good point to say.
I didn't think of that when you're totally right.
He's mentioning it and, and, and in the way that's presented,
it's like maybe he's exaggerating because of the all
the stuff he just did and chopping limbs off.
He's like, maybe he just likes doing that.
But it does sound like he might have been telling the truth and
just being too severe with how to handle it.
But the truth that there is a lot of crime in the city is
believable. Yeah, especially with stuff like
this happening. Just because it's true that
there's a lot of crime in the city doesn't mean you shouldn't
have a trial for the people being accused, you know?
But yeah, totally what's also an F?
Jumping much farther forward here and into the end of second
book whereas this is happening early in the first book is that
long after this the turning grounds are made and they just
kind of sit there afterwards they're they were they were set
aside and and afterwards there's still some like leftover
construction and just the area that had been made for that it
turns into an actual battlefield later.
It's sort of foreshadowing because the Battle of the
Blackwater spills into this area because meant ships are being
are going up the Blackwater and leaving men to jump off.
And that's a lot of that's right at the attorney grounds after
the battle, after the Battle of the Blackwater.
Ned is dead by then too, of course, dead for a while.
There's just bodies everywhere and it's just described that
way, bodies all over the tournament grounds, which is
really just brings it all back together.
Like the, the the issues that started at the tournament were
on display. They didn't start at the
tournament. Some of them did.
Some of them were just on display.
They were focused. They were put under the lens,
under the microscope, and some of them were exacerbated.
Nothing was really settled at the tournament.
Things didn't improve because of the tournament.
Alliances didn't weren't formed as so much of more grievances
were registered. And then here we go.
Like the battle actually comes to a head to, you know, a book
and a half later and it's the biggest battle to the in the
series so far to that point. Just 10s of thousands of
casualties. A bunch of dead bodies on the
tournament grounds kind of adds context to Cersei's quote.
When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die.
Oh yeah, especially because life tournaments are.
Bound to the tournament, you're now a spot of death in a real
war. Yeah.
Good. Sad you're right about that.
So now back to the other side. Before the before this happened
though, well before the Battle of the Blackwater, we got the
Knights of Summer at the Rainbow Guard tournament in Bitter
Bridge of 299 AC. The state of the realm question
is much different here because it's a rebel king.
This is not a king sitting the throne.
This is a king in the field. Usually rebels don't have time
to hold tournaments. I said at the beginning as the
power move, he was doing it for two mostly for I think there
were two main reasons. One was to show just how
powerful he was. He could afford to do this.
He could afford to waste time. He could afford to casually
stroll into King's Landing as his army grew larger and larger
along the way. There was a little bit of
strategy there. Some of it was just
grandstanding. Some of it was Renly pumping
himself up and pumping up his cause.
But some of it was just letting the others fight it out while he
took his time. That didn't work out so well
because Stannis landed right next to him and they ended up
having to fight. And that shouldn't have been a
big problem for Renly's army, but he didn't account for Shadow
Baby. None of us accounted for Shadow
Baby at the time. Well, that was a.
Big just shadow baby. He's might be in cahoots for the
Spanish Inquisition. I think you might be right.
Do those shadow babies speak Spanish?
I haven't heard them speak. It is different.
And it's also a different reason.
Like Vicenya would have cringed at the idea of a tournament to
decide who the Kingsguard is because that's what Aegon wanted
to do. Aegon the Conger, He's like,
let's have a tournament. The best warriors will be my
Kingsguard. But then he's like, no bad idea.
You want the most loyal. You want people who will die for
you, Not the best warrior. The best warrior might just be
like, I could beat that guy, but I'm going to stand, stand aside
because I don't want to fight him because I'm not that loyal
to you. You picked me because I'm good
at fighting. Actually, I'm kind of loyal to
myself. But yeah, you don't want
Kingsguard like that. You want the ones who will die
for you. Like Fagon said.
Like he wants Duck in his Kingsguard because Duck will die
for him. He's like, yeah, he's not the
greatest swordsman, but he will die for me.
