#asoiaf analysis
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Targaryens: Infamous End Inevitable.
This entire discourse on Jaehaera is so laughably absurd. I love my Green characters, but I couldn't care less what the show does with Jaehaera's arc. Team Black loves to remind everyone that Rhaenyra's lineage survived while Team Green's perished. That is true... BUT not only did her sons separate themselves from their mother's legacy to keep the Lords happy, but they did nothing to elevate her name in any way after their supposed 'win'. Their mother's 'usurper' was perceived as the legitimate ruler while she was branded a traitor. Rhaenyra's legacy was so badly tarnished that even after her lineage lived on, no Targaryen descendent carried her name, despite the House's tendency of reusing names.
For me, the Dance tells the story of how House Targaryen ruined itself. They put their most powerful assets (Dragons) all in at once... only to become extinct in just over a century, while the other noble houses had been ruling Westeros for millennia. It doesn't matter whose line survives - if this doesn't make sense to you, then you are not intelligent enough to engage with any form of media. I'm content with the way things ended because ultimately, no one is triumphant.
Even if Jaehaera lives, her line still loses since it was Viserys II's line that eventually took over. No matter who ends up reigning, HOUSE TARGARYEN WILL BE DEAD! The last survivor of the house (barring Jon Snow) will make sure its legacy would be one of infamy. It will linger in Westeros like the Mussolini's monument, forever infamous.
Even if the books attempt to alter Dany's storyline, it would be idiotic to expect a Targaryen restoration. To those who foolishly believe that the books will be rewritten and the Targaryens will once again sit on the Iron Throne, then I've got a bridge in Pyongyang I'm looking to unload.
#jaehaera targaryen#aegon ii targaryen#team green#hotd discourse#hotd fandom#the dance of the dragons#aegon iii targaryen#aegon iii x jaehaera#alicent hightower#otto hightower#house hightower#helaena taragryen#aemond targaryen#fandom discourse#hotd discussion#asoiaf analysis#house targaryen#rhaenyra targaryen#jon snow#anti daenerys targaryen#team black#daemon targeryan#viserys iii targaryen#hotd spoilers#hotd#daeron targaryen#house of the dragon
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It's no secret that the Red Temple of Volantis, and the vast majority of the R'hllorists in Essos, are considering Dany to be Azor Ahai reborn.
And it's equally no secret that Melisandre is off making a splinter sect of her own—rather than agree with the Dany-as-messiah hegemony, she's set her sights on Stannis Baratheon.
But these separate sects—and their potential—take on ever more meaning with the biblical parallels of their respective figureheads.
Dany has a series of paralleled images with Moses, if not wholly chronologically aligned: leading her people away from slavery, leading her people through a desert, communing with a magical fire and returning with a deified presence. I believe, in fact, that in the sense of this parallel she's in the middle of her trip to the top of Sinai, where some her followers believe her dead and begin to follow a false god leader in her absence.
So the Essosi branch of R'hllorism has this figurehead who is heavily paralleled with Moses...
and then Jon, then, for his part, is a heavy-handed Jesus figure, as we all know, with his betrayal and death at the hands of his brothers, his close allies with those who society rejects (Sam the effeminate scholar and Satin the prostitute), who is the de facto "king" of a refugee minority (the Wildlings) and who will be resurrected to return as a deity in truth.
The truth of Jon's return has the possibility to unite the two major factions of R'hllorists in Westeros. There's the small sect which is the Brotherhood Without Banners, or at least those not following Stoneheart, because the majority of their faith was earned through the proof of resurrection (of Beric) and who might follow another leader if he, too, seemed chosen by R'hllor (and was not as creepy or vengeful as LSH). Then there is the slightly larger sect which is Stannis' host and the Queen's Men in particular, who follow Melisandre's lead and believe in Stannis as Azor Ahai. If Melisandre changed her opinion for whatever reason—perhaps also through the "proof" of divine intervention via resurrection, then she and her followers, too, might follow Jon in the "cult of resurrection" so to speak.
Which would give us a geopolitical religious split along R'hllorist belief in who exactly is Azor Ahai, the Essosi sect believing that it's Dany, slave-freeing Moses-figure, and the Westerosi sect believing that it's Jon, resurrected king Jesus-figure.
Of course all of this comes with the caveat that Dany has her own Jesus parallels (wise men visiting her, "born" under a star) and Jon has his own Moses parallels, and of course that Jesus and Moses have plenty of parallels even themselves. I mean their status as major messiah figures is probably more nuanced than Moses/Jesus but it does make for an interesting divide. Not sure what it all means, to be honest, beyond noticing it.
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Okay, I know that I’m most likely gonna sound like a boomer, but hear me out:
Today’s HotD fans are a perfect example to me of what is wrong with a large proportion of modern audiences and the way people consume pop culture and media in general.
Ever since the premiere of the Season 1, I am becoming convinced that going beyond black-and-white perspective is… well, beyond capabilities of a growing number of folks out there.
Like, to so many of them it is either Team Black or Team Green.
Either Rhaenyra or Alicent. Or either Rhaenyra or Aegon. Either Daemon or Aemond. Either the Targaryens & the Velaryons or the Hightowers. Et cetera.
And once someone leans more to one side of the story, they just seem to idealize their team and completely demonize the other. Once you love Rhaenyra, she becomes the perfect heir, progressive and feminist, and Alicent becomes a cruel, back-stabbing b*tch and servant of patriarchy. And vice versa, once you prefer Alicent, she is a 100% victim of her circumstances with no agency whatsoever and Rhaenyra becomes a spoiled b*tch who is unable to make anything good out of her opportunities.
And it’s just so beyond the point for me.
People, this is not some football match where you pick your team and wish all the worst to the other.
It’s a fictional historical fantasy chronicle about a downfall of one of the greatest houses in the history of this universe. Nobody here is perfect to rule; in fact, every faction here is in one way or another bad and makes decisions that are just incompetent.
The whole point of George R.R. Martin writing about the Dance of Dragons story is to ask the question:
What happens when among all the heirs to choose from, none of them is good?
And let’s finally stick to that.
#hotd#house of the dragon#team black#team green#rhaenyra targaryen#alicent hightower#daemon targaryen#aemond targaryen#asoiaf#pre asoiaf#black-and-white thinking#lack of nuance#c’mon people it’s George R.R. Martin what were you expecting#hotd fans#hotd comment#hotd commentary#asoiaf analysis#house targaryen#house hightower
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I feel like people fundamentally misunderstand many of Catelyn and her “stupid choices”. Cat often does the right thing, but as a woman in Westerosi society, she simply does not have the power needed to back up those actions in a way that matters. Therefore, her plans don’t work.
If Catelyn had men of her own and the benefit of the doubt as a Lord when she apprehended Tyrion, she would have likely been able to question him before running off to Vale and as such Tyrion wouldn’t have been at the mercy of Lysa’s whims. Even if he was, as a Lord instead of a Lady, he would have been seen as Cat’s prisoner, not Lysa’s.
Her decision to release Jaime and trade him for Sansa and Arya would have worked if as a man and Lord she could override Robb’s word, and have men of her own escort Jaime south.
Catelyn was of course right not to allow Theon to go back home and parley (he is a hostage during war time) and again, if she were a Lord and not a Lady she could overrule Robb’s choice to let him go.
She likely would not have allowed Edmure to run off to battle, and as such Tywin likely would have fallen into Robb’s trap.
She wouldn’t have allowed Robb to forsake his vow to marry a Frey, just to marry Jeyne Westerling instead. Thus avoiding the Red Wedding.
If Catelyn were a Lord, and consequently had more power and control, a lot of her “bad decisions” wouldn’t end up being bad decisions at all, but “cautious strategic thinking”.
#catelyn stark#asoiaf#catelyn tully#asoiaf thoughts#robb stark#edmure tully#eddard stark#asoiaf analysis
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I'm sure this has probably already been pointed out, but it's interesting to think about the historically significant Targaryens who had the same name or a similar name to Daenerys.
Daenys the Dreamer - Saved all of House Targaryen from the Doom with her prophetic vision. A woman whose dreams came true. Could be argued is the very foundation of House Targaryen even more so than Aegon I because Aegon could have never conquered the Seven Kingdom if his ancestors were wiped out by the Doom.
Princess Daenerys Targaryen I - Firstborn daughter of Queen Alysanne and King Jaehaerys. Early walker, talker, and reader. A lively, laughing child, often mud-spattered and grass-stained. She died young, but Alysanne fought for her to become Jaehaerys' heir over her younger brother Aemon and to rule as Queen in her own right.
Princess Daenerys Targaryen II - Daughter of King Aegon the Unworthy and Queen Naerys. The Daenerys that our Dany is named after. Born 19 years after her older brother. Mother was trapped in an abusive, unloving marriage. Said to have loved Daemon Blackfyre but set aside her personal desires for duty to marry Maron Martell to further solidify peace with Dorne. Began the tradition of opening the Water Gardens to the common children of the palace. And was remembered mainly for her compassion.
You can say that this naming convention is just a little easter egg that was included by George simply to create literary parallels to our Dany and that's probably true. But it feels like George is subtly hinting that Dany has been this figure whose birth has been heralded for centuries.
You can see little echos of her story in other Danys throughout history. And now, in THIS incarnation as Daenerys Stormborn, she is all those Danys and more. She is the wide-eyed, clever, grass-stained young girl learning to become a Queen in the Dorthraki Sea. She is the Dany who was born from an abusive loveless marriage but still became a compassionate leader even though it meant making personal sacrifices (including entering a politically advantage marriage) of her own. A woman whose dreams come true and who rules in her own right. Daenys the Dreamer and Aegon I.
#asoiaf#asoiaf meta#asoiaf analysis#house targaryen#awoiaf#a world of ice and fire#fire and blood#daenerys targaryen#daenerys meta#daenerys targaryen meta#a song of ice and fire
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WHY SELYSE FLORENT SHOULD BE QUEEN OF WESTEROS WITH TEXTUAL PROOF
It is once again time to recline and ponder the many gifts of Queen Selyse Florent. Over the course of five books, what other character has had such an illustrious career so full of achievement or lived a life so dazzling and rewarding? As the fiscal year draws to a close we can see that so much of Westeros owes thanks to Selyse and House Florent for keeping it real and being classy and lots of other stuff. You may think the Tyrells are smart and competent but that’s just fraudulent fraud from Highgarden.
I want to post of a few key passages that best demonstrate why Selyse Florent, mother of foxes, is so well-suited to the title of Queen.
1.
”Yes,” Lady Selyse agreed. “Patches’s helm. It suits you well, old man. Put it on again, I command you.”
And I will serve you to the last, my sweet queen, Cressen thought, for suddenly he saw the way. “Thank you, Your Grace,” he intoned, bowing low. “I never realized until now how much I needed your discerning and fashionable eye. This helm enhances my style very much and I never would have had the confidence to express myself without you.”
2.
”Joffrey shall die,” Queen Selyse declared, serene in her confidence. Davis saw that her confidence was well-earned, with her regal poise and her flawless hair. He suddenly felt ashamed for being such a hater and decided that from now on, he would obey her without question.
3.
Queen Selyse pursed her lips. “Lord Snow, as Lady Val is a stranger to our ways, please send her to me, that I might instruct her in the duties of a noble lady toward her lord husband.”
That will go splendidly, I know. Jon knew that Val looked up to Queen Selyse and was always hoping to have her be a mentor figure. “As you wish,” he said, “though if I might speak freely—”
“No, I think not. Now you may sashay away.”
Jon Snow bent his knee, bowed his head, withdrew. He knew that Selyse shouldn’t be disturbed because she was about to go give away free cars to a bunch of her fans.
#asoiaf#a song of ice and fire#grrm#george rr martin#house florent#selyse florent#asoiaf analysis#the iron throne#westeros#stannis baratheon#jon snow#davos seaworth#asoiaf predictions#joffrey baratheon#sashay away#mother of foxes#selyse florent the prairie beauty#florys the fox#brightwater keep#house florent of brightwater keep#house florent of king’s landing#house florent of highgarden
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Davos Seaworth: A Lifetime of Smuggling
An aspect of Davos' backstory which I do not believe I have seen discussed much, likely because to my knowledge it appears to have only been brought up fairly briefly, is the age of which Davos first became involved in illegal smuggling and the potential implications of this own his character, backstory and general morality.
The first time he had seen the Wall he had been younger than Devan, serving aboard the Cobblecat under Roro Uhoris, a Tyroshi known up and down the narrow sea as the Blind Bastard, though he was neither blind nor baseborn. Roro had sailed past Skagos into the Shivering Sea, visiting a hundred little coves that had never seen a trading ship before. He brought steel; swords, axes, helms, good chainmail hauberks, to trade for furs, ivory, amber, and obsidian.
Here Davos is shown reflecting on his experiences while serving upon the Cobblecat, which was the first ship he served on, and notes he saw the wall during this time and was "younger than Devan" at this point.
“My son is not quite twelve. I am the King’s Hand. Give me another letter, if you would.”
In this same chapter, Davos remarks that Devan is "not quite twelve", therefore indicating that Davos was presumably no older than eleven himself (at the maximin) when he first joined the crew of the Cobblecat. We do not know much of Davos' childhood prior to this, but it is known that he grew up in Flea Bottom which is the poorest slum of King's Landing.
The HBO show does state he is a "Crabber's son" (for the record though I have only ever seen clips of the show) but this does not appear to be mentioned anywhere in the books. Instead we get this;
“That may be so,” Davos said, “but when I was a boy in Flea Bottom begging for a copper, sometimes the septons would feed me.”
So we know young Davos was a beggar, so likely not from a family with any stable employment or means to support themselves. When Davos' family is brought up, only his wife and sons are mentioned. He is never alluded to having living parents, siblings, cousins etc. Given his family-oriented nature, one might also expect he'd be at least a bit guilty if he had abandoned any family to join the Cobblecat's crew (although granted it has been decades). So while I do not think its outright stated that Davos is an orphan, it seems likely.
