The Summer Isles, a place that just by the sound of it, brings
to mind the polar solar opposite of what much of A Song of Ice
and Fire has been slowly and inexorably building towards.
A long night too. A mega winter.
We hope the books will end with some kind of summer, and we know
it won't be overwhelmingly joyous, because George has said
that he said bittersweet is the emotional ending he's aiming
for. And that since the summer,
islands are almost a goal, an aspiration, if an unreachable
one in terms of what we might hope Westerosi culture looks
like when it's said and done. And that'll just mean in terms
of weather, though, that's obviously a big deal.
Not just because they might not have been impacted much at all
by the original Long Night, which is a pretty interesting
tidbit to consider in this episode, but how they live,
their value systems are, shall we say, more civilized in many
ways. By that I mean, simply speaking,
they produce happier individuals, people who are more
likely to live lives free from suffering and less likely to
inflict suffering on others. They arguably have a more
sophisticated view of sex, and they definitely have a better
way of handling warfare and violence on a cultural level.
Not to mention they have superior technology in many
areas, especially shipbuilding, navigation, and associated
ideas. This is in part because their
culture is not overwhelmed by constant violence, and they are
pretty far out there. You know, sailing is a natural
evolution of a culture that lives so far away from everybody
else. They provide quite a contrast to
Westeros despite this. Because even all that said,
violence is a huge part of who they are, or they are humans
after all. But it's still a big contrast
because they are less so. It's a point of comparison.
The Summer Islands is in a lot of ways they are opposite
extremes. Much of this is rooted in
environment. Geography does play a huge role.
If God was a therapist, they'd say this culture needs less
therapy than most those Westerosi.
However, they need a lot of therapy.
And we see this positive influence in action when Sam and
Gilly and Eamon catch a ride on the cinnamon wind.
And especially Sam and Gilly are deeply impacted by just hanging
out with regular summer Islanders.
It's a rare glimpse, the cinnamon wind scenes where we
get to see a non Westerosi culture doing just non Westerosi
things this day-to-day normal people stuff.
And the Westerosi who were there observing it are in the small
minority. So it's really different.
And and they're not no nobility either, so they're just regular
summer Islanders living their lives.
We don't get a lot like that. George RR Martin himself lives
in the American southwest. It's not where he was born, but
it is where he's settled. And I bet if he had to live in
his own world, he would also choose the southwest of
Planetos, not the southwest of of Westeros.
Although that isn't, that's probably the best place there if
you want to pick like the Arbor or something like that.
But why not choose the Summer Isles, right?
The southwest of planets. That's where the maps place it,
essentially. But this is George, and he is a
realist, if not nothing else. Plenty of the Summer Islanders
out there are villainous or evil.
We've seen them in fighting pits, cell sword companies.
Some of the cell swords are brave companions.
We've seen them as pirates, slavers, you name it.
So, yeah, this isn't some whitewashed culture.
That's all one way, you know, it's it's very diverse and
produces people of all kinds. But by and large, those
individuals operate away from the islands, out of the world
where violent behavior is less tolerated, right?
There's more profit to be made being a violent person elsewhere
in the world. If you're going to make your
living through violence in summer, islands is not a great
place for that. So just just in essence, that
shows what kind of environment we're dealing with.
Of course, we're going to analyze a lot of this.
That's always our focus, right? But this is more of a tour in a
lot of ways. This episode, a collection of
lore and characters and thoughts regarding the Summer islands.
A Song of Ice and Fire may never take us there, though.
Maybe other stories in the future in Georgia or Martin's
World mites. And maybe they will.
Maybe some people will retire there at the end, or they'll
flee to the Summer Islands to get away from winter.
Either way, their technological advances in bows, ships,
beverages, and other things have them appearing all over the
story, popping up in interesting places.
And we've got all that and more on this episode of History of
Westeros Podcast. Hello and welcome back
everybody. It's time for another fun one
here we've got for you. If you're watching live, it must
be 3:00 PM Eastern on a Sunday because that is when we go live
when there's not ATV show on. That's right, you can catch them
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Save a little time, move through the episodes a little faster,
and support us while you're doing it.
That's patreon.com/history of Westeros, thanks to Nina.
Shout out to goodqueenalley.tumblr.com.
She's doing great things as usual.
She helped us a lot with this episode, gave us a couple of
good takes. She's also working on a rhyme
red wine episode that I think will be a lot of fun.
We'll get to that at some point this year.
She got asked a really interesting question.
What was Asha's upbringing like before the Greyjoy Rebellion
happened? She would have been on track to
maybe be like a lot of other Westerosi noble girls to be
maybe married off somewhere. What was Balon's plan for her
before things changed? Before you know his, both his or
two of his older sons died and Theon was taken as a hostage.
So yeah, that's a good question. Check out good
queenalley.tumblr.com for the answer.
And if you have questions for us, you certainly hit him up
live with that. If you're watching us live or
message us at westeroshistory@gmail.com or
anywhere you catch us on social media.
At the end of this episode, I'll mention some episodes that
relate to this one. There's quite a few.
It's a long list as as often the world building overview epic
episodes do that because we we touch on so many different
subjects and different little tidbits here and there.
It ends up overlapping with a lot of our catalogs.
So I've got a a long list at the end of the episode.
Also at the end of this episode is the answer to this trivia
question. We learned Golden Heart, the
wood Golden heart is the second best material for bows in the
world of Planetos. Golden heart, of course comes
from the Summer Isles. Only Dragon bone is a superior
material for making bows. We've only seen one person in
the series use a dragon bone bow.
Who is that? Who has used a dragon bone bow
and a Song of Ice and Fire Answer at the end.
All right, we have a lot of visuals and quotes in this
episode. So if you are someone that
mostly just listens, this might be a good episode for you to
peek at the video, especially if you watch on Spotify or listen
on Spotify because you can just click the video feed on whenever
we're talking about something visual.
Click it back off if you're not, if you don't want to use the
bandwidth, or just leave it in the background and glance at the
screen whenever we talk about something visual.
And the Spotify video is just as edited as the Spotify podcast
audio you get. That's right, it's a bit higher
quality than these live streams because yeah, Shia edits it and
tweaks it up, fixes it, gives it a little run through and makes
it sound better. So yeah, good call.
Let me read the section headers for today.
These are all the different subjects we'll be talking about.
First mention as usual, we start with that very often.
Then geography, the Isles of Wilano, Jala and Amburu, those
are the main three Isles there. Then there's other islands
because there's over 50 exports and imports.
Golden Heart, Flora and fauna, ancient history, the talking
trees, the age of Exploration, gods and worship, war and
slavery, the swan ships, Sithorios since the conquest.
And then we're going to talk about a whole bunch of
characters, including Jala Bargeau, the Cinnamon Wind, all
the characters on that Black Balak, Tal Torak, Shataya, and
Ala ya Ya. And we'll have our quote of the
week and then finish with some other characters and then end
with Sorella Sand and her mother, who was Summer Islander,
and then an outro. And that'll be our episode.
Hope you enjoy. Let's get to it.
With that first mention in her first chapter, Daenerys goes to
be introduced to Drogo for the first time, and as she looks
around at the gathered guests, she has an observation or two.
She realizes it's a majority of Dothraki, but quote.
Yet among them moved Bravos and sell swords from Pentos and Mir
and Thai Roche, a red priest even fatter than Illyrio, hairy
men from the port of Ibn and Lourdes, from the Summer Isles,
with skin as black as Ebony. Daenerys looked at them all in
wonder and realized with a sudden start of fear that she
was the only woman there. That's mostly true for our
purposes until later in the books as well.
I mean, we have Ali, Ya ya, Shataya, Kojimo, but most of the
summer Islanders we encounter are men.
Now some of this might be world, a facet of early world building.
By that, I mean, George Cooley had some idea what the Summer
Isles would be like here. He's obviously writing them as
black. He's writing them as feathery
and, like, very colorful. You know, he's had some ideas.
And the Summer Isles tells you a lot about the geography of the
place. It's obviously a warm place, but
at this point, he, George, hadn't even drawn a map of
Westeros, let alone what's in Essos and beyond.
And of course, Summer Isles is neither.
It's its own place. It isn't associated with any
continent, so George may not have fully fleshed out their
relative gender quality. I mean, it's, it's not total,
but there is more quality in the Summer owls than elsewhere.
Maybe he, if he had to do over again, there might have been a a
Princess among here as well. And he probably wouldn't have
called them Lords from the Summer Isles either, because I
don't we don't really have that. But that's fine because Danny
doesn't know better. Danny would think of them as
Lords because she doesn't know that they're a principality.
She's what, 12 in this scene? So it makes sense that there's a
little bit of unreliable narrator here, which helps serve
to obscure some of what George may not have finished developing
yet. The feather cloaks, like I said,
these guys aren't wearing the feather cloaks, but we see them
almost right away because she sees one for sale and based oath
rack at the at the market that the caravans bring in there.
So that was clearly an early piece of the world building.
But yeah, in the long run, we do learn that the Summer Isles are
an exception in many ways. They kind of stand out even in
this scene. But yeah, part of that is the
treatment of gender, but there's a lot of other things too.
And that in turn, the treatment of gender is rooted a lot in the
treatment of sexuality, which is very different.
They have a religious enshrinement of their how they
handle sexuality, which serves to solidify it, make it
traditional and take root and last through the ages.
It's not just, it wasn't just like a trend or a short term
cultural thing. No, it's religiously enshrined
and that's why it has longevity. They're an isolated people, but
also experts at seamanship. Those two things kind of go
together, although not all isolated peoples on planet Earth
have become good at seamanship. So it's certainly not a foregone
conclusion. It's just something that makes
sense. So navigation and trade, very
common professions in the Summer Isles.
And from there, let's go to another example.
Here's Tyrion 2A Game of Thrones on his way to the Wall quote.
On the 18th night of their journey, the wine was a rare
sweet amber from the Summer Isles that he had brought all
the way N from Cast of the Rock and the Book of Rumination on
the history and properties of Dragons.
With Lord Eddard Stark's permission, Tyrion had borrowed
a few rare volumes from the Winterfell Library and packed
them for the ride north. We're generally told that the
finest wines in Westeros come from Dorne and the Arbor, which
are the farthest South. And in the real in real life,
wine from grapes isn't really made in tropical regions.
It's kind of a peculiarity of wine that they part of their
growth cycle needs to be during the coolish temperate time and
then they finish their growth cycle when it's warmer.
So it's ideal climate for wine is was called Mediterranean
climate. And of course, the Summer
Islands are not that. Again, he hadn't drawn the maps
by this point though, but he again also had called them the
Summer Isles. So he clearly had tropical in
mind. So in that sense, we should
guess this is not grape wine. And in the world of Ice and
Fire, sure enough, we hear that an export from the Summer Isles
is palm wine, which is really sweet and is not made from
grapes. It's made from palm SAP from a
variety of different types of palm trees.
There's many, many different types of palm trees and the SAP
from these different palm trees creates different types of palm
wine. So this is probably what Tyrion
was drinking was palm wine. This is rare and sweet, which
absolutely, it's very sweet. It's made from SAP and it's kind
of kind of a fun take from the real world here.
Palm wine can ferment in like 2 hours.
It can become 4% alcohol in two hours.
It also turns to vinegar really quickly too.
So yeah, it's not something you store like in a wine cellar like
Grapevine would. And there's some funny nicknames
for palm wine in the real world. One of them is village gin,
Another is country whiskey. I kind of think of a lot of
whiskey as country whiskey, but it's not all.
But anyway, it's good. Or, or toddy is where the name
Hot Toddy comes from because a hot toddy is just a heated palm
wine. It's not always that way
anymore, but that's the original, original version
popular in India and other places.
Here's another example. Catlin 4A Game of Thrones
arriving at King's Landing quote.
Yet now the banners that flew from its battlements were
golden, not black, and where the three headed dragon had once
breathed fire, now pranced the crowned stag of House Baratheon.
A high masted Swanship from the Summer Isles was beating out
from port, it's white sails huge with wind.
The Storm Dancer moved past it, pulling steadily.
For sure. A very minor detail, of course,
but this is how world building is done.
These are the little details we gather in episodes like this to
paint a fuller picture. A port, especially at the
capitol of Westeros, is going to have people from all over, which
means an opportunity for our author to provide us with
examples of these other places. It's a perfect chance to show us
ships from other places and to give us a little hint of what
else is out there. And he chose one of the, if not
the most prolific trading cultures with the most
interesting and technologically advanced sailing vessels.
And the sum Morales is memorable because it's a descriptive name.
It's not a true like name, name like Valyria or Gisgar, Gisgari
or Westeros, right? It's like the meaning of the
word is what you're hearing. The Summer Isle Islanders
themselves don't call it that is when they were new to the world,
when they were coming up as a people, you know, in their
infancy as a as a people, we know that they didn't even know
there was a rest of the world. They thought the islands were
their whole world. They wouldn't have called it the
Summer Isles. They would have just called it
the world. That's everything to them.
And that name probably sticks because it was it would have
been that way for thousands of years.
They don't. They probably didn't rename the
world just because they discovered there were more
people in it. So they don't call it the Summer
Isles, but I'm sure they also recognize that other people do.
Yeah. For example, Jamaica means rich
in springs. No one calls it rich in springs
land. That's kind of what the Summer
Isles is. But that's fine.
They call it Jamaica. That's not the native name
either. The Taino people were an Arawak
offshoot. They're natives from the
mainland and they were the first ones to move to Jamaica from
South America. But the name is actually
similar. It's they call it Zamaka or
Hamaka. It's it's XAYMACA.
So it's kind of similar to Jamaica.
And that also means Isle of Springs.
So even the meaning is basically the same.
But it's an interesting point about perspective, like who's
naming these things? Is this the native name for it
or is this the outsider's name for it?
What do the natives call it if this is the outsider's name for
it? Or what do the outsiders call it
if this is the native name for it?
Like these things don't have just one universal name in a
place where people don't have like universal connectivity or
things like the Internet. And even with places like the
Internet, things like the Internet, well, the names were
invented before the Internet. So you've got the different
connectivity and and different angles and different
perspectives. So this has been true for a lot
of real life peoples in in the world, Like there's still today
uncontacted tribes and say, the extreme remote locations of the
Amazon. On the other hand, these tribes
tend to be effectively Stone Age where the summer Islanders are
quite advanced. Of course, they didn't become
advanced right away. They weren't advanced in a lot
of ways when they discovered the rest of the world.
In fact, the discovery that the world was a much bigger place
than they thought is part of what spurred them on to greater
technological advancement, especially with shipbuilding.
Or maybe this thing about names. Maybe we should just be
listening to what Olenna, the Queen of Thorns, has to say on
the matter. Quote Marjorie.
You're clever. Be a dear and tell your poor old
half daft grandmother the name of that queer fish from the
Summer Isles that puffs up to 10 times its own size when you poke
it. They.
Call them Puff fish, Grandmother of.
Course they do. Summer Islanders have no
imagination. That's why it's just the Summer
Isles. That's not a very descriptive
no. She then goes on to say how
Mace, her own son, should use a puff fist as his personal sigil.
So got to love Olenna. Here's another example.
Ned for A Game of Thrones. First time he arrives at the
Small Council chamber freshly off of the road from traveling.
Quote. The chamber was richly
furnished. Mirish carpets covered the floor
instead of rushes, and in one corner 100 fabulous beasts
cavorted in bright paints on a carved screen from the Summer
Isles. The walls were hung with
tapestries from Norvos and Kohor and Lise, and a pair of Valyrian
sphinxes flanked the door, eyes of polished garnet smoldering in
black marble faces. So we're still very early in the
world building as I've been saying and moving through these
examples, you can clearly see the partially Caribbean like
environment he had in mind, a Caribbean maybe.
Part of Africa, things like that, similar Equatorial range
because of this, like these rare woods, that's a feature of
places like Brazil and Africa where the rarest woods and most
sought after woods in the world come from.
And a lot of these timber industries set up in the
Caribbean to do exporting. So this is a great example.
George is like, OK, So what types of luxury goods are coming
from these different places? Valyria, well, they got
sphinxes, they got tapestries from Norvos and Kohorn lease.
But the Summer Isles, that's where the fancy carved wood and
bright paints colors are something we already associate
with them. And the carved woods are we do
now. But at this point, this is the
first time I think we see the carved wood being an important
thing and and it becomes just ubiquitous as a part of the
Summer Isles. So that's pretty cool.
I like that they do have the most sought afterwards in the
world. So George, even though it was
early, he'd already established that much.
And what's interesting too here is that this is these aren't
just luxury goods. These are royal luxury goods.
This is what the king and queen have decorated the Red Keep
with. It's the ultra most fanciest
stuff they can find. And it's includes these exotic
things from the Summer Isles. There's things from all over,
including the Summer Isles. They're not thought of as like a
lesser people. They produce extremely great
luxury goods and their work shows up in the palaces and
castles of the elites. Here's another example from
Sansa 2 watching the tournament in a Game of Thrones quote Jane.
Poole confessed herself frightened by the look of
Jalibar Zoe, an exiled Prince from the Summer Isles who wore a
Cape of green and scarlet feathers over skin as dark as
night. He's actually the first person
from the Summer Isles that we see.
He's from Red Flower Vale, a place we've got on tap for
today. Immediately you see how colorful
he is. Even though Jane is is scared of
well, it doesn't say why he's why she's scared.
If it's just his skin or just the bright colors or who knows,
just that he looks so different. Not the only person that reacts
to some seeing a black person for the first time, you know,
like, Oh my gosh, I've never seen skin like that.
But of course, since a black person from the aisles who's
never seen a white person before would probably react similarly
like whoa, I've never seen skin color like that before.
Most people aren't afraid of just different skin color, but
that is a realistic thing for the occasional person to be
like, whoa, I've never seen that before.
So sticking with her Sandor escorting Sansa to her chamber.
Sticking with Sansa, here we go. Quote Sandor.
Clegane stopped suddenly in the middle of a dark and empty
field. She had no choice but to stop
beside him. Some SEPTA trained you well.
You're like one of those birds from the Summer Isles, aren't
you? A Pretty Little talking bird,
repeating all the Pretty Little words they taught you to recite.
Parrots, Sandor. They're called parrots.
Yes, and they parrot what you teach them.
Hey, that's why they're called that.
Ah, you. You might wonder where a man
like Sandor Clegane learned about parrots.
But he's been around the Lannisters his whole life.
I'm sure they have rich people stuff that I'm sure they've seen
a parrot at least a few times. Maybe, Maybe several for the
summer Islanders who tried to sell them some, Right.
Maybe. Maybe it'd even work.
Maybe. Maybe Joanna Lannister bought a
parrot. I doubt Tywin would.
It would be annoying to him. He doesn't want anyone repeating
his plans. Yeah, parrots are a security
risk. They're like, they're like
Furbies in the Pentagon. You can't have recording
devices. Parrots are basically recording
devices anyway. So they.