And Connington wasn't happy about that.
But I think a lot of us were like, that's a smart move.
Like maybe you don't want 7 dunks Ducks, 7 dunks would be
good, but one, one or two in the mix is really good for the, you
know, for that reason, so. But no, an ideal world is 7
dunks. Yeah, 7 dunks.
You can't do bad with them yet. What were you going to say
before Sean though? Oh, someone might not only be
loyal to themself, but they might be loyal to their uncle or
their neighbor or their master at arms or who are their.
Yeah, it's a it, it is you. You do need a, a good, a good
mix of both, you know, competence and loyalty.
And then aside from all that, there's like the political
maneuvering of like, making a house feel honored by choosing
someone, or maybe like keeping a certain person from taking over
a house. By.
Yeah. Yeah, totally true.
You're right. There's a lot of reasons.
Like that's what Otto was saying.
That's why Otto was like, let's not just skip over the political
considerations here by naming Kristen Cole.
He's like, there's reasons and he's she doesn't want to hear
that. She didn't want to hear that
because she she's like, oh, politics this and that.
But it could have been something to her benefit.
It could have been a political choice that benefited her, but
she didn't want to hear it. And Otto wouldn't have probably
given her advice along with that.
If she had been aware of that, she could have made a choice
that helped her politically, but Otto wouldn't have steered her
in that direction. He was, but he did bring raised
the raised the issue, which is worthy of discussion.
Certainly it might be a good way to pick one person for the
Kings. Yeah, maybe even a couple.
Yeah, but not all 7. But here I don't think it's a
problem in Renly's case. And the reason is is because
this is a he's a rebel. They already wouldn't be with
him. They're already declared for a
rebel. That implies loyalty already.
There are like Brienne. Obviously you don't need to
worry about that with him or Loris.
But I think if you're fighting in this situation to be to fight
for a rebel king, you've already pretty much declared your
loyalty. There's maybe a way, a way for
someone to worm in and pretend, but just fight for the other
side if you're going to do that, you know what I mean?
Like, how? How could you prove that you
were doing that? I don't know.
Westeros doesn't really operate like that.
Underhanded moves like that don't usually get treated with
respect in in the aftermath. You want to beat your opponents
head to head, That's what gets you respect.
Bystanders didn't get a lot of respect for really being killed
with the shadow. And that's partly why Renly was
so keen on doing this, because he's like, this works for him.
He's going to show, look how badly people want to fight for
me. And that message spreads like
everyone wants to fight for Renly.
And that's why I can go move along slowly, letting that
message spread, like, let that permeate through the
countryside. The great Renly is here, the one
everyone wants to fight for. I do too, you know, like, let
that, let that war do its work. So throwing tournaments along
the way, it definitely, it might seem frivolous, and a part of it
was because I'm not sure how much Renly realized how
strategic this was or if it just kind of worked out for him.
Yeah, just because it happens to be good or have some good
elements doesn't mean that's why Renly was.
Exactly. I don't want to give him too
much credit, but I do think there were reasons it worked for
him, let's put it that way. Like whether intentional or not.
It, it's the type of thing that would be neat.
You know, you can't imagine that there were some, he had some
advisors around found him. There might have been someone
explaining to him the bonuses, you know, like, even if he came
up with this, it would be a neat.
You can imagine, like a council meeting where someone's like,
tell him really why it's such a bad idea and he's like, well,
but. And someone else like, no, it's
actually, it's a good idea for this one.
I was like, yes, that. So.
All right, let's do it. Yeah.
I. Can imagine the opposite with
Stannis. We're like Stannis, like, no
tournaments. And they're like, yeah, but
there's a couple of good reasons.
Like he'd be like Ned. He'd be like, I don't want
anything to do with this. He's like, all right.
Yes, you might be right. So we'll do.
But it's so much money, Yeah. But anyway.
So he's like, oh, it's it's people do it.
So people do it because people do it.