I feel the reason why this might be important to note, and why it might have some notable implications, is because it shows how and why Davos became involved in smuggling in the first place. One criticism I have seen of Davos' character a few times is that he does not necessarily feel like the type of man who'd break the law for profit for many years, as he is one of the most morally upright and honest characters in ASOIAF.
While I do think these criticisms have some merit, I also think that there is nothing about being a criminal which necessarily means Davos would prevent Davos from being a generally moral man. This is especially the case in Westeros, which is a highly stratified feudal society where the commons have little protection or upward morbility.
On this same note; there is also another thing worth mentioning when considering the time Davos become a smuggler... the tenure of Tywin Lannister as Hand of the King.
A Wiki of Ice and Fire calculates Davos' birthdate as being no later than 260, although notes that Davos was likely born a few years earlier. Tywin was Aerys' hand from 262–281 AC, and one of his famed actions is removing the pro-smallfolk reforms. I've seen this theorised as contributing to the eventual rise of the Kingswood Brotherhood and their initial popularity with the smallfolk.
So judging by what we know; Davos was born into extreme poverty in a society in which distinctions between classes are part of the law, and likely grew up during a time where the rights and conditions of commoners were being taken away and decreased.
I do not mean to claim Davos is free of fault; he has cheated on his life, he associates with morally ambiguous folk such as Salladhor Saan (A pirate who has no scruples with pillaging innocent civilians) or Stannis Baratheon (a very fascinating character as well).
But I do think this history and context could be worth noting to inform how Davos grew up, and how he is the man that he is. He got into smuggling when he was young enough to possibly not fully grasp the implication of this, and likely continued all those years because smuggling was his main skill-set to support himself, and later his family.
Transitioning to being a legitimate merchant would likely carry a number of obstacles; having to explain where he gained his wealth and cargo he'd have to sell at first, paying tariffs, making himself more well-known to authorities which could risk his old crimes being uncovered and making it easier to arrest him for them. I do not think it is a contradiction between Davos generally being good-natured, but also continuing to do the (dishonest) job he is best at. Especially when his commitment to his family is such a major part of his character that it also likely was why he continued the job of a smuggler to support them.
#davos seaworth#asoiaf#a song of ice and fire#asoiaf analysis#asoiaf theory#stannis baratheon#house seaworth#smuggling#salladhor saan#tywin lannister#aerys ii targaryen#cobblecat#Roro Uhoris#devan seaworth
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Ser Glendon and Ser Kyle on the Identity of Dunk and Egg
Spoilers for Duncan & Egg: The Mystery Knight...
So having recently gotten done reading through Dunk & Egg (a very wonderful if sadly short spin-off to the ASOIAF Novels) I had a quick thought regarding the ending...
So.
Glendon Balls/Flowers and Kyle the Cat have got to realise there's more to Ser Duncan the Tall (and by extension, Egg) than it seems, right? Sorry if I'm getting any details mixed up, I'm kinda tired today and also only recently finished reading through it all...
So Dunk shows up during the meals and start up outs John the Fiddler as Daemon the Second, aka a Blackfyre pretender and all that, and then proceeds to defend Glendon; not only proclaiming his innocence and accusing others of preforming a frame-up, but also accuses the tourney as a whole of being rigged in Daemon's favour.
So Daemon agrees to do some trial by combat, and Glendon wins, and then Bloodraven shows up to crash the party and arrest everyone. This is probably where they should really start getting curious about Dunk's connection.
It was only a few heartbeats later, as Dunk and Ser Kyle were helping Glendon Ball off his horse, that the first trumpet blew, and the sentries on the walls raised the alarm. An army had appeared outside the castle, rising from the morning mists. “Egg wasn’t lying after all,” Dunk told Ser Kyle, astonished.
Here we see Dunk inferring to Kyle that Egg was aware of the coming army and had informed him of it as well.
It was late that afternoon before Ser Roland Crakehall of the Kingsguard found Dunk among the other prisoners. “Ser Duncan. Where in seven hells have you been hiding? Lord Rivers has been asking for you for hours. Come with me, if you please.”
As Dunk, Glendon and Kyle all await trial, suddenly a knight of the Kingsguard shows up and greets Ser Duncan by name and then proceeds to reveal Bloodraven has been looking for Duncan specifically.
“Aye, m’lord. Ser Kyle the Cat, and Maynard Plumm. And Ser Glendon Ball. It was him unhorsed the Fidd … the pretender.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that tale from half a hundred lips already. The Bastard of the Pussywillows. Born of a whore and a traitor.”
“Born of heroes,” Egg insisted. “If he’s amongst the captives, I want him found and released. And rewarded.”
And then of course we have the meeting with Dunk and Egg with Bloodraven in which Egg names Kyle and Glendon (and also Maynard Plumm, who from what I understand was likely Bloodraven himself) and specifically asks for the latter to be freed and rewarded. I'd assume Kyle also would at least get the courtesy of a shift release due to being named here by Dunk.
So from the perspective of Glendon and Kyle; Dunk knew of the Blackfyre presence, was informed a Targaryen army was coming, is acquainted with a member of the Kingsguard, and was specifically sought out by Bloodraven himself. And then presumably shortly after Dunk was taken to speak with Bloodraven, both Kyle and Glendon were presumably freed, with the latter getting rewarded for knocking the latest Blackfyre pretender in the mud.
From an outside perspective, this all has to be quite suspicious right? They'd likely be wondering if Dunk was a Bloodraven spy all along or at the very least side-eye just what kinds of connections he has (or rather, Egg has). If they manage to hear about the Ashford Tourney and Dunk's role in it, then that only would add to the confusion.
Just thought all this could be a source of conflict or at least confusion. I do think its likely they'll have questions at least.
“Some never will,” Dunk told him. “It doesn’t matter what you do. Others, though … they’re not all the same. I’ve met some good ones.” He thought a moment. “When the tourney’s done, Egg and I mean to go north. Take service at Winterfell and fight for the Starks against the ironmen. You could come with us.”
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You have as much chance of wearing a white cloak as I do, Dunk almost said. You were born of a camp follower, and I crawled out of the gutters of Flea Bottom. Kings do not heap honor on the likes of you and me. The lad would not have taken kindly to that truth, however. Instead he said, “Strength to your arm, then.”
Dunk does offer to Glendon to come with him and Egg to the North, and given how disillusioned he became with the Blackfyres as a result of the events of the Tourney, as well as gratitude to Dunk for saving him from torture, he may be more inclined to join them. Plus there's also foreshadowing of Glendon one day joining the Kingsguard of Aegon V, so him joining Dunk and Egg on their travels at least for a bit more would make sense in increasing the bond.
“I know that feeling well.” Ser Kyle sighed. “Lord Caswell did not know me. When I told him how I carved his first sword, he stared at me as if I’d lost my wits. He said there was no place at Bitterbridge for knights as feeble as I had shown myself to be.” The Cat gave a bitter laugh. “He took my arms and armor, though. My mount as well. What will I do?”
Kyle was also in a rather bad situation due to the tourney, and so might also be inclined to join the group heading North in hopes of finding more long-term service with the Starks.
So if both Glendon and Kyle are going to be travelling with Dunk and Egg, then that increases the liklihood of them noticing the pair (mostly Egg really but still) are more than they seem, and more time for them to ask questions the two will need to find someway to answer.
#asoiaf#dunk and egg#ser duncan the tall#aegon vi targaryen#ser glendon flowers#ser glendon ball#ser kyle the cat#bloodraven#bryden rivers#the mystery knight#starks#daemon ii blackfyre#john the fiddler#egg#dunk#asoiaf theory#a song of ice and fire#asoiaf analysis
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I find myself constantly thinking about how interesting the power dynamics between Alys and Aemond can be. He is a 20 years old prince who rides a dragon and kills her entire family after taking Harrenhal. Alys is at least 40 years old, was a wet nurse to her own relatives and was rumored to be a witch.
So two interesting questions can be posed here: 1) What weights more in this case her age, experience and possible powers or his position? Is Aemond a boy being taken advantage of or he took Alys by force? 2) How consensual can this relationship be? Because ultimately she was his captive.
In my perception the book points to their relationship becoming something mutual at some point. On Aemond’s side he’s said to become besotted and listens only to Alys when he’s enraged and wants to kill a messenger, and there’s also the “she sees much and more, my alys” line. Alys, on the other side, seems to be proud of carrying his son when she meets Sabitha Frey. Besides that, the only moment the maesters raise a question that could point directly to it being non consensual is when they say it was believed that she gave him (and Criston) a love potion.
None of this confirms or denies anything, of course, so we’re going with what we want to believe about it all and our own theories. I’m excited to see how the show will portray this relationship and, regardless of the route they take, I’m only hoping it isn’t superficial or just for the sake of shocking.
#team green#aemond targaryen#alys rivers#alysmond#asoiaf analysis#my thoughts: asoiaf#asoiaf#hotd#f&b
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Daenerys Targaryen, Martians, Eatable Ants and the Influence of The War of The Worlds on ASOIAF Part 3
January 18, 2023
©Michael Komarck for the 2009 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar
It’s been a long time coming, but here we are. After almost 4 years, I have finally completed my essay series on the influence of H.G Wells, The War of the Worlds (TWOTW) on A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF). Before you begin, I should say that if you have not already done so, go back and first read parts one and two in the order they were written. This way, you get a better feel for the scope of what Martin has done in integrating TWOTW into his magnum opus.
In part one, I proposed that the Targaryens and their dragons represent the Martian invaders from Wells’ classic story and showed the numerous ways Martin compares them to visitors from the red planet. Then in part two, I dived deep into ants…how Wells and Martin used them in the same metaphoric way in their stories and what this might indicate about the future arc of Daenerys Targaryen.
Now in the final chapter, I take a closer look at how the Targaryen words fire and blood reverberate as deeply in TWOTW as it does in ASOIAF…pointing towards the conflagration that both the Martians and dragons will bring to the world. I also provide my theory on the location of Dany’s house with the red door and what it truly means to her and the in-world characters. Finally, I briefly discuss the clues in TWOTW that echo ones about Euron Greyjoy in ASOIAF and what they might potentially suggest about the convergence of his story with Dany’s. And so, let’s jump right in.
Fire and Blood and the Targaryen colors of red and black are not just motifs in ASOIAF. They are also layered throughout TWOTW. There is an overabundance of comparisons of the Targaryens and their dragons to the Martians in the text of ASOIAF. On the dragon side, this is especially true with Balerion and Drogon and their black fire. George plainly shows how it represents his version of Wells’ Martian’s Black Smoke.
As I noted in the post I made after the publication of part one of this essay series, George refers to Mars as the Blood and Fire planet, and wrote a long introduction for an anthology of Mars stories he edited where he discussed his lifelong fascination with the planet and its influence on him and and other writers of the genre.
Interestingly enough, he more recently mentioned in a blog post from March 2022 that he’s thinking of calling part two of F&B, Blood and Fire. This further supports my thesis that he has written the Targs as the Martians invaders of the story. ASOIAF is in a way, the story he says that he’s always wanted to write about Martians and the storied planet of Mars.
THE MARTIAN LANDSCAPE AND ASOIAF
As is the case in ASOIAF, the Targaryen words of Fire & Blood, and the colors of red and black are major motifs in TWOTW. From the beginning of the novel, Wells makes it clear that the Martians like George’s dragons were bringing a firestorm to the earth.
The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java4 set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, “as flaming gases rushed out of a gun.”
A singularly appropriate phrase it proved.
The War of the Worlds: The Eve of the War
I discussed many of the direct comparisons between the Targs and the Martians by George in part one. These include how the Martians’ cylinder like space ships were first thought to be meteors just like the Qarthian myth suggest was the case with the dragons of Planetos; the cylinders symbolically serving as eggs from which Martians are born on earth and how the crusted metal of their ship is described like the metallic scales on a dragon egg; the plethora of comparisons of both the Martians, Targs and their dragons to snakes; how both the dragons and Martians’ heat ray are described as swords above the world; the association of both to pits; and of course, the ants, the ants, the ants.
Elen11/Getty Images
Both Wells and George play with the idea blackness of space as a primordial sea. This is an idea that’s at the heart of many of the world’s myths and has been used by other fantasy and science fiction authors on numerous occasions.
Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far profounder. And invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth.
The War of the Worlds: The Eve of the War
As the unnamed narrator looks through the telescope, it’s as if he is looking at the cosmic ocean, which is a theme that George plays with throughout ASOIAF regarding the weirwoods and being ‘under the sea.’ However, we are not here to discuss the primordial sea, but rather the emphasis put on red and black in both Wells and George’s work.
There is the blackness of space reference in the passage above, which the narrator is viewing at night from a night black observatory. There is the moving black mark on the cylinder that alerts Ogilvy to the fact that it is being opened from the inside.
And then he perceived that, very slowly, the circular top of the cylinder was rotating on its body. It was such a gradual movement that he discovered it only through noticing that a black mark that had been near him five minutes ago was now at the other side of the circumference. Even then he scarcely understood what this indicated, until he heard a muffled grating sound and saw the black mark jerk forward an inch or so. Then the Thing came upon him in a flash. The cylinder was artificial—hollow—with an end that screwed out! Something within the cylinder was unscrewing the top!
The War of the Worlds: The Falling Star
There is how Wells describes the crowd standing around the pit where the Martians were about to be born.
WHEN I RETURNED to the common the sun was setting. Scattered groups were hurrying from the direction of Woking, and one or two persons were returning. The crowd about the pit had increased, and stood out black against the lemon yellow of the sky—a couple of hundred people, perhaps.
The War of the Worlds: The Cylinder Opens
The sky turning yellow is a harbinger. A yellow sky means that a storm is brewing. This seems an apt metaphor considering what occurred on the sand dunes of Horsell Common.
Another way black is used as an important symbol is how Wells compares people to black ants as they flee from the Martians. I described the symbolic importance this in detail and how Martin uses them in the same metaphoric manner in his story, as well as what it implies about Dany’s future arc in the last chapter and so I will not do so again here.
There is also the black machine the Martians’ travel in from which they dispense their heat ray. Not surprisingly, the narrator describes it as a sword from above just as Xaro Xhoan Daxos describes Dany’s dragons.
