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Aegon the Unworthy, A Study in Historiography: Chapter 3 - Plumming the Depths

Previous: Chapter 2 - The World of Ice and Fire

I'll begin with the situation I referenced in chapter two as an example of a "Misrepresentation" kind of unreliable narration.

>Aegon soon filled his court with men chosen not for their nobility, honesty, or wisdom, but for their ability to amuse and flatter him. And the women of his court were largely those who did the same, letting him slake his lusts upon their bodies. On a whim, he often took from one noble house to give to another, as he did when he casually appropriated the great hills called the Teats from the Brackens and gifted them to the Blackwoods. For the sake of his desires, he gave away priceless treasures, as he did when he granted his Hand, Lord Butterwell, a dragon’s egg in return for access to all three of his daughters. He deprived men of their rightful inheritance when he desired their wealth, as rumors claim he did following the death of Lord Plumm upon his wedding day. (—Maester Yandel, TWOIAF: The Targaryen Kings: Aegon IV p95)

The last sentence is the only one I'll examine for the duration of this whole chapter.

First, I want to quickly point out that this criticism comes as part of a group. The group creates the sense that we need not bother looking into the specifics of any one particular criticism, because even if only one of them is true then Aegon IV was a very bad person, and because that general assessment of Aegon is constant with almost everything else that can be read about him. But for now, let's pluck this one accusation out of the group and see how it holds up to scrutiny.

>He deprived men of their rightful inheritance when he desired their wealth, as rumors claim he did following the death of Lord Plumm upon his wedding day. (—Maester Yandel, TWOIAF: The Targaryen Kings: Aegon IV p95)

The accusation is that, following the death of Lord Plumm upon Lord Plumm's wedding day, Aegon IV desired the wealth of men and deprived those men of their rightful inheritance. The first thing I want to find out is who those men were.

A Victimless Crime

Who were the men or man that was deprived of his rightful inheritance?

Presumably, the man who was deprived of his rightful inheritance was a son of Lord Plumm, but possibly not, so it's good to check and make sure. When I look at the House Plumm family tree on the Westeros.org wiki, I can see that the name "Lord Plumm" is referring to Ossifer Plumm, because Ossifer was the lord of House Plumm at the time. And since Ossifer is already the lord, he can't be the Plumm who was deprived of his rightful inheritance, because he already inherited the lordship. So the man who was deprived of his rightful inheritance must have been Ossifer Plumm's son, Viserys Plumm.

When I check Viserys Plumm's wiki page, I can see that Viserys Plumm became Lord Plumm next after his father Ossifer. So Viserys Plumm can't be the man who was deprived of his rightful inheritance, either.

Then who was the man or "men" who was deprived of his rightful inheritance? Ossifer Plumm didn't have any other children, and Viserys Plumm didn't have any siblings. What the heck is going on?

The next Plumm in the line of succession after a son is a brother. But Ossifer Plumm didn't have any brothers, either.

There are two Plumms on the Plumm family tree who are not connected to any other Plumms. Those are Petyr Plumm and Maynard Plumm.

When I look into Petyr Plumm, I learn that Petyr Plumm is not a real character. Nothing about him is written and he's nothing more than a drawing in a graphic novel who needed a name.

Since I've read the three Dunk and Egg books, I know that Maynard Plumm is a real character, but he's not a real Plumm. Maynard Plumm is the made up identity of Brynden Rivers, who you might know better as Bloodraven. So Maynard can't be the man who was deprived of his rightful inheritance either, because since he's not a Plumm it wouldn't have been rightful for him to inherit House Plumm.

With all the existing Plumms ruled out as the man who was deprived of his rightful inheritance, I'm feeling lost and confused.

I remember that there was a situation with Ossifer Plumm that was described in King Baelor's section, so let's turn back to page 92 and look at that.

A Scurrilous Rumor

>Elaena outlived her siblings and led a tumultuous life once freed from the Maidenvault. Following in Daena’s footsteps, she bore the bastard twins Jon and Jeyne Waters to Alyn Velaryon, Lord Oakenfist. She hoped to wed him, it is written, but a year after his disappearance at sea, she gave up hope and agreed to marry elsewhere. > >She was thrice wed. Her first marriage was in 176 AC, to the wealthy but aged Ossifer Plumm, who is said to have died while consummating the marriage. She conceived, however, for Lord Plumm did his duty before he died. Later, scurrilous rumors came to suggest that Lord Plumm, in fact, died at the sight of his new bride in her nakedness (this rumor was put in the lewdest terms— terms which might have amused Mushroom but which we need not repeat), and that the child she conceived that night was by her cousin Aegon—he who later became King Aegon the Unworthy. (—Maester Yandel, TWOIAF: The Targaryen Kings: Baelor I p92)

Here I encounter two conflicting versions of Ossifer Plumm's wedding night, when Viserys Plumm was conceived. The official version says that Ossifer died after impregnating Elaena, and a rumor says that Ossifer died without impregnating Elaena and that Aegon impregnated her instead.

Both versions agree that Ossifer died on his wedding night at the bedding, that Elaena was impregnated on her wedding night at the bedding, and that the baby that came from that pregnancy was the person now known as Viserys Plumm. The main point of disagreement is whether the real father of Viserys Plumm is Ossifer Plumm or Aegon Targaryen.

But there are more points of agreement than those three that I can infer from this situation. For instance, both versions seem to agree that Aegon was present at the wedding, otherwise the rumor probably would have been discredited already by the simple fact that Aegon was not there. Likewise, both versions seem to agree that Mushroom was present at the wedding, otherwise the rumor probably would have been discredited already by the simple fact that Mushroom was not there, because Mushroom is apparently the source of the rumor. With these recognitions, we can start filling in some of the surrounding information that's missing from the story, and see what we can learn from the bigger picture.

It makes sense that Aegon was present at the wedding, because the bride is his cousin. And it makes sense that Mushroom was present at the wedding, because Aegon is the king and Mushroom is the court fool, and the king could reasonably take the court fool with him to a wedding celebration.

The crucial issue is about what really happened in that bedroom. Now that you know the gist of both versions of the story, how do you imagine that scene in the bedroom played out? I call this kind of analysis Scenes That Must Have Happened. The way I do it is I hold the scene in my mind, and watch what my imagination places into the gaps. Whatever appears is probably what the history book was meant to suggest. Then I ask myself one basic question and hold onto it for the rest of the investigation: Does that suggestion make sense?

The way the scene fills out for me is that Aegon probably weaseled his way into that bedroom somehow to take advantage of the situation. Maybe he snuck in through the window or maybe when Elaena was freaking out about her dead husband Aegon went into the room with her and locked the door behind them. He would probably tell the other wedding attendees later that Elaena just needed some emotional support from her dear cousin on her big day, and that Ossifer was alive and well at the time. With Elaena's husband dead, Aegon probably saw it as an opportunity to slake his lusts upon yet another woman, with no regard for anyone but himself. Being the king, he can pretty much do whatever he wants and everybody just has to do what he says, or else pretend like they don't know what's happening.

Now that I've allowed my imagination to fill in the details, roles and tone, I can consider if the picture as a whole makes sense. It certainly makes sense with Aegon's characterization as a cruel and insatiable glutton, so let's keep this scene as it is and test how much sense it makes by seeing what it means for the original question: Who was the man or men that Aegon deprived of their rightful inheritance?

Supposing that the scene played out mostly as described above, the real father of Viserys Plumm is Aegon Targaryen. And if the real father of Viserys Plumm is Aegon Targaryen, then Viserys Plumm can't possibly be the man who was deprived of his rightful inheritance, because Viserys Plumm did inherit House Plumm.

Unless . . .

When the historian says "deprived men of their rightful inheritance", could he mean the thing that the men were deprived of was the rightfulness of the inheritance, rather than the inheritance?

In that interpretation, the historian's words still technically allow that the man who Aegon wronged did receive an inheritance, but he received it wrongfully because he's a Targaryen and not a Plumm.

After you're finished rolling on the floor laughing, let's take a moment to appreciate the art of the lie.

I finally understand why the historian used the word "men" instead of "man." At the time the historian is writing this book, there have been five generations of Plumms since the time of Viserys Plumm's birth, and every Plumm man including and after Viserys can truthfully be called a "man who was deprived of his rightful inheritance," emphasis on rightful, because Viserys Plumm's father was not really Ossifer, and all of Viserys's descendants are therefore descendants of not-Ossifer, too.