You know, I got to do it as expected of a king, you know,
like a fine. You know, that might be what
gets him. You know, it's like, it's kind
of your duty. But boy, he would just be
grumbling the whole time. He'd like next.
Yeah, get it over with. You know, he'd be like, his
brother starts a joust already, but not because he won't.
He can't wait for it. He's like, he can't wait for it
to be over. The other thing that Nina points
out that was really valuable for Renly in the sense was that by
marrying Marjorie, he wins the reach over to his side.
But this has just happened. So he needs to also like have
time for that to spread through the reach and for the reach to
sort themselves out and decide who they're going to follow.
And of course, they're likely to follow the daughter, the the
side that has Marjorie Tyrell. But again, take your time and
let them join you rather than rush off to battle before you're
at full strength. And Nina says similar things
about Damon Blackfire, says he used his nightly skills and
tournament experience to appeal to the people in the Reach.
Like, he was the consummate knight.
He was a tournament dominator. And so when he shows up in the
Reach being like, hey, look at me.
I'm like you. I'm your ideal.
A lot of people flock to his banners.
And Renly was trying to capture some of that same energy, though
he did not have Damon Blackfire's skills, but he did
have a lot of that same popularity, a lot of that
belief. Yeah.
He had the charisma without the the skills.
He may have had more political skills than Damon Blackfire.
We don't really know. He just definitely didn't have
the the sword kills. Nina points out, though there's
there's downsides as well, like had he just gone straight for
King's Landing, he might have just won it and that been the
end of it. He he might not have needed the
extra tank speed could have done more for him.
So it could have been a it could have been a huge mistake.
It's it's a woulda coulda shoulda, We don't know.
It may have backfired had he done that.
But as it is, Renly fans are bitter.
All right, the Tourney of the Wing tonight's it's our last
example of the day, the last major example.
I did collect a few anecdotes from other tournaments for for
our outro here. But yeah, I don't want to say
too much about this one because some of you all have avoided it
because of it's wins, winter spoilers, so we won't get into
details. But here let me just say a few
things that are obvious. It's a tournament run by
Littlefinger. Stuff's going to happen.
They're also like discussing grain prices during winter,
which is the type of behind the scenes, like finagling of
finance, the kind of thing we we talk about that that definitely
happens that we just don't always aren't Privy to.
And we know that Lynn Corbrae is there.
We already know that that Littlefinger worked with Lynn
Corbrae to throw off another meeting in A Feast for Crows
when they met to the Lord's declarant and all that, where he
got Lynn Corbrae to pull his sword out at a parlay to throw
the whole thing off. I don't know what he's going to
do here, but these two are again in cahoots, most likely so.
And we do also know Harold Harding won a melee for Squires,
and Harold Harding maybe isn't that great of a fighter.
So did he really win that melee for Squires like what happened
there, You know? So there's all this lots of set
up. You know, little fingers off in
a lot of ways, but but I can I still can imagine him being so
frustrated with Robert and whoever else.
Like do you know what I could do with a tournament?
God, one day run my own tournament.
Man, the things I could pull, yeah.
The potential that you're fluttering away.
Yeah, 'cause he knows how to make money too.
So he would do all the things like he would, he would find
ways to maximize the profits as well as all the other evil
stuff, which the maximizing the profits isn't necessarily evil,
but it can be what he does. Yeah, yeah, but even the other
stuff isn't necessarily evil, like coordinating marriages and
repair some road and making friends among different nights
and all this stuff could all be very polished.
You know, even if maybe he has, you know, selfish evil
intentions or whatever, he could still be very productive with
the tournament. Whereas Robert barely cares,
throws a bunch of money at it and just wants to see someone
fight. You know, that's.
Part of why he's risen so high is because he is effective with
money. Some of that is is effective,
quote, UN quote, because he's fooled people to think he's
effective when actually he's put the crown in some debt and
things and done all this financial chicanery that
benefited him a lot. But he is good at it, you know,
like, yeah, if he wasn't, if he was totally incompetent, yeah,
he wouldn't have risen that high in the 1st place.