It was sweeping round swiftly and steadily, this flaming death, this invisible, inevitable sword of heat. I perceived it coming towards me by the flashing bushes it touched, and was too astounded and stupefied to stir. I heard the crackle of fire in the sand pits and the sudden squeal of a horse that was as suddenly stilled. Then it was as if an invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn through the heather between me and the Martians, and all along a curving line beyond the sand pits the dark ground smoked and crackled. Something fell with a crash far away to the left where the road from Woking station opens out on the common. Forthwith the hissing and humming ceased, and the black, domelike object sank slowly out of sight into the pit.
The War of the Worlds: The Heat Ray
However, the most important black motif I want to discuss is the Martian black smoke. This is most heavily crystallized in ASOIAF with Balerion the Black Dread, Drogon, and their black fire. Their fire, which produces black smoke is the symbolic stand-in for the Martian black smoke.
And from this paper my brother read that catastrophic despatch of the Commander-in-Chief:
“The Martians are able to discharge enormous clouds of a black and poisonous vapour by means of rockets. They have smothered our batteries, destroyed Richmond, Kingston, and Wimbledon, and are advancing slowly towards London, destroying everything on the way. It is impossible to stop them. There is no safety from the Black Smoke but in instant flight.
“Black Smoke!” the voices cried. “Fire!”
The bells of the neighbouring church made a jangling tumult…”
The War of the Worlds: In London
Credit: by Brendan Perkins via Lonesome Crow on DeviantArt
Note the ringing of the bells echo in response to the call of fire. We know that bells will have an important role to play in Jon Connington’s arc, and it likely will not be good news for the people. Bells also play a role in Dany’s arc in the books via the bells the Dothraki wear in their hair. This is especially important tool of fear for the Khals like Drogo.
Dany braided his hair and slid the silver rings onto his mustache and hung his bells one by one. So many bells, gold and silver and bronze. Bells so his enemies would hear him coming and grow weak with fear.
A Game of Thrones, Daenerys X
In real life whether via the church bells of distant eras, or the more recent past of bells on fire trucks, the clanging instruments have alerted the populace that there was a fire in their midst.
On the show, like was the case with the Martians in TWOTW, bells herald the start of Dany’s fiery destruction of Kings Landing. Will something similar happen in the books after the Khaleesi becomes the “stallion who mounts the world?” Only time will tell.
As Balerion and Drogon discharge their black flame onto cities and the populace, the Martians do the same. Only, they discharge their heat ray and black smoke from their walking tripods and flying machines via rockets. Whether via the dragons or the Martian machines, the powerful force of fire and smoke have similar results when used against people…immediate death.
Now here is an extremely interesting detail. The description of the Martian black smoke eerily mirrors the description of Drogon’s fire. In fact, except for a couple of words, it’s almost exactly the same.
In front was a quiet, sunny landscape, a wheat field ahead on either side of the road, and the Maybury Inn with its swinging sign. I saw the doctor’s cart ahead of me. At the bottom of the hill I turned my head to look at the hillside I was leaving. Thick streamers of black smoke shot with threads of red fire were driving up into the still air, and throwing dark shadows upon the green treetops eastward.”
The War of the Worlds: The Fighting Begins
And now here is a description of Drogon’s fire.
Above them all the dragon turned, dark against the sun. His scales were black, his eyes and horns and spinal plates blood red. Ever the largest of her three, in the wild Drogon had grown larger still. His wings stretched twenty feet from tip to tip, black as jet. He flapped them once as he swept back above the sands, and the sound was like a clap of thunder. The boar raised his head, snorting … and flame engulfed him, black fire shot with red.
ADWD, Daenerys IX
The Martians’ black smoke is shot through with red fire, while Drogon’s black fire is shot through with red. When you consider all the many other ways George compares the dragons to the Martians, the similarities in the description of these two fiery characteristics cannot be mere happenstance. It’s a deliberate comparison on George’s part.
The Martian black smoke poisons all living things it touches, while Drogon’s fire destroys everything it burns. For all practical purposes, the two are the same and both results in ashes.
And all being quiet throughout the afternoon, we started about five o’clock, as I should judge, along the blackened road to Sunbury.
In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were dead bodies lying in contorted attitudes, horses as well as men, overturned carts and luggage, all covered thickly with black dust. That pall of cindery powder made me think of what I had read of the destruction of Pompeii.
The War of the Worlds: Under Foot
I mentioned in part two that the description of this scene reads very much like what we saw on the show of Kings Landing after it was burnt by Dany, and what we will likely see in next book after she burns much of Essos. Also, while the black smoke is separate from the Martian heat ray, the two are often used as one.
The Martians’ black smoke is poisonous, but dragon fire likely has a similar effect on burnt cities in the immediate aftermath of its fiery destruction. Residents in such locations would find it very difficult to breath and if they lived in modern times, many would later be diagnosed with cancer, as with the case of those who lived in the downtown area of New York City after 9/11. Basically, if not resulting in immediate death, the aftereffects of fire from Balerion, Drogon and the other dragons is like a slow poison.
The Targaryen House sword carried by Aegon the Conqueror is name Blackfyre, which mirrors the description of Drogon’s flame. We have not yet seen Blackfyre on the page and have not been given a detail description of its color.
Although we can assume it is like the dark grey of House Starks Valyrian sword Ice and other such blades, I suspect that Blackfyre will be even darker…closer to black as the name implies with threads of red…Targaryen colors. It will be the total opposite to the milk glass color of Dawn, a sword the future wielder of Blackfyre seems destined to meet across the battlefield.
So now that we’ve talk about the symbolic importance of black as a motif in both books, and why Balerion and Drogon’s fire are meant to mirror the Martians’ black smoke, let’s move on to red. We will begin in the Red Waste, George’s version of the Martian landscape through which Dany travels to Qarth.
Like the meteor that herald the arrival and birth of the Martians on earth, one does the same for the birth of Dany’s dragon at the edge of the Red Waste. Dany took this as a portent from the gods and led her followers after the red comet through the waste.
The Dothraki named the comet shierak qiya, the Bleeding Star. The old men muttered that it omened ill, but Daenerys Targaryen had seen it first on the night she had burned Khal Drogo, the night her dragons had awakened. It is the herald of my coming, she told herself as she gazed up into the night sky with wonder in her heart. The gods have sent it to show me the way.
Yet when she put the thought into words, her handmaid Doreah quailed. “That way lies the red lands, Khaleesi. A grim place and terrible, the riders say.”
“The way the comet points is the way we must go,” Dany insisted … though in truth, it was the only way open to her.”
ACOK, Daenerys I
Much of what Wells speculated about the red planet…so called because of the color of the dust that layers it surface, and what scientists of the time proposed have since proven to be incorrect. However, one thing that remains constant from then to today is that of Mars is a dry, sandy red waste whose seas have dried up. Here is Wells’ version of the planet.
The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars.
The War of the Worlds: The Eve of War
The Bonneville Crater on Mars NASA/JPL/Cornell University
And here is George’s version of the Martian landscape.
There was little forage in the red waste, and less water. It was a sere and desolate land of low hills and barren windswept plains. The rivers they crossed were dry as dead men’s bones. Their mounts subsisted on the tough brown devilgrass that grew in clumps at the base of rocks and dead trees. Dany sent outriders ranging ahead of the column, but they found neither wells nor springs, only bitter pools, shallow and stagnant, shrinking in the hot sun. The deeper they rode into the waste, the smaller the pools became, while the distance between them grew. If there were gods in this trackless wilderness of stone and sand and red clay, they were hard dry gods, deaf to prayers for rain.
ACOK, Daenerys I
George’s red waste is dry and desolate but more like the real Mars than Wells whose telescopic instruments were not as technologically as advance as the ones today. However, the two are pretty close. George’s red waste, like Wells’ Mars, has little to no water, and what it does have is undrinkable. Nonetheless, the desperate travelers have no other choice but to drink it. The land is also filled with fiery dragon like symbolism with the sun beating down and the extra hot water smelling of brimstone.
The next pool they found was scalding hot and stinking of brimstone, but their skins were almost empty. The Dothraki cooled the water in jars and pots and drank it tepid. The taste was no less foul, but water was water, and all of them thirsted. Dany looked at the horizon with despair. They had lost a third of their number, and still the waste stretched before them, bleak and red and endless.
ACOK, Daenerys I
While, initially, they refused to eat because their meat was not charred, after Dany figured out this was the problem, her dragons ate and thrived. Unliked her followers.
Yet even as her dragons prospered, her khalasar withered and died. Around them the land turned ever more desolate. Even devilgrass grew scant; horses dropped in their tracks, leaving so few that some of her people must trudge along on foot. Doreah took a fever and grew worse with every league they crossed. Her lips and hands broke with blood blisters, her hair came out in clumps, and one evenfall she lacked the strength to mount her horse. Jhogo said they must leave her or bind her to her saddle, but Dany remembered a night on the Dothraki sea, when the Lysene girl had taught her secrets so that Drogo might love her more. She gave Doreah water from her own skin, cooled her brow with a damp cloth, and held her hand until she died, shivering. Only then would she permit the khalasar to press on.
ACOK, Daenerys I
Doreah, the handmaiden who warned Dany against crossing the red waste is one of the earliest of Dany’s followers to die, but Dany’s dragons are getting stronger. This makes symbolic sense as the dragons are the Martians of the story, and thus should thrived in the place of their birth. But of course, like the Martian invaders, their food and water supply are depleting and so they need another source of nourishment.
The Red Weed by Mechagen_Deviant Art_
The Martians bring with them a red weed that pretty much overtakes the landscape. It’s not clear whether they deliberately planted the weed or if it accidentally hatched a ride on their cylinders, got into the earth ecosystem and then proliferated.
And speaking of the differences between the life on Mars and terrestrial life, I may allude here to the curious suggestions of the red weed.
Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green for a dominant colour, is of a vivid blood-red tint. At any rate, the seeds which the Martians (intentionally or accidentally) brought with them gave rise in all cases to red-coloured growths. Only that known popularly as the red weed, however, gained any footing in competition with terrestrial forms. The red creeper was quite a transitory growth, and few people have seen it growing. For a time, however, the red weed grew with astonishing vigour and luxuriance. It “spread up the sides of the pit by the third or fourth day of our imprisonment, and its cactus-like branches formed a carmine fringe to the edges of our triangular window. And afterwards I found it broadcast throughout the country, and especially wherever there was a stream of water.”
The War of the Worlds: What We Saw from the Ruined House
As he has woven the story of the Martians so indelibly into Dany’s arc of ASOIAF, one would expect that George has also included something like the iconic red weed in his story and that it would be associated with Dany. And low and behold, he has done just that as Jorah describes to Dany how the Dothraki Sea looks at certain times of the year.
It was a sea, Dany thought. Past here, there were no hills, no mountains, no trees nor cities nor roads, only the endless grasses, the tall blades rippling like waves when the winds blew. "It's so green," she said.
"Here and now," Ser Jorah agreed. "You ought to see it when it blooms, all dark red flowers from horizon to horizon, like a sea of blood. Come the dry season, and the world turns the color of old bronze.
A Game of thrones, Daenerys III
It’s funny that George, describes the dark red flowers of his story like a sea of blood because Wells does something similar in his. He doesn’t specifically call it a sea, but he associates it with blood in a different way.
My first action coming to this water was, of course, to slake my thirst. I drank a great deal of it and, moved by an impulse, gnawed some fronds of red weed; but they were watery, and had a sickly, metallic taste.
The War of the Worlds: The Work of Fifteen Days
Blood of course tastes metallic because of its iron rich hemoglobin content, and so when Wells describes the red weed as tasting like metal, he wants you to think of blood.
Blood is another way that red as a motif plays an important role in the story. Like the many references to fire and black smoke from Martian weapons, Wells has numerous scenes where blood is heavily featured throughout the text.
The narrator often comes across the aftereffects of bloody scenes; people are often shown injured or getting into fights where they bleed; or in a blood rage as they fight each other for the scraps of survival. It’s to show that underneath the humans are not that different from the Martians.
However, it’s also to highlight the main reason the Martian’s came to earth. They invaded because they were looking for a new food source. Just like Dany and her followers in the Red Waste, theirs was depleted on Mars. And they found it in human blood.
They did not eat, much less digest. Instead, they took the fresh living blood of other creatures, and injected it into their own veins. I have myself seen this being done, as I shall mention in its place. But, squeamish as I may seem, I cannot bring myself to describe what I could not endure even to continue watching. Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal….
The War of the Worlds: What We Saw from the Ruined House
Red also appears in some trees the narrator encounters. There is a that while much smaller in nature than the Wall in ASOIAF, the narrator finds difficult to cross. When he does, he encounters some trees that are overgrown by the Martian red weed that has overtaken the land. The description of the trees as he walks underneath them can’t help but make one think of the weirwoods.
In the direction away from the pit I saw, beyond a red-covered wall, a patch of garden ground unburied. This gave me a hint, and I went knee-deep, and sometimes neck-deep, in the red weed. The density of the weed gave me a reassuring sense of hiding.
The wall was some six feet high, and when I attempted to clamber it I found I could not lift my feet to the crest. So I went along by the side of it, and came to a corner and a rockwork that enabled me to get to the top, and tumble into the garden I coveted.
Here I found some young onions, a couple of gladiolus bulbs, and a quantity of immature carrots, all of which I secured, and, scrambling over a ruined wall, went on my way through scarlet and crimson trees towards Kew—it was like walking through an avenue of gigantic blood-drops—possessed with two ideas: to get more food, and to limp, as soon and as far as my strength permitted, out of this accursed unearthly region of the pit.
The War of the Worlds: The Work of Fifteen Days
As I said, red is one of the most important motifs in TWOTW, and it is meant to signify danger from the Martians. It usually heralds their arrival or indicates their presence in the vicinity. There is the fire and blood, and red weed that I’ve already discussed, but red also appears symbolically in lights.