Again, this is so clever to me, like looking for these little
hints. And this is what makes making
episodes like this for me particularly fun is this is such
a small little thing, like the the point of the scene has
nothing to do with Paris. It's just a way to refer to what
Santa's doing. But it does absolutely serve as
world building. This is more little tidbits that
add up to something that add up to a a full picture of the
Summer Isles. We we've learned about the
feather cloaks. Now we know where the feathers
come from. We've seen a few examples of
summer Islanders actually should correct myself.
I said Jalibarjo is the first one we see That's not true.
We see those ones with Danny, but they are unidentified.
The first one we see with a name, I should say about
Jalibar. So we've gotten to see a few
people. We've gotten to see how a few
people how they dress. We've gotten to see some
information about their geography, some information
about their flora and fauna and about their wood.
So that's a lot without ever going there or anyone having a
conversation about it. These are just a little bit
here, a little bit there, a little bit here.
Oh, and of course I didn't even mention in my rundown there the
swan ship the the Catlin saw. So we also see that they are
advanced semen in the Game of Thrones appendix.
We hear or read that the oh, maybe here.
If you listen to the audio book, the Ironborn occasionally raid
the Summer Isles. I'm guessing that, yeah, that's
that's pretty far from them. But it's not as far as you know,
it's about as far as like the step stones or other places.
It's a challenging place for them to go, not just because the
Summer Isles are are so good at archery and it's sailing
themselves, but because they have to go into the open ocean
to get there and long ships aren't great at that so it is
extra daring. So I doubt this is a common
occurrence and I think it's probably less common than it
used to be when the when the Ironborn were particularly
powerful when they ruled the West Coast of Westeros.
I bet the Summer Isles got raided a lot.
But the Ironborn are weaker now and even though they have to
travel farther to raid because, right, they used to be able to
raid the West Coast of Westeros and there's no one to stop them
now under the Iron Throne. If they do that well, they get
in big trouble. But back in the day, before
there was an Iron Throne, yeah, now they probably focused on
Westeros more. So ironically, once the Iron
Throne is in place and says no, you can't raid Westeros, the the
Ironborn will go farther and wider.
We talked about that in the Red Kraken episode.
That's why the Red Kraken spent so much time in the step stones,
because they weren't allowed to raid in Westeros.
Same thing here. Some of the Ironborn probably
raid the Summer Isles during the time of the Iron Throne because
they were permitted even by their own Lords to raid in the
in the West. So that's something I wonder
about, you know, like how how often that happens, what those
encounters look like. I imagine a lot of times it
doesn't go very well for the Ironborn, but surely there's
sometimes where it did or they would probably never do it.
Maybe they're just that stubborn.
Speaking of that great distance, let's talk about the geography.
An easy way to describe the placement of the Summer Isles is
directly South of the Narrow Sea.
Don't forget the Narrow Sea is the body of water between Essos
and Westeros. So just take that body of water
there and just go straight South.
And there you go. And here is the description.
Quote South. Of Westeros Cradled in the deep
blue waters of the Summer Sea, the Summer Isles bask in the
warm southern sun. More than fifty islands make up
this verdant archipelago. Many are so small a man could
walk across them in an hour. But Jala, largest of the aisles,
stretches 200 leagues from tip to tip.
Just the tips, as a reminder, 200 leagues is 600 miles.
It's 3 to 1 ratio there. The wall is 100 leagues, which
is 300 miles, etcetera. The Sunset Sea is to the West,
which is, you know, the sunsets in the West, so that figures.
And the Summer Sea is to the east.
So the all these seas have some colorful names.
Wolanu and Umboru are the other two major Isles next to Jala.
Wolano. Wolano and Umboru combined are
less than half the size of Jala and each are larger than all the
step stones combined. So they're pretty darn big.
And those three islands out of the 50 have 90% of the
population of the Summer Isles. We have some fun here.
We, we, we, we got the idea to kind of go deep with our
comparisons. So Shay and I played around with
this this week comparing the summer AL's to other Westerosi
regions. She did a little Photoshop work
here to kind of mash them all together, just kind of get an
idea of what their total size is and we can overlay that on some
other Westerosi regions. So, Shay, I won't you tell us
where you're where you're laying them right now.
Yeah, I, I did one mock up that was kind of the shape of Dorn.
So I could see what it looked like overlaid over Dorn, trying
to keep, you know, overlap at minimum and leave some gaps
because there would be lakes and rivers and such and, and all of
that. And as you can see, it's, I
think probably around the size or a tiny bit larger than Dorn.
And then I did another mock up, as you can see here, where I
made it into like a ball shape so that we could put it over
places like the Riverlands. Bigger than the Riverlands, I
believe the Vale, roughly the size of the Vale, obviously
smaller than than the North. We don't even need to look at
that. Obviously much larger than the
Iron Islands, maybe the size bigger than the the West,
smaller than the Reach, definitely bigger here than the
Stormlands. So I think that's a good way to
look at it. It was pretty fun to to to pick
up each island and combine them. All the tiny islands, all the
big ones. I love doing it.
Yeah, that was fun. For us and to play with, I liked
watching what you came up with with that.
So really the Somewhere Else are quite big.
If it was a restaurateur region, it would be the third or fourth
biggest region. We don't know how to compare the
population figures, but it seems like they're reasonably popular.
I mean, Wilano, which we're about to talk about, has two
notable towns and a city. West Coast itself only has five
cities on the entire continent. So anyway, let's move on Wilano.
Here is a quote about the islands right here though.
Jala is the largest of the Summer Isles.
Wilano is the most populous. There can be found Last Lament
with its great harbor, sleepy Lotus point and sun dappled Tall
trees town where priestesses in feathered robes carve songs and
stories into the trunks of the enormous tower trees that shade
the town. Milano is the northernmost of
the three major islands. If you could go straight S from
Sunspier, you would hit it on your way.
I love the idea that Last Lament has a great harbor because that
leads me to believe that it's where a lot of the Swan ships
are launched from or are able to dock.
Because without sufficient anchorage or a deep enough
harbor, those big old ships wouldn't be able to get close to
shore. You need to be careful with that
sort of thing, Kind of things that some rounders would have
worked out long in advance, but the kind of thing for us to be
aware of, because it's not just as simple as like the Ironborn
long ships, which have such a shallow draft they can go almost
anywhere. Like they can be picked up and
carried over land and then dropped in the water again.
You definitely can't do that with a Swan ship.
So we have this place called Last Lament.
Besides that, it's great harbor. We don't know a whole lot about
it other than that it's the last place, the last population
center before you hit the water north than the northern seas on
the southern coast. There's actually more going on.
It's more of a population center.
Apparently you've got the town of Lotus Port, which is
sometimes called Lotus Point in the literature.
So I think that one of those might have been a typo before,
or maybe they just have multiple names.
Doesn't doesn't really matter, as we've said in the real world
places have multiple names all the time, so who cares?
It's realistic. There's Tall Trees Town, which
was mentioned there in the quote, and that's of course very
important 'cause it's where their history is carved into the
trees. We've got a section on that a
little bit later. We even hear during A Feast for
Crows that a Corsair king from the Basilisk Isles raided Tall
Trees Town. And it's not the first time we
hear of Tall Trees Town being raided.
It happened during the time of Aegon the Conqueror as well.
We'll mention that later. So if you look at the map again,
just as a glance to see how far the Summer Isles are from
everything else, it's actually not that far from a lot of
places. Like, Wolano is closer to
Sunspear than Sunspear is to Storm's End.
And Sunspear and Storm's End have been enemies for forever.
Of course they have a, you know, overland connection, which makes
it all more sensible. But just to give you an idea,
yeah, it's not as far as you might think, given how isolated
they were. I mean, it's not that far from
Old Town, the Arbor Starfall, I'm not sure Starfall's taking a
lot of big ships, but still, it's it's close by.
It's still relevant. Elise and Volantis in terms of
what's going on in on Essos, it's reasonable to assume these
are all among the most frequent trading partners.
But because Swan Ship sails so far and wide, it certainly goes
beyond that too. And in this includes places not
on our maps. And by our maps, I mean
Westerosi maps, because that's what we have.
We only have Westerosi maps. And we know for a fact that the
Summer Islanders have better maps than the Westerosi maps.
It's kind of a little bit of a subtle world building plot point
there that they know more about the world than the Westerosi do.
They've been working on it longer.
It's I mean, they've been, they care about it more.
It's been a more focus of their culture, etcetera.
And they also haven't been spending effort building
warships for so long that most of nearly every ship they build
is a ship designed for exploration and or trade, which
given that for thousands of years, they're going to make
more progress on the exploration front.
All right, nearby Isles. So we have the Isle of Women,
which is the also called Abulu. It's next to Wilano.
So it's among the closer places to Westeros.
You may recall the Isle of Women from our Nymeria series.
There was a whole group of Reinar refugees who settled
there originally just a few thousand, originally more than
that, now a few thousand. Because when Nymeria said, never
mind, this isn't going to work, we got to go.
Some of her people were like, you know, we're going to stay If
all of you leave, we can make this work.
We can't make it work with so many of us because it's not
fertile here. But if most of you leave, the
rest of us can make it work. So that's still the case.
So that that's an interesting little facet of the Summer Isles
is there's a, a pocket, substantial pocket of Roynar
descendants who have most likely intermingled with Summer
Islanders over the years, because we're talking at least
600 years ago. Between Jala and Wilano is the
Smiling Sea. That's pretty cool.
And in between them is on Boro. Let's go to the far South.
We'll, we'll come back to the middle one a little bit later or
right afterwards rather. Jala, it is the biggest of the
three. As we said, it's the farthest S
larger than the other two combined, but not in population.
Let's not forget it is the Wilano is is the smallest but
has the most people and Jala is the biggest and has the fewest
people of the three big ones anyway.
Of course it has more people than the 47 others.
It's also more remote to the rest of the world because it's
much farther S that would put it days if by sale, if not more
away from all these other places that we said are closer.
So if you're a trader, a lot of people, you know, you might have
moved to Ilano to be closer to a lot of the action.
But you can see why some people might want to stay farther back
to have access to the more remote markets.
Nath might be an exception to a place that's closer to it.
But I doubt they have a lot of contact with Nath because of the
butterfly disease. They might trade there, but they
would know not to stick around, right?
So yeah. So they're remote, right?
This is a we're painting a picture of remote but connected
by seas, but it's still very civilized and ancient and full
of interest. Check this quote out.
Beneath its towering Green Mountains are vast forests,
steaming jungles, beaches of green and black sand, mighty
rivers teeming with monstrous crocodiles and fertile veils.
I'll pass on the monstrous crocodiles, but the rest sounds
pretty cool. Fertile veils.
Yeah. That's why they're, you know,
living pretty good. They got plenty of fertility.
They got fruits and and and plenty of animals.
But beaches of green and black sand.
That's interesting, Huh? I of course knew black sand was
a thing. We've talked way too much about
volcanoes in in this podcast to not know about black sand.
But So what I learned today is, or while making this episode
rather, is that black sand isn't always volcanic.
Usually is, but isn't always. There's an example of Langkawi
in Malaysia, also known as the Jewel of Kedah is one such
beach. This is an interesting place.
It used to be a pirate haven. Before that it was a Kingdom
where legends said they'd sacrifice a virgin daughter
whenever a new king was chosen or when war was declared.
Sounds like this place would fit and planetoast pretty well.
In the 18th century some woman there was accused of adultery
wrongfully and she uttered a curse.
A seven generation curse, which sounds like the curse dropped on
the the the royal dynasty of France in the beginning of the
accursed kings, right? Or supposedly in real life too,
but this curse as well. Just like that curse which
seemed to somewhat play out, this one did as well.
The Siamese army came in almost immediately after this curse and
enslaved the Islanders, leading many to credit the curse as the
reason for that. OK, anyway, that is getting a
bit far afield, but it's a thought.
It was an interesting anecdote, but this is kind of cool that
the this jewel of Queda, this Langkawi in Malaysia was
apparently the first part of Southeast Asia to emerge from
the depths in the Cambrian area, 500 Cambrian era, 500 million
years ago when the continents were just forming.
So that's pretty cool there. Let's talk about an original
landmass, right? The Caribbean has so many black
sand beaches that I can't possibly list them all.
That would get boring. But Jamaica, Martinique, the
Dominican, Puerto Rico all have black sand beaches right Also.
Hawaii. Yes, Hawaii.
Too, That's right, Hawaii also is is maybe also has this next
one green sand that's also a real thing.
Green sand. I was like, OK, black sand.
I knew that one the green sand. George made that up, right?
Nope, he did not. It forms under sea.
It's like a maritime kind of deal.
So it can be very fossil rich. It's very popular in gardening
because of all the nutrients and it holds moisture really well.
It it comes in some kind of random places.
New Jersey is a place where it it occurs naturally because of
the geological formations on the shelf there.
Near the fault line maybe. And well, not fault line, but
near just where the base of the continent forms.
Brazil has a lot of it too. Again, I shout out our world
building episodes. I learned so much just doing
this. These research on whether these
things are real or not. I'm like, I expected to be
fantastical and I'm like, Nope, that's real too.
Golden Heart trees, however, that's made-up and the the
amazing bows that are produced from those, we have a whole
section on that coming up in a bit.
It grows on Jala and on Boru, but not on Wilano.
So gold that makes Golden Heart a little rarer that it's in the
two farther aisles and not the one that's the closest to the
trade centers. But ultimately that's a small
difference. We're told that there's vast
forests and jungles, and this is the same latitude as Sothorios,
so that really tracks. Thankfully we don't hear about
just endless awful diseases happening in the Summer Isles
like we do in Zithoria. So yeah, there is some river
valleys here. There's a Red Flower Vale to the
east and Sweet Lotus Vale to the southwest.
Red Flower Vale may sound familiar to you because that's
the one that Jalibarjo was exiled from and wants to get
back. Sweet Lotus Vale has the city of
Eben Head. Near the mouth of the river that
Sweet Lotus Vale resides next to and there's a peninsula there
called Golden Head. And north of that is a small
group of islands called Lizard Head.
So there's there's also a stone head which we'll mention in a
minute. So they really a lot of things
named Head, Eben Head, Golden Head, Lizard Head, Stone Head.
It also kind of looks like each of the three major islands has
exactly 2 large rivers, so eastern Jala might actually be
more remote because it has less fresh water, but you know, there
might be rivers and lakes that are too small for the maps.
There's a place called Parrot Bay South of Jala and three
islands called the Bones, so that's pretty cool.
The. Passage of water the straits
between Amburu and Jala is called the Indigo Straits.
And with that, let's move on to Amburu.
Umburu is the central Isle, the middle child of the three.
We're told today that each of the smaller islands has its own
ruler. Each of the 47 islands, at least
the ones that have people on them, have a Prince, sort of
like a sort of like the, the iron Isle system, right?
Like each different island has a rock king or had not anymore.
They don't. But this still is the case in
the summer islands. They don't have a a united
ruler. It's rarely have the Isles been
united for one purpose. We're told later that it's only
about a dozen times it's ever happened.
So that's pretty neat that you have individual islands or kind
of individual principalities. But the exception is Jala.
Umboro and Wilano have multiple Princess and sometimes they have
rivalries, presumably over land rights, water rights, the same
things that Westerassi Lords and ladies fight over for the most
part. But here's where we see some of
the geographical advantage. There's just less of it.
There's less borders to fight over.
There's. More.
Of these like deep jungles that you don't have a border there.
It's like, well, that's just a natural barrier between the two
and no one really is going to live in that anyway, you know?
So less disputes over who gets what naturally laid out.
By the way, the geography isn't that's just, it's just a feature
of the place. West of Amburu is the Isle of
Love. Isn't that nice?
Nearby also are the singing stones and a couple island or
trio of islands, not a couple called the Three exiles.
Lots of colorful names here. And these are all the kind of
things that if there's ever I'll, I'm sure I'll repeat this
point later in the episode that if we ever get like a show or
another story or something that deals with the summer islands a
lot or even features them, a lot of these places will get a lot
more development, a lot more back story, a lot more ideas,
more just more detail. And it'd be kind of fun to if
that ever happens to, to think back on this.
And when it was all just with a few lines, you know, plus
whatever we can extrapolate, whatever we can read between the
lines. That's how I feel like when you
set out to adapt, that's what you should be doing anyway.
Other islands, there's the singing Stones.
They're West of the main aisles. They have jagged peaks so
riddled with holes and Airways. It's like it makes a sound.
The wind blows through it creates noises and and sounds
musical. The people who live on these
aisles, because they're not deserted, they're not, they are
populated, can tell the direction of the wind just by
the sound of the song it's blowing like the, you know, be
like a musician that knows particular wind instrument
really well. I can tell you, OK, I can tell
you where the fingers are placed because of I can tell you what
notes that is similar, similar concept.
They wonder whether the gods or men taught the stones to sing.
It's a kind of a neat little add on by the maester.
There stone head is the northernmost island in the whole
chain. It's plainly the work of men
because it's carved. I mean, look at this thing.
Shea is going to put it up on screen if she hasn't already.
It really looks like some forgotten God glowering out
across the sea, it says. And glowering is right.
That does it really is glowering.
This is the last visage that Summer Islanders see as they
sail N to Westeros. Maybe it's like a warning.
It's like, this is what you're going to be seeing up there.
Watch out for this shout out. To the Unseen Westeros project,
which is where I got this piece and the last piece from.
They did a lot of the unseen parts of Westeros, Yeah, or.
In this case, other places around the world.
That's cool, very cool. I love this.
I love this extra art. You just we don't get this kind
of thing in other fandoms very much.
I mean big fandoms. We do like Star Wars, Lord of
the Rings, big ones like that. But unless it's a really big
fandom, you do not see art of the obscure things, right?
If you're seeing art of a really obscure part as they're like,
we're we have lots of summer islands art, you know, of course
there's more of the Targaryens and the Starks, obviously, but
these are like only big successful fandoms have artwork
of the really obscure stuff. Obviously there's exceptions.
There's always exceptions, but you, you get my point.
There's we get a lot we're we're we're privileged to get to be in
a fandom that is so successful and has so many people just
contributing to it just because they want to, because they're
inspired to, which is a it's a great thing.
Coach is another one. Once home to a man named
Malthar, the map maker Coach boasts the finest shipyards in
the whole archipelago. And the finest shipyards in the
archipelago probably mean some of the finest shipyards in the
world, if not the finest, right? The Swan ships are incredible,
and 3/4 of the Swan ships are built on Koj.
And the Pearl Palace, which is seat of the Princess of Koj, is
renowned for its collection of charts and maps.
This is what I'm saying. The people of the Citadel, the
Iron Islanders, there's a they would kill for that information
'cause they know. They know for a fact it's more
than what they have. Can I?
Way more can I? Cut in here with a note from
Dornish Dame that I was thinking you should.