He has to have some skills that are not all evil or he wouldn't.
Yeah, he wouldn't have gotten this far.
It's also just kind of odd too. Isn't it weird to think about
this a tournament about to happen and with everything else,
I'm like, we're about to have the others that are like coming
like there's a war at the wall. I mean, John was just killed.
You know, Danny was is on the out in the middle of nowhere.
There's plague at Marine. I mean, the Veil's going to have
a tournament, but that but it makes sense.
The Veil's been held out of the fighting and they've wanted to
fight. They're like, let us go fight.
Damn you, Eliza. We want to get out there.
We want to be part of this. We look weak sitting here doing
nothing. It's embarrassing.
So this is the next best thing. Have a tournament.
There's something at stake, right?
So they want to get involved. And again, the thing that's at
stake is being Robert's personal guardians, which they're doing
it. And that isn't loyalty.
This is this is skill at arms. We just talked about why that's
not the best idea. But of course, the the idea that
Robert will get murdered by little fingers comes up way
before this chapter. Of course.
In fact, the biggest evidence for it has nothing to do with
this chapter anyway. You can also imagine loyalty may
come down to who wins this tournament, like on the surface
about, but Littlefinger's going to set it up so that the loyal
people win. Loyal to him, yeah, right.
The little finger. Yeah, exactly.
So that's that's kind of what we're expecting anyway, we don't
know for sure because again, for those of you who haven't read
the chapter, the tournament isn't in it.
It presumably in Elaine's second T Wow chapter, but we're not
sure yet. It's just the setup is there.
We're expecting a lot there. We're expecting more level, a
higher level of intrigue, maybe on the level of the A Tournament
of White Walls, but also just the unusual nature of a
tournament happening at a time when there's war in almost every
other region in the realm and overseas.
But hey, the veil, they're just getting started.
We talked at the beginning of how like the book was in the
first book was introduced kind of with the tournament.
The first show was introduced with the tournament.
The House of the Dragon was introduced with the tournament.
Well, the veil, they have to have that too.
They get their turn. That's a tourney, their turn.
E Yeah don't go tournamental over it.
We'll send you to a you need to work on your tournamental health
yes so just a few other tournaments that are worth
mentioning that we're not going to get into but just ones I
wanted to stoke the imagination as we work our way out of this
episode. Daenerys wedding tournament in
the year 187 not Daenerys of current times obviously, because
I said the year 187. This is Daenerys of water
gardens fame. Her wedding tournament featured
Damon Blackfyre in the finals against Baylor Breakspier.
Hello. That was a that was a that was
foreshadowing, wasn't it? And Baylor Breakspier won, just
like his side won in the in the Battle of the Red Grass Field.
Otho Bracken slayed Quentin Blackwood at a tournament three
years prior to Ashford Meadow, which had the Blackwoods and
Brackens not so happy with each other as of course they never
are, but this fired up that old wound again.
He got the nickname The Brute of Bracken for that.
It's unclear whether he had much intent there, but Bracken
Blackwood probably did, probably did.
And that that needed to needed work.
The the King had to do some business there to keep them from
killing each other. The Golden Wedding had a huge
tournament that was notable and expensive because the whole
Golden Wedding was expensive. Was the biggest wedding, perhaps
in the history of the Targaryen rain?
Yeah, that was obviously the Alyssa and Rogar's wedding.
Yeah, I'll never forget the Golden wedding because we got us
someone in our comments one time when we did our George RR Martin
interview. And like George starts talking
about the Golden wedding and we like change the subject to
something else. And someone commented like, I
can't believe you guys cut George off when he was about to
reveal some new wedding in the Main Street.
You know, like, I can't believe that we're like, we're like,
that was it's a known historical event, you know?
The person didn't respond so. I think of that every time.