OF RED DOORS AND LEMON TREES
When the announcement is made that the Martians have arrived in London, a red light shines in from outside on to the ceiling of the room of the narrator’s brother. A couple of times, the narrator also sees red searchlights and a red glow in the vicinity where the Martians are located. Red is a warning both in TWOTW and in ASOIAF, which brings me to Dany’s red door.
Credit: Tiziano Baracchi. © Fantasy Flight Games...via Deviant Art
All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known.
A Game of Thrones, Daenerys I
For Dany, this house with the red door represents a lost childhood and a time when she was happy. The longing to find this house with the red door is palpable throughout her arc. However, while on this surface, this seems like simply the dream of a lost and hurt child, I think that it and its color represent more.
As with Wells use of red in his story and George’s use of it in the house color of the Targaryen, I think Dany’s door being red is a warning to the reader to beware…that there is more to this symbolism than meets the eye. On a Watsonian level, Dany’s red door is also a warning to her about the danger she represents to the world of Planetos. Let’s dig in.
A few years ago, I wrote a thread on Twitter where I broke down what I think Dany’s red door means. I still hold to this theory and so I’ll copy and paste here with just a few minor corrections.
Why did George make the symbol of Dany's quest for home a red door? Well, aside from symbolically using red as a similar motif as Wells in TWOTW, I think it ties into the biblical story of the Passover. It’s the story of the world’s first known symbolic red door and you can read about it below.
I should mention that I'm Episcopalian and the red door on our church is what made me associate Dany's door with the religious aspect of the biblical Passover. Red doors are also used on most Catholic Churches.
Red on church doors is supposed to represent a place of sanctuary. However, this is often not the case. The church and its priest not providing sanctuary is also a theme in TWOTW, but that’s a topic for another essay. My point is that George is a lapse Catholic and I’m sure he’s aware of the symbolism behind red doors and that institutional religion is often not a sanctuary.
Keeping the story of the Passover you just read in mind, what might it symbolically imply about Dany's arc and her quest for the red door? And why did dream turn into a nightmare the one time in the story she made it behind the door.
She could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and great stone houses and arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open the door.
“… the dragon …”
And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. “The last dragon,” Ser Jorah’s voice whispered faintly. “The last, the last.” Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.
After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and the whisperings of stars.
She woke to the taste of ashes.
A Game of Thrones, Daenerys IX
Note George’s consistent use of black with red fire to echo both the Martian black smoke and Drogon’s flame. Based on the biblical scripture, to make it behind the red door is to be protected from the Lord's vengeance. He sent the angel of death during the night to kill all the first born of Egypt...be they people or animals. Only his people who obeyed his command to mark their door with the blood of a lamb no older than a year were protected when the angel of death came. The angel passed them over. The red door in this instance thus symbolizes protection.
However, not in the case of Dany. The protection of the red door is not available to her. And sadly, it probably never was. At least it won’t if Quaithe has her way. She emphasizes it in this and other dreams that she sends the dragon queen. Dany is the angel of death who does not belong behind the red door with the populace.
The only time Dany makes it behind the door, it occurs in her dreams, and it becomes a nightmare. She opens Rhaegar’s helm and sees not her brother, but herself. This should be a happy moment. She’s made it to home and behind the red door, where she is supposed to be safe, but of course, it’s not.
She is the angel of death and thus her being behind the red door indicates that she is a threat to the humans. Thus, her dream becomes a nightmare that foreshadows her future arc. It’s why she wakes to the taste of ashes.
But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King's Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind's eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind's eye, all the doors were red.
A Game of Thrones, Daenerys III
On the surface, longing for Kings Landing is just that, a longing for the home of her recent ancestors...a place she can call home. However, underneath, it maybe foreshadowing something much darker...potentially her burning of Kings Landing as on the show.
Dany’s red door and her "wake the dragon dream" have always been a signpost indicating where her story was going. The red door was never about home for her. Sadly, it’s just the opposite.
Dany thinks of herself as a god when flying Drogon in her last chapter of ADWD and so in a way, she is also the Lord sending the angel of death...in this case, Drogon among the populace.
By the way, George writes Drogon as "passing over" but Dany called him back to use him to bring the Dothraki to heel. Left alone to run wild, Drogon would have killed animals and some humans but for food only. It is in Dany’s hands, as was the case with past Targaryens and dragon lords that the beasts become weapons of mass destruction.
Thrice that day she caught sight of Drogon. Once he was so far off that he might have been an eagle, slipping in and out of distant clouds, but Dany knew the look of him by now, even when he was no more than a speck. The second time he passed before the sun, his black wings spread, and the world darkened. The last time he flew right above her, so close she could hear the sound of his wings.
A Dance with Dragons, Daenerys X
Later in the chapter after hearing Quaithe voice again in the stars, she decides to follow the shadowbinder’s advice and accept her dragon heritage.
DanceOfDragons_by_ertacaltinoz_DeviantArt
Dany watched him go. When the sound of his hooves had faded away to silence, she began to shout. She called until her voice was hoarse … and Drogon came, snorting plumes of smoke. The grass bowed down before him. Dany leapt onto his back. She stank of blood and sweat and fear, but none of that mattered. “To go forward I must go back,” she said. Her bare legs tightened around the dragon’s neck. She kicked him, and Drogon threw himself into the sky. Her whip was gone, so she used her hands and feet and turned him north by east, the way the scout had gone. Drogon went willingly enough; perhaps he smelled the rider’s fear.
A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys X
Dany calls Drogon back to her and claims her dragon identity and he recognizes this change. Thus, she no longer needs a whip to control him. He now goes where she wants.
So, if Dany’s red door is meant to be seen as a warning, is it real or just a symbolic figment of her imagination. I think the answer is yes, it is real, but it also potentially a figment. What do I mean? Well, let’s first determine where the house with the red door is located.
I’m going to be as short as possible in this section as this chapter is already overlong. The topic of the red door probably deserves its own essay, but I don’t have the time to write it. There are also a couple of other important points about the influence of TWOTW on the story that I want to get to…including a brief discussion of Euron.
For years, the location of the house with the red door has been a hot topic of conversation in the fandom because, Dany says the house was in Braavos. The confusion arises because in her memory, Dany also remembers a lemon tree growing outside her window. The problem with this memory is that lemon trees and trees in general do not grow in the stone city of Braavos. I’m not going to go into the reasons why as most anyone who has read the books already know the answer, but the basic reason is a lack of irrigated water.
Some sides of the fandom have proposed that yes, Dany was raised in Braavos…at the Palace of the Sealord. He is rich and is said by Syrio Florel among others to have exotic creatures walking the grounds of his estate. Thus, if anyone resident could be said to be able to afford to have an irrigated system to channel water from the canals, it would be the Sealord. Thus, maybe it’s possible that Dany is remembering a house on the Sealord’s estate. Or maybe not.
Doran Martell also tells his daughter Arianne that she was promised to Dany’s brother Viserys as bride. An agreement signed and witness by Oberyn for House Martell and the Sealord as representative for Viserys. There seems to be no reason for Doran to lie about this story, and it fits with his tendency to play the long game. The Sealord also never leaves Braavos, and so, if such a pact was signed, it must have happened in that city and Dany and Viserys must have resided there. If not, why would the Sealord bear witness. This also supports the theory that Dany is remembering the Sealord’s house. But then again, maybe not.
Another popular option proposed by fans is that Dany was hidden away and raised in Dorne and that’s where the pact was signed. After all, it’s established on multiple ocassions in the text that Dorne is where lemon trees grow. It’s mentioned so often that I see it as one of George’s shiny apples. And by that, I mean that he hides the truth in plain sight and then by sleight of hand, makes the reader look in another direction. There are a lot of shiny apples in the text, and one day, I may write an essay about them.
I say that Dorne and the lemon trees that grow there are a shiny apple because I think that Dany was raised exactly where she says she was…in Braavos. Only, I don’t think that it was at the Sealord’s Palace. If not there, the question then becomes where?
Well, I think that the answer can be found in Dany’s dreams and the one constant other than Jorah, and her Dothraki khalasar that have been with her throughout her story thus far…Quaithe, the shadowbinder from Asshai. Quaithe is not always there with Dany in person, but her presence is always felt.
In AGOT, the stars whisper to Dany during her wake the dragon dream as I showed in the passage I posted above. We don’t know then that it’s Quaithe but we start getting an inkling that she will have an important role to play in Dany’s story when she shows up in person in A Clash of Kings.
The woman in the lacquered wooden mask said in the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms, "I am Quaithe of the Shadow. We come seeking dragons."
"Seek no more," Daenerys Targaryen told them. "You have found them."
______
Last of the three seekers to depart was Quaithe the shadowbinder. From her Dany received only a warning. "Beware," the woman in the red lacquer mask said.
"Of whom?"
"Of all. They shall come day and night to see the wonder that has been born again into the world, and when they see they shall lust. For dragons are fire made flesh, and fire is power."
When Quaithe too was gone, Ser Jorah said, "She speaks truly, my queen . . . though I like her no more than the others."
A Clash of Kings, Daenerys II
Quaithe turns up again a little later in ACOK, this time with a warning and a bit of cryptic advice for Dany.
“The woman took a step backward. “You must leave this city soon, Daenerys Targaryen, or you will never be permitted to leave it at all.”
Dany’s wrist still tingled where Quaithe had touched her. “Where would you have me go?” she asked.
“To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”
Asshai, Dany thought.
A Clash of Kings, Daenerys III
By the way, I think that Quaithe’s riddle is another of George’s shiny apple, and I’ll discuss why if I ever write that essay on the topic.
Dany next has an encounter with Quaithe in A Storm of Sword, only this time she is not there in person, but instead communicates with Dany via a glass candle and again peppers her with the cryptic riddle.
She woke suddenly in the darkness of her cabin, still flush with triumph. Balerion seemed to wake with her, and she heard the faint creak of wood, water lapping against the hull, a footfall on the deck above her head. And something else.
Someone was in the cabin with her.
“Irri? Jhiqui? Where are you?” Her handmaids did not respond. It was too black to see, but she could hear them breathing. “Jorah, is that you?”
“They sleep,” a woman said. “They all sleep.” The voice was very close. “Even dragons must sleep.”
She is standing over me. “Who’s there?” Dany peered into the darkness. She thought she could see a shadow, the faintest outline of a shape. “What do you want to me?”
“Remember. To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”
“Quaithe?” Dany sprung from the bed and threw open the door. Pale yellow lantern light flooded the cabin, and Irri and Jhiqui sat up sleepily.
A Storm of Swords, Daenerys III
She next has two encounters with Quaithe is in ADWD.
“They sleep,” came the answer.
A woman stood under the persimmon tree, clad in a hooded robe that brushed the grass. Beneath the hood, her face seemed hard and shiny. She is wearing a mask, Dany knew, a wooden mask finished in dark red lacquer. “Quaithe? Am I dreaming?” She pinched her ear and winced at the pain. “I dreamt of you on Balerion, when first we came to Astapor.”
“You did not dream. Then or now.”
“What are you doing here? How did you get past my guards?”
“I came another way. Your guards never saw me.”
“If I call out, they will kill you.”
“They will swear to you that I am not here.”
“Are you here?”
“No. Hear me, Daenerys Targaryen. The glass candles are burning.
________
“If you have some warning for me, speak plainly. What do you want of me, Quaithe?”
Moonlight shone in the woman’s eyes. “To show you the way.”
A Dance with Dragon, Daenerys II
Does it seem as if Quaithe wants Dany to trust only her? It does to me.
Dany’s final encounter with Quaithe happens in her last chapter of ADWD. And it is here that we get confirmation that she has always been the whisperer of stars in Dany’s dreams.
She dreamed. All her cares fell away from her, and all her pains as well, and she seemed to float upward into the sky. She was flying once again, spinning, laughing, dancing, as the stars wheeled around her and whispered secrets in her ear. "To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward, you must go back. To touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow."
"Quaithe?" Dany called. "Where are you, Quaithe?"
Then she saw. Her mask is made of starlight.
"Remember who you are, Daenerys," the stars whispered in a woman's voice. "The dragons know. Do you?"
A Dance with Dragons, Daenerys X
Dany perceives Quaithe as speaking to her via the stars, whispering as it were. Thus, we realize that when the stars whispered to her during her wake the dragon dream back in A Game of Thrones, it was likely Quaithe at that time as well, communicating with Dany via a glass candle.
"What feeds the flame?" asked Sam.
"What feeds a dragon's fire?" Marwyn seated himself upon a stool. "All Valyrian sorcery was rooted in blood or fire. The sorcerers of the Freehold could see across mountains, seas, and deserts with one of these glass candles. They could enter a man's dreams and give him visions, and speak to one another half a world apart, seated before their candles. Do you think that might be useful, Slayer?"
"We would have no more need of ravens."
A Feast for Crows, Sam V
I fully expect to discover that Marwyn knows Quaithe. After all, we know from Miri Maz Duur that he was in Asshai. He is the one who taught her about the human body. I suspect that Quaithe in turn taught Marwyn, and a lot more than just the secrets of the body. After all, Quaithe is a shadowbinder from Asshai, where dragons are said to come from and which others in the fandom have proposed, may have been the ancient capital of the Great Empire of the Dawn. A theory that I endorse.
In Dany’s “wake the dragon” dream, Quaithe sends her a vision of her ancestors. Why?
Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade. "Faster," they cried, "faster, faster." She raced, her feet melting the stone wherever they touched. "Faster!" the ghosts cried as one, and she screamed and threw herself forward. A great knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew.
A Game of Thrones, Daenerys IX
George gave us a bit more history on these ancient Targaryen ancestors when he dropped this ditty in TWOIAF history book.
Dominion over mankind then passed to his eldest son, who was known as the Pearl Emperor and ruled for a thousand years. The Jade Emperor, the Tourmaline Emperor, the Onyx Emperor, the Topaz Emperor, and the Opal Emperor followed in turn, each reigning for centuries...yet every reign was shorter and more troubled than the one preceding it, for wild men and baleful beasts pressed at the borders of the Great Empire, lesser kings grew prideful and rebellious, and the common people gave themselves over to avarice, envy, lust, murder, incest, gluttony, and sloth.