I was. Thinking the same thing a great
call which is that when you which is why I decided to say
Jala like Jala because of Jala Barzo and coach like code Jamo
Dornish, Dame notes. Really like that we get those
names, characters who may have been named after places, which I
yeah, I love seeing that like etymology that through line and
George's work every time we we notice that.
Like for me, the other one that I think of not is a summer
Islander, but not summer Islander Root is like Sorella.
How like when I noticed her name, Sorella was like Nisar,
like you could see the Roy Nish history.
You know, I love seeing when George does stuff like that, and
he does. It with some regularity, yeah,
he likes to keep that consistency.
He's pretty darn good at it. Yeah.
Good job, George. Yeah, good.
And and great take there. Ishaya and Dornish Dame like
that. South of Tall Trees town is a
place called the Isle of Birds. And we already have Parrot Bay.
So, yeah, it just gives you an idea that there's a lot of these
birds down there. They they they thrive in this
region. The farthest South of the 50
Isles is called Doku or Doku. It's DOQUUI.
Don't know how to say that, but that is the farthest S aisle,
Not the farthest South point we know of, just the farthest South
and the summer aisles. Obviously the Satorio stretches
farther S towards whatever else is down there.
Exports. And imports.
Here's a passage from The World of Ice and Fire that gives us a
great take on just that, the. Islands lacked iron, tin, and
other metals, but were rich in gemstones, emeralds, rubies and
sapphires, and pearls of many sorts.
Spice, nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper, and hardwoods.
Bloodwood, Ebony, mahogany, Purple Heart, blue maho, burl,
tiger wood, golden heart, pink ivory and other rare and
precious woods were also much in demand, along with palm wine,
fruit and feathers. They sure respect wood there.
They know how to respect wood there.
Isn't it strange to hear pink ivory as a wood?
But that is a real wood. Most of these are not like Ebony
and mahogany are. I don't think Purple Heart is
bloodwood. I don't think that is either.
Although he might just be coming up with a different name for
something real. Burl.
I've never heard of blue mahoe. That one's funny.
Because usually that's the other way around, right?
Heck. Yeah.
Anyway, one of the points here is the aisles may lack quite a
few things, iron, tin and other metals, but they have so much
other wealth. They can either buy what they
need or just live without it. You know, they don't necessarily
need all that metal they can do with it.
They can do other things. They just they're just they have
so many amazing woods that they can do similar things with.
Japan has some similar upbringing or culture.
There's a lot. Japan is amazing with wood
houses built without nails, just with fittings and fastenings and
and just little notches and slots.
That is what the swan ships are built like.
They don't have nails either. So that's pretty neat.
Earlier we compared the Isles to the Caribbean a bit, but I think
to take that comparison a little further, what we should do is
imagine the Caribbean as a place that was never colonized,
because that is maybe more accurate.
Obviously the Caribbean today has been heavily colonized and
it's it's own cultural evolution was stunted by outside
influence, violent outside influence in a lot of places, so
they weren't able to determine their own destiny as a culture.
A lot of these nations, some are Isles.
However, they didn't really have a lot of outside influence.
There was some it wasn't. It's not like they were immune
to it, but I think that's a a vital and valid comparison.
What if Africa or the Caribbean wasn't heavily colonized by
outside other cultures? If it was enabled to become what
it would eventually become on its own, It might look something
like this where they have they are in charge of their own
luxury industries instead of outsiders ruling those things.
Like, for example, that's the case in Hawaii.
One of the rarest woods in the world comes from Hawaii.
It's not endangered, but the locals no longer really control
the trade of it. It's all outsiders, people who
are not native to Hawaii that now over the course of the last
hundred, 150 years since Hawaii was colonized has changed.
So this is like George's statement in a sense on what a
culture that was allowed, allowed, was not denied their
own self determination. So I think that's a good
comparison here, has a lot of real world merit to consider.
One of the ways George did this was by making the summer Owls
more remote. It's harder to colonize or
conquer a place that's just so darn far away.
You know, there were, like I said, there's some events that
bordered on such but never really took, never really took.
You might make that case. I think that this is what George
is saying, that this is what would happen if colonialism
didn't stick or just never happened in the 1st place.
One of the interesting technological advancements they
have there that maybe slid under the radar for most of us.
You surely noted the ships and arrows because that's discussed
explicitly at the bows and arrows around the ships.
Rather that's pointed out how the summer elders are superior.
But what you might not have noticed is that they also have
better drinks. And I mean by that, I mean
alcohol, liquor. They have liquor.
That means they have distillation.
Westeros doesn't seem to have distillation.
They definitely have fermentation.
Absolutely they have fermentation.
That's how you have wine. That's how you have Hippocrates.
Say you have beer, ale, things like that.
But to have liquor, you need distillation.
Summer Islanders explicitly have rum, a lot of rums, BlackBerry
rum, a spiced rum, black tar rum, which means high end and
low end. The kind that just like the the
lower level sailors would drink in the porch just to get wasted,
and the kind that like the nobles would sip in their fancy
parties. And we know that it's rare in
Westeros because Sam and Gilly have never had it.
OK, well, Gilly never having had.
It's not weird. She lived beyond the Wall where
they don't have hardly anything from the rest of the world.
But Sam was born at Hornhill. He's a he's a high born, high
falutin, high society kid. Even he even though he didn't
really belong in that society, he still grew up in it.
And so he never tasted rum, which means his father never
like had it or imported it. They just didn't care.
It just wasn't a thing. It's not on their radar.
Maybe. So that's pretty interesting.
And and George had a little joke with it.
He gave his own he he threw out one of his own book title style
takes from Sam. Sam was like Gilly's Gilly said
at first. She's like, I like this drink.
Sounds like. Yeah, me too.
It's a drink of Dragons. A drink of Dragons.
The 6th book. It's not going to be The Winds
of Winter. It's going to be a drink of
Dragons, the follow up to A Dance of Dragons.
That's why they were dancing, because they were drunk, right.
But yeah, so that's kind of neat.
And he he thinks of it as fiery. That's why he thinks of it as a
drink of Dragons because of its fiery taste.
Liquors are seen elsewhere in the Free Cities, Karth, but not
so much Westeros. Yeah, it's a little under the
radar food and drink stuff that Georgia kept consistent that 99%
of us never noticed. You know who didn't notice it?
Nobody suspects the butterfly. Hat tip to them.
That's why we're having this discussion right now, because of
a post they put up on Tumblr way back when.
Liam Shea is one who pointed out to me coming from a decade.
Ago from a decade. Wow.
Yeah, another hugely valuable trade good they have over there
that was mentioned and it's one that most of you will
immediately grasp as powerful and potent is spice.
And of course I don't mean spice like in Dune, but like in the
real world. Wars have been fought over spice
and they've also been fought over in Westeros or in Essos
rather. There's this the many spice wars
between the Roynar and the Valentines or the OR the
Valyrians. So I mean, the, the real life
wars that have been fought over trade routes and trade rights to
certain spices during the time of when the East India Company
was new and things like that, where there were Columbus was
looking for a passage to India. Like this was all motivated by
spice, by money, by the profits for spice, right?
So you got to figure there's some industrial back and forth
in the Summer Isles over rights to these things so they can turn
around and sell them on these world markets for massive
amounts of money. Yeah, So, yeah, some Islanders
are making bank. They got gemstones, they got
spices, they got all these rare woods.
No wonder they're so rich. No wonder all these people that
we see are dressed in really nice cloaks and gemstones, and
they look fancy because they're rich.
You can see why their their land, their aisles are great,
Nina says. This is a great point.
I love this thought, she says. Because they're so rich, because
they're so widespread in trade, they've traded for some cool
stuff over the years from cultures that no longer exist.
You got to believe the Summer Islanders have Valyrian stuff.
That's really rare now because Valyria's gone.
Same with like, the kingdoms of Sarnor, right?
Or ACT Pasha even. Or places that used to exist on
Sithorius that don't anymore. Like they might have traded with
Zamatar, they might have traded with yen, They might have traded
with who knows where else. They might have traded an
ancient Old Town before the Andals came.
They might have traded with the Free Folk before.
A lot of the prohibitions of with trade went into them.
You know, there's so many possibilities.
You might, I mean, you literally might have mammoth fur down
there. You might have Valyrian steel
there. Why not?
Valyrian steel was sold to Wester Rossi for gold.
There's more wealth in this. There's more like exotic trade
goods in the summer owls than there might be in all of
Westeros. That's the kind of hard to parse
necessarily because of the great size, but I think it might be
true. I mean, I don't know.
The rich people want obscure, exotic, rare stuff.
And the summer owl is farther away, more exotic, has more of
these sought after goods. So what are they trading for?
Well, the summer owls aren't bringing gemstones to trade for
more gemstones. Oh, they're trading for stuff
they can't get. Yeah.
Valyrian steel, Obsidian, things that aren't available there.
They would trade to faraway places so they could have that
cool stuff. Those things are still there
now. That's great.
The doom wiped all the stuff out there, but the summer Elms,
whatever they traded for, nothing doomed that.
Yeah. Yeah.
So that's the kind of neat I like to think of it.
A great thought by Nino on that one.
Let's talk about Golden Heart. Because of all the exports of
all the products from there, it's probably the one that pops
up the most, given it is a military use product and A Song
of Ice and Fire has so much war in it.
Here is Eddard 7, the Game of Thrones at the tournament.
Quote 100 Golden Dragons on the Kingslayer, Littlefinger
announced loudly as Jamie Lannister entered the lists,
riding an elegant blood Bay destrier.
The horse wore a blanket of gilded ringmail, and Jamie
glittered from head to heel. Even his Lance was fashioned
from the golden wood of the Summer Isles.
OK, that is just absurd. Jamie, Mr. Lannisters, these
guys are, you know they're wealthy, but this just takes it
to another level when you realize the implication here.
Lance's are made to break. That's the whole point of them
in in tournaments anyway, not in real warfare.
So he's got a made to break fancy ass rare wood for his
Lance? What?
That's not only expensive as hell, it's Nina used examples
like lighting $100 bills on fire to light your cigars.
That's what this is. You're throwing it away.
You use it once and it's gone and it's so expensive.
I mean, this would pay for like years of food for a single, a
peasant family. Like you could probably eat for
the rest of their lives off of a single golden heart Lance.
Jolles Bargeaux might have given the Lannisters this Lance as a
gift. You know, he's been trying to
get in good with Robert. Later he tries to get in good
with Searcy. So it makes sense that he would
cozy up to the wealthiest family in Westeros to try to get an
army to invade his country again.
It's so that also turns it around on us.
Like why is Jamie? Why are the Lannisters doing
this? Well, because they're that rich,
right? They're they're showing off that
this this isn't just rich. This is a banned product.
This is golden heart is illegal to export from the Summer Isles.
So but this is eminently believable, right?
It's like, well, of course this richest family in in Westeros
has access to black market goods.
They're just that rich. They're they're both A so rich
they can afford to buy things that way.
B, They're above the law. And who's going to punish them
for it? Some summer islands, like export
commission's going to sail up and go.
You guys are breaking the law and we're going to come after
you. What are they?
They're going to ignore them, you know, So maybe the example
shouldn't just be lighting a cigar with $100 bill.
It should be lighting a Cuban cigar in America with $100 bill
because it's an illegal item that you're using wastefully and
extravagantly just to throw away.
Yeah, it's crazy, right? Let's follow it up with another
quote about the golden heart bows.
To this day, the Bowman and women of the Summer Isles are
esteemed the finest in the world.
Nor can their bows be matched by common bows, for the Princess of
the Isles have forbidden the export of Golden Heart Wood
since the Slavers Wars. Only bows of dragon bone are
known to surpass them, and those are exceedingly rare.
We have some examples of this when we get to the character
section of the episode, meaning bows getting used, but they seem
rare even then, in part because of this prohibition, right?
And the only dragon bone bow we get we get to see used is
Danny's Blood Rider AGO, right? We're also told the golden heart
bows and yard long shafts carried by these Archers are
never used against their own people.
There's a prohibition not only against exporting it, but
against using it against other Summer Islanders.
You can only use it for warfare outside of the country or
against invaders. And this is also a religious
thing. It's not just like a law, a
regular law that people have to follow.
It's a religious law, which when people are religious, religious
laws tend to be followed more strictly or more held more
tightly because you're not just upsetting people when you break
laws, you're upsetting the gods. That's that's what people tend
to think, which is partly why those laws are made that way in
the 1st place, because it's seems a little more effective
when people are less likely to break it.
So. So it's not just a luxury good,
but it is that it's a practical item used in warfare and it's
very powerful in that regard. But it's also, yeah, it's also
used as a luxury good or show used in a flashy ways by people
like the Lannisters, which is crazy too because most people
don't even know that's a rare luxury good.
So to extend the metaphor one last time, it's like light.
Instead of the $100 bill, you're lighting a bill from some other
country and other people don't know how much that is worth.
It's like, what is that a dollar?
Is that $100? I don't know because I.
Don't know what? I don't recognize that currency.
So it's like this is this is a rich people move for only other
rich people to get, you know, it's like an elite move for only
the elite showing off to other elites.
Only regular folk don't know that he just blew a, you know,
5000 gold Lance. They just, that was just another
Lance to them. Let's talk flora and fauna.
It's a very unique environment, which of course means it has
Besides these cool trees and these cool spices and gemstones,
there's also some neat other types of biological organisms
living there. Quote Flowers.
Of 1000 Different sorts bloom in profusion on the Summer Isles,
filling the air with their perfume.
The trees are heavy with exotic fruits, and a myriad of brightly
colored birds flitter through the skies from their plumage.
The summer Islanders make their fabulous feathered cloaks
beneath the green canopies of the rainforests prowl spotted
Panthers larger than any lion and packs of lean red wolves.
Tribes of monkeys swing through the branches of the trees above.
Apes abound as well, the old red men of Amboru, silver pelts in
the mountains of Jala, night stalkers on Wilano.
Wilano is the most populous, yet they live amidst these so-called
night stalkers. Yikes, that sounds terrifying.
Lemurs though, how cool. I love that they have lemurs.
We know that one that's not actually mentioned in this
quote, but we know that from the the little Valyrians, the silver
purple lemurs that live in the northern forests of Essos.
It's mentioned that these are the only lemurs that live up
here and normally they're only found in the Summer Isles and
tropical regions. So, so we know that they exist
down there. Not the Valyrian version, but
yeah, of course we said parrots. We talked about them before.
This might be the only place that parrots are native in this
world. I'm not really sure.
They might also exist in Sothorios.
I, I neglected to look that one up, but definitely they pop up
all over associated with Summer Islanders.
Danny is offered one in Vase Dothrak.
She doesn't take it. They were trendy in Valyria for
a while. The Valyria.
That makes sense. Rich people getting like, yeah,
I want a talking bird. Yeah.
Oh, did you see? They've got a talking bird?
We got to get one too. We can't be left behind.
We can't be the only family at the social club without a
talking bird. Come on now.
Right. Maybe the feather cloaks were
trendy for a while too. I mean, we're talking thousands
of years of Valyrian history. So, you know, a 20 year trend
every once a century of the feather cloaks coming back.
The feather cloaks are back in. Y'all get your feather cloak
out. I mean, it's a a rich people
garb in another country that, you know, people do that all the
time. Sometimes we call that
appropriation, but sometimes it just just looks cool.
You know? Either way, I can definitely
believe it, right. Nina says the old red men are
probably orangutans. Yeah, that sounds right to me.
Silver pelts, silverback gorillas.
Probably right. But yeah, she's also lost on
what the heck a Night Stalker is.
She says, what are night stalkers?
And I wrote, apart from terrifying, I was like, well,
that's about all we know. Yeah, maybe they don't stalk
people. Maybe they just they're just
nocturnal monkeys that just eat bananas at night.
Yes, it. Makes me think about night
monkey and spider man. And night monkeys are a real
type of monkey. These are apes.
Night Apes. Is that like the one that
Visenya had the the ape that was, does she dress up like the
Prince or that regal? Yeah.
I do wonder what kind of relationship they have with the
primates, like culturally speaking.
Like are they kept as pets like the Valyrians did?
I would assume so. Not the night stalkers and old
red men or the silver pelts, but the smaller monkeys.
Maybe you would assume that since the Valyrians, one of them
is pets that they got the idea from somewhere as some rounders
would have been keeping them as pets to sort of show that off
and to, you know, be like looked at this.
Don't you want one? Look how cute they are.
Don't you want to buy one of these?
Maybe they're considered sacred by some people.
I don't know. It's an interesting question
that they would they probably don't have a just a shrug
relationship with these very interesting creatures.
Like they're so fascinating in our world.
I would assume that the summer Islanders, at least some of them
would be curious. Maybe the night stalkers are
haunted. Maybe they're that dangerous.
You know, I keep coming back to the night stalkers because
they're so cool. Just the names, all we get.
They kind of sound like to me, it's like shadow cats, right?
It's just this is a cool sounding animal.
But apparently we have Panthers the size of lions there too.
So yeah, it it is not entirely idyllic.
We've said the nice things about it.
But remember, what we're saying is all in comparison to the rest
of Planetos, which is the bar is really low for being better in
terms of a better place to live. Let's talk ancient history.
They are unique in many ways because they were isolated for
such a long time in those early days.
The peoples of Essos meanwhile evolved with overlap to each
other. The people of Sarnor grew up
influencing and being influenced by the Ebenez and the the Quafi.
And of course the Valyrians influenced everyone around them
and but in their early days they were influenced by other people
like the Ghiscari and just the Roy NAR, just endless examples
of this. Whereas the Summer Islanders
were very isolated from that and grew up on their own in their
own little microcosm. This gives them more basis for
much more variety and different origins because of that lack of
commerce between other peoples in their formative years as a
culture. That's why you see larger and
more distinct differences and more homogenization amongst some
of the SoC cultures and Westerosi cultures, because
they've been living connected and in the same cities for so
long. Whereas this place not so much,
right? The talking trees.
Let's talk about the talking trees.
History can be recorded in many ways.
Here's though, there's a couple other ways that people record
history, you know, in the real world that are fascinating.
There's runes, there's books. This is sort of a combination of
the two, but done with in a in a way that's very summer Islander.
It's using the tools they have at their disposal.
Pretty cool quote. Sun dappled tall trees town
where priestesses in feathered robes carved songs and stories
into the trunks of the enormous tower trees that shade the town.
On these talking trees can be read the whole history of the
Summer Islanders, together with the commandments of their many
gods and the laws by which they live their lives.
The earliest records on the talking trees include their time
of isolation when they didn't know any other cultures that
exist in the entire world. That's part of why we know that
was a thing in the 1st place and why that's confirmed and not
just like a matter of legend. It's just really cool though I
it's very, it's a little reminiscent of the way history
is stored in the carved heart trees.
You carve a face and then the tree remembers.
This is a lot more literal. There's nothing supernatural
about this as far as we know. It's just record keeping on
trees which is neat but also there are some challenges cause
trees aren't they don't stick around as long you know they
aren't as permanent as as stone or even other things like bone
or metal especially yet. This is a real world thing too.