I'm like you guys, this is what the Golden wedding is if you
don't know. Referring to some things that
y'all mentioned before, Sean, you mentioned that a lot of
older school tournaments involved teams where they would
turn, they would fight each other on teams, and then it
would change up to commemorate the opening of the dragon pit.
The dragon pit was so huge that they had a tournament inside it
before they started moving Dragons into it.
We can picture it really well now, though.
We've seen House of the Dragon, right?
Right, we can totally. Right, totally.
They could have a tournament in there.
And what what they did was they had a bunch of teams that fought
each other and when one team won, that team had to turn on
itself. So tournaments, you know, they
turned on the selves. And that was the one Nina was
referring to that Lukemore strong won Luke The Who.
Of course, that became Lukemore the Lusty.
So his ending wasn't so great but it had great start.
Pretty good middle too. Pretty good middle, Yeah.
He had a good time in the middle there with 16 children.
But you know. I can imagine some like survivor
type tactics in that like you, you want to be on the winning
team so you can make it to the end, but you might not want the
strongest people on your team to make it to that second stage.
But. You do want the Lukamar
strongest people on your team or you want someone to take him out
before he went. Yeah, So that's pretty cool.
And the Red Viper, when he crippled Willis, that was in a
tournament. We don't know what tournament,
just some random tournament. It's never given a name.
But that was obviously important politically, Red Viper claims I
didn't do anything on purpose. And he he's the kind of guy that
would say he did probably if he does like, no, I meant to do
that. He would not be shy about saying
that. But it still had a political,
huge political impact. Like that's the the brother to
the Lord of Dorn or to the Prince of Dorn crippled the
aired Highgard. And that's a big story whether
you know, even though it was almost certainly just an
accident. Willis even believed it was an
accident. Willis remember, he sends him
get. All off his horse or get the
horse fell on him the. Horse fell on him.
Yeah, that's what happened. He got he.
Yeah. That's hard to blame.
Exactly, but from a distance, this violent Dornishman who has
a reputation any of this young gentle it just it doesn't look
good and the and the red wipers like he was too young to.
Be, I mean, the Reach and Doran are like, you know, traditional
enemies at odds. So it, you know, yeah, the the
average person might not believe that story.
Yeah, like if, oh, Phil Bracken really did accidentally kill
Lucas Blackwood, no one would believe him.
Quentin Black. Quentin Black.
I'm sorry. Quentin Blackwood.
Yeah. No one would believe him except
his family and he might not even own up to.
He was like, no, yeah, I meant to do that.
Like I didn't. He might go like, it's the it's
the question we have about Eamon.
Was Eamon going to own up to kill him?
Luke is going to claim he's did it on purpose or is he going to
say, oops, yeah. Lady Ellen as in Lady Ellen rain
of the Rains of Castamere era. She threw a lot of tournaments
as a way to pump her house up as a way to sort of over shadow the
Lannisters, right. She was the Lady of Castely
Rock, even though she didn't really have the authority she
did. She took the authority and no
one called her out on it until Tywin came along and he was old
enough to do that. But she was throwing tournaments
as a means to pump up her half of the family to be the the
dominant in law. And it was working.
She was just giving out orders. She was telling people what to
do. She was ruling in in all but
name. And being the provider, being
the one who holds the large events, like gives you that like
supports that level of unearned authority.
So that's part of how she took the reins in 272.
There was a tournament four years before Aries.
Tywin held the tournament for Viserys birth.
This was the 10 year anniversary of Aries King.
This is the time when Aries mocked Joanna and was like, it's
your breasts have been ruined by having kids, you know, and I
just said that in front of everybody.
And Tywin tried to resign the next day and I was like, no, you
can't resign. I was like, man, it really
tries. Aries tries really hard to make
us feel bad for Tywin. It's hard to do that though.
The Greyjoy defeat was celebrated Atlantisport Baylon's
rebellion, the one where Jorah won that event.
But under the radar is that Jorah won the final tilt by
decision. He didn't win straightforward.