The hilariously glaring omission? Neither Viserys Plumm nor any of his descenents would exist at all if Aegon hadn't fathered Viserys, because Ossifer Plumm died on his wedding night before he could do his duty in the marriage bed.

So Aegon the Unworthy is guilty as charged. Aegon caused rightful inheritances to be deprived from many Plumm men, none of whom would have ever been born to inherit anything if Aegon had not been so darn Unworthy. That rascal!

Honesty Tooled For Dishonesty

That was a good example of how these histories are laden with unreliable narrations. In this case, the unreliability is misrepresentation. The historian is using language in a sneaky way to tell a technically true statement that, upon closer inspection, is meaningfully false, and that does a lot of work to depict Aegon IV as a depraved monster.

As if to drive home the nail, the historian ends the story with a tactically placed reminder.

>and that the child she conceived that night was by her cousin Aegon—he who later became King Aegon the Unworthy.

'Yes, this man Aegon who I just mentioned is the same Aegon you've heard about, and who you'll probably recognize better as Aegon the (officially) Unworthy.' [Ominous screech]

Through this revelation we can begin to develop an understanding of what all did really happen in this situation, and what really was the true tone of these events and characters.

Inferring Cause From Effect

Why did Maester Yandel include the rumor at all? The effect of the rumor's inclusion was that it caused me to imagine that Aegon raped Elaena. In other words, it caused me to imagine Aegon being a villain. So a simple way to infer cause from effect is to invert the effect: Maybe Aegon was really the hero in the situation. And maybe the reason the historian needs to depict him as a villain is because Aegon's heroism is problematic for the royal narrative. Then I can start imagining how Aegon being the hero in the situation could be possible.

The effectiveness with which this piece of history hides the potential for Aegon to be the hero in the situation leads me to wonder if Aegon was really the hero in the situation. If nothing else, by having sex with Elaena on her wedding night and denying it, Aegon rescued the Plumm name from extinction. House Plumm is among the oldest Houses in Westeros, tracing their history all the way back to the Age of Heroes. It would be a shame for such an ancient House to fade away just because one generation had a stroke of bad luck.

In addition to being ancient, House Plumm is also rich. Remember, Elaena's history describes Ossifer Plumm as being wealthy.

>Her first marriage was in 176 AC, to the wealthy but aged Ossifer Plumm, who is said to have died while consummating the marriage.

Come to think of it, the accusation against Aegon mentioned wealth, too.

A desire for wealth was supposedly Aegon's motivation for depriving men of their rightful inheritance. But since Viserys Plumm did inherit House Plumm, then the wealth of House Plumm didn't go to Aegon, it went to Viserys Plumm. I mean, if Aegon is not really the person who ended up with House Plumm's wealth, that should cause us to doubt whether Aegon really had his sights set on House Plumm's wealth at all, shouldn't it?

I call this kind of analysis Follow The Money. It can be a good way to discover and correctly assign motivations in situations that involve money. The way I do it is I ignore everything I'm told about what peoples' motivations are, then I look at whose control the money is moving out of and into, and then I infer peoples' motivations based on who gained and who lost money.

Before Ossifer Plumm died on his wedding night, House Plumm's gold was in the control of Ossifer Plumm. Then Ossifer Plumm died on his wedding night, and at the same time Viserys Plumm was conceived (by Aegon). Nine to ten months later, Viserys Plumm was born. But a baby can't be the lord of a House in any way but name. He'll have to wait until he's grown before he can be the acting lord.

So, who really controls House Plumm and its gold for the fourteen to seventeen years between Viserys Plumm's conception and Viserys Plumm's ascension to acting lord?

His mother, Elaena Targaryen.

The effectiveness with which this piece of history hides the potential for Elaena to be the villain in the situation leads me to wonder if Elaena was really the villain in the situation. I mean, since the person who really ended up with House Plumm's wealth is Elaena, then maybe wealth was her motivation from the very beginning, rather than Aegon's. Marrying someone for their wealth does not seem like an especially villainous thing to do, but it seems cold and calculating. But maybe that's just because I'm not a Westerosi person.

If nothing else, this answers a question that I only now just realized I would have asked from the beginning if the situation were introduced to me differently. Why did the twenty-six year old Elaena Targaryen marry the "aged" and apparently frail of health Ossifer Plumm? To get the Plumm fortune.

Rhyme As Witness

But even that is the wrong question. Because you see, in context of Westerosi norms, Elaena's marriage to Ossifer does not demand as much explanation as does Ossifer's marriage to Elaena. Being the lord of a rich and ancient House with no heirs to speak of and few years left to live, Lord Ossifer Plumm was the juiciest plum in the seven kingdoms.

>"This old Plumm was a lord, though, must have been a famous fellow in his day, the talk of all the land. The thing was, begging your royal pardon, he had himself a cock six foot long.” (—Brown Ben Plumm, ASOS Daenerys V)

And not because of his giant cock. We'll arrive at that later.

This next mode of analysis I call Complete The Rhyme (taken from George R. R. Martin’s quote that History doesn’t always repeat but it does rhyme.). The way I do it is when I find a situation in the present day characters that mirrors (or rhymes with) the historical characters, or vice versa, I let knowns from one era fill in unknowns from the other era. In this case, Elaena Targaryen’s marriage to Ossifer Plumm rhymes with Lysa Arryn’s marriage to Jon Arryn. That is, young noble princess marries rich old lord who desperately needs an heir before he dies.

In Elaena's situation, we've arrived at a conflict of interpretation. Some readers will argue that Elaena was the bigger prize in the marriage, and other readers will argue that Ossifer was the bigger prize in the marriage. To fill in this unknown in the past, I can refer to Lysa's situation nearer to the present, and try to get a sense of the actual opinion of Westerosi people and nobles. Then I will have good grounding to suppose that the opinion in the past would have been the same as the opinion in the present.

>Catelyn rose, threw on a robe, and descended the steps to the darkened solar to stand over her father. A sense of helpless dread filled her. "Father," she said, "Father, I know what you did." She was no longer an innocent bride with a head full of dreams. She was a widow, a traitor, a grieving mother, and wise, wise in the ways of the world. "You made him take her," she whispered. "Lysa was the price Jon Arryn had to pay for the swords and spears of House Tully." > >Small wonder her sister's marriage had been so loveless. The Arryns were proud, and prickly of their honor. Lord Jon might wed Lysa to bind the Tullys to the cause of the rebellion, and in hopes of a son, but it would have been hard for him to love a woman who came to his bed soiled and unwilling. He would have been kind, no doubt; dutiful, yes; but Lysa needed warmth. (—Catelyn Stark, ASOS 2 Catelyn I)

As Catelyn's thoughts indicate, the general attitude of Westerosi nobles about Jon Arryn's marriage to Lysa Tully is that Jon Arryn is the bigger prize, with one reason being that Lysa's maidenhead is soiled. Westerosi people do not weigh passion as heavily nor wealth as lightly as we do in the real world where, under capitalism for instance, fortunes rarely last for hundreds of years, but are most often made and lost within the space of a few generations.

Not so unlike Elaena Targaryen, Jon Arryn, Lysa Arryn and Hoster Tully, Ossifer Plumm is not as concerned with love, compatibility or desire in the marriage as he is with the socio-political needs of his House. House Plumm desperately needs an heir, and fast, or else House Plumm will fall into disarray and ruin or disappear forever with the death of Ossifer Plumm. Every great House in the kingdom would know that, because lines of succession are integral to the political machinery of Westeros. And that's why Ossifer Plumm was "a famous fellow in his day, the talk of all the land." Elaena Targaryen would know about House Plumm's situation, too.

Additionally, just like Lysa's soiling made her a perfect candidate for marriage to an heirless old lord who can't afford the risk of marrying an infertile bride, so did Elaena's soiling.

So when Ossifer Plumm died on his wedding night before conceiving an heir, Elaena knew that without a Plumm heir to show for it she could assume no claim to House Plumm's wealth.

At the end of the Plumm puzzle, a whole different picture of the bedroom scene is beginning to take shape. It was not Aegon who seized upon the tragedy to slake his lusts upon Elaena, it was Elaena who urged Aegon to slake his lusts upon her, helping her to prevent her own tragedy of failing to secure House Plumm's wealth for herself.

I can almost write Elaena's lines in the bedroom scene myself.

The kings of old practiced the First Night, this is no different.

The Targaryens have wed brother to sister for hundreds of years.

No one will ever know.

We can save the old man's memory from humiliation.