These are called Arbor glyphs or dendroglyphs or Silva glyphs.
Aboriginal Australia has a lot of these.
The Chatham Islands of New Zealand does as well.
And in modern times, it's still a thing.
Aspen trees in Colorado, for example, have these kind of
carvings on them just by settlers and and shepherds who
lived, you know, 150 years ago. Can I give a shout?
Out to our an old episode of ours.
You should. In our.
Old, I think it was our Weywood tour episode.
I we had this this moment where we were like, well, how do the
faces not move up? And it was people, many people
commented on it, like, just use your heads for a second and
think about all the times like you people carve into a tree and
it doesn't grow up. It grows from above.
Not well anyways. Yeah, trees don't grow that way,
as he said. Exactly.
And so it makes me think of that, but it also makes me think
that like, if they start low, like whether summer Islanders
have to like climb up and carve, like how where where they stop,
where where the top is, or if they like get higher and put
some stories up really tall. I don't know.
I picture. It like redwoods, and I know
you've seen redwoods in person. A lot of y'all out there maybe
haven't. But if you've seen redwoods in
person, I'm picturing trees like this so you can fit.
Like you can drive a car through a Redwood tree if it's carved
out. They're that big, so you could
carve quite a bit on a trunk of that size.
But you're still making a good point.
Like, yeah, would you like rappel up a little higher to
like, drop or they just have that many trees, you know, to be
clear. I also I I I also want to say we
don't think that this is the same as the golden heart tree
despite we us making comparisons to heart trees.
It definitely. Isn't the tall tree?
Yeah, they're. Definitely not.
Yeah, 'cause tall trees. Town is on Wilano and a golden
heart doesn't grow in Wilano. That's a good, good point there.
I didn't think of the heart connection with the word heart.
Yeah, but George may have been trying to give the vibe of,
well, this is where the history is kept.
But otherwise, they're not that similar.
Yeah. So I think this is a lot like
the the, the, the challenges with these is the wood grows
over it. Carving into a into a tree can
harm it like it allows, like that's like cutting into your
skin, you know, it, it, it makes a tree more vulnerable to
getting sick. But that might be something that
they've worked out. They've figured out how to carve
into the trees without harming them.
And then they maybe just go over.
Maybe they just recarve instead of it fading over time, they
just, you know, like copying books.
You just recarve that spot on the tree so it's, you know,
distinct again. So George took this concept,
this real world concept of Arbor glyphs and does what he does.
He turned it up to 11. He's like, well, what if a whole
society has existed like this for a long time and they aren't
a society like Aboriginal Australia that's just been
colonized and a lot of it's been lost.
Well, what if they didn't lose their history?
What if it's all still there? What if they not only didn't
lose it, but they have facts and knowledge that other cultures
want? Like again, their maps and
charts which aren't on the tall trees aren't the tall That this
is history and laws and religion.
I'm just saying. They're.
They this culture has things that other people want.
There's also a history compiled by a maester named Gallard who
wrote the book Children of Summer, an exhaustive
compilation presumably just taken from the trees.
Like, it's like the primary source is the trees.
And he spent a lot of time there just writing down what he got
from the trees and compiling it and presenting it to presumably
to Westerosi people in a way they can understand how to say.
Notable the name Children of Summer again because we're
talking about the children of the forest carving Hart trees
and we're thinking of Children of Summer I Anyways, I just find
it to be a brilliant title. It calls to.
Mind the similar things and George is just sort of the way
George likes to use language. But if that creates a lot of
connectivity, I totally agree. Now we don't know a lot of
what's on these trees. There's a lot of information, of
course, that we're missing, just like we're missing huge amounts
of history from all the cultures of the World of Planets host.
But one thing that is explicitly not mentioned, that is mentioned
for so many other cultures, is a long nightmareth.
Every culture seems to have one. The Royner have one.
The freaking Yeetish have one. There's versions from Aishai,
everyone seems to have one just about.
I mean, there's a few cultures that are too obscure to have one
maybe, but this one isn't that obscure and yet it isn't
mentioned. It's entirely possible that it
just didn't affect them very much.
They were still able to fish, and they don't rely on
agriculture too much. There's a lot of fertility, but
it's mostly fruit trees and orchards, things like that.
The heat, probably. They probably didn't probably
didn't get as cold there. The idea of the Others is
probably completely foreign to them, other than having heard
about it from from Westerosse or whatever.
So that's pretty interesting, I think.
Can I? Say there is one story I think
they have that isn't a long night story, but has the
resonance of the the point of the long night story sure hit
it? I think the story of Zonda Ko
that we're going to get into later has a lot of resonance
with that story because it's all about how she unites the islands
under her rule. And so I just find that that's
the one story within the summer Islander like mythos.
I guess that like is still about like, Hey y'all, we all need to
unite in order to stop this. That's a really.
Good take. Because yeah, that is an
important aspect of the Other's invasion is will humanity stop
its quibbling long enough to prevent extinction?
Right. And so the, we've, we've talked
at length about how the Azora High myth is more about Azora
High being a uniter than a warrior, or is more of like a
logistician bringing people together.
A diplomat like a Daenerys bringing together the Dothraki,
the Unsullied, the people of Slaver's Bay, plus whoever in
Westeros joins her, that's a uniter.
John bringing together the Free folk, Stannis's people, the
Night's Watch, some people from the North, that's a uniter as
well. That's the kind of thing we're
talking about. The example of Shaya brought up
is very rare for the summer elves to be brought together.
And they did do it in time of great need.
And it was They were facing an overwhelming enemy who wanted to
enslave them all. Just tell you what the others
want to do. The others want to kill you and
then enslave you. There's an extra step in there,
but it's a similar vibe. Yeah.
The Great. Other to the summer, Islanders
are enslavers, yeah. Absolutely.
Very good point. Yeah, I mean, that's that's the
worst thing they've ever faced as a culture, as mass
enslavement. They haven't faced mass
extinction by winter, whereas Westeros never really faced mass
enslavement. A lot of people moved to
Westeros to to get away from that.
A lot of the Andals fled from Essos to get away from Valyrian
enslavement. So but they ended up on a
continent where the others might do that to them instead, but in
a different way. Anyway, the talking trees will
continue to pop up throughout the episode here and there
because we we refer to them a few times and then we'll see
what happens. Let's move on to the age of
exploration. Let's start with how they
started Quote. As Islanders, they took to the
seas in the dawn of days, first in Ord coracles, then in larger,
swifter ships with sails of woven hemp.
Yet few ever ventured beyond the site of their own shores, and
those who sailed beyond the horizons did not always return.
Yeah, I mean, that's that's early exploration for you.
People are brave, you know, you do not know what's out there.
And some of the people didn't return 'cause they legitimately
got lost at sea, but some of them found new land and didn't
know how to get back. And that creates just as much
risk as like, well, if I go back, well, how do I, I don't
know if I can find back and then how do I get back here again,
You know, so the, the world of ancient navigation was a scary
place 'cause you just have very little else to go on.
You don't have prior navigators to give you information or help
or, or anything. The Ironborn had a similar
beginning, but they didn't start on their aisles.
They started as first men who migrated the aisles and then
went further still. That's you would still call them
a sailing culture even though that's not the only thing about
them. Same is true for the summer
aisles. Their relationship to sailing is
very different than the iron aisles, but they are very much a
sailing culture. Sailors don't always represent a
culture because sailors are typically a very tiny percentage
of that culture. That's less true when you're
talking about island people who thrive on sailing.
There's a lot larger percentage of the people from the Iron
Isles and the Summer Isles that know how to sail or are familiar
with sailing, etcetera. So they they are more
representative of their culture than say, I don't know, an
American sailor. Isn't that representative of
Americans? You know, like that's no more
than any random job would be, you know.
But if you say an American banker, you know, that might
register more with people, right?
Like, oh, American bankers. Yeah, there's a lot of them.
American insurance salesman. Yeah.
Lawyers, etcetera. Sorry if that's what your
profession is. I'm not making fun.
But those are common professions in America.
They get talked about a lot. So both of these cultures, the
Ironborn and the Summer Isles had a lot of incentive, a huge
amount of incentive to explore their nearby surrounding.
What other aisles are there? Well, there's I can see an
island over there. It's in the distance.
You can actually see it sail to that.
Well, let's just be on the horizon or hey, we could.
Now that we've gotten to this island, we can see another one
over there, you know, island hopping.
So they discovered all their own aisles.
There's no one else down there finding them.
Maybe in some far bygone time, the summer some they were they
were they migrated there from somewhere else, but it doesn't
seem like seems like they just kind of developed there.
I don't know. There may have been a long ago
Pangaea of West of of Planetos and yeah, who knows.
But of course, the day came when their isolation ended, when the
day came, when they learned that they were not alone in the
world. Here's what happened.
Quote. The first recorded contact
between the Summer Isles and the wider world occurred at the
height of the old Empire of Geese.
A Ghiscari merchant ship made landfall on Wilano after being
blown off course by a storm, only to flee in terror at the
first sight of the local inhabitants, whom the Ghiscari
took for demons with skins burned black by the fires of
Hell. Thereafter, Ghiscari sailors
took care to stay well away from the Demon Isle, as they named
Wolano On their charts. They had no inkling of the
existence of Amburu Jala. Or the lesser islands.
Truly, it was the Summer Islanders who had reason to be
afraid. Skin color isn't scary.
They thought it was, but slavery is scary.
That's what the Summer Islanders had to fear from the Ghiscari.
So yeah, it's oddly this is an example of like, prejudice or
racism. I don't know if it's fully
racism, but whatever, whatever it was, it was it was a negative
thing that worked out really well for the Summer Islanders.
Like, yeah, you don't want them here.
You don't want them. You want them being afraid of
you because if they're not afraid of you, they're going to
come back and enslave you. So that was good.
But yeah, the Summer Islanders are the ones who were had reason
to be afraid because the Giscard even today are the biggest
slavers in the world since the Valyrians are gone because the
Valyrians took that title away. But then, yeah, gave it back.
But nowadays, the Summer Islanders are difficult.
You don't go after them. You don't do slave raids.
They're nearly as often anymore because they're well prepared
for that. That's why it was a daring raid
on Tall Trees Town, when we hear about that from this Corsair
king during A Feast for Crows, because it's not a common
occurrence anymore. They're well prepared.
The bows in particular are what make them so difficult to
attack. They can hit you from far away.
They're really good with them. A good example of the concept we
were discussing earlier about naming the Gascari called it the
Demon Isle. Obviously the Summer Islanders
weren't calling it that and they didn't even know the Gascari
were using that name. Here's a follow up quote in
terms of how it impacted them and what it spurred them to.
Next quote this. Contact had a profound effect
upon the Summer Islanders themselves, for it proved that
other peoples lived in the lands beyond the waves.
Their curiosity and avarice thus awakened, the Princess of the
Isles began to build larger and stronger ships capable of
carrying sufficient provisions to cross long stretches of ocean
whilst withstanding even the fiercest storms at sea.
Malthar Zak, a Prince of the small island of Koj, was the
greatest of these shipbuilders and is remembered today as
Malthar the Wind Rider and Malthar the Map Maker.
As we see a lot of times in history, there's a particular
individual credited with starting a very long term trend
that pays off even now. As we saw earlier, Koj is where
3/4 of the Swan ships are built to this day.
And this Malthar Zak fellow lived thousands of years ago.
He lived during the time of the old Empire of Gist.
That's like seriously 5 to 8000 years ago, long ago.
And this guy is famous. He's an example.
He is like an Aegon the Conqueror of his people but much
older. Maybe Grasdan of of GIS or a
Brandon the Builder type figure is more accurate.
Maybe even a Garth Greenhand type figure.
Less supernatural or not supernatural at all.
Just a very brave forward thinking person that whose
actions had a long lasting impact on the culture that is
still present today. Here's what happened next.
It kicked off what they say is a new time, a new era right here
quote. A new era of exploration and
trade began as the great ships struck out across the waters,
dispatched by Malthar and his fellow Princess.
Many did not return. More did Nath.
The Basilisk Isles, the northern coasts of Sothorios, and the
southern coasts of both Westeros and Essos were all visited, and
within less than half a century a thriving trade had grown up
between the Summer Isles and the Freehold of Valyria.
Mad wealth must have gone back and forth there as these two
powerful, wealthy nations discovered each other.
Of course, Summer Isles aren't nearly as powerful
militaristically, but they have so much wealth that makes them a
big player on the international marketplace, Which was barely a
thing back then. There was a lot of trade
probably made between the Great, the Great Empire, the Dawn
prior, and when Valyria was at its apex or at its peak, which
was a very long peak. They certainly facilitated lots
of trade in all directions, including with Sarnor and and
Karth and and and maybe Ashai. Certainly they just tried to
establish trading posts in the Basilisk Isles and in the
Basilisk Isles in the northern coast of Sithorius like they
were trying to the the point was all the welfare which the Summer
Islanders were also extracting. So the Summer Islanders can
extract wealth from Sothorios and then trade it to Valyria, or
keep some of it for themselves however they see fit.
This must have been such an interesting time to live in.
Where every week Malthar and his fellow Princess are sending out
ships, and every week ships are coming back from voyages that
left six months to a year ago. And every time they're bringing
new information, new history, new lands, new peoples, new
goods, new fruit, new spice, new everything.
It's just would have been just constant excitement.
And what a great time for storytelling.
I suppose if someone wanted to, if, if ever people were looking
for an interesting time in the history of the Summer Isles,
their age of exploration would be just really neat to think
about. Here's a another little quote in
terms of specific things that got traded.
Yes. Now this this somewhat refers to
a quote we had earlier, but it expands on this quote the
Islands. Lacked iron, tin and other
metals, but were rich in gemstones, emeralds, rubies and
sapphires, and pearls of many sorts.
Spice, nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper and hardwoods.
A fashion developed amongst the dragonlords for monkeys, apes,
Panther Cubs and parrots. Can I just say real quick the
the Panther Cubs is very telling, 'cause you know what
happens is that they get big and they they don't have those
Panthers anymore. Yeah.
That's dangerous. Maybe the apes too, 'cause they
might get, they probably get Catch the baby apes.
Try to train. To be docile and we get huge and
who knows I hope many. A dragon Lord was mauled.
You can hope. So it really figures, doesn't
it, that they would just try to make pets out of all the living
creatures of the world. And these are slavers and and
they think they own everything. So yeah.
But I wonder if the sport loving Valyrians ever had a rally
monkey on the lighter side. Right.
We can we can use our imagination to come up with with
humorous things rather than just imagining how awful the
Valerians were. Mark Mullindor, Westerosi is
seen to have a pet monkey in A Clash of Kings.
It has a little suit of chainmail.
He loses part of his arm and the monkey in the Battle of
Blackwater. Damn poor monkey, I don't care
about his arm so much. Mega Tyrell asked Marjorie for
help finding him a new monkey because she likes him and she's
like, well that would make him feel better if she finds him a
new monkey. I don't know that she succeeded.
We do know that Mark was sent to the dungeons as part of Cersei's
accusations against Marjorie. So he was caught up in that.
Instead of getting a new monkey, he gets thrown in prison for not
doing anything. So that's, that's Cersei for
you. Let's talk about gods and
worship. Here is a quote to kick us off.
Though a score of gods, both great and small, are honored on
the Summer Isles, a special reverence is shown to the God
and goddess of love, beauty, and fertility.
The union of male and female is sacred to these deities.
By joining together in this act of worship, the Islanders
believe men and women give honor to the gods who made them, be
they rich or poor, male or female, of high birth or low.
All summer, Islanders are expected to dwell for a time in
the temples of love that dot the islands, sharing their bodies
with any who might desire them. The quote's actually a lot
lengthier than that, and it goes on to say how it's expected and
respected as worthy of on the same level as music, sculpture,
dance and other art forms. Now there's a lot of real world
work going on behind the scenes here you could point to that
shows that, for example, sex work is only decriminalized in
two countries, Belgium and New Zealand.
But also it's legalized in certain like areas like carve
outs like parts of Nevada for example, but where almost
wherever sex work is legalized or permitted, there's a drop in
sexual assaults and just violent crime in general.
So this is an extension of we have a culture that has this
permissive and open and almost Worshipful attitude towards sex
and also doesn't have a lot of warfare.
So I think George is connecting these two things and I think he
should because it is connected in the real world.
I mean, war is the number one place where sexual assault
happens when it is the by far. It's just, it's disgusting, but
it's true, can I say? It's kind of an interesting
counterpoint to be on the wall, yeah.
Yeah. Just cause like they're all
they're permissive, but in a kind of a very different way.
And so they are there is still like sexual assault, but do the
women see it as much as as sexual as I don't know, but it's
a it's certainly it's like. They don't tolerate sexual
assault in the Beyond the wall. They tolerate it if the man is
good enough. Like it's like if you're good
enough at not the assault part, but at the at the capturing and
the stealing. If you're.
So there is a level of like you have to be good enough at what
you're doing. Yeah, we really would have to.
Interview more women beyond the wall to have a better
understanding of if they feel you know power in that or or
lacking in power. I don't really know.
I don't want to assume one way or the other and I'm sure it
varies, but like like. Like someone like a Gilly would
be like, no, but like he grits like, well, yeah, yeah, that's
exactly my point, someone. Like a grit is like, well, yeah,
I feel, I, I, I have all the control I need, you know?
Yeah, he's like, well. Yeah, I just kill him in his
sleep. Like, what more do you need?
You know, it's like Gilly's like I wouldn't, if I could do that,
I would have killed Craster long ago.
You know, I was like, so it's not so simple, but for so some
women, and maybe it does seem that way because they are
capable in ways that a Gilly might not be.
Yeah. So this is a really interesting
facet of it that touches on a lot of real world stuff that I'm
no expert on, but there is a lot of bases here.
There's a place in the South Pacific called Mangia.
Yes. Mangia.
It's spelled Mangia, where there's a strong cultural focus
on female sexual pleasure. It is height of importance.
A lot of women are awake going wait where?
Where is this island exactly? Yes, Mangia in the South
Pacific. I hadn't heard of it before
either honestly. So it's not exactly popular, but
it is a thing. It's a real it is a real thing
and has existed in other cultures and times and places
throughout the world as well. Perhaps the most famous non
modern book on sexuality is the Kamasutra open the butt of jokes
in western culture. As a book of sex positions.
It is not that. I mean, it does have that, but
that is not the point. It has a much more broader high
minded goal, living well, emotional fulfillment, finding
love, finding partners, but yeah, also pleasure.
But mostly with how pleasure connects and supports and
relates to those other concepts like fulfillment, love and and
living well. It was written by Vatsyayana.
I'm probably saying that wrong in probably the second or third
century, so 17 to 1800 years ago.