He he broke 9 lances against Jamie and Robert named Jorah the
victor. Was Robert going to name Jamie
the victor? I don't know.
Maybe he's like maybe this was his chair.
Maybe he what he's in my mind Robert's thinking Robert likes
jousting so why would he just call an end to it?
He would just let them keep going.
Robert loves fighting. My thinking is he didn't want
Jamie to win so he could just say he gave it to Jorah as an
excuse because he's like if he keeps on going Jamie might win
and he didn't want that. So is his way to just like, OK,
Joro wins. He fought better.
Yeah. I bet he heard about it from
Cersei that night, though. Again, politics getting involved
a little, just extracurricular, just kind of low scale politics.
But still, like, none of this Joro, none of that other stuff
with Joro and Linus maybe wouldn't have happened if if
they'd kept going and Jamie had won or if Robert had picked
Jamie just to please his wife. Maybe.
Maybe Robert was like, I really don't want to hear it from
Cersei. So I'm going to name Jamie the
champion. I don't know.
Weird thing, by the way, Danny might just be dead if Jorah
hadn't been there, yeah? You're right.
Barton served her if, if you know, if Jamie had won that
tournament. Jorah doesn't make that
marriage. Etcetera.
He saved her life outside the tent for sure.
Maybe and maybe a few other times, but definitely that one's
very notable. Like the blood riders were going
to come kill her. Yeah.
That's the one of the most straightforward.
Let's see. So, yeah.
So it really shows us this, this gives us the meta when you see
Jorah winning and Jamie being talked about and you hear about
some of the other people who were in that tournament.
It's it's the meta showing us who the badasses are before we
see them in real action. It's like, OK, so we know
Jamie's good at fighting before we've ever seen him swing a
sword. We know Joras must be legit,
even though he was on another level that day, like he was more
inspired than he's ever been. Still, he was a good fighter.
He was the second one through the walls at Pike, which is part
of this story because that was the the final battle that led to
this tournament. And it again allows the George
to mention people like Thoros Amir, who was the first one
through the breach with this flaming sword.
It allows us multiple mentions of characters like that.
Because in a story this large, sometimes we need multiple
mentions of characters to remember who they are.
Like we're all so deep in it to this point, we don't need to be
reminded of who Thoros of Mirror is.
But early on that was useful. Or before it sunk in who Thoros
of Mirror was. That was useful.
That was good. Also, the reason we know now is
because he's had several mentions.
Yeah, yeah. True, true.
And we would know him less otherwise.
Yeah, funny as well. Joffrey's name day tournament in
299. That's we mentioned that
briefly. That was the year before 298.
Jamie lost to Loris in the finals of the same tournament,
which was again, Jamie constantly finishing second,
third, fourth in a lot of these tournaments.
So Laura Loris won that one and 299, like I said, was the Dontos
affair. Sandor didn't even enter.
He's like, ah, this is the tournament of Nats because the
war has started by this point. So most of the most of the best
warriors were out in the field. And this features one of my
favorite exchanges in all of the Song of Ice and Fire when
Joffrey's like, all right, the tournament's over, tournament's
done. He's just bored.
It's not a very good tournament because it's most of the best
warriors aren't there. Dontos has has just happened and
that's embarrassing, you know, And so Tom is like, wait, I
didn't get a chance to do do right against the quintane and
Jopra's like don't be childish, you know, and and Thomas said,
mother said and here's the quote.
Mother Said mocked the king. Don't be childish.
We're children, Marcella declared haughtily.
We're supposed to be childish. The Hound laughed.
She has you there. I love that lie so much.
We're childish. We're we're children.
We're supposed to be childish. That's maybe one of the only
times the Hound has ever laughed too.
I think it's notable for that reason too.
Like Marcella can make the Hound laugh only young girls can make,
Maybe Aria, maybe some. Because I think Aria did make
her laugh once or make him laugh once or twice too, even though I
don't think she was trying to. I'm slightly like stepping over
the line there too that day, you know, like, yeah.