Everywhere that Ossifer Plumm's name is mentioned in the main series, there can be found a Complete The Rhyme clue. Let's find Ossifer Plumm's name in a Cersei chapter in A Feast for Crows.

>To break her fast the queen sent to the kitchens for two boiled eggs, a loaf of bread, and a pot of honey. But when she cracked the first egg and found a bloody half-formed chick inside, her stomach roiled. “Take this away and bring me hot spiced wine,” she told Senelle. The chill in the air was settling in her bones, and she had a long nasty day ahead of her. > >Nor did Jaime help her mood when he turned up all in white and still unshaven, to tell her how he meant to keep her son from being poisoned. “I will have men in the kitchens watching as each dish is prepared,” he said. “Ser Addam’s gold cloaks will escort the servants as they bring the food to table, to make certain no tampering takes place along the way. Ser Boros will be tasting every course before Tommen puts a bite into his mouth. And if all that should fail, Maester Ballabar will be seated in the back of the hall, with purges and antidotes for twenty common poisons on his person. Tommen will be safe, I promise you.” > >“Safe.” The word tasted bitter on her tongue. Jaime did not understand. No one understood. Only Melara had been in the tent to hear the old hag’s croaking threats, and Melara was long dead. “Tyrion will not kill the same way twice. He is too cunning for that. He could be under the floor even now, listening to every word we say and making plans to open Tommen’s throat.” > >“Suppose he was,” said Jaime. “Whatever plans he makes, he will still be small and stunted. Tommen will be surrounded by the finest knights in Westeros. The Kingsguard will protect him.” > >Cersei glanced at where the sleeve of her brother’s white silk tunic had been pinned up over his stump. “I remember how well they guarded Joffrey, these splendid knights of yours. I want you to remain with Tommen all night, is that understood?” > >“I will have a guardsman outside his door.” > >She seized his arm. “Not a guardsman. You. And inside his bedchamber.” >

>“In case Tyrion crawls out of the hearth? He won’t.” > >“So you say. Will you tell me that you found all the hidden tunnels in these walls?” They both knew better. “I will not have Tommen alone with Margaery, not for so much as half a heartbeat.” > >“They will not be alone. Her cousins will be with them.” > >“As will you. I command it, in the king’s name.” Cersei had not wanted Tommen and his wife to share a bed at all, but the Tyrells had insisted. “Husband and wife should sleep together,” the Queen of Thorns had said, “even if they do no more than sleep. His Grace’s bed is big enough for two, surely.” Lady Alerie had echoed her good-mother. “Let the children warm each other in the night. It will bring them closer. Margaery oft shares her blankets with her cousins. They sing and play games and whisper secrets to each other when the candles are snuffed out.” > >“How delightful,” Cersei had said. “Let them continue, by all means. In the Maidenvault.” > >“I am sure Her Grace knows best,” Lady Olenna had said to Lady Alerie. “She is the boy’s own mother, after all, of that we are all sure. And surely we can agree about the wedding night? A man should not sleep apart from his wife on the night of their wedding. It is ill luck for their marriage if they do.” > >Someday I will teach you the meaning of “ill luck,” the queen had vowed. “Margaery may share Tommen’s bedchamber for that one night,” she had been forced to say. “No longer.” > >“Your Grace is so gracious,” the Queen of Thorns had replied, and everyone had exchanged smiles. > >Cersei’s fingers were digging into Jaime’s arm hard enough to leave bruises. “I need eyes inside that room,” she said. > >“To see what?” he said. “There can be no danger of a consummation. Tommen is much too young.” > >“And Ossifer Plumm was much too dead, but that did not stop him fathering a child, did it?” > >Her brother looked lost. “Who was Ossifer Plumm? Was he Lord Philip’s father, or … who?” > >He is near as ignorant as Robert. All his wits were in his sword hand. “Forget Plumm, just remember what I told you. Swear to me that you will stay by Tommen’s side until the sun comes up.” (AFFC 12 Cersei III)

In this passage, Cersei references Ossifer Plumm as an example from history of a dynasty being hereditarily usurped, because any pregnancy conceived on the bride during or near her wedding night will be assumed the child of the husband. The baby will go on carrying the dynasty name without a drop of the blood in his veins.

Jaime doesn't know this bit of history, so he doesn't understand the reference. He guesses that Ossifer was the father of Lord Philip Plumm, who is the current Lord of House Plumm at the time of Jaime and Cersei's conversation. Jaime's guess shows me that the history-ness of the reference is definitely the reason Jaime doesn't know it. He was more interested in swordfighting than history.

As if to settle the debate about whose idea it was — between Aegon IV and Elaena Targaryen — to pass off Aegon's baby as Ossifer's baby, A Song of Ice and Fire chooses a side by showing me that the same idea occurred first to our present day woman, and not at all to our present day man.

By traveling from one era to the other along the dimension of gender, this instance of Complete The Rhyme points to the differences between men and women as somehow containing the explanation for why such an idea occurs to Elaena and Cersei before Aegon and Jaime. The idea for pregnancy sneakiness would reasonably occur sooner to a person who is capable of pregnancy than to a person who is not.

History Written With The Sword

Let's take another moment to appreciate the art of the lie. In order to completely reverse the hero and villain roles of this part of history, the historian had to do little more than lift the villain's motivation from off the villain and place it onto the hero. "He deprived men of their rightful inheritance when he desired their wealth, (...)"

When a House goes extinct, all of its land, wealth, property and titles are returned to the king. The king can then do with them as he likes. Far from a desire for House Plumm's wealth, by making a baby with Elaena, Aegon prevented himself from receiving House Plumm's wealth and enabled Elaena to receive it instead.

Aegon knew that because he was king at the time and that he would likely remain king for many years to come, House Plumm's extinction would remain a secret, allowing its name to live on. Few are the people who would dare to publicly accuse the *king* of lying about such a thing. Far from abusing his kingly power to gratify himself free from criticism, Aegon managed to put his kingly freedom from criticism to work toward a selfless and sentimental result.

With the historian's reconfiguration, the memory of Elaena enjoys an undeserved boon, and the memory of Aegon suffers an undeserved curse. Why? Because history is written by the victors, and the victor of history was Daeron II Targaryen.

After Aegon's death, Elaena became Daeron's highly capable master of coin during his reign as king.

>Her second marriage was at the behest of Aegon the Unworthy’s successor, King Daeron the Good. Daeron wed her to his master of coin, and this union led to four more children … and to Elaena becoming known to be the true master of coin, for her husband was said to be a good and noble lord but one without a great facility for numbers. She swiftly grew influential, and was trusted by King Daeron in all things as she labored on his behalf and on that of the realm. (—Maester Yandel, TWOIAF: The Targaryen Kings: Baelor I p92)

Calculating, indeed. How did Elaena get so much practice with numbers, anyway?

The quality of a king's court reflects the quality of the king, and since Elaena was a key member of King Daeron's trusted court, her villainy was an annoyance to historians. So whenever Daeron and his descendants conscripted a history book, the historian found better use of Elaena by hiding her unflattering motivations and deeds and instead allowing suggestion to grant her the role of victim. Therein lies much of the historian's reason for including Mushroom's version of the story.

If Mushroom's version had been left out, the passage would not have conjured in my mind that awful bedroom scene of Aegon the Unworthy's unworthiness. As references to Ossifer Plumm in the main series indicate, it's an open secret that Aegon IV rather than Ossifer Plumm fathered Viserys Plumm. The "cock" in Brown Ben Plumm's "he had a cock six foot long" quote is, of course, referring to the "length" (height) of King Aegon IV, implying that Aegon rather than Ossifer impregnated Elaena, and with double entendre where "cock" also works as an insult to Aegon.

Indeed, it would seem that evoking the image of Aegon forcing or insisting himself upon Elaena in the in-story reader's mind was the historians' only reason for including Mushroom's version at all. It's the specifically sexual and self-gratifying kind of villainy that history has branded Aegon with to great effect in the public consciousness. Thus concludes our game of Scenes That Must Have Happened. In light of everything we've learned, the scene that the histories evoke through suggestion does not make sense with the facts.

At the same time, we should be careful not to underestimate the historians. Like Maester Yandel, a person generally doesn't come to write history without having in his heart a genuine love and commitment to true knowledge. While it's true that, in the context of the "Unworthy" theme of Aegon the Unworthy, the inclusion of Mushroom's version of this piece of history will predictably cause an in-story reader to imagine the bedroom rape scene, it's also true that without the inclusion of Mushroom's version, it would not have been possible for we sleuthing readers or maesters to have researched and reasoned our way to the true history. The "rumor" that Viserys Plumm was really sired by Aegon rather than Ossifer is what enabled us to discover everything else. Without it, there wouldn't have been two competing accounts, and we would have gone on believing the official one that Viserys was sired by Ossifer. So it's conceivable that Maester Yandel was counting on smart readers to be unsatisfied with the uncertainty and to dig out the true version.