He was a philosopher with a religious goal in mind for this
quote after. Reading and considering the
works of Babravia and other ancient authors, and thinking
over the meaning of the rules given by them, this treatise was
composed according to the precepts of the Holy Writ for
the benefit of the world by Vatsyayana while leading the
life of a religious student at Banaras and wholly engaged in
the contemplation of the Deity. This work is not to be used
merely as an instrument for satisfying our desires.
A person acquainted with the true principles of this science,
who preserves his Dharma virtue or religious merit, his arta,
worldly wealth, and his Kama, pleasure or sensual
gratification, and who has regard to the customs of the
people, is sure to obtain the mastery over his senses.
In short, an intelligent and knowing person, attending to
Dharma and Arta and also to Karma, without becoming the
slave of his passions, will obtain success in everything
that he may do. So yeah, that's the
undercurrent. There is not pleasure, it's not
sex, it's not getting off. It's discipline.
That's the underlying anchor between all those things.
Sure, those other elements are contained, the pleasure and the
all the joy and the all these other things, but the goal is to
obtain mastery of his senses. It's explicitly saying this is
not about only gratification. This work is not to be used
merely as an instrument for satisfying desires.
Master these things rather than becoming a slave to your
passion. So he's acknowledging the
downside and why this is important to master these
things. So why did I bring this up?
Why did I have a share read from the Kama Sutra?
Because we don't have direct religious writing on this.
What we would call now sex positive culture.
That isn't a term that necessarily existed in the past,
but the concept is not new. Sex positive as a term is new,
relatively speaking. So if we don't have distinct
real examples from the Summer Islands, why not look to the
best analog we have in the real world?
What does the real world sex positive culture look like?
And we can kind of overlap that of the Summer Islands a little,
at least a little bit to get an idea of what they might be
thinking. If they're making it high
minded, then we should look at what the high minded people of
the world have done and think about it in that on those terms.
If you were an HBO writer working on adapting more of
George's work for screen and the story called for the Summer
Islanders to be involved, I would think that reading about
this type of culture, reading about reading the Kama Sutra,
reading about the philosophical writers who have taken this on
and made a career of it and start there.
You know, now this is, I can't go too far with this because
this isn't necessarily what George had in mind for the
Summer Islander religion, but I think it's at least a good
starting point. The Westerosi maesters are too
ignorant of this for George to get too deep on it too, because
they they're very sexually ignorant and inexperienced when
it comes to their own culture. Westerosi maesters are basically
sexless academics, which I don't mean to, that doesn't denigrate
academics. I'm just saying like they live
their whole life in academia without having relationships.
What do they know about sex other than the clinical aspects
of it? They don't have it.
They don't they don't coming they're not coming at it from an
experiential position. Hey, hey, they don't come at it
for with experience and they don't understand any of this.
This is completely alien. These concepts are like, yeah,
they esteem sex and love and I don't know, it sounds well,
that's what they do. You know, it's if they they
really don't get it. And this is a small downside of
of George presenting us information through in world
characters rather than narrators, But I still vastly
prefer it this way. If George wants to expand on
these concepts, that's what interviews are for.
If he wants to tell us what he was thinking.
But in terms of the books like the World of Ice and Fire, it
wouldn't make sense for the maesters to really grasp what a
sex positive culture looks like. You know, they don't, they
wouldn't get it. They don't have that experience.
They don't have that basis. Everything is just Westeros to
them. And George himself getting a
little bit meta. This is a Roman Catholic man.
So that was his upbringing. That's not where he landed, but
it's definitely part of who he was.
But he he basically became a hippie, you know, so a hippie
who married another hippie. So he's very well read, You
know, he's more he, he didn't come from a free love
environment of his upbringing, but that's where he sort of
trended towards as he got older. So I think he may have had a
little extra fun with the Summer Islands because it may be more
reflects how he wants the world to be, whereas Westeros is more
what he sees it as. Anyway, I might be reading a
little too much into George there, but I think there's some
basis there. I think you're right.
That he definitely views it positively.
It is idyllic. It is, you know, he I, I,
although I want I, I like that he is also sure to point out
their their flaws when he brings up like the avarice of the
Princess, you know, like they with all these positive traits,
they're still greedy, they still fight, they still kill people,
you know, all of these things. So like, he has some nuance to
it. Agreed.
Now another aspect of violence and sex is that it's also I I
said that the prevalence places that have brothels and sex work
have large to modest drop offs in in sexual assaults and
regular violence. They also have a drop off in
drug use. Now George just doesn't have a
lot of drug use or drugs in his world at all.
There's a lot of drinking. Maybe the Summer Islanders drink
less because of that too. The bar is pretty low there too,
though Nina adds that there's a certain level of discomfort for
her, and certainly this is shared by other people, to the
extent to which George has had the culture of the Summer
Islands revolve around sex, 'cause you could have them be
sex positive without it being just so central to their
culture, right? Westeros, their antagonism
towards sex, that violence isn't necessarily upheld as positive.
It's just what happens, right? It isn't.
Their culture doesn't revolve around that.
It's just a big thing that people don't like to talk about.
So that might be a little some people could see that as
painting with too broad of a brush.
Or, well, it's a trope. A trope.
Sure, the trope is maybe the right word.
Yeah, just the oversexed exotic people, you know?
Yeah, exactly. And so, like, you can't divorce
the series from the tropes and the world it lives in, even if
you're like, well, within the world, he's it's celebratory.
It's this, it's that it still exists within our world.
Right. Yeah.
And Nina says the same thing. She don't she doesn't say George
is acting in bad faith here, but there is some of that exotic
equals erotic trope happening here.
You know, that's fair. That's fair.
I mean, he is, he is working in dangerous territory with that.
Not dangerous, but it is a little, you know, it's, it's an
area of sexuality and things like that.
You do it gets personal with with the readers like we, we,
it's easy. It's it's it's an ironic thing
that we can more easily detach from people getting their heads
cut off. You know, because that's not
really a part of our world for most of us, but this but
sexuality is so yeah, fair, fair points.
Good thing that we like to be thorough and yeah, criticize
where it's where it's appropriate or at least raise
the issue of potential criticism.
Well, actually, what I'd. Like to bring up here too, is
that he's brought up how he he when he thought about if he had
made the Valyrians black. Oh yeah.
Yeah, you know, like this is. Kind of related to that, you
know, sure, just just if he had, they wouldn't be the main black
culture and the sexualized culture.
There would be multiple, that's true.
And of course, the reason George didn't do that is just because
he thought they'd be dark elves. And he's like, they're just like
dark elves. I don't want to do dark elves if
he had. Plenty of criticisms if he had.
And yeah, you know, it's, you can't say what would have
happened if if he'd done that, but I see why he didn't.
Yeah. It's hard to make realistic ish
races that have, you know, big flaws and big, you know,
cultural touchstones and not, you know, make people think of
real world stuff and occasionally they can hurt some
feelings or, you know, whatever. Anyway, let's move on.
I think that's a a a worthy discussion, but I think we've
covered it for now. If you're enjoying our
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Guilty, Undertaker says sort of like the island of Hawaii is the
biggest, but Oahu is the most populous.
Good example, Iron Owens is the same.
Old Wick is the largest, but it is not the most populous.
So that is not an uncommon thing at all.
Like think about Japan. Japan is there's 160 million
Japanese people in the world roughly, but only like 10% of
Japan is liveable. What?
Right. But that's not, you know,
compared like the Sahara Desert, unliveable.
There's huge parts of the US that are unliveable.
Death Valley, you know, the terrain is not the map, right?
People live where people can live.
Land is not all equal. All right, let's get into some
of the darker subject matter. War and slavery, pretty much the
darkest subject matters there are here.
The Summer Islanders are not conquerors.
They've never conquered anything other than perhaps from each
other. And that isn't perhaps maybe
that isn't even properly called conquest, but whatever.
Semantics. Mostly this is because of how
far away they live from anybody else.
Like, who are they going to conquer and then managed to
still govern from such a distance?
Like that would be a very difficult conquest to manage
indeed. And there haven't been any real
attempts to conquer them either for similar reason.
Like, wow, that would be difficult to pull off.
It's so far from our center of government.
Valyria would try to conquer the summer islands.
I mean, days and days of travel, weeks and weeks on by dragon
back, weeks by ship, just to, like, communicate.
Yeah. It just wouldn't work.
It wouldn't work. But also just the whole concept
of war and fighting. It's just different in some very
fundamental ways on the Summer Islands, quote wars.
On the summer Isles seldom last longer than a day and do no harm
to any but the warriors themselves.
No crops are destroyed, no homes are put to the torch, no cities
are sacked, no children are harmed, no women are raped.
The warrior women OFT fight beside their men in the line of
battle. Even the defeated Princess
suffer neither death nor disfigurement, though they must
leave their homes and palaces to spend the remainder of their
days in exile. So this is a little piece of
connective tissue that you may not have realized.
JAL Bargeau is a ass. He, he lost and he has to spend
the remainder of his days in exile by their laws.
But he's like, no, I'm an election denier.
He wants to bring Westerosi Knights and armies to somewhere
else to get his, his veil back, which he lost fair and square,
at least as far as we can tell. So for all we know.
There was something that went on.
Yeah, maybe he was. Untoward.
On the other side, like what we can't?
No, but probably the other person fought valiantly and won,
yeah. And even if he lost unfairly,
he's would be bringing death and destruction to a lot of
innocence just to, you know, because he didn't get what he
wanted, right? Yeah, absolutely.
He probably wouldn't follow these tenants with those
Westerosi Knights because he wouldn't actually be able to
control them and they would rape and loot and destroy.
Yes. So this is the the type of what
he's willing to inflict on his people because he's not Prince
of Red Flower Veil. Now, Patucia's point.
Yeah, Knights in the Westerosi, they would do the things that
they do. They would rape and kill and
murder. But this line reads to me like
Oberyn in the TV show, He's like, we don't harm little girls
in Dorn. And Cersei's like, oh, please.
It's like when I'm like, yeah, Cersei's right on that one.
I was like, no. I'm.
Positive. You're right.
Yeah, there's. Some women, yeah, Some.
There's no way that the maesters are exaggerating.
This is this is the idyllic thing that this isn't George
saying that. This is the maesters saying that
and not realizing that. No, that's not believable.
Some this, they're not that good a people.
No, humans are that good, right? As a whole.
So yeah, I don't think I'm being too cynical.
I think these ministers aren't being religious, are being
realistic enough. But maybe I'm wrong.
Also I'm just. Kind of curious, how far do they
actually have to go to be in exile?
Like definitionally you know, like does does a Prince have to
go to the next island over? Just the next veil over the
palace. All the way to Western Isles.
Completely. Yeah, doing.
How badly they lost or how much they were hated.
He was really hated. He had to go all the way to the
Red Keep red from the red flower veil to the red Keep.
He just likes the red places. So there's also a a underlying
difference in just a societal structure here that I think is
similar to the Scandinavian systems, which is that they had
kings and Queens and Princess and princesses, but they didn't
really have the nobility. They didn't really have the
feudal system because their their geography just didn't
support it. In we have an episode that was
chosen in topics mood that we're going to do later this year
called Norse myth and the long nights.
I've been learning a lot about some of these old Scandinavian
countries in in medieval and proto medieval times and, and
around this era, which is that, yeah, they don't have, they
don't really have the feudal system there because their their
society couldn't support it. Just logistically, you can't
make an estate farming all this territory to support all these
slaves or or serfs or peasants or whatever the appropriate term
is for whichever place we're talking about where you have a
household nights and all these other things supported by this
estate. The Scandinavia just doesn't
support that. The land isn't fertile enough.
There isn't enough. Like only like 2% of Norway can
be farmed. It's just a tiny amount.
So like, where are you supposed to support these armies and and
people? So the feudal system isn't
support, not because it just didn't they didn't want it.
It just doesn't work. You, you need to have these
levels of I send my food to you and you give that food to your
troops and they pass their troops up to the king when the
king calls for them. This system can't exist in
Scandinavia, couldn't exist in old Scandinavia because there
wasn't enough food to go around. And I suspect it's similar in
the Summer Isles, maybe not for the same reason, maybe because
maybe not because there isn't enough food to go around, but
just because for whatever reason, maybe other reasons,
they just didn't have this feudal system which leads to
entangling violence. And you don't have anyone to
say, hey, call, I call up the troops.
What troops you don't have the troops to call up, you know, let
all you don't even, let alone not having standing armies, you
don't even have vassals to call on.
So that's this is a fundamentally different system,
which I think we sort of take for granted that that such
things exist, especially as I'm pointing to a Scandinavian
system, which is European. You think even in Europe this
wasn't ubiquitous, although it was common.
This wasn't though this lack of feudal system was the was the
not the was the exception. The rule was mostly feudal
system. So yeah.
And these are principalities, right?
These aren't kingdoms or so they were, they're a little
designated a little bit differently.
They're a little more similar to Dorne in that way.
Although Dorne was united under 1 Prince.
And prior to that there were just Lords and yeah, and they
were kings at at one point. So anyway, that's somewhat just
semantics, the difference between principality and
kingdoms. But it it is, it is different
enough to point out. Now the Valyrians of course were
very interested in all those exotic goods we discussed, but
that's not all they were interested in.
It's the Valyrians being Valyrian quote.
The Valyrians offered gold for slaves as well.
Then as now, the Summer Islanders were a handsome
people, tall, strong, graceful, and quick to learn.
These qualities drew pirates and slavers from Valyria, the
Basilisk Isles, and Old Geese. Much woe ensued as these Raiders
descended on peaceful villages to carry their inhabitants into
bondage. For a time, the Princess of the
Isles abetted this trade by selling captured foes and rivals
to the slavers. The histories carved into the
talking trees tell us that these years of shame endured for the
better part of two centuries until a warrior woman named
Zonda Ko, Princess of Sweet Lotus Vale, who had herself been
enslaved for a time, united all the islands under her rule and
made an end to it. The years of shame It seems like
the shameful part is the collaboration with the slavers.
That makes sense. It's the most shameful thing and
like helping slavers enslave your own people.
That's that's about as bad as it gets, right?
I mean, it's the Valerians are a whole another culture.
It's not they've been doing this for all along.
You don't write the history of the if you write the history of
the Valerians, you say, yeah, they're evil, but it's not the
Summer Islanders. They're not their shame to bear
that the Valerians were slavers. It's only their shame to bear
that they helped. And whether this is the reason
or not, it did seem to stick. It's like, yeah, slavery bad.
That was enshrined. We tried this it, it was bad for
our culture. It turned US against each other.
Luckily, Zonda Co emerged and and LED her people the right way
and that stuck. So this was a, this was a
temporary, historically speaking, because it lasted over
200 years. It was very long.
But in terms of thousands of years of summer I'll history, it
is a little bit more of a blip when you're looking at it that
way. Most of the time they've been
opposed to this. Most of the time they they only
entertained the idea as a as a nation once the richest amongst
them were newly introduced to the concept and the greater
population pushed back against it.
Clearly it might be worse if you consider what kind of slaves the
Valyrians would most value. Like the Valyrians are obviously
they want sex slaves in term and on top of everything else, and
they know that the Summer Islanders put this religious
importance on sex and you'll be good at it.
So they would really exploit that.
It's pretty awful. It's a good reason to really
pushed back. So this was a huge amount of
cultural impetus to adapt their their people were being enslaved
and if they didn't fight back, it's just like any bully.
If you don't push back against bullies, they come harder.
They're like, look how weak they are.
Let's go double, let's go triple, let's go quadruple.
So if you don't stop the slavers, more slavery will
happen. They'll start establishing
outposts on your country and start pulling rather than the
summer Islander middle men selling their own people, the
Valerians would come directly to the source.
And it just then it gets harder and harder to stop the whole
process. And that's what happened.
They just said, hey, we're going to fight back, let's find a way
to do that. And it was weapons of war unlike
they had ever used before. And because they developed these
weapons to fight invaders, well, that helped them keep it that
way. Like we only built these weapons
to fight invaders. Let's not use them on each other
is kind of the idea here in this quote.
Before I read the quote, shout out to the image I just had on,
which is a still of a gift set I made on Tumblr about a decade
ago now of Zondaco and quote. As iron was scarce and costly in
the Isles, armor was little known, and the long thrusting
Spears and short stabbing Spears traditional amongst the summer
Islanders had proved of little worth against the steel swords
and axes of the slavers. So Zonda Co armed her sailors
with tall bows of Golden Heart, a wood found only on Jala and on
Boru. These great bows far outranged
the recurved bows of horn and sinew.
The slavers carried and could throw a yard long shaft hard
enough to Pierce through mail and boiled leather and even good
steel plate. You might think of people like
the Mashika, who were often called the Aztecs, or maybe a
different South American culture that lacked metalworking but
still found a great substitute for war, In their case Obsidian.
They made wooden planks ridged with Obsidian that would be
extremely sharp. There's no native alternative on
the Summer Isles, though. They don't have Obsidian there.
There's no these are not volcanic islands, as best as we
can tell. But they did have this, and they
found it and they used it. They figured out what it was
best for, and they made the most of it.
It's the world's best wood other than dragon bone, which is not
wood. And they make the world's best
bows, which probably means they have the world's best bow makers
too, or at least tied for the best with I don't even know who.
And we're, as we were, we've said a few times in this
episode, they've only been united under a single ruler
about 1/2 a dozen times in their entire many thousands of years
of history. This was one of them actually,
sorry, let me say that again. Only about half a dozen times
since these wars. So it would have maybe even
been, there would have been a few times before that, but this
was one of the main times it happened and perhaps the most
important time it happened because it was to push back
foreign invaders. All those other times it may
have happened under a single leader.
We don't know anything about those times, but I doubt it was
to push back for an invasion because I don't think they've
faced that many times Like what other invaders would there have
been? So bows as well.
This isn't just thinking about the way bows work and their
function. They're much so.
They're good for hunting. They can be offensive weapons,
but they're better for defense. They're better for holding a
fixed position when someone else has happened to come at you and
you get to just shoot at them. That's the ideal position to be
in a bow to be shooting at. So attacking a castle with bows
is a lot harder to do or a Fort than the people inside the Fort
shooting back. So yeah.
So you can see why this culture's ripe with defensive
weaponry, which is why they would be less likely to go
attacking each other 'cause they're all very good at defence
and not as good at offence. So the development of these bows
was huge for them. It did completely change their
trajectory as a culture 'cause it meant the Valyrians were
like, all right, well, the Valerians are all about profit.
This, the whole slavery engine is about profit and greed,
right? It's about wealth.
So if by developing golden heart bows, by getting good at using
them, they made enslaving summer Islanders unprofitable, the
Valerians like, you know what, going there, we get shot at so
much, it just isn't worth it. There's plenty of other people
to go enslave out there in the world.
And so they basically said, hey, we have more value with our
woods and our gems and our spices than we do with our
slaves. So come back and trade with us
like normal people and let's forget about all this slavery
business. And that's pretty much what
happened. I think it seems to be that's
what happened. It didn't just happen overnight,
but this incursion of warfare died away.