And. The next one is like, Joffrey
was beaten. He's like, fine, have your
little, you know, be your bait. Whatever he says, you know, he
just gives in without while still denigrating them, you
know? So yeah, that was really good.
I love that moment. Lots of stuff happens at
tournaments great and small, whether it's a tournament of
gnats like Sandor says, where where Dontos gets drunk, or a
giant tournament of Harrenhal where more things could happen
that we could possibly talk about in one episode.
You know, it's kind of funny that we've never done an episode
squarely on the tournament of Harrenhal.
Maybe someday. And from little things like that
to people like Sansa. Sansa at this Tournament of Nats
behaved like a knight. Behaved like what Sansa hate,
what? The real version of what she
thought was all glory and flowers and victories.
She stood up for Dantos, risked her life to do it and saved him,
you know, only for Littlefinger to kill him later.
But still, the action was notable and it was meaningful,
not just to Dantos, not just to her, not just to his readers,
but to people like Sandor around her.
Sandor gained a lot more respect for Sansa because of what she
did for for Dantos, and he backed her up.
Remember, he's like, she's like, it's it's bad luck to kill
someone your name day. And Joffrey's like what?
I never heard that. And Sandor backs the lie.
He's like, I've heard that, I've heard that they say that.
And he's like, fine, all right, yeah.
This this moment, this, this. This little gnats tournament was
crucial. Sandor Sansa character building
and connecting, building, the connecting building, whatever
that it worked. It did they fusing, bonding,
whatever. They became closer and it's good
stuff. I believe that is all the extra
tournaments I was going to mention.
So I think that's it for today. You have a question?
Trivia question. That's right.
Yeah. I was making sure we had nothing
else to do before that. The trivia question was which
knight defeated someone in the hands tourney and then killed
them for real later. The answer is Loris Tyrell.
Loris Tyrell defeated Robar Royce in the tournament and then
killed him in anger when Renly was slain because M and Kai and
Robar Royce were guarding the tent.
And Loris, it was furious that they failed to protect him and
killed them both. He has since realized the error
of his ways there. And yeah, that's probably
weighing on him pretty severely because they did nothing wrong.
But yeah, he killed them both. He killed M and Kai and Robar
Royce in his roath. So there you go.
I bet a lot of people were thinking of Gregor and or maybe
the Hound or even Jamie maybe but.
Yeah, there were people that thought of Gregor and the Hound.
They're like, wait, the Hound isn't a night, so it can't be
hanging out. They're thinking the barracks
specifically with that. Barrack was in the tournament.
That's a good call. Yeah, Barrack was in the
tournament briefly, but yeah, that's it.
It was Loris. Yep.
Robar, Royce, Robar Royce. The Royces were all over under
the radar there. Jan Royce was in a couple of
these tournaments as a competitor and then they just
went home after the tournament and it would have been nice for
them to stick around because Ned really could have used a Royce
Royce's help. When things started to go South
in the South, we mentioned a few of our other episodes.
We mentioned our Elaine T Wow coverage that we actually have
two versions of that. We have a recent one that we did
with Radio Westeros and one that we did much longer ago.
Right when it was released. Right when it was released.
So both versions have different things in them.
There is some overlap of course, but we we endeavored to keep
them as different as possible. So they're both worth listening
to if you haven't already or are thinking of a re listen.
We certainly tunked talked a lot about tournaments during Duncan
Egg. That's where the unk came from.
So certainly during mostly during the hedge night and the
mystery night. Obviously the Sworn Sword has a
lot less tournament stuff in it, but if you're looking for a
little more, check out those two series.
They're both 4 episodes long, each one including the Sworn
Sword 1. So 12 episodes on Duncan Egg,
plus The Wrap Up, which was the 13th episode, but it's a lucky
one. It's not an unlucky 13th, it's a
lucky 13th. You can also find all of our
other episodes on Spotify or Apple Music or Google Play,
wherever you find podcasts. You can also find them on
Patreon where you can find bonus episodes as well as the ones on
Spotify. We have bonus episodes on both.