When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky. (Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world).
The World of Ice and Fire, The Bones – Beyond YiTi
Based on the similarity in the descriptions of the ancient people from the GEOTD to the ancestors in Dany’s vision, the fandom, I think correctly assumed that they are one and the same. I propose that their appearance in Dany’s vision isn’t just about a generic ancestral line, but rather to clue us in that Targaryen genetic blood line can be traced all the way back to the Bloodstone Emperor.
In fact, I think that the Blackfyre is the first Valyrian steel blade. It’s the red “sword of heroes” Melisandre constantly references, and its heritage can be traced all the way back to the Bloodstone Emperor. The blood of the Amethyst Empress or Nissa Nissa, if you want to call her that went into the forging of that sword. There is more to it than just the forging of the sword as it also had to do with the BE’s attempt to gain access to the weirwoods, but I think that Blackfyre is his sword, and it has been passed down through the Targaryen line since then.
All the dark arts referenced in the history books are still practiced in the Shadowlands from where Quaithe hails. Quaithe whispering to Dany through the stars, strongly suggests as others have proposed that she is a member of the Church of Starry Wisdom originally started by the BE. I also think that the church has been keeping a close on and watching over the Targs through the many generations since the height of the GEOTD, and it was a member of the church who sent the dreams to Daenys the Dreamer about the coming fall of Valyria.
I would not be surprised to discover that the church was somehow involved with what happened in Valyria. I think that their goal is again to attempt the deepest of the dark arts, and Dany is the unknowing guinea pig to help Quaithe and other senior members of the church achieve their goals.
Also, Dany’s ability to hear the whispering through the stars, suggests that she may have been unknowingly exposed to the church’s trainings. And I don’t mean that she’s literally hearing thoughts through the stars. It’s about symbolism and her knowing to associate Quaithe with them.
Therefore, I proposed that the house with the red door she remembers, is the Church of Starry Wisdom in Braavos. The red door is either the entrance door or on a building on the church’s estate. It was there that Dany picked up some unknowing little knowledge about scrying to the stars…maybe even by using a glass candle.
Church of Starry Wisdom by Cyprus-1 - Deviant Art
As I stated up thread, red doors are often associated with churches. However, we don’t know the color of the one on the door of the COSW in Braavos. The only reference we have to it in the text is from Arya when she walks by as Blind Beth.
As she made her way past the temples, she could hear the acolytes of the Cult of Starry Wisdom atop their scrying tower, singing to the evening stars.
A Dance with Dragons, The Blind Girl
The door to the church could be red. We don’t know. However, I don’t think that it is. I think that the red door that Dany remembers is an interior one…behind the main entrance.
She was walking down a long hall beneath high stone arches. She could not look behind her, must not look behind her. There was a door ahead of her, tiny with distance, but even from afar, she saw that it was painted red. She walked faster, and her bare feet left bloody footprints on the stone.
A Game of Thrones, Daenerys IX
Halls are interior walkways and so the fact that she is in one with stone arches suggests that she is in some type of courtyard and the red door of her memory opens out from there. This still leaves the question of the lemon tree, which after all, do not grow in Braavos.
If she did stay in Braavos and there are no lemon trees in the city, then how do we explain the mystery. My answer is that while I think that Dany stayed at the Church of Starry Wisdom while in Braavos, the lemon tree, and quite possibly the house with the red door are things of the past that Dany viewed through a glass candle, possibly even from as far back as ancient Asshai when it was a robust seafaring port city. After all, we don’t yet know the full magical aspects of the candles.
Another explanation for the missing lemon tree and red door is that the two are simply metaphors and George is playing with the idea of the golden apples from the Garden of Hesperides. There are many myths of the golden apples in many different cultures including Greek where they play into the myths of Hercules, Hera, Atlanta, and Paris of Troy and the Trojan War. There is even an Irish myth of the golden apple branch.
In the Hercules myth, the golden apples grown in the Garden of Hesperides, sacred to Hera. The apples and the garden were guarded by the dragon Ladon. Modern scholars think that the golden apples were actually a citrus fruit...either an orange or a lemon. George might be playing with the idea of them being lemons.
I mention this of course because of the dragon connection but also because the apples in most of the myths, granted immortality or access to the underworld, a theme which is strongly at play in ASOIAF.
George also seems to be playing with the idea of the golden apples in the ancient myth of one of the daughters of Garth Greenhand, Rowan Gold-Tree...
who was so bereft when her lover left her for a rich rival that she wrapped an apple in her golden hair, planted it upon a hill, and grew a tree whose bark and leaves and fruit were gleaming yellow gold, and to whose daughters the Rowans of Goldengrove trace their roots.
The World of Ice and Fire, The Reach: Garth Greenhand
The thing is that if George is symbolically playing with this idea and Dany is supposed to be the dragon guarding the red door...possibly a symbolic access point to the underworld, she abandoned or was force to abandon her post, and so we will have to see what that potentially means.
And there you have it. My theory about Dany’s possible explanations for Danys infamous red door with the lemon tree outside the window. Tinfoil? Possibly…only maybe not.
I’ve discussed in this and the previous two chapters the many ways in which George compares his dragons to Wells’ Martians. However, there is one other comparison that Wells makes in his story that George echoes in his that I want to mention. Only this time, the comparison is not to Dany and her dragons but to another character.
OF DANY AND EURON
And so, I will wind things down and leave you with these final passages and how they play into the arc of this character from ASOIAF. First, we will again briefly revisit the red weed and black smoke.
Panjin Red Beach marsh landscape_World Atlas
At Putney, as I afterwards saw, the bridge was almost lost in a tangle of this weed, and at Richmond, too, the Thames water poured in a broad and shallow stream across the meadows of Hampton and Twickenham. As the water spread the weed followed them, until the ruined villas of the Thames valley were for a time lost in this red swamp, whose margin I explored, and much of the desolation the Martians had caused was concealed.”
The War of the Worlds: The Work of Fifteen Days
________
“About one o’clock in the afternoon the thinning remnant of a cloud of the black vapour appeared between the arches of Blackfriars Bridge. At that the Pool became a scene of mad confusion, fighting, and collision, and for some time a multitude of boats and barges jammed in the northern arch of the Tower Bridge, and the sailors and lightermen had to fight savagely against the people who swarmed upon them from the riverfront. People were actually clambering down the piers of the bridge from above.
When, an hour later, a Martian appeared beyond the Clock Tower and waded down the river, nothing but wreckage floated above Limehouse.”
The War of the Worlds: The Thunder Child
______
A Martian fighting-machine battling with HMS Thunder Child. (Corréa, 1906)
“About a couple of miles out lay an ironclad, very low in the water, almost, to my brother’s perception, like a water-logged ship. This was the ram Thunder Child. It was the only warship in sight, but far away to the right over the smooth surface of the sea—for that day there was a dead calm—lay a serpent of black smoke to mark the next ironclads of the Channel Fleet, which hovered in an extended line, steam up and “ready for action, across the Thames estuary during the course of the Martian conquest, vigilant and yet powerless to prevent it.”
The War of the Worlds: The Exodus from London
Consider now this conversation between Jon and Melisandre.
"We've had a raven from Ser Denys Mallister at the Shadow Tower," Jon Snow told her. "His men have seen fires in the mountains on the far side of the Gorge. Wildlings massing, Ser Denys believes. He thinks they are going to try to force the Bridge of Skulls again."
"Some may." Could the skulls in her vision have signified this bridge? Somehow Melisandre did not think so. "If it comes, that attack will be no more than a diversion. I saw towers by the sea, submerged beneath a black and bloody tide. That is where the heaviest blow will fall."
A Dance with Dragons - Melisandre I
In the excerpt from TWOTW, we see that the bloody tide of the Martian red weed literally causes the Thames to flood London, which at the time was the premier English city of learning. London with its famous Tower Bridge and its two towers. We also see that the black smoke and fires from the Martian Heat Ray are destroying the British Fleet.
Juxtaposed those passages with Melisandre vision from ASOIAF. Mels has a vision of a symbolic bloody tide submerging towers by the sea. Her bloody tide echoes that of the red weed and black smoke flooding London and its countryside.
In ASOIAF, all evidence suggests that George’s version of the bloody tide will be caused by Euron as he and the Ironfleet attack Oldtown, the premier city of learning in Westeros and home to two major towers…the Hightower and the Citadel. Poor Quentyn famously broke down this theory in his Eldritch Apocalypse essay.
The rivers will be red with blood after the Ironborn attack, and any of the Redwyne fleet that were not previously destroyed, and or others put into play by Tyrells or Hightowers will be as defenseless against the Ironfleet as the British Navy is shown to be against the Martians.
There is also the potential for a real flood if shards of meteors hit planetos as has been proposed by Lucifer Means Lightbringer. This echoes the flooding caused by the Martians because as I discussed in part one, the Martian cylinders were at first thought to be meteors.
The bloody tide is not the only comparison George makes in his story to Euron and the events in The War of the Worlds.
Illustration from original edition of HG Wells’s War of the Worlds, Public Domain
“Once a leash of thin black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset and was immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up, joint by joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a wobbling motion. What could be going on there?”
The War of the Worlds: The Heat Ray
_______
“I talked with these soldiers for a time; I told them of my sight of the Martians on the previous evening. None of them had seen the Martians, and they had but the vaguest ideas of them, so that they plied me with questions.
“ ’Ain’t they got any necks, then?” said a third, abruptly—a little, contemplative, dark man, smoking a pipe.”
“I repeated my description.
“Octopuses,” said he, “that’s what I calls ’em. Talk about fishers of men—fighters of fish it is this time!”
The War of the Worlds: The Fighting Begins
Although this next excerpt has not yet officially appeared on the page, we learn about from George’s reading of an excerpt of The Winds of Winter at a convention, which fans such as Poor Quentyn and others recorded, transcribed, and shared with the rest of the fandom. Thanks guys!
The dreams were even worse the second time.
He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea. He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed...
The Martians are compared to octopuses while Aeron views Euron as looking like a squid. Pretty much the same thing.
And what about the woman whose hands are alive with pale white fire. There has been much discussion in the fandom over who the woman might be with suggestions ranging from Dany to Cersei, to even Viserion as the dragon’s fire is pale white. As it is said that dragons can be both sexes, this theory assumes that Viserion is currently female.
Like dragons, the Martian’s have no discernable sex. However, unlike dragons who lay eggs, their procreation method seems to mimic that of flowers.
In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the Martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the tumultuous emotions that arise from that difference among men. A young Martian, there can now be no dispute, was really born upon earth during the war, and it was found attached to its parent, partially budded off, just as young lilybulbs bud off, or like the young animals in the fresh-water polyp.
The War of the Worlds: What We Saw from the Ruined House
I for one think the woman with hands with pale white flame is meant to represent Dany. While there is no female Martian, as I’ve discussed, the Targs and their dragons are heavily compared to the alien invaders and their fiery black smoke. And like the Martians, they bring fire and blood. Funnily enough, while there is no figure of a woman involved, there is a scene in TWOTW makes one think of the Euron excerpt. We get a hint that the woman with Euron is Dany in another of Melisandre’s memory of her vision.
“Visions danced before her, gold and scarlet, flickering, forming and melting and dissolving into one another, shapes strange and terrifying and seductive. She saw the eyeless faces again, staring out at her from sockets weeping blood. Then the towers by the sea, crumbling as the dark tide came sweeping over them, rising from the depths. Shadows in the shape of skulls, skulls that turned to mist, bodies locked together in lust, writhing and rolling and clawing. Through curtains of fire great winged shadows wheeled against a hard blue sky.”
A Dance with Dragons, Melisandre I
I’m not sure about the symbolic implication of the white fire in either instance, but the one with Euron does show George being consistent in echoing events in TWOTW. Let’s look at the passage in question.
The air was full of sound, a deafening and confusing conflict of noises—the clangorous din of the Martians, the crash of falling houses, the thud of trees, fences, sheds flashing into flame, and the crackling and roaring of fire. Dense black smoke was leaping up to mingle with the steam from the river, and as the Heat-Ray went to and fro over Weybridge its impact was marked by flashes of incandescent white, that gave place at once to a smoky dance of lurid flames. The nearer houses still stood intact, awaiting their fate, shadowy, faint, and pallid in the steam, with the fire behind them going to and fro.
The War of the Worlds
Dany represents the incandescent white fire, or in George’s parlay, the woman with hands of pale white fire.
Also, as I briefly discussed here, George has associated both Dany and Euron with storms for a reason. It gives them something in common and we the readers should wonder about this commonality. We should also ponder what might happen if these two storms merge and possibly generate a Fujiwhara Effect.
So, we come to the end of this series, that’s been 4 years in the writing. What are your thoughts? What do you think George writing Dany, the Targs and Euron like Martian Invaders will mean? Finally, what do you think of my red door theory…tinfoil? All thoughts welcome.
And yes, I will finish the Florian and Jonquil, and Dragon vs the Wolf series. I promise.
If you didn’t take my advice and read this chapter before reading the first two, you can go back and read them at the links below.
The War of the Worlds is a pretty short book…about 300 pages, and so if you want to read it for yourself to see other comparisons I didn’t include…and there are more, prices for the Apple e-book starts as low as $2.99. Or if you prefer a listen, check out the dulcet sounds of Robert from In Deep Geek as he reads the entire book on his second YouTube channel, The Well Told Tale.
PART ONE
PART TWO
GRRM’s ESSAY ON MARS
No doubt I will re-read and find numerous typos that I will have to go back to fix but here it is. Thanks for reading.
ETA 1/26/23...As expected, I found a few typos, which I fixed. I also added some sections header and a second quote from Melisandre’s visions pertaining to Dany and Euron.
#asoiaf#asoiaf meta#literary comparasion#war of the worlds#george rr martin#hg wells#daenerys targaryen#euron greyjoy#storm cloud meta#daenerys endgame#daenerys endgame analysis#asoiaf analysis#long meta#scr meta
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The vitriol spewed at Alicent reveals the warped view of modern feminism in these online circles. People criticize her for reinforcing traditional gender roles, while they praise Rhaenyra as this "feminist revolutionary" who defied the status quo.