It didn't seem to flare up again and trade started to really take
off. So that was pretty good.
Like, that was a good outcome given this awful beginning.
So, and it's an interesting how it happened on economic terms.
Again, the summer elder just made slavery unprofitable, at
least in their corner of the world, while making other
industries very, very profitable.
Like, don't come here and attack us.
We've got these great luxury goods to sell you.
If you come here and attack us, then all the trade falls apart,
you know, everybody loses. So the Westerosi elite, sorry,
the Valyrian elite are not stupid.
There are a lot of negative things, but they're not stupid.
And they could see that. That's a very obvious
connection. It's like, OK, well, we can make
more money from these people by trading with them than by
attacking them. But part of the development of
this, part of what made trade between these nations really
happen was the next innovation, which may have been the most
important for their entire society, more important than the
bows, or at least as important the swan ships.
And this development of the swan ships was part of the same push
by Zanda Co during the slavery wars.
Quote to give. Her Archers a solid platform
from which to draw and loose, Zonda Co built ships larger than
any previously seen in the summer sea.
Tall, graceful ships cunningly fit together without so much as
a single nail. Many walled with rare hardwoods
of the Isles, made harder still with magics, so the Rams of
slaver ships cracked and splintered against their sides.
As swift as they were strong, her ships OFT sported tall,
curved prows carved into the shapes of birds and beasts.
These swan necks won them the sobriquette of swan ships.
I just love that picture. Something very satisfying about
the idea of slavers going ramming speed and then they ram
the side of the ship and their ram breaks and their ship is the
thing that gets this just like gets destroyed.
And it's like they're just like the summer.
I was just shaking their heads like, Yep, I love when they do
that. I love those.
And they're just shooting down on them.
It was like the the even when they stick and they're like
trying to climb over the railings, like that railing is
like 20 feet above. How do I get over there to board
that ship? And they're just like shooting
down on you. And it's like, this was a bad
idea y'all? And the.
Mention of magic's the only mention of magic in all of the
summer islands is lore that we've looked up.
And I wonder if it really is magic.
This is the maesters, just like is the technology they don't
understand, like might not be any magic involved at all, but
there might be. And that would even make it even
more hilarious when the slavers try to ram them and it's like he
he, we've got magic wood. That's going to work so poorly,
you suckers. They're really big too, not just
tall but just long. They're just massive ships, way
bigger than anything built in Westeros.
Maybe maybe not bigger than Westeros he warships but I'm not
clear on that. Anyway they're way bigger than
any like trade ship, any non war vessel, and maybe even bigger
than the war vessels. When Sam is embarrassed after
sleeping with Gilly and he's like Oh my God, what have I
done? I broke my vows.
He goes off and hides from her because the ship is so big that
he can avoid her. It's a big enough place that he
can go over here. She won't know where I am.
He thinks how if they were still on the Blackbird, that which is
the Night's Watch ship that carries them around, he's like,
I wouldn't be able to do this there, that she would find me in
a second because it's just so much smaller.
Yeah, pretty cool. So to me, these ships stand out
even more than the than the purple ships of Bravos, which
kind of to me are like the second most outstanding in terms
of how they look and then how that would really stand out in
the harbor or whatever. But they're far more impressive
in their sailing range. There's really nothing like them
in the world as far as we know. So not only can they explore in
places few others could even dream of, they're able to take
routes other ships can't. These are true ocean going
vessels. Long ships can't do that without
a lot of risk. Only like the Ibanez have a
similar level of technology for ocean going vessels.
Maybe some of the other people, but I don't think so.
They mirdy bunch all the other races.
Cultures pretty much have to hug the coasts, or at least stay
inside of the coast. But the summer.
Islanders can cut across large bodies of water or avoid really
dangerous areas like the step stones.
If you're trying to cross into the Narrow Sea from the South,
you have to pass, you have to go through the step stones and,
well, that's dangerous. But if you're a swan ship, not
only are you more prepared to fight piracy, but you have other
options in terms of what route to take.
Can I say it? Was really interesting I
rewatched the histories and lore about the Summer Sea from That's
the Game of Thrones histories and lores of the extras they did
and the one about the Summer Sea is narrated by Euron Greyjoy.
So it's Euron's perspective on it and he talks about the Summer
Islanders and how they're hardly really worth attacking because
they're such fierce warriors. It's it's hard to to win against
them you're more likely to lose and then when you get into their
hold, they're just holding like that.
They have a bunch of stuff that the iron Islanders don't really
prize as much like there's better targets that have better
loot. But what he says is the reason
that he would target them and other other Ironborn would want
to target them is for their women.
It's a really good like if they managed to get a woman, they're
like trained and love making, yadda yadda.
He goes into that and he next and then after that he goes into
talking about the Ebenez and how they're also really good
fighters. All these things.
He's like, these are the two people that like you don't
really want to mess with. Makes sense?
Take it from a pirate like which pirates don't.
Don't target those guys. They're tough.
They're tough customers. Yeah, Alyssa Farm and Sun
Chaser, the famous ship, the one of the most famous ships ever
built in the world, was designed based on the design of a swan
ship. It was like actual even larger
than a swan ship. Arya sees the swan ships coming
in and out of the harbor sometimes at Bravos, and she
loves seeing them. She enjoys watching them.
She just thinks they're really graceful, which that's what they
are. That's that's the way they're
designed. And Arya.
Knows graceful. Arya does.
Know graceful they're kind of like their own little water
dancer, aren't they? So this put them in places like
Bravos. Speaking of Bravos, because the
summer Islanders were among the many people enslaved on that
ship that escaped to form the hidden city.
Too bad they didn't just head for the summer owls.
I wonder if the people in there were like, yo, let's not make a
new city. Let's let's go to let's go to
the summer Isles Might not have worked out though, like Nymeria
and Abulu might have been the same problem with the the summer
Islanders Princess might have been like, we don't want to
upset the Valyrians. So we're going to we're going to
kind of semi compromise here. Again, Valyria never actually
invaded the Summer Isles. They may have thought about it
and but the way events transpired, it just didn't seem
profitable for them. But clearly the Summer Islands
would have been worried or some people there would have been
worried that that could happen. That could come to pass.
Like what if the Valyria comes for us?
We can't beat Dragons. I mean, any culture is going to
realize they can't beat Dragons. But even if they don't invade,
you don't want a situation where it's like Valyria has decided to
burn all swan ships on site with their Dragons.
You don't want to, you don't want that.
No one wants that, right? They trade would be better for
both of them. The dragonlords would have the
advantage, but they don't want to go up against those Archers,
right? That's that's bad for them.
Like you could pick off a dragonlord on the back of a
dragon with that, with those huge range twice as long as
regular bows. That takes a whole different
strategy. Again, that's like you're on
being like, you'd just rather fight somebody else.
Let's just take on a different target.
Remember the Roynar when when Volantis and the Roynar went to
war and when Valyria got involved, there were lots of
Dragons and some of those Dragons got shot down by Roynish
Archers. If the Roynish Archers can shoot
down Dragons, I feel like the Summer Islanders probably could
as well. Speaking of challenges managing
Valyria, now let's talk about Sothorios, because that's a
place that they might have handled better than anybody
else. Lots of different cultures tried
to extract wealth from Sothorios.
None seem to have like, succeeded overwhelmingly well.
But there's some evidence that the Summer Islanders might have
succeeded more than anyone else. Sothorios is a place we love to
think about, a place we'd love to know more about.
It's just full of mystery and wonder and danger.
And again, yeah, maybe the Summer Islanders do know more
about it than anyone else. Quote.
There are certain indications that explorers from Koj may well
have mapped the western coasts of Sothorios to the very bottom
of world and discovered strange lands and stranger peoples far
to the South or across the endless waters of the Sunset
Sea. But the truth of these tales is
known only to the Princess of the Isles and the captains who
serve them. It absolutely holds up to
scrutiny. It's close by.
They're expert semen. They share a latitude with it,
so the climate should be at least more manageable to them
than it is to Westerosi or Gascari or Valyrians.
They might even have prior experience with some of the
diseases maybe they have resistance or immunity to if
some of them. At the very least, melanated
skin is protection against the sun more so than light skin.
Of course the Roy and I were dark skinned too and it didn't
work out for them, but wasn't because of that, it's because of
the diseases and the untold horrors.
Another passage in the World of Ice and Fire suggests that the
Summer Islands have charted the whole West Coast, or a lot of
the West Coast, but don't share that knowledge.
Like a lot of the secrets they have a lot of their trade
secrets, aha. Literally trade secrets.
Of course they don't. Why would they share that?
They wouldn't even necessarily share with each other trade
routes in the real world before the whole world was mapped
really well. But back in the day, before it
was, those were highly guarded secrets.
Highly guarded. I mean, again, we come back to
Columbus. He was trying to find another
route to India. Here's a name.
We'd be remiss not to mention the famous Explorer quote.
Lomas Longstreider, who visited the Summer Isles in his search
for wonders, recorded that the sages of the Isles claimed that
their ancestors once reached the western shores of Sothorios and
founded cities there, only to have them overwhelmed and
destroyed by the same forces that wiped out later Ghiscari
and Valyrian settlements on that perilous continent.
The Citadel's archives hold a few ancient Chronicles of
Valyria, but none speak of these supposed cities, and there are
maesters who cast doubts on the truth of these claims, if these.
Settlements were far South enough along that western coast,
it's not at all hard to see how they escaped the knowledge of
Valyria and or the Ghiscari who mostly cared about the northern
coast and the Basil's Guiles. We don't hear about the Ghiscari
or Valyrians going over to the West Coast at all.
So I don't know why they would be so aware of the Summer
Islanders, especially if we know the Summer Islanders would have
incentive to keep this on the down low.
What are they? So what are the what is the
source of this maestroly doubt? Like it?
Yeah. Just because these these these
obscure Valyrian chronicles don't mention something they
might not even know about. Maybe they.
Didn't have cities. That part I can get behind.
Like yeah, they probably didn't have cities in Sothorios, but
they would have a trading outpost, Small towns.
I would believe that again. Coming back to Alyssa Farman and
her Sun Chaser, that incredible tale included two ships
escorting her captain by Hightower Brothers.
Those two ships didn't make the full voyage.
One of them was taken down by maybe a Kraken.
The other just found itself on the western coast of Sothorios.
After getting lost. They thought they were going to
try to find the summer islands. Ended up in Sothorios and but
they did meet some summer Islanders.
Here's what Sir Eustace Hightower, captain of that ship,
said. We all.
Would have perished I think, but some summer Islanders passing by
came on us. They know that hell better than
they let on. I think.
With their help I was able to get Lady Meredith to Tall Trees
Town and from there to home. It was pretty gross.
Of them, the Summer Islanders just came by and came on them.
It's just some Summer Islanders passing by.
Came on us, yeah. They came on us, yeah.
Yeah, it's like, well, all this disease and everything and these
guys are doing that to us. That's awful.
No, it's sorry. That was gross, y'all.
It's horrible. Hey, we're talking about awful
diseases. I'm just trying to, like, make
something slightly less gross than dying of brown leg or red,
whatever these weird diseases whose names I can't recall.
Red spots. Yeah, so as horrible as this
experience was, the starvation and the the diseases, I can
almost laugh at how much money these Summer Islanders probably
got paid for this. They probably know this route
really well. Like you want us to take you to
the Summer Islands? Yeah, we know where that is.
That's where we're from. We sail back and forth all the
time. It's just straight wet.
I mean, we can find, we take you on this difficult journey that
is very hard to navigate. Only we know the way.
They got paid a lot. You're like, wait, you're
willing to pay how much for us to just guide you to a place we
know really well? Sign me up.
You know, in Westeros, we've heard the expression.
Sweet summer child. They don't have that phrase on
the summer islands. I bet they probably have
something like bitter winter child or bitter winter adults.
That's what these Hightowers were like.
You bitter winter adults. Naive little.
Yeah. Pay us all your Hightower money
and we'll take you to port. Cyclops is better than
Wolverine. Sends a super chat and says
would love to see the North and Islanders interacting.
Yeah, that would be so cool. Culture clash.
It makes you think of that. Quote referencing Jane Poole
earlier where she was afraid, you know, and that was a
northern person interacting with a summer Islander kind of well.
Cyclops is better than Wolverine.
Stay tuned, because we do have the Night's Watch interacting
with the Summer Islanders on the Cinnamon Wind very soon in this
episode and it's great. So we've got close to that
anyway, and I have a. Response to your username.
Jean is better than Cyclops and Wolverines.
Since the conquest, of course, the Summer Islanders would take
note of the conquest. It may have created more trade
opportunities because the Kingdom would be at peace more
often, and they would have more unified trade structures and
export fees and all these other things.
Laws would be more unified, might just make things simpler.
Their own dating system wouldn't account for this, of course,
'cause you know, they would. It's just they're they're
they're not using the Conquest as a as a timeline indicator for
themselves, but it would matter. And here's a reference to
something that happened early on after Aegon's Conquest quote
and. In the 19th year after the
Conquest, word reached Westeros of a daring raid in the Summer
Isles, where a pirate fleet had sacked Tall Trees Town and
carried off 1000 women and children as slaves, along with a
fortune in plunder. A pirate fleet, not a ship.
So that might be what it takes these days, because I think a
single pirate ship or two would not have much success.
They're just, they're just way, way too well defended, way too
prepared. But they weren't prepared for
this. This was a this is not an
invasion 'cause they didn't stay, but they brought perhaps
enough manpower to do something along those lines, like to carry
out 1000 women and children. Not just the the sheer logistics
of that, let let alone the horror of it all, But this news
is what got Aegon to build walls around King's Landing.
I don't know if Tall Trees Town took the hint and built walls,
but maybe. We certainly have great wood for
it. So, you know, that might be a
good idea. There's a mention of Alison, as
in good Queen Alice Anne, going to the Citadel and getting lost
in the library. Not like literally like where am
I? But getting lost amongst the
books because the books were so interesting to her.
And it's mentioned like she emerged only to attend lectures
on the Valyrian Dragon Wars, Leechcraft, and the Gods of the
Summer Isles. What was she is?
What's her interest in the gods of the Summer Isles?
It's like, it's like the gods of the Summer Isles are all about
love and sex. Is that what she was trying to
like? I'm going to see what I can.
Learned some things for the bedroom.
And we have only got 9 children. I want to have 13.
That's what she ended up with, right?
So, but Can you imagine if she really got lost in the library?
They're like, oh, sorry, Jairus, we lost her in there.
She's she's just in the suite. We can't find her.
She's somewhere in the library. At least she's happy, right?
The Sea Snake took his ship, Summer Maid named appropriately
enough to the Summer Isles. We don't know what he did there,
but I'm sure, yeah, he probably had a good time and probably
made some money, you know, had some nice drinks, drank some of
their rum maybe, and swapped some trade goods.
You know, it probably worked out great for him.
We also have this quote from the wedding of Aegon and Jahara at
the end of the Dance of the Dragons right here.
Even from across the Narrow Sea they came from Braavos and
Pentos. All three of the daughters, Old
Volantis from the Summer Isles appeared. 3 tall black Princess
in feathered cloaks, whose splendor was a wonder to behold.
At the time of the Dance of the Dragons, this would be a big
deal. I mean, well, what did we just
say before about war messing up trade?
So the end of the Dance would be huge because it means trades
opening back up again. Some of our Islanders want to be
there for that. They want to be negotiating
because new trade deals would be happening.
Things would have to be started over.
That means new deals, rearrangements, things that were
dropped and destroyed and have to be fixed and picked up.
And that might mean a change in the pecking order.
That might mean a change in who gets the deals.
So these summer Islanders representative, these Princess
are almost certainly thinking along those lines.
They're like, let's show up, be at the wedding and then get to
business. Right?
Start this all over. Let's start re importing
Goldenhart. You want palm wine, You want
that fruit? You want monkeys?
You want some feathered cloaks? War's over.
Time to get back to your luxury goods.
So they're in the elite wealthy club.
They're invited to events like this.
They belong there because they have similar status in their
homeland and they have things that Westerosi want and vice
versa. And the whims of kings and
Queens can have a huge impact on them because they get their
wealth through these trade arrangements.
Another great example is Aegon the 4th Mistress, the Black
Pearl. Belgiere.
Afaris. Belgiere.
I don't know how to say that Belgiere like Richard Gere, Bel
Gere who was probably far more interesting than him outside of
his children, cause the great bastards are very interesting.
Now she was half summer Islander through her mother who was a
Princess. So this was no ordinary
somewhere around. This isn't like we were talking
before about how when we see the cinnamon wind, it's a bunch of,
you know, mostly regular folk. Bel Gere Otharis was a Princess
on one side and a son of the Sea Lord of Braavos on the other.
So she's very, you know, high born and this is a very more
cultural overlap here that a summer Islander could excel in.
The courtesan culture of Bravos comes in there very well
equipped, very well experienced and with probably with some
skills and knowledge that people elsewhere might not have.
She was also, though, a pirate, smuggler, trader and captain of
a ship called the Widow Wind. She had many lovers apart from
Aegon. So, you know, very free spirited
person. Saw him off and on for 10 years,
mostly during the reign of Baylor the Blessed.
And then of course, he became king not long after Baylor's
death. So she wouldn't have been around
as much. And I don't know if she wanted
to visit him there. She might have been afraid of
him making her stay or something like that.
I'd be worried about that. But the Black Pearl tradition
continues. Now there's another Black Pearl
in in Arya's time that Arya sees and and encounters, so that's
pretty cool. I don't think the current one is
descendant of the Summer Islands, but I forget, I didn't
look that up. In one case, a Summer Islander
did get embroiled and did help bring war to the Seven Kingdoms.
Zobar Kukua AKA the Ebon Prince. He was one of the Band of Nine
alongside Meilis the Monstrous. There's a scene where Jamie,
who's very young in his memories when he's thinking about this,
was completely disinterested in Lysa Tully because, you know,
they were trying to get them to to talk and he was ignoring her
'cause he was more interested in Brendan Blackfish and asking
Brendan questions about Neilis the monstrous and the Ebon
Prince. He wanted to know all about
those guys who Brendan had fought against.
Cause Brendan was in the War of Ninepenny Kings.
It was Brendan's first war. That brings us to the
characters. Let's talk about some specific
characters. This is basically our final
section of what's proving to be a pretty lengthy episode.
But hey, there's a lot to say about the Summer Isles and we
don't want to leave things out. So with these characters, this
is kind of why I saved it for laughed, even though they're
probably the most interesting thing is that we get to see all
these things. We've discussed the culture and
the customs and their traditions and the behavior and the
upbringing. All these things play out in
scenes within the story. Of course, as we said, Jala
Bargeau is the first one we see who's got a name.
The first one we see like interacting with people and
doing things. He doesn't actually speak common
when we first meet him, but later in the story he seems to
have learned some, which, well, that makes sense.