You can sign up to be a regular subscriber and get access to
those as well as other bonus content, things like voting in
polls, access to our scripts and notes, things like that.
Thanks as well to Nina for her notes.
Super valuable as always. Got a lot of great discussion
points in there. Things we wouldn't have noticed.
Some tidbits from history as well as in world.
And thanks as well to Kevin for our music.
Thanks to Michael for our maps, and to Jesse Koval and Joey
Townsend for our regular intro music.
Thanks to everyone who came and watched live and participated in
the chat. And thanks to anyone who listens
at any time. We do appreciate your
listenership, your watcherness, whatever, however you choose to
consume history of Westeros. I want to say I wish I brought
this up earlier, but anyone who's going to be at this con in
LA, come up and say hi, please. I'm excited to meet people so.
Absolutely. That goes for any con we're at,
whether the year 2022 or beyond. We are.
We go to a decent number of conventions, partly because we
like going, but also partly because we learn a lot of things
there. A lot of our scoops come from
conventions. A lot of people we meet and
network with that give us later opportunities and friendships.
Happen in conventions? Same thing.
We would not have had our interview with George RR Martin
if we hadn't gone to conventions and 'cause we didn't, I don't
know if y'all know, but like, we didn't ask for that.
Like, like that was offered to us because of the, you know, we
put the work in, but we didn't, we didn't send them an e-mail
and be like, hey, can we do this?
So yeah. It's basically the same concept
we just described with tournaments.
Like you want FaceTime with the people who, like you said, who
are important or who have, who have pull in the industry or in
the community or in the fandom. They you got to go to
conventions. That's, that's, that's the way
of it, you know, and, and that's not necessarily true for
everyone, but it's definitely true for us being doing what we
do. And that's also a kind of like
the tournaments. This is sort of like these meta
values. But the the panels themselves
are very enlightening and insightful.
And yeah. I learned a lot going.
I like going. I mean, I've done a lot of
panels, but I go, I tend a lot of panels too.
I really do enjoy that process of listening to what people have
to say because people choose really clever off the beaten
path topics a lot of times. And some of them are not off the
beaten path. They're just really good, you
know, like, like music, stuff that takes a special kind of
analysis or or education to be able to speak to properly or
acting or costuming or literary analysis, things like that.
Just any you name it, how to costume, how to.
Yeah. So that they have a lot of
things in common. FaceTime with important people
cosplay fun. Usually modern conventions don't
have people dying, but you're. Going to twitch con and you'll
have someone breaking their back.
You do have injuries though. Yeah, usually drunken, but not
always. I had another thought, by the
way of attorney thing, that a new house was born at that
tournament. That dunk was at right the fossa
way. Oh, the green apples.
Yeah. Hey, great point.
Yeah, it's true. I think about that I'm.
Especially upset I didn't think of it because my drink had they
have a new apple flavored Red Bull that I mixed into my Oh
yeah. How is that?
It was good. It's pretty good, yeah.
Better than the regular I mean. I think it's better than
regular. I don't like.
Regular Red Bulls where it's not either the flavor of regular.
Red Bull is like, to me, right on.
That's all. It's Apple.
I'm like, I'll try it. It's fine.
Not as good as Mountain Dew, but.
Did it give you wings? I.
Have wings anyway, so. I didn't get more wings, didn't
get longer. They turned from Angel wings to
dragon wings. There you go.
That's an improving OK folks. With that last bit of Apple Red
Bull knowledge and wings, we say adieu for this time.
Remember no episode next week, but we'll be back in two weeks
and won't have another break until January for Mag Fest when
Shaya is going to be gone. Yeah, I'll be in Maryland for
Mag Fest. If you're going to the Music and
Gaming Festival, she's about video games.
Yeah, so we'll see you all in two weeks.
In the meantime, you know what to do.
Valar re watches and Valar re read us.