Some online communities that claim to espouse progressive values seem almost oblivious to the fact that any freedom or independence received by female characters is rooted in a fragile foundation. These shallow analyses perpetuate ignorance, completely disregarding the social structures and complex power dynamics employed within these fictional universes.
When King Viserys passed away, Rhaenyra's supposed 'independence' vanished with his death - a reminder of the fragility of a woman's power within the rigidly patriarchal society. Although her father had bucked tradition by making her heir, she still functioned within the confines of the same feudal system, refusing to grant inheritance rights to Rosby women and Lady Stokeworth. Her authority was never truly absolute; it could be overturned at any moment by those more entrenched in power. In this way, Rhaenyra's 'agency' was, ironically, dependent upon the king.
Alicent and Rhaenyra were both prisoners of an archaic system, their freedom bound by the shackles of patriarchy. But while Alicent had power as long as she followed the status quo, Rhaenyra felt the full brunt of her restriction once her father - the king - passed away!!
#alicent hightower#pro alicent hightower#hotd analysis#team green#alicent x rhaenyra#anti viserys i targaryen#helaena targaryen#alicent hotd#asoiaf analysis
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Dorne, Shown not Told: how Darkstar is more than his reputation.
Darkstar used to bug me as a character—not necessarily because of his edgy dialogue, but because the way he was written: he's not on-page for very long, so we're really told much more about him than we are shown anything.
I've seen this same complaint voiced before, and almost always it's brushed over as an inherent failure of Gerold as a character, or other arguments that presuppose a lack of faith in Martin.
I can understand why, without deeper analysis, some people try to make the Doylist argument that Darkstar must be lazy writing by Martin, something along the lines of "I have to introduce this guy quick, so here's a bunch of backstory told by a bunch of characters". Instead, though, I argue that this situation of being "told" so much about Darkstar is actually the Watsonian perspective of his character; it is Arianne who has been told so much about him, and we're experiencing her misconceptions.
I've come to realize that the feeling of being "told" about Darkstar, with a focus away from what we're "shown," is fully intentional. With this different approach to interpreting Darkstar's character, I've found that not only do I like him so much more as a character in-universe, but I also like him so much more as an element in George R R Martin's writing. Melisandre might be his "most misunderstood character," but I think Gerold Dayne must be up there too.
I don't understand why it took me so long to see it: ASOIAF is all about the way that information—or misinformation—spreads and changes the course of action and history. Of course this would be a theme to look out for. Once I started to dig more into this idea in relation to Darkstar, I realized just how prevalent this theme was in the Dornish arc, which is entirely about the way that people are told something, and the way that being told these things—even without evidence—has such an impact. That's what the companion post to this one is about.
If you've read that post already, and now I've got you on board to doubt the reputation that Darkstar has, and to doubt the story Arianne was told about him, this is the post where I rebuild Gerold's character from scratch, and convince you that he's actually an alright guy, a trustworthy one, and possibly even a true knight. Maybe, even, he's worthy of Dawn, and the title of "Sword of the Morning."
I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest this, as it's been so many years, but it's exciting to experience a moment of realization that makes me see the writing itself in a new light, so I wanted to share my thought process here.
2.0 Gerold Dayne, shown not told.
In this part, I attempt to look at Gerold Dayne as if I were Areo Hotah, not Arianne: to watch what he does and says, on page, rather than take anyone's word for it, and rather than interpret his actions against a prejudice that he is as dark and dangerous as Arianne thinks. This way, I want to see what kind of man Gerold Dayne actually shows us he is, through his actions and interactions, rather than who we're told he is.
Beyond just doubting Doran's story because I don't believe Doran to be trustworthy, here I'll be explaining why I think that once we get to know Darkstar as best as we can, maiming Myrcella doesn't even really sound like something he would do.
This is a long one too, like the other one, so the rest is after the cut
2.1 Early good impressions—by being early
We don't see very much of Darkstar on-page, so let's start with our very first impression of him, in the second paragraph of the chapter:
Arianne Martell arrived with Drey and Sylva just as the sun was going down, with the west a tapestry of gold and purple and the clouds all glowing crimson. The ruins seemed aglow as well; the fallen columns glimmered pinkly, red shadows crept across the cracked stone floors, and the sands themselves turned from gold to orange to purple as the light faded. Garin had arrived a few hours earlier, and the knight called Darkstar the day before.
We don't know when they arranged to meet, but I think there's room for a symbolic meaning to Arianne arriving just as the sun goes down. Symbolically, the day ending as soon as she arrives mirrors the way that her plan is going to end as soon as it begins.
In addition, it's a signature of Arianne's character this chapter, moving just slightly too slowly. In this way, Arianne is already more like her father than she wants to admit—remember the overripe oranges falling in The Captain of the Guards, or how Areo knew that Doran saying they would leave at dawn meant midday. Arianne is the same—she arrives to her own plan at dusk.
Even without that comparison, Arianne's late arrival is emblematic of her inability to structure a plan as carefully as she believes she can, which is also something that haunts her for the rest of his arc. Consider the meaning of this for her: she is the head of this plan, and yet she and her two companions are the last to arrive. Garin beats her to the rendezvous place by a few hours... and Darkstar is almost the opposite extreme. He gets there a whole day early.
Perhaps that's suspect, perhaps that's responsible; this alone is not enough to say. For a certainty, though, this clearly positions Darkstar as someone who is, say, the opposite of the "Late" Lord Walder Frey. He's a man who comes early, not late.
As the chapter continues, it's not the only time that Arianne lags carelessly while Darkstar vouches for a more responsible course of action, so keep this in mind. This passage sets the tone for the rest of the chapter.
2.2 What makes a man "Great"?
The next time we see Darkstar on page, we get his first line of dialogue and his first actual on-page action. He juts in while the others are talking about the storied hero who is Garin's namesake:
"Garin the Great," offered Drey, "the wonder of the Rhoyne."
"That's the one. He made Valyria tremble."
"They trembled," said Ser Gerold, "then they killed him. If I led a quarter of a million men to death, would they call me Gerold the Great?" He snorted. "I shall remain Darkstar, I think. At least it is mine own." He unsheathed his longsword, sat upon the lip of the dry well, and began to hone the blade with an oilstone.
There's a lot to unpack here for such a short passage. To begin with, we can interpret some of Darkstar's values from his additions to this conversation. He clearly has a certain pragmatism, because he chooses to see through the veneration that the stories have afforded "Garin the Great", and points out that his cause was actually poorly met. In this way, Gerold might come off like a humorless spoilsport, but we can also consider the fact that he's already learned some of the lessons that other characters, like Sansa, have been forced to face: reality does not match the songs, and not all "heroes" are good people.
Gerold also shows a concern for the ranks of the military. It's not about one man's veneration for him, it's about the success of the plan—and the survival of the men who act on it. This is actually the same concern for Dorne that Doran is obsessed with, at the end of The Watcher:
"Until the Mountain crushed my brother's skull, no Dornishmen had died in this War of the Five Kings," the prince murmured softly, as Hotah pulled a blanket over him. "Tell me, Captain, is that my shame or my glory?"
Doran has spent a lifetime hemming and hawing over this notion, unsure of whether to act or to wait, and choosing inaction over decision. By stark contrast, Gerold speaks with a casual certainty: "Garin the Great" was no good at all, because all his men died, and he lost. It might make him sound like a cynic, but Dayne knows what he believes in. Leading men to their death is no greatness at all.
2.3 Choosing one's own name
And, now knowing his thoughts on blind veneration, we might reinterpret his decision to invent his own nickname. Rather than grasping for approval from in songs (like Tywin's Rains of Castamere), his act of naming himself could be seen as a sign of honor, not blind pride.
"If I led a quarter of a million men to death, would they call me Gerold the Great?" He snorted. "I shall remain Darkstar, I think. At least it is mine own."
He does not believe in misjudged "bravery" for the sake of a title, and therefore is unlike so many others who we see across ASOIAF ready to die fighting in their desire for glory. Rather than dreaming of becoming immortalized in a song, Darkstar has no lust for public approval—he's given himself his own title, and means to prove himself against his own standard.
And at least it is his own. ASOIAF is a story where so much weight is put into names and epithets—Arya and Sansa losing their names and even their chapter titles, Brienne and Jaime fighting against the disparaging nicknames they are given. Here, Darkstar has already proven himself past all of those troubles with this one action—regardless of whatever names others should call him, or even remember him by, he shall go by this one, the name, and the fate, that he chose for himself.
2.4 Honing the blade
And then, immediately, Gerold starts caring for his blade.
He unsheathed his longsword, sat upon the lip of the dry well, and began to hone the blade with an oilstone.
Interestingly, the list of people who hone their blade on-page is surprisingly short. This shared action puts Gerold in league with the likes of Brienne:
I will, she promised his shade, there in the piney wood. She sat down on a rock, took out her sword, and began to hone its edge. I will remember, and I pray I will not flinch.
And also the likes of Yoren, Arya, Jon, Meera, Barristan, and Hotah himself; all of whom are dutiful if not also generally good-hearted. Ilyn Payne and Rakharo, care for their blades on-page, too, and though I'm not sure if they get enough story time to argue whether or not they are good-hearted, they are certainly pragmatic, skilled, and committed. Bronn, too, hones his blade on-page, and even if not good-hearted, he's these other positive qualities, the ones that make him likeable even in his scoundrel status: Bronn is skilled, pragmatic, dedicated to his craft, and even committed after his own fashion (he does name his adoptive child Tyrion, after all).
Better tying this to a morality case, the first time we see Sandor Clegane caring for his blade is after the Red Wedding, after he fully commits to taking in Arya. Similarly, Jaime is only seen caring for his blade in Feast and later, after he begins to have his own character turn towards searching for honor.
In stark contrast, Theon pulls out his blade to "sharpen" it before facing his father in Clash, but he only "gave it a few licks" with the whetstone ... what a total poser.
(It's a silly thing, but the most minor character we see sharpening a blade is a stray Blackwood... so you know these are the good guys, haha. Oswell Whent, too, which I don't make much of myself but I know others have.)
So, when we see Gerold Dayne start to sharpen his blade as his first on-page action, we might think: here is a man who is responsible, who is committed to duty, who believes in taking care of his person and his honor. Tying little actions like this to character qualities is the kind of thing GRRM does frequently.
2.5 Sober attitude
To a similar end, we also see that Gerold Dayne doesn't drink, preferring water with lemon.
Once the kindling caught, they sat around the flames and passed a skin of summerwine from hand to hand . . . all but Darkstar, who preferred to drink unsweetened lemonwater.
Which puts him in league with Brienne again:
"I would prefer water," said Brienne.
"Elmar, the red for Ser Jaime, water for the Lady Brienne, and hippocras for myself." Bolton waved a hand at their escort, dismissing them, and the men beat a silent retreat.
As well as Stannis, paragon of "duty":
But not today, I think—ah, here's your son with our water."
Devan set the tray on the table and filled two clay cups. The king sprinkled a pinch of salt in his cup before he drank; Davos took his water straight, wishing it were wine.
Again, this is the kind of quality that is associated with people who are attached to their sense of duty. (Note also that as Brienne feels increasingly lost during her search for Sansa, we see her increasingly drink wine. Roose, for his part, doesn't just drink wine, but wants wine sweetened with sugar and spices, which, like Littlefinger's minty breath, covers up his harsh reality).
So Gerold Dayne, in word and action, seems to have more in common with duty- and honor-bound characters, rather than being the heartless rogue which the Martells seem to believe he is.
2.6 Arianne's imagination versus Gerold's reality
Arianne asserts that Gerold would go so far as to exterminate an entire clan... but it's while she's fantasizing about ruling Sunspear with Myrcella as Queen:
Once I crown Myrcella and free the Sand Snakes, all Dorne will rally to my banners. The Yronwoods might declare for Quentyn, but alone they were no threat. If they went over to Tommen and the Lannisters, she would have Darkstar destroy them root and branch.
So we know what Arianne thinks he's capable of, but we also have heard Dayne's own thoughts that war for its own sake is not laudable. Would he really be the type to eradicate a whole family, like Arianne says? So far, he seems otherwise like an alright guy, and potentially even a true knight, so far: he takes care of his sword, he stays sober, he arrives early, he's not searching for glory from others, and he doesn't believe one should be rewarded for idiotic wars.
If I were to put this in a single quote—if I could create a single moment where I might show that Arianne's mental image of Darkstar is one way (hard, dangerous, mean) and his reality was a different way (dutiful, pragmatic, and good-hearted)—I might show it like this:
He has a cruel mouth, though, and a crueler tongue. His eyes seemed black as he sat outlined against the dying sun, sharpening his steel, but she had looked at them from a closer vantage and she knew that they were purple. Dark purple. Dark and angry.
He must have felt her gaze upon him, for he looked up from his sword, met her eyes, and smiled.
Does he have a cruel mouth, and dark, angry eyes? Or does he have an easy smile? Arianne tells us the former... but so far, we are shown the latter.
And what does Gerold himself say with that "cruel tongue"? What counsel does he give, what courses does he suggest?
2.7 Gerold's bloody suggestion
Before Myrcella arrives, Gerold Dayne has the chance to offer counsel to Arianne. This moment comes directly following that moment where all of Arianne's other conspirators confide that they don't trust him, and that they don't need him for the plan. Immediately afterward, Darkstar returns and suggests that the plan isn't very good to begin with.
Dayne put a foot upon the head of a statue that might have been the Maiden till the sands had scoured her face away. "It occurred to me as I was pissing that this plan of yours may not yield you what you want."
While all of Arianne's friends have warned her of Darkstar, why is it that Darkstar is the only one to warn Arianne that this is a poor plan? It's important to remember that he's right, after all, because this plan gets thwarted, and as he goes on to say, was ill-concieved to begin with. If he can see it, why have none of Arianne's other allies considered this? Or, more interestingly, why have none of them told her?