Cause like a couple years go by Tyrion for example, sees him
talking to Sansa at the purple wedding about some around her
wedding customs. She's like, and Tyrion thinks
how good Sansa is at at being social.
He's like, she's really good at this, you know?
And there's also Summer Islander dancers at the Purple Wedding.
They had quite a story to tell. And they was like, yo, we went
dancing at this wedding and the king was murdered.
What? Yeah.
He just dropped dead. And suddenly he dumped wine on
this short guy's head. And then it went off like, it
was crazy. Right.
And Jalabarjeo still giving expensive things away.
Remember, he gave that Lance apparently to Jamie and maybe
other stuff. Maybe that's not where Jamie got
it, but that's that's my best guess.
He gifts a golden heart bow to Joffrey.
That's a nice gift, right? As we've seen, that's a doubt.
Joffrey appreciated it fully, but that's a nice gift.
Jalibar of course, pops up a lot of times.
He petitioned apparently petitioned Robert like every
year for several years for Red Flower Vale.
Robert loves the idea, but Robert loves a lot of ideas.
I mean, hot weather women who are experienced at sex.
Of course Robert loves that. But it never happened.
So once Roberts gone. Jalibar just starts petitioning
Cersei for it instead, and Cersei thinks, yeah, no, he,
she, she thinks very well, ruthlessly and evilly about it.
She's like, yeah, I'm going to say no, but next time he asks
or, or I'm going to say next year, but next time he asks, I'm
going to say no. But actually what happens is she
arrests him because he hangs out with Marjorie a lot, because of
course he's hanging out with Marjorie a lot.
There's another rich family that might be able to give him what
he wants. And Marjorie's about to be
queen. Well, some people think that
Marjorie is apparently about to be queen.
I'm not sure she'll get there, but you can see why this man is
cozying up to her 'cause he's like, well, this is the
potential queen that can get me. Red Flower Vale.
He did perform well at the hands tourney in the archery event.
He came in, I think tied for second or third.
It couldn't beat an guy, the Archer, but he did as well as
anybody else other than Baylon Swan.
Makes sense. Good at archery, right, Fitz?
He rode in the procession that became the riot.
So he was there in that scene, and he escaped with his life
along with other people. And he accompanies Tyrion.
When Tyrion goes to meet the Dornish wedding party that's
arriving on the road that he expects to be Prince Doran, it
turns out to be Oberon. Yeah.
He brings Jalibar with him to make the party look a little
fuller. So yeah, unfortunately for
Jalibar, he was arrested by Cersei during the plot against
Marjorie and is currently in Kyburn's care.
So bad luck Jalibar. But he kind of seems like he
might be a kind of a jerk anyway, so maybe I don't feel
too bad for him. Nobody deserves Kyburn, but some
people deserve it less than others.
Let's talk about the Cinnamon Wind.
Maybe my favorite Summer Islander scene of the whole
books, because again, it we actually get to see the Summer
Islanders doing Summer Islander things as regular people as the
majority in the scene. It's a ship so excellent George
had to had it appear twice. The Cinnamon win first appears
in A Clash of Kings and then it appears in A Feast for Crows.
The 1st is really big, even though it's a relatively small
role, but it's a huge change for Danny because what it does for
her. The second is more important for
this episode because it gives us a better look at their culture.
What's neat about this is that sailing is a very common
profession. So it just makes sense that the
summer hours would be the one to connect these dots, which is
that Danny finds out about Robert's death in Karf because
of a summer Islander who heard about the Dragons and wanted to
see them. He goes to see the Dragons and
he's like, Hey, I I'll give you some news while I'm at it.
You know, I can give you this. As you know, I want to give you
you let me see the Dragons and I want to do something for you and
let me give you this important, valuable news.
And they're like, what? Robert's dead?
That is big news. Thank you.
This sailing scene with Sam and Gilly though, this is might be
why the maesters and the rest of the world look at the summer
Islanders as strong, which maybe isn't a cultural thing.
It might just be because of an outsized portion of people
encountered are sailors like and sailing is a lot of work and it
will make you strong as we see through Sam's point of view.
Sam works his ass off almost literally to pay to partly pay
for their passage to get to Old Town from all the way from
Bravos. And it is hard, hard work.
And yeah, that'll make you strong.
So if that's your job, then you're going to be strong.
And if most of the Summer Islanders that people meet
around the world are sailors, well then most of them are going
to be strong. There's a little observation
there. So there's like plenty of Lyseny
in the books. But do we get a majority Lyseny
scene where Lyseny are doing Lyseny thing?
No, the Dothraki, we get a little of that.
But even that it's kind of limited.
We get it through Danny's eyes and it things through Danny's
eyes are just different because they all treat her so
differently. They're all in awe of her.
She except for before, you know, in the first book when she's
just called Drogo's Khaleesi, and they treat her differently
because of that. So like, she's never everything
through Danny's eyes about the Dothraki's a little bit filtered
because they all see her as like this supernatural figure, the
Mother of Dragons, The the woman that brought them.
Yeah. It's just different than Sam,
who's a little more of a regular guy, even though, yeah, he's a
noble, but his personality, his bearing, he, he doesn't come off
as like in charge or authoritative or a guy who
brought Dragons back to the world.
Right. So, yeah, Arya does see quite a
bit of like, people doing regular people stuff.
And Bravos, it's another reason we love Bravos so much.
But these are. But Bravos is such a melting
pot. You know, it's already like so
culturally diverse that it's, yeah, you can see Bravosi doing
Bravosi things, but Bravos is, is a product of the rest of the
world and more so than other places where the summer, Summer
Islands is so unique and so exceptional because of the
unique origins and, and isolated origins.
Valantis and Salhoris, these are places we see through Tyrion
with Jora. Like they see the Red Temple,
that speech that Benero gives and we hear them talk about
festivals and holidays, but we don't really see it first hand.
You know, these aren't, this isn't like a volunteering
cultural experience. This is the Red Temple.
This is a relorist cultural experience that could happen in
any of the cities that relores present.
Now, we've never been to the Summer islands.
I kind of doubt we will in A Song of Ice and Fire, but it's
not that out of the question for it to be an ending point for
somebody to move there to go, hey, you know what?
I'm I'm out of here. Westeros sucks.
Let me finish my days in the summer Islands.
It could be like a a montage style thing for some characters
decide to go go to live there. But let's talk about what
happens on the Cinnamon Wind, because it's still our best
example. And they do something that we
see a lot of funerals. There's a lot of funerals in A
Song of Ice and Fire, but this is one of the few that isn't
Westerosi. We technically have a few others
that are sort of funeral, but even the other ones like Danny
doing the pyre for Drogo, that's not really a Dothraki funeral,
you know. So it's it's pretty unique.
Let's talk about Kahura MO. He wears a green and yellow
feathered Cape. I love keeping track of the
feathered capes. There's so many different
options here. You got all the different colors
are possible. So I said it wrong.
Kahuru MO is the one who wanted to see the Dragons.
It wasn't Zondo. I got them mixed up there.
He wanted to see the Dragons. He told Danny about Robert.
Anyway, Zondo is is Koja's lover and is the crew member that
gives Sam all his day-to-day tasks and Zondo saves Sam.
Zondo is the one who's at the brothel where Sam loses his
temple with Daring and punches him in the face, ends up in the
in the in the canal. Gendo jumps in after him,
rescues him, tells him, hey, man, it was funny when you
punched that guy, but you owe me a new cloak.
My cloak is ruined and I, you know, from saving your life.
And he's like, OK. And this is a good, a good, good
way for like a subtle literary clue that this is a good guy
'cause he's like, I like when you punched that bad guy, you
know, And he's like, I'm on your side.
And Sam is one of the ultimate good guys of the series, like
the most like wholesome good people.
And Zondo immediately likes him. And he's not like, after
anything. He's just like, you know, you
owe me for the cloak. But like, I'm not other than
that, I I don't have any designs on you.
And this is. Huge because Zondo heard about
the Dragons through Koro who is the captain.
Zondo is like a first mate or something like that.
And he when he sees Sam, he's like in I heard you.
Not only did I like it when you punched that guy, I heard you
talking about the Dragons. I've seen the Dragons and
they're like what? He's like, yeah, I was in Karf.
I, I met Daenerys, you know, I've and and that is huge.
This is again, connective tissue between Targaryens.
Eamon hears this and he's like Princess that was promised.
It's not the Prince, it's the Princess.
He's so energized by this. He's like it, it all makes sense
now, all this thing, I've been thinking about this for decades
and it all make all because this summer Islander comes along and
gives him this missing clue that's so vital.
But of course, Maestra Eamon's energy level can't be
maintained. He's too old.
He gets sick again and he dies on the way from Bravos to Old
Town, right? Sam gives a speech about Eamon,
he gives his funeral speech. And Zondo is the first one to
respond. Quote.
The air was moist and warm and dead calm, and the cinnamon wind
was adrift upon a deep blue sea far beyond the sight of land.
Black Sam said good words, Zondo said.
Now we drink his life. He shouted something in the
summer tongue and a cask of spiced rum was rolled up onto
the after deck and breached so those on watch might down a cup
in the memory of the old blind dragon.
The crew had known him only a short while, but summer
Islanders revered the elderly and celebrated their dead.
The extra tidbit that they revered the elderly is just it
fits so well into the pastiche of revering life and revering
the experiences that any elderly person would have had.
That's a person that has a lot to tell you about.
They have lived a long life that is valuable, that should be
celebrated and of course follows that you celebrate the dead
rather than mourn you would be you would look at it positively.
That person had a good full life.
This person lived to be 102. You can't ask for more than
that. That's a win.
That's not a loss when they died 102.
That is a victory. That person lived a long time.
We should celebrate that. So I I respect this.
I appreciate that there's lots of cultures around the world
that look at funeral to try to make funerals a happy event, a
celebration rather than a morning.
And this is in the interplay here.
Sam is sad, he's crying. He's he's he's he misses Maester
Eamonn. And that's real, that's human,
but he's presented with an opposite view.
He's never seen this before. He he is one of the characters
we've seen at a funeral scene before at the nights watch, the
nights watch funeral. See, when they give the the man
who dies at Craster's and they give a a speech for him, like
where did he come from down White Harbor way?
It's very it's solemn. You know, it's nice, it's
dutiful, but there's not there's no real emotion in it.
No one's they're not sad or happy.
It's just like they just do it right.
It's a thing to be done, you know, and it's this is so
different than the way the summer islands are like they're
colorful and and and joyous and outspoken and positive and the
nights watcher quiet and dutiful and sullen and and it's very
much the meta here is George is mashing these two very opposite
things together in a place where they can't escape each other.
They're on a ship. They have to interact.
These two cultures must clash, right?
There is no culture that is more restrictive, more negative
towards sex, and less colorful than the Night's Watch, right?
They're all in black. They have no color.
They're against color. Mance Ray to put a little bit of
red in his cloak and I ragged. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no. You're going way too red.
Are you kidding me? This is absolutely not.
Shea had a great catch right before this episode.
In this quote, Zondo, a black man, calls Sam a white man black
Sam because of his clothes. It must look really weird to a
summer Islander. They are dressed in their
feather cloaks, their bright colors.
Like why would you wear all black?
That is boring as hell. Like what are you trying to
sneak in? Are you a criminal?
Are you trying to sneak in somewhere?
You know, like are you a night stalker?
Are you trying to look like a night stalker?
Is that what's up here? Yeah.
Like, compare this to, again, other examples, the Hoster Tully
boat funeral scene, which does have a little bit of Comic
Relief cause of Ed Muir being a bad bow shot, which that would
be a problem if the Summer Islanders needed archery at
their funerals. Well, it has comic problems,
but. It's not a celebration.
No, you're. Right.
It, it, it's, it's Comic Relief in a very sad moment like this
is to make it less sad because it's so sad.
Like, you don't need that here. They're drinking and happy and
partying. You don't need the, you know,
Sam is the the exception. He's sad and everybody else is
happy. So yeah, it, it doesn't come off
like a sad scene. It's, it's great.
Compare that to the Targaryen burnings or, or whatever.
Like, these are all very different.
Zondo's lover, as we said, is Koja MO.
Koja is also one of our cats. We have a cat named Koja.
We call her Koja MU. That's her full name.
Koja is the daughter of the captain Kahura MO and she is the
herself the captain of The Archers on the ship.
And as Ashaya pointed out earlier, the name or Dornish
Dame did. I suppose we both did.
You both did. You all did.
Yeah. Koja might mean born on the
island of Koja. It might be what that means, or
at least associated with it somehow.
And they're. Extra, you know, ship maker
Extra, you know, it makes sense, it really.
Does not only do summer Islanders celebrate life and and
and drink and suffering funerals, they specifically make
a point to go have sex after funerals or as part of a
celebration because that is the ultimate like spitting in the
face of death is to celebrate life, maybe even make a new life
right? But Sam and Gilly, they hook up
after the funeral and he feels guilty.
Koja takes care of their baby, baby Sam, baby.
Sorry, baby Amon Amon Battleborn so that they can hook up.
So that's why she's like, I'm going to take care of the baby
so you can go hook up. She's like, if I weren't taking
care of your baby right now, I'd be hooking up with Koro right
now. I mean, that's her father.
Oops. This is in Targaryens with Zondo
right now. So this is what this is Koja's
shutdown of Sam and me. Like look man, you're looking at
it the wrong way. After saying no.
You honored the gods that made you both when you hooked up.
That was honoring the gods. It's they.
This is a gift from them. This is what she says.
Quote. I love this.
All you Westerosi make a shame of loving.
There is no shame in loving if your septons say there is.
Your 7 gods must be demons in the aisles.
We know better. Our gods gave us legs to run
with, noses to smell, with hands to touch and feel.
What mad, cruel God would give a man eyes and tell him he must
forever keep them shut and never look at all the beauty in the
world? Only a monster God.
A demon of the darkness. Like the blind God, right?
We do have that in Westeros. Like that one, There's one, but
that one does sound kind of bad. So yeah, there her point is
made, right. What mad cool that one.
Of course, the Nights Watch are celibate in order to fight the
demons of the darkness, but is that really necessary?
Many ignore it anyway. Like GR Morman basically says as
much as I was like, yeah, we don't actually care.
We don't. We can't make it an
institutional OK, but like, lots of men go to moles town and I'm
not going to do anything about it.
My predecessor didn't do anything about it.
I doubt many Lord Commanders will do anything about it, and
they shouldn't. So again, the meta here is
really strong. George clearly made the Summer
Islander is extremely sex positive in order to be a foil
to the Nights Watch vows and then to again jam them together
here and have this great scene. It's not random, right?
It isn't just George made a sex positive culture and then left
it at that. No, the rest of the details
around this culture all fit, that they're all in line, they
all make sense. You can see how things come, how
one follows the other. And it's also again, a statement
on how these really isolated cultures can have very different
outcomes in their cultural development.
And I love that this is who Eamon dies amidst, right?
These are the people most in opposition to not just how the
way a Night's Watchman lives, but how the maesters live.
Eamon is the the guy who gave the love versus duty speech.
And here Sam receives a very different near polar, again,
solar opposite love versus duty speech from Koju.
That's basically what that was. He's basically saying your duty
is to love Gilly needs you. Don't be one of those men that
just like, gets all weird after sleeping with somebody.
Be, you know, be with her, accelerate, be joyous, don't be
weird, don't be awkward. Enjoy it.
You don't. Your culture is making you
giving you the wrong ideas. Here it is.
Summer versus winter. This is these are very much
opposites conceptually, but also the dictates of geography,
right? The summer Islanders are who
they are in part because they've never faced the Others or
winters that will kill you. It's not the only reason, but if
those things existed in their culture, you could be sure that
things would be different in some ways.
In addition to the rich cultural world building and the culture
clash of the scenes on the Cinnamon wind that just it all
just fits together so expertly. George is at his best here.
It's also we get some just regular demonstration of of how
the Swan ships are so successful.
Not one but two attempts are made on them while they're
sailing. We we do get 2 chapters of
sailing so it makes sense the first one isn't something we
see, we just hear about it after the fact.
Sam is just thinking about he's like, I'm impressed.
Those golden heart bows, he's like, I was trying to fire 1 and
I don't think my arrows got far enough.
But Koji and her crew killed like a dozen Stepstone pirates
when one ship or a couple ships came at them.
And then they gave up and he keeps working at it and they get
another attempt. When the Cinnamon Wind is close
to Old Town. They see evidence of Euron's
piracy. They don't know it's Euron.
We do, and some Ironborn emerge to challenge them ignorantly.
Quote. Thrice long ships were sighted
by the crow's nest. Two were well astern, however,
and the cinnamon wind soon out distance them.
The third appeared near sunset to cut them off from whispering
sound when they saw her oars rising and falling, lashing the
copper waters. White Kojimo sent her Archers to
the castles with their great bows of golden heart that could
send a shaft farther and truer than even dornish Ute She waited
till the long ship came within 200 yards before she gave the
command to loose. Sam loosed with them, and this
time he thought his arrow reached the ship.
One volley was all it took. A long ship veered South in
search of tamer prey. There's also another bit of meta
here that Sam is becoming more of a man, more of a whole person
in this little bit of time that he spent with the Summer
Islanders than he did and his entire life on the wall, let
alone living with his family, who are even worse because this
is where he learned to really love.
And this is where he learned to like work.
Like all that time on the wall, all that work in there.
He didn't get in this good a shape.
He was never this good with a bow.
Remember, he was like a joke with the bow when he was being
taught by them. But here he learns how to do it
because they're really good at it.
And they probably weren't laughing at him in between.
He probably got they probably better at like teaching him with
confidence without mocking. Right.
So a lot going on here. Sam, his, his upbringing, just
like two chapters on the cinnamon wind did more for his
upbringing than all his life with his parents and all his
time in the nights Watch. That's huge.
This is a big part of of what George is doing here.
So Euron's men right there, very emboldened by what's happening
there. He his leadership is, is giving
them a lot of confidence. A more experienced Ironborn
captain wouldn't have even tried this, right?
They know swanships like this isn't news to them.
They've the swanships have been around for centuries, if not
thousands of years. The Ironborn have been dealing
with the Summer Isles for thousands of years.
They know better. So this might have been some guy
who was just like, all right, I'm excited.
I'm going to try something that isn't usually done or a guy that
just didn't know better because he's, you know, some new, some
rookie captain promoted under Euron's new authority here.
And so like a green guy, he's like, oh, never mind.
Bullies will be bullies, right? That's what happened here.
As soon as one volley was all it took.
And they're like, never mind, unless we'll find somebody that
doesn't have arrows that can fly 400 yards.
So it's in between these two pirate attacks, the one in the
step stones and Euron, well, it's not Euron, but Euron's men.
That's when Maestra Amon passes. And of course they can't do a
fiery burial. They can't do a, a, a funeral
pyre on a ship. But they do this cask corpse
compromise where Eamon's body is stuffed in the cask of rum.
April Tyndall says they drank Eamon.
His body was in the barrel they were drinking from.