A Memory Accursed

On the topic of public consciousness, let's look at another Complete The Rhyme from the present day characters.

>Viserion spread his pale white wings and flapped lazily at his head. One of the wings buffeted the sellsword in his face. The white dragon landed awkwardly with one foot on the man’s head and one on his shoulder, shrieked, and flew off again. “He likes you, Ben,” said Dany. > >“And well he might.” Brown Ben laughed. “I have me a drop of the dragon blood myself, you know.” > >“You?” Dany was startled. Plumm was a creature of the free companies, an amiable mongrel. He had a broad brown face with a broken nose and a head of nappy grey hair, and his Dothraki mother had bequeathed him large, dark, almond-shaped eyes. He claimed to be part Braavosi, part Summer Islander, part Ibbenese, part Qohorik, part Dothraki, part Dornish, and part Westerosi, but this was the first she had heard of Targaryen blood. She gave him a searching look and said, “How could that be?” > >“Well,” said Brown Ben, “there was some old Plumm in the Sunset Kingdoms who wed a dragon princess. My grandmama told me the tale. He lived in King Aegon’s day.” > >“Which King Aegon?” Dany asked. “Five Aegons have ruled in Westeros.” Her brother’s son would have been the sixth, but the Usurper’s men had dashed his head against a wall. >

>“Five, were there? Well, that’s a confusion. I could not give you a number, my queen. This old Plumm was a lord, though, must have been a famous fellow in his day, the talk of all the land. The thing was, begging your royal pardon, he had himself a cock six foot long.” > >The three bells in Dany’s braid tinkled when she laughed. “You mean inches, I think.” > >“Feet,” Brown Ben said firmly. “If it was inches, who’d want to talk about it, now? Your Grace.” > >Dany giggled like a little girl. “Did your grandmother claim she’d actually seen this prodigy?” > >“That the old crone never did. She was half-Ibbenese and half-Qohorik, never been to Westeros, my grandfather must have told her. Some Dothraki killed him before I was born.” > >“And where did your grandfather’s knowledge come from?” > >“One of them tales told at the teat, I’d guess.” Brown Ben shrugged. “That’s all I know about Aegon the Unnumbered or old Lord Plumm’s mighty manhood, I fear. I best see to my Sons.” > >“Go do that,” Dany told him. (ASOS Daenerys V)

In this passage, Daenerys's dragons show a liking for Brown Ben Plumm, suggesting that Mushroom's version of the Ossifer Plumm story is true, and contradicting the recurring insistences from Maester Yandel and other historians that Mushroom's versions of history are probably wrong.

Brown Ben Plumm claims to have a little bit of Targaryen in his heritage, referring to the same rumor we heard from Mushroom and Cersei that King Aegon IV the Unworthy was the biological father of Viserys Plumm.

Dany can see that Brown Ben has none of the traditional Targaryen features — not the silver hair, purple eyes, or pale skin. But since dragons are magical sorts of animals and animals have ways of sensing things that humans can't sense, I'm left with the impression that the behavior of the dragons is a more reliable test than Brown Ben's appearance.

I can be sure that the "old Plumm who lived in the Sunset kingdoms," "wed a dragon princess" and "lived in Aegon's day" is Ossifer Plumm, because Ossifer Plumm is the only Plumm who matches all of those descriptions.

Brown Ben credits his "drop of Targaryen blood" to a Targaryen princess, who I know was Elaena Targaryen. Both the official and rumor versions of history agree that Viserys Plumm's mother was Elaena Targaryen. But Brown Ben is more right than he knows, because Viserys Plumm's father was a Targaryen, too, none other than the king Aegon. Comically, Brown Ben takes his grandmama's story too literally, not understanding that Ossifer Plumm's "cock six foot long" is referring to Aegon the man rather than to Ossifer's literal endowment.

In the Ossifer Plumm situation from history, there is some disagreement in the interpretation. Some readers will say that the history is not really lying that a deprivation occurred, because Aegon did in fact deprive Plumm men of their rightful ineritances, meaning their inheritances being rightful, and that those Plumm men would prefer it if they were real Plumms so that they don't have to live a lie. And some readers will say that the Plumms would feel bad about being a descendent of such an Unworthy king, saying that House Plumm lost more than it gained when it was hereditarily usurped by House Targaryen.

As if to settle those disagreements, A Song of Ice and Fire chooses a side by showing me in this passage that the Plumm family themselves preserved the knowledge of Aegon's contribution to the Plumm line in a funny and memorable story, passing it down through the Plumm generations to arrive to us and Daenerys in the present day.

As wealthy as House Plumm may be, House Targaryen is wealthier and more powerful. And as desirable a position as Lord of House Plumm may be, it struggles to compare to the positions that are possible as a Targaryen descendent of a king— Heir Apparent, Crown Prince, King. For the noble Houses of Westeros, royalty is the last and most elusive rung to climb on the socio-economic ladder. Once your family gets into the Targaryen club, it's a permanent member. The more your family gets into the Targaryen family, the more chances your family has of being the lucky spot on the Targaryen lineage tree where the royal succession lands.

This passage further demonstrates that maester historians rely upon the "Aegon the Unworthy" narrative to do most of the work of misleading the in-story audience from the truth. Likewise, George R. R. Martin relies upon it to do most of the work of misleading us from the truth. Had I done a better job of leaving my real world attitudes at the door and adopting in-story attitudes, I would have noticed sooner that, far from deprivation of their rightful inheritance, it's better to be a real Targaryen Prince disguised as a real Plumm than to be simply a real Plumm. As simply a real Plumm you get House Plumm, but as a real Targaryen Prince disguised as a real Plumm you get all the same things as a real Plumm plus the chance of winning the Kinghood by the ever-unfolding lottery of unpredictable events. In this way, the Aegon the Unworthy narrative is symbolic of our tendency to slide into our real world attitudes, inappropriately abandoning the in-story attitudes in which the attraction of moving one's family into the line of royal succession far outweighs the repulsion of being associated with a king who has a bad reputation.

With the purple fruits of our labor in hand, let's carry all that we've learned about the Plumm situation in this chapter on to the next chapter, where we'll dive into another sentence from that original paragraph in The World of Ice and Fire.

Next: Chapter 4 - Butterwell and Eggs

applesanddragons

#asoiaf #asongoficeandfire #a song of ice and fire #applesanddragons #aegon the unworthy #aegon iv targaryen #the world of ice and fire #elaena targaryen #ossifer plumm #agameofthrones #aclashofkings #astormofswords #adancewithdragons #georgerrmartin #literaryanalysis

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applesanddragons · 2 years

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Forest Love and Forest Lass - Chapter 3 - The Knight of the Laughing Tree, A Rose in a Wasteland

Meera Reed's telling of the Tourney at Harrenhal is a chunk of text that makes up the bulk of the chapter Bran II, filling out no less than six pages in my paperback copy of A Storm of Swords (p279 if you want to reread it or follow along).

For readers who have visited the Knight of the Laughing Tree mystery many times, we often feel as though we've said everything there is to say. Without a doubt, in the dozens of Knight of the Laughing Tree discussions I've read over the years, a small handful of details such as the "booming voice" and ones pertaining to jousting ability received the greatest share of attention. We have a tendency to rapidly hone-in on the parts of the mystery that are debated the most hotly, perhaps sensing that, in some way or another, those debates are the point.

u/AlanCrowkiller

2 points 2014

You don't have to like it but you're going to have to suck it up and accept it that Martin is fine with his world being a place where a fourteen year old girl can joust with grown men. [1]

Since attention and time are limited, it's a smart way to approach the mystery. As a consequence, however, there may be much to learn by tilting at parts that receive less attention and approaching the Tourney at Harrenhal in different ways or with different questions.

This time, let's approach Meera's story as a story, and do our best to forget about the real identities of the characters. For example, we won't think of the crannogman as Howland Reed, we'll just think of him as the crannogman. The wolf maid won't be Lyanna, she'll be the wolf maid, no less and no more. We'll leave behind everything we know about their real identities, and instead use only the information that Meera's story provides. I'll call this way of interpreting the story 'story-mode' interpretation.