This conversation continues, and notice how Arianne is never straightforward with Gerold about how she feels in response to his questioning. She says one thing, and then thinks another to herself. Already, we are being shown how we might be distrustful of what we are told—and again, Arianne has more in common with her father than she thinks. She knows how to speak carefully when she really has another objective.
"And what is it I want, ser?"
"The Sand Snakes freed. Vengeance for Oberyn and Elia. Do I know the song? You want a little taste of lion blood."
That, and my birthright. I want Sunspear, and my father's seat. I want Dorne. "I want justice."
"Call it what you will. Crowning the Lannister girl is a hollow gesture. She will never sit the Iron Throne. Nor will you get the war you want. The lion is not so easily provoked."
"The lion's dead. Who knows which cub the lioness prefers?"
"The one in her own den." Ser Gerold drew his sword. It glimmered in the starlight, sharp as lies. "This is how you start a war. Not with a crown of gold, but with a blade of steel."
At first blush, it's easy to get caught up in the notion that Darkstar is simply offering to kill Myrcella for the ease of it all. We're told the whole chapter that Darkstar is a violent man, and here's the evidence.
Arianne herself only considers this interpretation, and it's how she remembers the conversation once she's imprisoned:
He wanted to kill her instead of crowning her, he said as much at Shandystone. He said that was how I'd get the war I wanted.
However, this conversation, though brief, is not so simple as that. Instead, while Gerold's advice to Arianne here at first seems unnecessarily violent, he's actually displaying wisdoms that we learn elsewhere in the story.
For a start, we see Gerold's disdain for vengeance for it's own sake—and his suggestion to Arianne that this quest of revenge and authority will not actually get her what she wants. In Gerold's words, she wants "a taste of lion's blood." He knows this song, as he says, as well as Ellaria, who gives an identical warning with far more impassioned language to the same audience ADWD The Watcher:
"Oberyn wanted vengeance for Elia. Now the three of you want vengeance for him. I have four daughters, I remind you. Your sisters. My Elia is fourteen, almost a woman. Obella is twelve, on the brink of maidenhood. They worship you, as Dorea and Loreza worship them. If you should die, must El and Obella seek vengeance for you, then Dorea and Loree for them? Is that how it goes, round and round forever? I ask again, where does it end?" Ellaria Sand laid her hand on the Mountain's head. "I saw your father die. Here is his killer. Can I take a skull to bed with me, to give me comfort in the night? Will it make me laugh, write me songs, care for me when I am old and sick?"
Gerold says it more simply, and more harshly: this quest for vengeance and lion's blood will not get you what you want.
He then tries another angle, saying that "Crowning the Lannister girl is a hollow gesture. She will never sit the Iron Throne. Nor will you get the war you want." This sounds, at first, like a complaint of the plan's futility, but he offers a suggestion of how to achieve said war instead: "Not with a crown of gold, but with a blade of steel."
I have to point out the metaphor at use in this moment:
Ser Gerold drew his sword. It glimmered in the starlight, sharp as lies.
A blade as sharp as lies—yet another allusion to this constant Dornish theme of lying and deadly misinformation. Seen from another perspective, we might put it another way: that lies are as deadly as a blade. This, too, is Doran's message: that the grass which hides the snake is just as deadly.
This too is Gerold's message, because in combination, his suggestion that crowning her is empty and to kill her is simpler sounds like an allusion to another wisdom we learn later in ADWD Tyrion I, given by Illyrio when Tyrion alights on the same bright idea as Arianne, to crown Myrcella:
"In Volantis they use a coin with a crown on one face and a death's-head on the other. Yet it is the same coin. To queen her is to kill her."
Gerold understands this, and he displays it in this conversation. His offer here, then, is to skip the trouble in between—the girl will never sit the Iron Throne in any case, so Arianne should just kill her and be done with it, and have your war that way.
Rather than a threat against Myrcella's life, the way Arianne remembers it, we might see this as a challenge: if Gerold sees that both acts end in Myrcella's death, and both in war, he's presenting Arianne reality of the lack of choice.
In a way, this is consistent with his earlier complaints about Garin the Great—was it worth it to make Valyria "tremble" at the cost of so many of his own? Gerold's question, though harshly put, makes Arianne face that question now, before they start off with the plans.
Like her father, though, Arianne defers the problem, preferring not to address it this night.
I am no murderer of children. "Put that away. Myrcella is under my protection. And Ser Arys will permit no harm to come to his precious princess, you know that."
Arianne makes the choice, but she does not say it aloud. Why? Because even she sees that it's contradictory to raise her up and expect her to live?
As we see so often with Arianne, she foolishly answers that it's not her responsibility. Myrcella may be under her protection, but Arianne relies on Ser Arys' action to keep it that way. Arianne tries to argue that the weight of this threat to Myrcella is not Arianne's burden to take, but rather Arys'.
Darkstar disagrees, pointing out the longstanding rivalry between the Dornish and the Marcher Lords.
"No, my lady. What I know is that Daynes have been killing Oakhearts for several thousand years."
His arrogance took her breath away. "It seems to me that Oakhearts have been killing Daynes for just as long."
"We all have our family traditions." Darkstar sheathed his sword. "The moon is rising, and I see your paragon approaching."
Finally, though, actions once again speak louder than words. Rather than pull his sword here against Arys, like he was just threatening to do, he sheathes his sword when he spots Arys, obeying Arianne's command. So far, whatever he's said, Gerold is still committed to following Arianne's wishes.
His threats about Daynes killing Oakhearts has another layer of meaning, though, in this complete context: Daynes have been killing Oakhearts, yes, but it's not just Daynes who wouldn't blink at killing a Marcher, it's all of the Dornish—as Arys is so intimately aware of in his one chapter.
As much as Arianne is dodging responsibility, she's also right that Arys is the final obstacle in anyone's way should they wish to do harm to Myrcella. Note, though, that despite the story Doran and Arianne later tell the Sand Snakes, it is not Darkstar who slays Arys—it's Areo Hotah. If we say that actions speak louder than words, hear this: Gerold sheathes his sword when Arys approaches, and it is Doran (through Areo) who kills Myrcella's most leal protector.
Given all the trouble Doran later goes to in an attempt to smooth over Arys' death, Gerold is probably right here that a dead Arys means war. Once again, Gerold is a pragmatic thinker, in theory. In my opinion, despite the cruelty of his suggestion, his conversation about the death of Myrcella is a reality check, not a call for wanton violence.
2.8 Gerold's good counsel and care
Later comes the second time where Arianne lags carelessly... and here, Gerold steps in to give Arianne good counsel.
Arianne had hoped to reach the river before the sun came up, but they had started much later than she'd planned, so they were still in the saddle when the eastern sky turned red. Darkstar cantered up beside her. "Princess," he said, "I'd set a faster pace, unless you mean to kill the child after all. We have no tents, and by day the sands are cruel."
Here, contradicting the stories of Gerold Dayne as a cruel man, Darkstar seems to show more direct concern for Myrcella's wellbeing than any of the other plotters. Arianne—like her father—moves to slow, and Gerold wants to make sure that the girl isn't killed. He's not just pragmatic in theory, he can also be pragmatic and considerate when it comes to the young girl with them.
Here, also, we see that Gerold does not actually mean the girl harm. The accusation that Darkstar slashed Myrcella implies this narrative where Darkstar took advantage of the chaos to finally take his chance to kill the girl and make good on his threat. If that were the case, then here Darkstar could have simply said nothing, and let the girl suffer or even die from the heat. Instead, he speaks up in order to spare Myrcella from the sand's cruelty.
2.9 Gerold's opinion of Arthur Dayne
With all of this context, I'll finally take a look at Gerold's opinion of Arthur Dayne.
As she led the princess to the fire, Arianne found Ser Gerold behind her. "My House goes back ten thousand years, unto the dawn of days," he complained. "Why is it that my cousin is the only Dayne that anyone remembers?"
"He was a great knight," Ser Arys Oakheart put in.
"He had a great sword," Darkstar said.
"And a great heart."
He clearly loves the Dayne house, but seems to have less respect than most for Arthur. Many and more have taken this to be a sign of petty envy, that Darkstar is questioning Arthur's skill at swordplay, perhaps in comparison to his own.
But consider the quote another way: we know from his opinion of "Garin the Great" that Gerold resists the idea of blindly idolizing heroes only because they have become great in the telling. This newer hero, Arthur, is no more special to him. What has he actually done, not what stories have been told of him?
Once again, this is a return of our theming: being shown, not told. Gerold is quick to resist the allure of the songs of Arthur Dayne—to Gerold, there are plenty of other Daynes just as special, or perhaps even more so. This is not a lack of love for his house, nor for honor and glory—quite the opposite. Like with choosing his own name, Darkstar wants to create his own context to see Arthur in, as part of a ten thousand year old lineage of great Daynes (ha) and not some special, magic knight.
Perhaps Gerold Dayne is pointing out that there is more to a knight than having a sword; perhaps he is condemning the idea of equating "swordplay" with "greatness".
What we hear about Arthur is more often than not about his prowress with a sword, but consider the context in which Arthur Dayne was brought up in this chapter. When Myrcella brings him up, his reputation is marred by the fact it's own existence:
"There was an Arthur Dayne," Myrcella said. "He was a knight of the Kingsguard in the days of Mad King Aerys."
Not the most good-hearted of details to remember him by, truth be told.
I suggest that this passage instead serves to suggest that Gerold has a stricter sense of what is valorous than most. Even the great, seemingly infallible Arthur Dayne was a sword in defense of the Mad King. Does serving the Mad King still make for a "great knight"? Or only a "great sword"?
Of course, there's another interesting aspect to this quote: despite his disregard for the particular qualities of Arthur, Gerold is more than willing to acknowledge the greatness of the sword Dawn. I'll get into that at the end.
2.10 Gerold sues for peace
Finally, in his final appearance on-page, we get a last word from Gerold Dayne, who, this time, says exactly what Arianne is thinking... when she, again, is too slow to act, and is unable to say anything herself.
You reckless fool, was all that Arianne had time to think, what do you think you're doing?
Darkstar's laughter rang out. "Are you blind or stupid, Oakheart? There are too many. Put up your sword."
Darkstar suggests to all that they surrender. He suggests they put up their swords. Yet again, this is a consistent characterization for Darkstar: a man who speaks against the honor of leading others in a death charge, a man who is a sober thinker, a man who plans to arrive early, and a man who considers heavily the consequences of the actions at hand, especially when they end in the death of a young girl.
After all this, I don't think it sounds like Darkstar to make a wild, reckless, opportune grasp for Myrcella's life, no matter whatever Doran says. Instead, Gerold Dayne has all the trappings of a dutiful knight, and even his brusque edges come from a certain brutal realism, not a sense of jilted pride. He may even be a good and caring man at times.
3.0 My predictions for TWOW: GRRM's next moves
I used to really not like Darkstar. I don't mind him being a little cringe, because this whole series, as well written as it is, still has plenty of pulpy 80s underpinnings which I love just as much as the highbrow stuff. I can handle a little melodrama, fine... but why is Darkstar so flat, I wondered. It felt so incredibly—uncharacteristically—clumsy to have this hurried introduction of a character, and have everyone in the chapter rush to tell the reader how dangerous he is, just so he could do the "dangerous guy" thing and run off to become the next MacGuffin of Dorne.
That is, if everything, or anything, that we were told about him is true.
If we understand that not all we're told is true, then GRRM hasn't actually spent a whole chapter telling without showing. Instead, he's been consistently playing with the same notions of actual reality vs. stories and lies that the rest of the Dornish plot revolves around (and the rest of the series, for that matter, but I'm staying focused here).
In addition, all of that telling we got about Gerold Dayne wasn't at all for the purpose of giving us a quick, surface level introduction to the character (which makes sense, because George is otherwise so good with character). Instead, all that telling is part of a larger, longer plot about Doran's scheming and lying, and Arianne's own susceptibility to Doran's stories.
Finally, and most of all, it all sets up one of GRRM's favorite things to do: a subversion of a character in a twist that involves a sudden change of perspective.
If Arianne and Doran have spent 4 (or 5, including TWOW previews) chapters now telling us what a nasty guy Gerold Dayne is, won't it be a shock once he's granted Dawn rightfully and is named the next Sword of the Morning? What's even better is that, looking back, it will be clear to see how much he isn't a nasty guy—he's actually a pretty good candidate, dutiful, smart, aware of the consequences. He's the kind of guy to take care of himself, keeping his mind and blade sharp, and to be considerate of those lesser than him, as with Myrcella or Garin's army. He may not be a nice guy, but being nice and kind are not always the same. That character of Darkstar, the knight worthy of Dawn, was there all along—except that it was all obfuscated under Arianne internal narration and Doran's repeated lying.
After all, he is of the night... which sounds super edgy, but is foreshadowing too. What comes after the night? The Morning.
Being "of the night" might not be Darkstar being an antihero, but instead being anti- heroes, he's against the concept of the overinflated hero. Like Sandor Clegane, who starts to seem more and more a true knight despite despising knights, Darkstar may be set up to take on a legendary mantle, like Sword of the Morning, despite his utter disdain for legendary heroes, like Ser Arthur and Garin the Great.
And actually, I suspect that Darkstar is quite familiar with Dawn already—after all, despite his cool words about Ser Arthur, Gerold Dayne does seem to recognize the greatness of Dawn. I expect that he's seen its value for himself.
Gerold is the type of man to take himself seriously ... and while that's very easy to make fun of from a reader's perspective, it's a very admirable quality in a knight. It's the same trajectory Jaime has been on: everything used to be a joke to him, but no longer: Jaime is learning how to shed that shield of humor and to take himself and his honor seriously. Can we begrudge Ser Gerold the same?
Rather than hunting down a villain, Areo Hotah, Obara, and Balon Swann are on Doran's truth-suppression mission. For after all, as Lady Nym pointed out, loose ends make for exposed lies. If I replace some of the names of her cautionary message from The Watcher:
If Gerold Dayne is alive, soon or late the truth will out. If he appears again, Doran Martell will be exposed as a liar before all the Seven Kingdoms. He would be an utter fool to risk that.