They don't say drink to life. They drank his life literally.
I'm not sure that's what happened.
They definitely put his body in the rum.
I'm not sure they put the body. I think they rolled the body
out. They celebrated his life.
I think they put the body in after that, not before, but it
either. But it is more fun to think that
they actually drank. It reminds us of of the time
where where Dollar said said he drank.
He's like you drank the wine that your brother died in.
He's like, well, it was good wine.
Like I don't want to waste it. You know, it's the same thing.
This is good rum. You know, Black Balak.
He is the commander of the 1000 strong Archer core and the
Golden Company 1000 out of 10,000.
So they have a full 10th of their army is Archers.
But only fifty of those 1000 are summer Islanders wielding golden
heart bows, which goes to show it's rare.
But also like, he's the leader. Like it figures that a guy from
an archery society would rise to the top of a merit based company
where, yeah, the the the guys who were the best to rise to.
I mean, not only is he probably among the best actual Archers,
he has a golden heart bow himself, which means he's also
one of the best equipped as far as summer Islanders looking
colorful as a standard, which is what we've come to expect.
Black Balak is far more so because he combines the somewhat
standard splendor of a summer Islander with the quote UN quote
rude splendor of the Golden Company, which is that sell
swords carry much of their wealth on their person because
where else are they going to put it right?
It it shows off how successful they are and it keeps it safe.
Like they have arm ring, the golden arm rings, one for each
year in the company Black Palak. His his beard is whitened.
He's he's older. He's at least in his 40s,
probably got a lot of golden arm rings to go with his feathered
cloak and his whatever other gems and rings and wealth he's
carrying on his by this is a very, very shiny blinged out
guy, but also not a man to mess with high up high officer.
He's among the inner circle. We see him meeting with nine
other eight other officers like the the top of the top of the
golden company. Now he's a good example of how
the Golden Company used to be a Westerosi thing, but over time
they've evolved and even the officers are not all Westerosi
anymore. He's not even the only one.
There's Goris Sidorian and Lysone Omar who are Valentine
and Lyseny respectively, and of course all the Captain Captain
generals of the Golden Company. To date, it's still all been
Westerosi, but that may not stick either over time.
So this is a man we'll see again.
We already saw him in action at Griffin's Roost, helped taking
shooting some dudes off the wall.
There wasn't much of A defense mounted, but The Archers did
their job. The the maester tried to send
Ravens off to Warren and well, Black Balak and his men took
those Ravens down too. So they really did their job
quite well. And we'll probably see that
again now, maybe in some battles, certainly to come.
Tal Torak kind of rhymes a little bit with Black Balak.
When Danny frees the slaves in Marine, she forms a cell sword
company out of freed slaves, guys who want to be in this
company. The first leader is a man named
Milano Yoss Daub, who is described as more of a scribe
than a warrior, but still a competent and formidable guy.
But he dies of the Pale Mirror, and he's replaced by Tal Torak,
who is a summer Islander, and he's seen giving advice at the
War Council when they're under siege.
He and his men, the Stalwart Shields, gather at the Eastgate
when Bereson is getting ready to do his charge in The Winds of
Winter. We don't actually hear what
happens with them, because the charge happens in Bereson's
second T Willow chapter, but he's out in the field.
He doesn't know what's happening on the other side of the
battlefield, so presumably they're doing something.
We'll find out more later. Shataya and Aliyaya.
Shataya is an extremely graceful and disciplined business woman.
She's the very picture of the upscale Madam.
She has a feathered gown too. Not a cloak, but a gown.
So yeah, this is I guess that's the feminine version of the
feathered cloak. Maybe is the gown or maybe the
women wear cloaks too. I don't know.
Women wear cloaks, so no reason why she couldn't have that also.
But it goes to show that there are other garments that they use
these bright colored feathers on.
She owns one of the most high end brothels in King's Landing
on the Street of Silk. Recall that early on, Bron is
like not even allowed in. I'm like Nah, you're you're too
low end for this place. But he becomes a knight and a
hero of the Blackwater. Next thing you know he's in bed
with two of the women from there.
And yeah, you have to be rich to even go in, let alone afford it.
Now sex work is something we could expect the Summer
Islanders to have a big leg up on given all the cultural
attitudes towards it, and perhaps skill is a big part of
it as well. But a foreign born operator is
going to face challenges from the culture she resides in.
Their views towards sex are going to be the predominant
view, not hers. So it gives her perspective on
both of these worlds really. And she thinks sex is a gift
from the gods and was she was raised to believe that but
Westerosi don't. But they sure are willing to pay
for it and there's a lot of bank for her.
Speaking of willing to pay, it's Shatia's brothel that Tyrion
pays huge amounts to, to pretend to sleep with Aliyaya, who is
Shatia's daughter, so he can take the secret passage to
instead see Shay. Now, of course, this secret
tunnel's been there since maybe the time of Tywin.
Tywin is the most popular theory for who built that tunnel.
And he may even be the father of what is it, Murray or Dancy, one
of the two girls there? Certainly not Aliyah.
Yeah. So Cersei finds out about this
part of it and thinks to threaten Aliyah, thinking he's
threatening Tom, Tyrion's lover. Tyrion is still very upset by
this and threatens to do to Tom and whatever has done to her,
which actually restrains Cersei. But Tywin finds out and is very
very disappointed in this whole thing and has Alyaya whipped
anyway. She still doesn't snitch or
anything and heals up. It's her back is permanently
scarred but she goes back to work.
She was born in King's Landing, so we don't know if she's ever
even been to the Summer Isles. Likely her mother raised her
with some Summer Islander values, but if she did wasn't
raised there that would certainly be.
There'd be a lot of Westeros in her as well.
In terms of her upbringing, we don't know who her father was,
that's he's not mentioned at all, but she looks like her
mother. So yeah.
Anyway, Angai won the hands tournament, archery.
He was, you know, he beat out Jala Bargeau and Baylin Swan,
won a ton of money there and blew most of it at Chatais,
including with Aliyaya. Braun, like I said, also paid
for Aliyaya and so did Obra and Martel.
Just just, she's just a very popular choice.
Robert, of course, loved the place, which means, yeah, he had
bastards there. This is where Cersei targeted
her bastard, his bastard Barra. That was an ugly scene.
Shataya was grateful to Tyrion when he had Al Ardeem killed and
had Slint sent to the Wall because those were the two
people who came in and and did The Dirty work.
That wasn't good. So yeah, Littlefinger himself,
of course, is a major brothel owner, The biggest brothel owner
in King's Landing probably actually compliments Shatayas
and says she runs a, well, a fine establishment over there.
I thought about buying it. What A twist that would be.
Littlefinger owning the brothel with the secret tunnel that
leads near the Red Keep. Whoa, can't have him owning
that, can we? I'm not sure the tunnel even
matters anymore. Nina and I were discussing this
one like the Tower of the Hand was burned down.
So but the tunnel didn't lead directly into the tower.
It led to a stable right next to it.
The stable might have been destroyed too, but maybe not so
that it might be a dead end now that tunnel, but it might not
be. So it's it's kind of an open
question. Quote of the Week are somewhat
new feature where I bring you some of my favorite quotes from
other books and give you an opportunity to perhaps pick this
story up yourself. Here's the quote.
There is time enough to be lost in the majesty and to remember
nature did not provide this with her careless hand.
My race of mortals carved this paradise from irradiated rock
and violent gas by channelling the greatest virtues of all men
in common cause. A patriotic pride that I did not
know I possessed fills me. The same blood flows through my
veins as the man who sent the last of the Lovelock engines and
storm gods here. But the zeal evaporates as soon
as I realize I do not belong to the age of giants who made this,
but to a smaller, meaner age where men think war the height
of human endeavour. I laugh at the cosmic joke only
humanity could grasp the stars and then let them slip through
its fingers for the pettiness in its heart.
But I feel hope. That pettiness defined my
grandmother's age. It may yet not define ours.
That is from Dark Age book 4 of Red Rising by Pierce Brown.
Red Rising is my favorite series since The Expanse, and it's got
one more book before being complete that should be out next
year, according to Pierce Brown. And he's under 40, a hungry
young author. It's his first series.
And so I think it won't be delayed a long time like some of
these other novels in their final books, our series in their
final books. So this is book 4.
So it's a while to get to that. I hope you're inspired by this
quote. I'll probably throw a few more
quotes from the series here and there over the coming months
because I love it so much. But yeah, Dark Age, Red Rising
and if you want to get involved, get book 1.
You can get it through our website historywesteros.com,
either through audible format on audible through Amazon, or just
buy the book regular and and read it analog style.
Few other characters that I think are worth mentioning,
people with Summer Islander heritage, Brown Ben Plum, he
claims to have amongst the many ethnicities in his background.
Summer Islander is one of them. Tyrion notes that when they're
attacked by stone men at the Bridge of Dream, one of the ones
that almost gets Young Griff was a Summer Islander.
There are summer Islanders in the brave companions?
Unsure how many, probably maybe none now since the Brave
Companions isn't really a a functional unit anymore.
We see one fighting at Daznak's pit.
He fights Kraz, loses cause of course Kraz is later killed by
Barristan outside of the pit. Sorella Sand and her mother, of
course. Sorella is presented as Alaris
at in the Feast for Crows prologue.
She's the 4th daughter of Oberyn.
Her mother is the captain of a ship called the Feathered Kiss,
which is presumably a swan ship. Safe guess, right?
Let's not forget how close Old Town is.
As we discussed earlier. Relatively speaking to Wilano,
decent chance that's where Alaris's mother is from.
Sorella's mother from Wilano, but she could be from Koge or OR
Jala or Umburu anywhere. And in the opening chapter of A
Feast for Crows and Pate's prologue, Alaris is seen
shooting arrows at apples with a golden hard bow.
She puts it away and it's nice case afterwards and they kind of
admire it for a minute. And how really Pate's like
Notice thinks about how hard it is to draw and how Alaris must
be stronger than she looks because bows, you know, it's
hard to do that. But Alaris was probably drawn a
bow since a very young age, given her mother.
And yeah, you got to believe that any merchant Summer
Islander is going to have skill with a bow, or at least basic
training in one. Because can I say.
Something. It's everything.
Yeah, I think. The answer to how you should
refer to Sorella is to use gender neutral pronouns to say
they because. You're constantly.
Referring to man and woman. I think that's what should be a
good rule of thumb. Yeah, you're right.
Cuz yeah, cuz she's in disguise as a man and that's how she
goes. They're in.
Disguise as a man. Yeah, True.
Yeah, you're right. That makes that makes good
sense. It's true.
And that's it. That is our final character to
mention. As I've said a few times, maybe
we'll see someone flee or retire there.
The cinnamon wind, though, could absolutely be heard from again
when Marwin decides he's leaving.
Almost. Immediately after meeting Sam,
he says this quote. What will you do?
Asked. Alaris the Sphinx, get myself to
Slaver's Bay in Eamon's place. The swanship that delivered
Slayer should serve my needs well enough.
The Gray sheep will send their man on a galley.
I don't doubt with Fairwinds I should reach her first, but do.
They want to go, I mean, he can't just be like, yo, take me
to Slaver's Bay. Like they have to want to go
there. They have to like, can he pay
for it? Like, I don't know that they
want to go there. It's a war zone.
Even if he pays, they've seen Danny once.
I mean, they have other things to do.
They're not just at Marwin's beck and call, obviously.
So he may have to find another way to get there.
And I'm not convinced that the cinnamon wind is the is the
guaranteed to be the option. It could be, though, which is
why we have to consider it. But Marwin doesn't appear in
Quait's vision as one of the people coming to her, to Danny.
You know, it's, you know, the Kraken and Dark flame, you know,
Sun, Sun and Griffin. There's no Marwin.
There's no, you know, Bulldog Maester, you know, chained
Bulldog. Whatever you would call him.
I don't know what you would call him.
He kind of looks like a bulldog is the point being.
But either way, he's not in there.
So that doesn't necessarily it doesn't mean she won't encounter
Marwin or the Cinnamon win, but maybe not based on this quote.
One final thought I have here. The Sea Snake Show is a strong
possibility for us to explore more of the world.
Any show involving the Summer Isles has that potential as
well. It can reveal more of the world
than most perspectives. Like any show featuring either
Corliss, Valerian or the Summer Islanders or both is going to be
a show that has a lot of exploration and a lot of places
to go. Why not have Corlee's have
Summer Islanders on his crew men with great experience in places
he hasn't even been to makes a lot of sense to have people with
that experience amongst your your people yeah the if you're
if you want experienced seaman get the most experienced people
in the world makes sense right. I would love for this E Snake
show to have that. We've talked about this.
We've used this comparison before to have like a Star Trek
the Next Generation vibe where they just go from place to place
and getting in adventures and exploring these cultures.
And yeah, the crew of this ship as well, though you could have a
diverse crew on the sea Snake the ship, because it's also the
name of the ship where you've got Westerosi Summer Islanders,
Valentin's, Lyseny, just you would have a lot of, you know, a
melting pot that could just be really cool.
Variety of stories, a variety of backgrounds, just lots of
options for different stories. At first, when Corlise on the TV
show on House of Dragon was black, we wondered if that was
maybe a Summer Islander Islands heritage thing.
They never really explored that, which is fine.
Maybe they will eventually, but they might one day, especially
if they do the show, they may get into that, I think.
Technically they said something out of world that it precludes
that being the case, but I still think that's my head cannon and
I would prefer that. And I don't think that some
offhand comment from a writer or whatever necessarily has to mean
that this show should be hamstrung by that.
You know what I mean? So I, I, I really like the idea
that the Valarians who are seafaring people married into
another seafaring people. It makes so much.
Sense they're wealthy they'd be trade back and forth between the
cultures yeah I mean and the Valarians were the naval leaders
of the Targaryen vassals or whatever.
Yeah that's it's a connection that makes some sense.
So it's possible but definitely not established.
They flipped Zarozo and Daxus actually wrote Zarozo and Davos
on in the document here and Speaking of seafarers.
But yeah he was Carthene in the books.
They made him a summer Islander in the show.
They also identified Grey Worm as from the summer islands in
the books. We don't know where Grey Worm is
from His background is specifically not unidentified
and George even said I haven't had a reason to come up with a
back story for him yet but maybe one day I will so it shouldn't
need to be said though that planet toast has a wide variety
of skin tones and we shouldn't just be thinking black must mean
from the summer Isles. But it's a possibility whenever
you see that if we don't have an explicit name if we don't know
where they're from. It's a valid guess but it's a
guess not an automatic because there's more possibilities.
Sir Tony sled says summer owls would be a nice place to hide
people like Danny and viserys. That would have been an
interesting place for them to hide rather than an Essos.
Yeah. I mean, the the the few white
people in the summer islands might stand out, but to who?
Only to other summer islands. We're going to do is sail North
and tell everyone. Yeah, yeah, you.
Would have to have a betrayal from within, you know, But one
day you like, I just really like that alternate universe idea of
like Danny raised down there. That would have been cool.
Summer Island, OR. Marriage you.
I don't know, it's just interesting.
Yeah, it's just. Totally makes sense.
Yeah, it is like, well, they stand out with their silver
hair, but they do that anywhere. Their silver hair and their
purple eyes. I mean that there's plenty of
silver haired, purple eyed people in Essos.
Maybe that was the thinking to to vanish amongst them.
But they didn't, Yeah, they didn't actually.
Hide them? Really.
No. They weren't like in a group of
other Valyrian looking people. They were by themselves with
like Edelerios, you know. Yeah.
Guilt. Gendertaker says African
kingdoms did some of the same things when colonialism was
happening. They would sell their enemies to
European slavery as well or to Arab slavery.
Yeah. So this is a real world thing,
getting rid of your getting rid of your getting rid of enemies
who share your own cultural heritage in a, in a really gross
way by selling them to to foreign slavers.
But it's a it's it's happened. Yeah.
It isn't just a, it isn't just an American thing, that's for
sure. Slavery's old and old and old
and it gets more and more stories.
That's just terrifying. Lady Bayla says regarding Sam
and archery, especially as archery's on the Tarly sigil.
So having him get good at that makes a lot of yeah, that's
true. Having him get getting into his
Huntsman background, his Huntsman ancestry.
Right. Great catch.
Very good, very good response. From Cyclops is better than
Wolverine said well Emma frost is better than Jean and Scott my
response to them was Madeline Pryor is better than them all
and they agreed so all right there's our X-Men chat for y'all
I cosplayed Maddie, Pryor and Jean very well I.
Might add that's a good compromise right there.
See, everyone getting gets along.
Scattered Minds from the Scattered Minds show says.
Loving this topic as a black fan.
This is diversity done well, real and natural, not forced.
George R Martin is a genius. Cool.
Glad to hear from you. Thanks.
Scattered Minds. Yeah.
I'm always a little nervous when I'm talking about things like
this. I'm like, I hope I did this
reasonably well. I'm for.
You're referring to George, not me.
But you didn't say I did anything wrong, so I guess I
did. OK, trivia answer.
Let's give that one. In this episode we learn Golden
Heart is the second best material for Bo's only dragon
bone is superior who is the only person in this series we see use
a dragon bone Bo AGO. Danny's blood rider.
He uses it really well. He saves her life at least once.
He shoots Kahala or one of the two.
One of maybe not Kahala, but one of the blood riders of of Drogo.
When Drogo's blood riders fight Danny's blood riders, she's
almost killed by one of them and it's AGO who shoots him at the
last second. So yeah, that AGO is valuable.
And that dragon bone bow is a gift from her.
So he is well equipped. I really wonder what his maximum
range is. Want to see him really use that
thing to its greatest effect? Might be one day.
We'll see that. Certainly we didn't get much
Blood Rider action on the TV show, so more of them is to be
hoped for, as well as more from the Summer Islanders in the
books coming forward, going forward.
Rather, we mentioned a lot of episodes that relate to this
one. We have a Sun Chaser episode.
If you want more about exploration and more to follow
up on that story, check that one out.
Nymeria series, especially the second one, is where the Summer
Islanders come up in it. Our episode on Old Gifts, our
episodes, our episodes on Valyria touch on a lot of these
things. We have an episode on the
Basilisk Isles. We have an episode on Nath, we
have an episode on Egg on the 4th which talks about the Black
Pearl, We have multiple episodes on the 9 Penny Kings where you
can hear about the Ebon Prince. We have episodes on Lomas
Longstrider in the Wonders of the World which also touch on a
Tall Trees Town and a few other things like that.
There are certainly more episodes that involve Summer
Islanders that I didn't mention, but that is a very good place to
start that list of 10 or so that I just gave you.
Thanks again to Nina. Check out Good Queen Alley for
more of her great takes. Thanks to Joey Townsend for our
great intro music. Thanks to Michael Klarfeld for
the video intro and the maps you see behind me.
You can find him at KLARADO x.de.
That's claradox.de. On behalf of Ashea, we'll see
you next time and you know what to do.
Valerie Ritas.