What is the story about? The story is about a heroic knight. Three squires beat up the crannogman, and then he was rescued by the she-wolf. That night, the crannogman left the quiet wolf's tent to say a prayer beside the lake. The next day, the mystery knight appeared in the jousting tournament and defeated all three of the offending squires' knights, to the cheering of the crowd, winning ownership of their horses and armor. When the knights came to the mystery knight to ransom (buy back) their horses and armor, the mystery knight said:

"(...) ‘Teach your squires honor, that shall be ransom enough.’ Once the defeated knights chastised their squires sharply, their horses and armor were returned. And so the little crannogman’s prayer was answered … by the green men, or the old gods, or the children of the forest, who can say?” (—Meera Reed, ASOS Bran II)

As of A Dance with Dragons, this act of heroism is the clearest and cleanest instance of heroism in the entire series of A Song of Ice and Fire. In a story where no character's hands ever stay perfectly clean, the Knight of the Laughing Tree stands out like a rose in a frozen wasteland. He or she is the one character that potentially belies A Song of Ice and Fire's apparent thousands-page-long proposition that maybe genuine heroes only exist in naive fictional stories. It's no wonder, then, why readers are ravenous to know the knight's true identity, and why we're eager to propose our most beloved characters as the knight.

But if we ever do learn the mystery knight's true identity, and if it's a character we already know, we would then be able to know his other deeds in life, too. Without a doubt, his hands would have some dirt on them like everyone else's do, because nobody can be perfect. So it's possible and perhaps likely that the Knight of the Laughing Tree's heroism is merely a consequence of information about him being so limited, it being confined to this one event. In that way, the story would demonstrate that genuine heroes really do only exist in fictional stories, and that the only way to convince us otherwise was to keep us naive about his other deeds.

As a result, the thematic stakes of the Knight of the Laughing Tree's identity could not be higher. 'Who was A Song of Ice and Fire's only true hero? And was he really a hero? And was he really a he?'

So what is it, exactly, that makes the Knight of the Laughing Tree seem so heroic? It's selflessness. At every crossroad he encounters, he chooses the most selfless path.

He could have ignored the needs of the crannogman, the prayer, or whatever it was that compelled him to defeat the three knights. Doing nothing would have been easier than doing all that.

He could have kept the horses and armor for himself, having already achieved a symbolic justice for the crannogman by defeating the offending squires' knights.

He could have given the horses and armors to the crannogman, transferring wealth from the offending party to the offended party and thereby punishing the knights for neglecting to teach their squires honor and simultaneously compensating the crannogman for the damage he suffered to his body and pride.

I can even see how the Knight of the Laughing Tree rescued the crannogman from the crannogman himself. The crannogman wanted revenge against the squires, but he didn't know how to joust in order to get it by jousting. There's no telling which ugly alternative he might have resorted to if the Knight of the Laughing Tree had not been there to alleviate the injustice of the situation.

The Knight of the Laughing Tree could have revealed his own identity after winning the jousts. Doing so would have pleased the lustful audience and transferred the love and renown that was earned for his fake identity to his real identity.

As it happens, when I look at all of the mystery knights that have been mentioned in A Song of Ice and Fire (as of A Dance with Dragons) the Knight of the Laughing Tree is the only one whose identity remains unknown.

The Knight of Tears was Aemon Targaryen

The mystery knight at Blackhaven was Barristan Selmy

The mystery knight at King's Landing was Barristan Selmy

The mystery knight at Storm's End was Simon Toyne

Blackshield was the Bastard of Uplands

The Gallows Knight was Ser Duncan the Tall

John the Fiddler was Daemon II Blackfyre

The Serpent in Scarlet was Jonquil Darke

The Silver Fool was Baelon Targaryen

The Knight of the Laughing Tree was ...

Even among heroes, the Knight of the Laughing Tree's selflessness stands out from all the rest.

If the hero was apparently not interested in wealth, revenge or renown, the question remains: Just what the bloody hell was motivating the Knight of the Laughing Tree?

Justice is a good answer. He achieved symbolic justice for the crannogman and literal justice for the squires, who will benefit long-term from learning honor and having their knights reminded of their duties to them. But that does not seem like a description of the Knight of Laughing Tree's heroism that goes far enough, because the benefits to the squires will extend to their own squires in the future, and theirs after them.

Undoubtedly, much of the reason that the three knights have neglected to teach their squires enough honor so as to prevent them from beating up someone for being different can be traced back to the time when the knights were squires themselves. Their own knights must have done a poor job of teaching them honor, too, or else they wouldn't have become negligent knights, or wouldn't have been knighted at all. After all, only a knight can make another knight.

"Any knight can make a knight, and every man you see before you has felt a sword upon his shoulder." (—Beric Dondarrion to Sandor Clegane, ASOS Arya VI)

It required a knight to make a knight, and if something should go awry tonight, dawn might find him dead or in a dungeon. (—Thoughts of Barristan, ADWD The Kingbreaker)

Similarly, if the Knight of the Laughing Tree had given the winnings to the crannogman rather than leveraging the winnings to compel the knights to teach their squires honor, there can be small doubt that the squires, if knighted, would have grown up to become negligent knights themselves, who would go on to produce worse squires who become even worse knights. These recognitions portray an institution of knighthood and a Westerosi tradition that are in a state of decline.

The Knight of the Laughing Tree was able to look beyond the bruised body and pride of the crannogman, the wrongdoings of the squires and the shortcomings of the knights, and see how each of those problems reaches back into history and forward into the future so as to partly implicate and exonerate every individual person and grouping of people involved. Indeed, these are problems that have mostly built up slowly over generations, one ordinary and understandable shortcoming at a time. Who can honestly say that he has never been guilty of neglecting his duties, of laziness, complacency, forgetfulness or of going too easy on the young people who depend upon him to enforce firm enough boundaries? Scarcer, still, is a person who is unable to see the seeds of his own shortcomings in the imperfections and unheroism of the people he once depended upon.

Having accounted for the sympathetic viewpoints of everyone involved in the past, present, and future, the Knight of the Laughing Tree was now able to see that there are no mustache-twirling villains in the situation, there are only ordinary people with ordinary flaws. With a mission to correct for this long history of ordinary flaws, he took the burden upon himself to rearrange costs and incentives in such a way as to motivate the three knights to do their duty to their squires, their society and ultimately their Westerosi tradition of knighthood. And he did it at risk to himself, by using his own body, skills, courage, and the imperfect institutions and traditions at hand.

Yet still... yet still... that does not seem like a description of the Knight of the Laughing Tree's heroism that goes far enough.

What does the mystery knight represent with his identity unknown, compared to with his identity exposed? With his identity unknown, the mystery knight is just a knight — a symbol of knighthood itself. If I don't know who he is, then I don't know what's wrong with him. More than that, I can never find out what's wrong with him. I will never know how he might be failing to live up to the knightly ideal as much as I am or more.

Isn't that the first thing everybody tries to do after we're caught falling short of our ideals? Especially when we're caught publicly? Instead of taking stock of myself, I tend instead to attack the ideal.

So a predictable reaction that the negligent knights and their squires might have after being publicly defeated and criticized is to find things that are wrong with the mystery knight. It's a way to alleviate themselves of the unpleasant conscientious responsibility to admit to themselves that they're not truly striving to be as good as they know they can be.

“I’ve never lain with any woman but Cersei. In my own way, I have been truer than your Ned ever was. Poor old dead Ned. So who has shit for honor now, I ask you? What was the name of that bastard he fathered?”

Catelyn took a step backward. “Brienne.”

“No, that wasn’t it.” Jaime Lannister upended the flagon. A trickle ran down onto his face, bright as blood. “Snow, that was the one. Such a white name . . . like the pretty cloaks they give us in the Kingsguard when we swear our pretty oaths.” (—Catelyn and Jaime, ACOK Catelyn VII)

In the dungeons of Riverrun, Jaime seized upon his knowledge of a dishonorable moment in Ned's past to attack the ideal of honor itself, as though Ned's dishonor somehow excuse's Jaime's dishonor, or as though to suggest that honor is a mostly unworthy thing to strive for at all. Even the ambiguity between those two suggestions expedites the same purpose by hiding the rationale in the fog. This sort of thing happens in the minds of POV characters all throughout A Song of Ice and Fire, and it shows me much of what it means for a human heart to be in conflict with itself.