And so Doran sends his unbeatable Hotah, with his massive and lethal axe that already killed one Kingsguard and might well kill another. How is Gerold Dayne going to match up against that?
Well, he'll have a great sword.
#jozor thoughts#asoiaf meta#asoiaf analysis#Doran Martell and Gerold Dayne#valyrianscrolls#twow speculation#darkstar#Dorne Told not Shown
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I can’t think of anything that did more damage to the ASoIaF fandom than this perception of GRRM as a grand twist master who’s text can’t be trusted.
#asoiaf#asoiaf analysis#george rr martin#GRRM#a song if ice and fire#his foreshadowing is pretty straightforward actually#don’t know why I decided to post in the ASoIaF tag#guess I was feeling chaotic
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I have a theory why tradfems fester in the ASOIAF fandom, first one is that the fandom is filled with tradcels, so some are genuine pickmes who are into the series to get male attention. and others, the Stansas..i think they have a super shallow/self insert reading of their faves? aside from QITN/Jonsa/shitting on DanyArya nonsense they mostly like Sansa just because she's feminine. They praise stuff of her that is supposed to be seen in a negative light like her shallowness or lack of smarts and then make horrible takes about how she's revolutionary because she wears dresses unlike all other literature heroines cause they wear pants? nevermind they ignore the historical context for why Sansa would wear a dress in contrast to say a YA heroine living in modern day USA. it gets stupidier the more you think of it.
I definitely agree, and the whole situation is a lot more nuanced and understated than a lot of hardcore Stansas would have you believe.
I think the show can be blamed in part for depicting its female characters as archetypes of gender stereotypes. For example, Arya is often relegated to the role of the “not like other girls” female character. Dany is never allowed to be warm and caring like her book counterpart, and Sansa is made out to basically be a “damsel in distress” the first few seasons, and then a girl boss in the last few. The show runners really did not want these female characters to be multi-dimensional, they wanted to fit them into neat little gendered boxes.
The show would also rather have female characters r*ped than have consensual sex. As evidence by excluding female characters that do have a healthy relationship with sex (Asha, Val, Arianne) from the narrative.
In Westeros things like being intelligent, strong and independent are seen as masculine. Whereas traits like kindness, softness, and dependance on others are seen as feminine. But as the reader you are meant to know that traits like compassion or brutality are not feminine or masculine, and yet there are still readers that buy into the gender roles of Westeros without examining why they believe that adventuring for instance, is for men, and sitting in towers is for women. Gender is not as simple as “girls wear dresses and boys wear pants” and even though that is the general belief in Westeros, that is evidently not what the reader is meant to believe. And through characters like Daenerys, Arya, Sansa, Asha, Arianne, Val, Brienne and more, that could not be made any more clear to the reader.
Some people are selective readers, some people have only seen the show and not read the books, others read the books a long time ago and have forgotten things, others only re-read their favs chapters and allow their favourite character’s own biases to influence their view of other characters. Despite the fact it is made clear no character is entirely objective and they all have their own biases and version of events.
Aside from that, I don’t get the Jonsa ship. To each their own, but I don’t understand how such an obscure pairing can be so popular. Jon and Sansa have not interacted one on one at any point in the entire book series (that I recall). On top of that, they only think of one another when they think of all of their siblings combined. I don’t believe there is a single instance of Jon thinking about Sansa individually or vice versa at any point in all of ASOIAF to date. Jon does think about Arya very fondly a whole lot, and vice versa. In fact, there is way more evidence for Jon x Arya than there is for Jon x Sansa (though I don’t care at all for either ship). But then again, maybe that’s why some Sansa stans insist on the Jonsa ship? Because they hate the idea of their favourite male character being closer to their favourite female character’s “rival” (Arya) than their favourite female character in question (Sansa)? I also think some people watched the show and saw how close Sansa and Jon seemed to be in the last few seasons and conflated that with some unseen truth that must exist in the books, even though we all know that pretty much everything in season 6 of GOT and onwards was bullshit.
Which brings me to my final point, which is that a lot of hardcore Stansas and Arya stans insist on this character war, and push the extreme idea that Sansa and Arya are enemies instead of… sisters that don’t get along.
#I do love Sansa but her fans drive me up the wall#asoiaf#asoiaf analysis#asoiaf ask#valyrianscrolls#arya stark#jon snow#daenys targaryen#anti sansa stans
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Eu já fiz alguns - vários - paralelos entre Rhaenyra e Cersei, agora, eu trago alguns paralelos entre Arianne com a filha de Viserys.
Em breve tentarei fazer um blog maior (agora estou sem muito tempo), mas por enquanto, vamos de forma resumida:
-Ambas são as filhas mais velhas e herdeiras de seus pais, tendo um irmão mais velho que elas desprezam e que são (ou assim elas acreditam, como no caso de Arianne) ameaças ao direito delas como herdeiras;
-Tiveram caso desde jovem com alguém chamado Daemon e perderam a virgindade para ele;
-Ambas tiveram algum grau de relação e sentimentos amorosos com o irmão mais novo e rebelde de seu pai; Rhaenyra foi abusada desde cedo pelo seu tio Daemon, enquanto Arianne tinha um "crush" não correspondido por seu tio Oberyn —ambos são homens ardilosos e o total oposto de seus irmãos mais velhos, conhecidos por suas personalidades mais calmas e pacíficas;
-Viserys e Doran tem suas igualdades e diferenças, mas ambos defenderam o direito de suas filhas: Viserys ignorou as leis de sucessão e declarou Rhaenyra herdeira, e, mesmo sendo conhecido por sua personalidade leviana, nunca voltou atrás em sua decisão; Doran por sua vez, sempre foi visto como fraco, e acabou tendo problemas em relação a sua filha Arianne quando esta achou que ele estava favorecendo seu irmão Quentyn, acreditando que seu pai tramava para que ele herdasse dorne; entretanto, Doran queria que Arianne se casasse com Viserys (oq não aconteceu, fazendo com que ele deixasse Arianne como herdeira de Dorne e Quentyn como pretendente de Daenerys);
-Ambas tiveram um caso com um Cavaleiro da Guarda Real, chamando-os de "Meu manto Branco"; no caso de Rhaenyra, não sabemos com absoluta certeza se ela e Criston chegaram a consumar algo (talvez essa seja a diferença entre ele e Arys, visto que ambos eram ditos como cavaleiros honrados, mas Arys acabou por não resistir a ficar com a princesa, enquanto Criston parece ter repudiado a ideia de que a sua princesa queria ter um caso com ele). Ambos os cavaleiros acabaram vagando em deserto ardente (Criston nas terras devastadas das Terras Fluviais, totalmente queimadas e Arys no deserto literal de Dorne), e foram abatidos por flechas em uma emboscada dos inimigos, morrendo sem um último duelo memorável.
Paralelos com outros personagens?
-Arianne lembra um pouco o próprio Sor Criston, tramando contra o rei Tommen para coroar Myrcella, tudo isso é feito para impedir seu irmão de pegar o trono de Dorne e tomar o trono para si (ironicamente, Arianne está usando a defesa da lei dornesa para coroar uma garota, enquanto Criston defendeu a lei andala, que dizia que nenhuma mulher seria herdeira no lugar de um irmão; tudo isso enquanto a própria Arianne usa Criston como um exemplo de ter atrapalhado uma herdeira legítima de tomar o trono.). Por último, é bom lembrar que Sir Criston é conhecido como "fazedor de Reis" e Arianne tem um capítulo chamado "A Fazedora de Rainhas";
-Tal qual Alicent, Arianne acaba presa numa torre, sendo obrigada a reviver com horror a morte de Sor Arys, o ataque a Myrcella e a prisão de seus colegas, se culpando pelas consequências de suas atitudes -tal qual Alicent em seus últimos anos de vida.
-Arianne estaria repetindo o papel de sua falecida tia, Elia Martell: tomando o lugar de Cersei como rainha, ao lado de um Targaryen, e tirando a casa Lannister do trono de ferro, sendo uma dolorosa ferroada no orgulho da Lannister.
Paralelos futuros?
-Arianne, tal qual Rhaenyra com Otto, pode enfrentar alguns problemas com uma certa mão do Rei: Jon Connington, que pode não gostar de Arianne se casando com Griff ao invés de Daenerys. Isso pode resultar em Arianne convencendo Aegon a mandar sua mão para longe, talvez com a desculpa de que é para resolver algo na Campina—mais expecificamente, para Vilavelha, onde ele espalhará scamagris, mas aí é outra teoria minha 🤭;
-Os aliados de Arianne (mais expecificamente, suas primas) podem matar os filhos de Cersei, como Tommen e Myrcella —Tommen, por exemplo, pode morrer jogado nos espinhos, como Jaehaera (isto é, caso o mesmo não ocorra com Myrcella);
-É possível que Daemon Sand, ex-amante de Arianne, torne-se um "novo Criston Cole" e se volte contra ela, talvez acreditando que ela tomou um caminho ruim para se tornar Rainha (ou ele pode ser mais parecido com Harwyn Strong e ser um fiel seguidor);
-Ela pode acabar se casando com Aegon VI (que a essa altura será praticamente o equivalente ao que Aegon II foi para a Rhaenyra) enquanto Daenerys conquista pedra do Dragão; nesse aspecto, Arianne estaria tomando o lugar de Cersei e Alicent, deixando pretensa rainha Targaryen (ou rei baratheon, no caso de Cersei) exilada e quase sem apoiadores inicialmente, enquanto trata de ser a consorte de um rei Targaryen de aparência mais "legítima" que sua inimiga;
-Uma teoria que eu não acredito muito, é que Elia Sand será um possível interesse romântico para Aegon, imitando o papel da bastarda menos bonita de Nettles com Daemon Targaryen... Mas tenho grandes dúvidas, até porque não acredito que Arianne vá amar Aegon, nem que este se apaixone por Elia;
-Quanto ao final... Talvez, considerando o fim de Rhaenyra, Arianne morra queimada quando o "Holocausto de Jade" ocorrer nos livros, com Daenerys queimando a cidade (mesmo que não com total intenção*) e matando inúmeros personagens importantes —entre eles, a própria Arianne;
*Ironicamente, se essa for uma artimanha de Tyrion, lembraria um pouco Tyland Lannister, que também foi um rival que ajudou a facção verde ao ser uma das causas da queda de Rhaenyra.
-Talvez Arianne acabe não sendo morta, mas volte a ser presa em algum torre, tal qual o fim de Alicent (e revivendo o momento em que acabou sendo presa por seu pai e ficou semanas/meses revivendo seus erros).
Particularmente? Não acredito que Arianne sobreviva no final. Inclusive, acredito que o propósito de Trystane existir é justamente porque ele será o último Martell vivo, sendo uma criança traumatizada pelas perdas familiares que sofreu em tenra idade e pelo reino devastado pelo inverno e guerra (muito por culpa da busca por vingança de seu pai e da ambição de sua irmã).
#arianne martell#asoiaf#rhaenyra targaryen#alicent hightower#asoiaf theories#daemon targaryen#oberyn martell#asoiaf analysis#asoiaf parallels#criston cole#doran martell#sand snakes#aegon vi targaryen#young griff
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I honestly can't believe the people who think Jonsa will be canon in the books when Jonrya is right there. At least Jonerys *kinda* makes sense, butJon mentally compares Arya's body to Ygrittes when they're having sex. That literally happens. Explain that away.
(So help me, if you guys use this one as an excuse to reopen the pro-shipping debate...)
Before I go any further, I will address the elephant in the room. The only one The Golden Company ferried over. I am aware that in the original outline, Martin planned to put Jon and Arya together. So it's easier to see this as leftover remnants of that could-have-been romance. Problem is, that outline also had Tyrion crushing on Arya. It had Sansa pregnant with Joffrey's child, it had Cat getting killed by The Others. See what I mean? It's not the released series, and it's certainly different enough for me to pretty much disregard what it offers.
One quick correction, if you don't mind my doing so. Technically, Jon mentally compares Ygritte's body to Arya's when he's picturing her naked, but not actually when they're doing the deed. I...realize that hardly sounds any better, but the actual lines, about how underneath her furs, she could be "as skinny as Arya" just seems innocent enough for me to take it as innocent.
Another important note. While I'm not condemning the idea of shipping half siblings (or...cousins? R + L = J isn't confirmed in the books, but even if it's true, they were raised as siblings...y'know what, it doesn't matter.) since this is ASOIAF after all, what I will condemn is shipping Jon and Arya as anything other than a "distant future" idea because...there's a considerable age-gap and while it's not quite as pronounced in the books, the character are also younger. I believe Arya is nine in AGOT, which is the last time Jon would have seen her? So uh, no. He better not be thinking about her that way.
Really, I think there's a much more logical (and non-sexual) explanation for what happened here.
Jon doesn't compare Ygritte to Arya because he has a thing for Arya. He compares them because he has literally no other frame of reference for women. No, seriously, think about it. The only women/girls that he's ever interacted with are Cat, Sansa, and Arya. Cat despised him and iced him out. Sansa was rude to him (as she was to basically everyone) and mocked him for being a bastard. Arya, on the other hand, was Jon's best friend. She was also the only girl, (again, he knew all of three, growing up) who defied gender norms, meaning that she was not just the only girl, but only person in general that Jon knew who acted like one of The Free Folk.
When Jon leaves Winterfell, he goes straight to the Night's Watch, which is exclusively men. He doesn't encounter a woman again until Ygritte. Want to know why he compares Ygritte to Arya? This is why. She reminds him of his sister, which one can take as a sign of shipping, but it could easily be platonic as well. I feel like it would have been stranger for him not to compare them. Ygritte is literally the second girl in Jon's life that he feels anything positive for, and she's also Jon's first exposure to the Free Folk, who embody a lot of qualities as a whole that Arya also has.
Ultimately, Jon loves his family, the North, and the Free Folk, and that's all interconnected. I don't think it really has much to do with shipping.
#ASOIAF#Jon Snow#A Song of Ice and Fire#Arya Stark#Ygritte#The Free Folk#ASOIAF Analysis#Fandom Analysis
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