With the mystery knight's identity forever concealed, knowledge of his imperfections and past mistakes is forever unavailable to the three knights and their squires. Being deprived of information that they might likely use in their defeated state to assault the ideal that the mystery knight represents in their own consciences, the negligent knights and dishonorable squires cannot psychologically escape judgement from their own ideal, and are forced to admit to themselves that they were wrong, lest they be haunted by their consciences ever after.

The Knight of the Laughing Tree knew that revealing his identity would risk sabotaging their chances of development. He was protecting the knights and squires from themselves even as he was reprimanding them. And therein lies the proof of his motivation and heroism. The Knight of the Laughing Tree story is not about a knight merely avenging a crannogman, rescuing a crannogman's pride, or even righting wrongs between contemporary people. With the heroism rooted in the knight's motivation and with his motivation proven by his anonymity, it is a story about a knight rescuing the institution of knighthood.

I think that's why the Knight of the Laughing Tree is the fullest and truest hero in A Song of Ice and Fire to date. If there be one righteous knight in Westeros, peradventure mankind and existence are still worth loving.

To unmask the Knight of the Laughing Tree is to destroy his anonymity. To destroy the Knight of the Laughing Tree's anonymity is to destroy the proof of his heroism. To say "the only way to convince me that genuine heroes really exist is to keep me naive about his other deeds" is to set a standard of proof of heroism that requires the destruction of the proof of the Knight of the Laughing Tree's heroism. In this way, the true motivations behind such an attitude are exposed. For the parts of myself that agree with it, the destruction of heroism is the point. I am already engaged in an assault against my own ideal.

After Bran hears the story, he offers critiques and suggests changes that he thinks would be improvements to the story.

“That was a good story. But it should have been the three bad knights who hurt him, not their squires. Then the little crannogman could have killed them all. The part about the ransoms was stupid. And the mystery knight should win the tourney, defeating every challenger, and name the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty.” (—Bran, ASOS Bran II)

These lines from Bran show me that Bran is missing the deeper meanings of the story just like I was for so long. He thinks the story would be better if the squires were removed entirely, making the knights more villainous and more straightforwardly villains. Then, once the knights are made into one-dimensional villains, Bran thinks the knights should all be killed by the hero. Not merely defeated in the tournament, but killed! Then as reward, he wants the hero to win everything at the end, both the tourney and the girl, too.

Bran doesn't seem to notice how these changes would destroy the story's deeper meanings. He doesn't notice that the Knight of the Laughing Tree is trying to fix society rather than simply avenging a crannogman and sticking it to the bad guys.

So the theme of Bran's comments is that 'Bran is missing the deeper meanings of the story.'

"And the mystery knight should win the tourney, defeating every challenger, and name the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty.”

“She was,” said Meera, “but that’s a sadder story.” (ASOS Bran II)

Meera doesn't bother to tell Bran that he's missing the deeper meanings of the story. As the storyteller, Meera represents George R. R. Martin. As Meera's audience, Bran represents the reader.

With Meera's final comment, the mystery of The Relationship Between The Two Mysteries stirs beneath A Song of Ice and Fire's surface. In relationship to the theme of Bran's comments, Meera's line is the quietest whisper of suggestion that A Song of Ice and Fire is hiding an association between 'missing the deeper meanings of the story' and 'the dragon prince naming the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty.'

Me: https://applesanddragons.home.blog/2022/04/03/forest-love-and-forest-lass/

#asoiaf #asongoficeandfire #literature #literaryanalysis #theknightofthelaughingtree #howlandreed #lyannastark #nedstark #meerareed #jojen reed #agameofthrones #georgerrmartin #thetourneyatharrenhal #rhaegartargaryen #R+L=J #jonsnow

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applesanddragons · 2 years

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Forest Love and Forest Lass - Chapter 2 - The Tourney at Harrenhal

To recount every joust and jape is far outside our purpose here. That task we gladly leave to the singers. Two incidents must not be passed over, however, for they would prove to have grave consequences. (—Maester Yandel, TWOIAF)

Who was the Knight of the Laughing Tree? And why did Rhaegar crown Lyanna the queen of love and beauty?

The Tourney at Harrenhal is one event that contains two mysteries. These two mysteries are inescapably entangled throughout the story. It seems that the nearer a topic is to one or both of these questions, the more it is characterized by missing information. Cryptic memories like "Promise me, Ned" and Ned's dream about the Tower of Joy are two such topics.

This fog surrounding the two mysteries is a pattern that alludes to the existence of some unknown connection between the two mysteries that, when it becomes known, should illuminate the full truth of them both. To many readers, this connection and the story's subtle but persistent suggestion of its existence has long seemed to be the real mystery at hand.

u/Jaomi

2 points 2018

What happened between those two is the single most critical piece of backstory, because without it, none of the rest of the tale happens. The Targs don't go into exile and Dany doesn't hatch the dragons. Cat marries Brandon, so the Stark kids as we know them never exist. Jon is never born. So much of the plot hinges on their relationship, that one has to believe GRRM had a fair idea of how it happened before he wrote it all out for us to read. [1]

Whatever the answer or answers to the two Tourney at Harrenhal questions, the in-story reminders of their cohabitation within the same event (such as the opening quote from Maester Yandel) suggest that there's a relationship between them, and that the nature of the relationship is the cream of both mysteries. I call this relationship 'The Relationship Between The Two Mysteries.' That is the topic of Forest Love and Forest Lass moreso than either one of the two mysteries.

Identifying that there is a mystery regarding the relationship between the two mysteries is no species of master key to unlocking ASOIAF's secrets, nor is it a license to circumvent the original two mysteries. I knew that if I wanted to have any chance of gleaning The Relationship Between The Two Mysteries, I needed to develop an intimate understanding of the two mysteries themselves as separate things. So I began where they happened, at the Tourney at Harrenhal.

The events of the Tourney at Harrenhal are provided by three different sources. Foremost of those sources is Meera Reed in the chapter ASOS Bran II. Her account is the longest and most detailed account of them all, however much the truth of the events and people that interest us might be obscured by their translation to mythology and symbols, such as "lake" for God's Eye and "wolf pup" for Benjen.

“There was one knight,” said Meera, “in the year of the false spring. The Knight of the Laughing Tree, they called him. He might have been a crannogman, that one.” (—Meera Reed, ASOS Bran II)

Next is Maester Yandel in The World of Ice and Fire. Yandel's account is the second longest account, however unreliable of a narrator he may or may not be.

As warm winds blew from the south, lords and knights from throughout the Seven Kingdoms made their way toward Harrenhal to compete in Lord Whent’s great tournament on the shore of the Gods Eye, which promised to be the largest and most magnificent competition since the time of Aegon the Unlikely. (—Maester Yandel, TWOIAF: The Year of the False Spring)

Next is everybody else. This is a category of sources rather than a source in and of itself, but it's a useful category for my purpose of explaining things. Every off-handed mention, reference or allusion throughout ASOIAF of the events of, surrounding or related to the Tourney at Harrenhal by characters such as Ned, Barristan, Daenerys and Robert falls into this third category.

"And Rhaegar . . . how many times do you think he raped your sister? How many hundreds of times?” (—Robert Baratheon to Ned, AGOT Eddard II)

Meera Reed's account sings with such thematic resonance, narrative wonder and A Song of Ice and Fire style that I have returned to pore over it more than any other text in the series. All of the characters in it are represented in symbolic terms like their House sigils, heritages, affiliations and nicknames — stylistic patterns so pervasive throughout the series that translations like "dragon" to "Targaryen" and "wolf" to "Stark" have become second-nature to the readers.

The crannogman = Howland Reed

The lake = God's Eye

The castle = Harrenhal

The host = Walter Whent

The King = Aerys Targaryen

The dragon prince = Rhaegar Targaryen

The white swords = Aerys's Kingsguard

The storm lord = Robert Baratheon

The rose lord = Mace Tyrell

The great lion of the rock = Tywin Lannister

The daughter of the castle / fair maid = Walter Whent's daughter

Her four brothers = Walter Whent's sons

Her uncle a white knight of the Kingsguard = Oswell Whent

Wife of the dragon prince = Elia Martell

A dozen of her lady companions = Including Ashara

The porcupine knight = A knight of House Blount

The pitchfork knight = A knight of House Haigh

The knight of the two/twin towers = A knight of House Frey

The she-wolf / wolf maid = Lyanna Stark

The wild wolf = Brandon Stark

The quiet wolf = Eddard Stark

The wolf pup = Benjen Stark

The knight of skulls and kisses = Richard Lonmouth

A maid with laughing purple eyes = Ashara Dayne

A white sword = Barristan Selmy

A red snake = Oberyn Martell

The lord of griffins = Jon Connington

With dozens of characters populating Meera's story this way, and combined with the series' baked-in emphasis that perspective is everything, A Song of Ice and Fire sounds its warcry loud and clear:

'The Tourney At Harrenhal Is My Ultimate Challenge. Test Your Knowledge Of Me Here, If You Dare!'

The Tourney at Harrenhal has always seemed to me to be the soulful centerpiece of A Song of Ice and Fire's deepest secrets, and it's where I begin our dig into the fine (and familiar) details of the story. As it happens, the translation of events to mythology both obscures and reveals the truth of them.

Me: https://applesanddragons.home.blog/2022/04/03/forest-love-and-forest-lass/

#forestloveandforestlass #asongoficeandfire #asoiaf #literature #literaryanalysis #knightofthelaughingtree #kotlt #lyannastark #nedstark #R+L=J #harrenhal #rhaegartargaryen #jonsnow #thetourneyatharrenhal

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applesanddragons · 2 years

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Forest Love and Forest Lass - Chapter 1 - The Maiden of the Tree

At a small castle in the Riverlands called Acorn Hall, Arya Stark and Gendry have just returned to the main hall after a bit of playful rough-housing in the smithy. As they enter the hall together looking disheveled, a man named Tom of Sevenstreams sings this song.

My featherbed is deep and soft, and there I'll lay you down, I'll dress you all in yellow silk, and on your head a crown. For you shall be my lady love, and I shall be your lord. I'll always keep you warm and safe, and guard you with my sword. And how she smiled and how she laughed, the maiden of the tree. She spun away and said to him, no featherbed for me.

I'll wear a gown of golden leaves, and bind my hair with grass, But you can be my forest love, and me your forest lass. (ASOS Arya IV)

Tom of Sevenstreams no doubt can see as clearly as the readers can that the narrative seeds of a young-love romance between Arya and Gendry are planted in these scenes. In the context of Arya and Gendry reappearing together, the song is meant to relate to them — certainly through the eyes of Tom, but perhaps also through the thematic lens of the story itself. It is this lens that I focus my attention upon.

First I asked myself, what is the song itself about? What does it seem to mean when I remove the context of Arya, Gendry and Tom, and view it in isolation, as a work of art that has its own inherent characteristics and internal logic separate from these specific people, this specific place and time?

The song begins with the voice of a man. The man is offering a woman some things such as a featherbed, a crown, a romance and safety. All of these things together constitute a marriage, and so the offers constitute a marriage proposal. And I think he's trying to be persuasive about it.

The second half of the song is the woman responding to the man. She's being lighthearted about his offerings, but ultimately she's rejecting them. She proposes all of the same sort of things in response, except in the more casual, affordable and temporary forms of forest debris. The woman's suggestions contrast the man's suggestions in a way that suggests that she does want the romance he offers, and perhaps sex, too, but she wants them informally and outside of the cultural norms of society.

A possible implication in the song is that the man believes his offerings somehow entitle him to the woman's affection, as if material things, status and protection are what the woman necessarily needs or wants in a romance, and as if her personal preferences do not weigh or weigh much in the matter. But maybe the man didn't mean it that way.

The man offers the titles "lady love" and "lord." The woman changes them to "forest love" and "forest lass." Notice that now the man is the "love" rather than the woman.

The word "love" can mean affection, or it can mean sex, as in "lover" and "lovemaking." So by moving the "love" title to the man, another possible implication in the song is that the woman received "lady love" to mean something offensive to her, perhaps approximating "lady for sex" or "sexual plaything." In her new framing, she may be casting the man as her sexual plaything instead. Turning the tables, so to speak. But maybe the woman was not offended and is not returning insult in this way.

The titles of "lord" and "lady" are part of Westerosi culture, so they represent Westerosi culture. The title of "forest" depicts a physical change of venue from civilization to the wilderness. In this song, the forest and forestry are symbolic of a rejection of and removal from civilization, tradition and culture, as well as an embracement of nature — both the nature of the earth and the nature within themselves that compels them to have sex regardless of the cultural norms and expectations that might prevent them from doing it.

So I think all of that is what the song itself is about. Simply put, a man offers a woman a traditional pairing and the woman counter-offers by accepting the pairing but rejecting the traditions.

Characters who buck tradition are featured prominently in A Song of Ice and Fire, and little Arya Stark is one of them. So it's no wonder how the song relates to Arya and why it features in her chapter, even if marriage, romance and sex are still years to come for Arya, or never to come at all. Her incompatibility with the traditional womanly roles of Westeros is portrayed from the very beginning of the story when she flees from her sewing class and watches her brothers train at swords in the yard. The name that Arya chooses for her sword Needle is symbolic of this incompatibility. Plainly, Arya does not want the marriage-and-motherhood lifestyle that her father presents to her.

Arya cocked her head to one side. "Can I be a king's councillor and build castles and become the High Septon?"

"You," Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, "will marry a king and rule his castle, and your sons will be knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High Septon."

Arya screwed up her face. "No," she said, "that's Sansa." She folded up her right leg and resumed her balancing. Ned sighed and left her there. (AGOT Eddard V)

The Maiden of the Tree song's placement in Arya's scene highlights that Arya and the Maiden of the Tree are somehow similar, if only according to Tom.

While I won't go into great depth about the character Arya in Forest Love and Forest Lass, (though she is my favorite character!) she and the Maiden of the Tree seem to be echoes of one another through the ages, and that makes the song a cool foresty symbol for an essay about a story in which so much of its mystery resides in its history. Thankfully, however, I'll need to revisit Arya later. Arya plays an important role as our present-day set of eyes upon some important places in Westeros.

Me: https://applesanddragons.home.blog/2022/04/03/forest-love-and-forest-lass/

#asoiaf #literature #asongoficeandfire #forestloveandforestlass #applesanddragons #literaryanalysis #aryastark #nedstark #gendry #fantasy #fiction #agameofthrones #astormofswords #george rr martin

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applesanddragons · 2 years

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Tyrion Shows Us How To Prove Unreliable Narration

A proof of unreliable narration requires three things.

Narration

Narration that contradicts the narration in 1

You must have an explanation for why one narration is more credible than the other.

A fourth and final test is how well the more credible narration matches with the story as a whole, its themes, style, and self-evident character.

In ADWD, Tyrion has just joined the traveling party of Griff.

“No doubt. Well, Hugor Hill, answer me this. How did Serwyn of the Mirror Shield slay the dragon Urrax?”

“He approached behind his shield. Urrax saw only his own reflection until Serwyn had plunged his spear through his eye.”

Haldon was unimpressed. “Even Duck knows that tale. Can you tell me the name of the knight who tried the same ploy with Vhagar during the Dance of the dragons?”

Tyrion grinned. “Ser Byron Swann. He was roasted for his trouble … only the dragon was Syrax, not Vhagar.”

“I fear that you’re mistaken. In The Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling, Maester Munkun writes—”

“—that it was Vhagar. Grand Maester Munkun errs. Ser Byron’s squire saw his master die, and wrote his daughter of the manner of it. His account says it was Syrax, Rhaenyra’s she-dragon, which makes more sense than Munken’s version. Swann was the son of a marcher lord, and Storm’s End was for Aegon. Vhagar was ridden by Prince Aemond, Aegon’s brother. Why should Swann want to slay her?”

Haldon pursed his lips. “Try not to tumble off the horse. If you do, best waddle back to Pentos. Our shy maid will not wait for man nor dwarf.” (ADWD Tyrion III)

Haldon Halfmaester doesn’t like Tyrion. Since Haldon is from Westeros himself and an educated man, being a Maester, he recognizes Tyrion’s name Hugor Hill to be a lie immediately. Haldon improvises a little pop quiz about Westerosi mythology, apparently in an attempt to expose the falseness of Tyrion’s name.

Tyrion answers the first question correctly, thwarting Haldon’s reveal, which causes Haldon to challenge him again with a harder question.

“Can you tell me the name of the knight who tried the same ploy with Vhagar during the Dance of the dragons?”

Tyrion answers with the name Ser Byron Swann, which Haldon apparently agrees with, because Haldon doesn’t object to the Byron part of Tyrion’s answer.

Then Tyrion corrects Haldon on the identity of the dragon that roasted Byron.

Haldon corrects Tyrion back, citing the book The Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling by Maester Munkun.

Tyrion rejects Haldon’s counter-correction, citing the writings of Ser Byron Swann’s squire. The squire was eye-witness to the event in question, and he wrote a letter to his daughter in which he named Syrax, rather than Vhagar, as the dragon that killed Byron.

This little duel of knowledge between Tyrion and Haldon is the story’s way of showing the reader how the reader should handle suspect unreliable narration.

First, there is some narration: Ser Byron Swann was killed by Vhagar in The Dance of the dragons.

Second, there is some narration contradictory to the other narration: Ser Byron Swann was killed by Syrax in The Dance of the dragons.

Third, Tyrion and the reader are left to deliberate the truth of the situation.

The first thing we can do is weigh the credibility of the sources. Who is a more credible source regarding the identity of the dragon that killed Ser Byron Swann? Maester Munkun or Ser Byron’s squire?

Maester Munkun’s account is a third-hand account, while the squire’s account is a first-hand eye-witness account. So based on that, the squire is the more credible source.

It’s possible that some unusual circumstance could cast the squire in a more- or less-credible light. For example, perhaps somewhere in the story canon there exists a comment that Ser Byron’s squire was an infamous liar, that the squire never had a daughter, or that he didn’t know how to write at all. Likewise, it’s possible that some unusual circumstance could cast Maester Munkun in a more- or less-credible light. Perhaps somewhere in the story canon there exists a comment that Maester Munkun had a bad memory when it came to the names of dragons.

However, I have no grounds to assert that an unusual circumstance like that exists until and unless one has been found in the story. So the squire wins the battle of credibility by a large margin by having an in-person perspective on the event.

The next test for unreliable narration is to check how well each competing narration fits with the story canon as a whole.

Haldon pursed his lips. “Try not to tumble off the horse. If you do, best waddle back to Pentos. Our shy maid will not wait for man nor dwarf.”

Haldon responds to Tyrion’s counter-counter-correction with body language and a reply that both suggest that he’s not happy about losing their contentious little duel of knowledge. It suggests that Haldon knows that Tyrion is correct about Storm’s End and by extension Ser Byron Swann siding with Aegon in the war. This is apparently knowledge common and certain enough that Haldon can’t refute it, despite wanting to best Tyrion very badly.

And when I think about it, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense if Storm’s End siding with Aegon was not common knowledge among everybody who has studied The Dance of the dragons even a little bit. Storm’s End is one of only a dozen or so major castles in Westeros, and The Dance of the dragons was one of the most significant wars in Westerosi history.

Since the squire’s account that Syrax killed Byron matches with the overarching “story” of The Dance of the dragons, and since Maester Munkun’s account that Vhagar killed Byron contradicts it, it suddenly becomes incredibly obvious which account is the truth.

Byron was fighting on the side of Aegon, and Vhagar was Aemond’s dragon, and Aemond was Aegon’s brother, and Aemond sided with Aegon, so it doesn’t make sense to suppose that Vhagar was the dragon Byron confronted. Coming at it from the other angle, Byron was fighting against Rhaenyra, and Syrax was Rhaenyra’s dragon, so it makes sense to suppose that Syrax was the dragon Byron confronted.

In this way, unreliable narration rewards the reader (symbolized by Tyrion in this scene) for challenging its narrative (symbolized by Haldon’s narrative) by thinking critically about character motivations, loyalties, behaviors, and taking the time to allow easy-to-gloss-over details like the names of dragons and their riders to unfold and breathe in his imagination, experiencing the world vicariously and more like the characters experience it, and thereby allowing him to remember and notice things better.

For a spice of irony, the author even had Maester Munkun name his book “A True Telling”, as if naming a falsehood true can make it so. The irony paints Maester Munkun as incompetent, arrogant, perhaps desperate for acclaim, or perhaps nefarious. And it paints Haldon and readers who defended the unreliable narration as inattentive or gullible.

To the extent that I’m made by the story to appear gullible, the story’s critique of me is tongue-in-cheek, because, after all, the presupposition that the reader can trust the story to tell him the truth about its narrative is implicit in the story’s very existence, because it’s implicit in the very act of telling a story. ‘Why would a storyteller tell a story at all if he were going to falsify the narrative?’

Well, as if it wasn’t clear enough already, A Song of Ice and Fire is unusual fare among stories. This one is teaching us how to think.

Main blog: applesanddragons.home.blog

#asoiaf #asongoficeandfire #tyrion lannister #literature #literary analysis #george rr martin #adancewithdragons #unreliable narration #fantasy #fiction

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applesanddragons · 2 years

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Dothraki Superstition: Strength Right

Excerpt from the essay Dothraki Superstition by Apples and Dragons

Strength Right

The fundamental attitude at the heart of Dothraki society is one I will call Strength Right. It’s the attitude that the strong have the right to rule and take from the weak.

“They took Khal Drogo’s herds, Khaleesi,” Rakharo said. “We were too few to stop them. It is the right of the strong to take from the weak. They took many slaves as well, the khal‘s and yours, yet they left some few.” (AGOT Daenerys IX)

The primacy of strength can be seen all throughout Dothraki beliefs and behaviors, such as in their propensity for conquest and enslavement. Strength Right can be seen influencing Dothraki society in subtler ways, too. For example, the growth of a trade economy is stunted due to the Dothraki attitude that trading is unmanly.

For us, however, the only true importance of Vaes Dothrak is the trading that takes place there. The Dothraki themselves will neither buy nor sell, deeming it unmanly, but in their sacred city, by leave of the dosh khaleen, merchants and traders from beyond the Bones and the Free Cities come together, to haggle and exchange goods and gold. (TWOIAF: Beyond the Free Cities, The Grasslands)

Though manliness and strength aren’t exactly the same thing, they’re particularly indistinguishable in everyday Dothraki life.

However, wherever manliness is an inadequate description of strength, I find Dothraki society beginning to break down.

They want a glimpse of dragons to tell their children of, and their children’s children. (ASOS Daenerys III)

To own baby dragons, for example, affords the owner much influence and power, but it isn’t a kind of power or influence that the word “strength” describes quite as well as it describes more traditional kinds of strength, such as physicality.

Wealth is another kind of power that doesn’t fit neatly into this masculine concept of strength. Trade is a system of wealth creation that doesn’t directly involve physicality, so it’s an area where Dothraki society encounters its limitation, unable to accommodate the innovation of trading at large scale due to the mismatch between “masculine strength” and “power,” or “masculine strength” and “influence.”

The Dothraki conflate power and masculinity so strongly that indirect kinds of power sometimes confuse the Dothraki value system and the Dothraki people, causing instability throughout the system and society.

When it comes to Dany’s treatment of Dothraki superstitions, the effect of her decisions at Drogo’s funeral pyre and the resulting miracles is that this weakness in Dothraki society is exposed, penetrated, and consequences both good and bad are set into motion early in the story for readers to consider.

Sex

One of the most unflattering features of Dothraki society is the way Strength Right manifests in Dothraki attitudes towards sex. In a society where nearly every weakness is perceived by the strong as an opportunity to exercise one’s right to take what one wants, such opportunities are scarcely more evident or commonplace than those found in the physiological differences between men and women.

The warriors were watching too. One of them finally stepped into the circle, grabbed a dancer by the arm, pushed her down to the ground, and mounted her right there, as a stallion mounts a mare. Illyrio had told her that might happen. “The Dothraki mate like the animals in their herds. There is no privacy in a khalasar, and they do not understand sin or shame as we do.” (AGOT Daenerys II)

Dany is understandably horrified by the rape. She has never seen anything like Dothraki society before, and, in Westeros, where Dany’s attitudes derive, rape is a heinous crime for which severe punishments are given. However, the more I pay attention to the Dothraki people, the more I come to realize that it is innaccurate to describe this or other instances of Dothraki sex as rape. A comparable kind of inaccuracy would be to describe a khal as the King.

The word King carries other meanings and implications attached to it. For example, in Westeros, the King is someone who wears a crown, who rules over a territory, and whose claim to power is based in a claim to Blood Right. But on the Dothraki sea, the word King is only an approximate translation of the word khal, because none of those three meanings accurately describe a khal. A khal doesn’t wear a crown. A khal doesn’t rule over a territory, because the khalasar is nomadic and there are many khals. A khal’s claim to power is based in Strength Right rather than Blood Right.

Likewise, the word rape carries other meanings in the minds of Dany and the reader that don’t accurately describe what is happening when the Dothraki mate. For example, one implication in the word rape is that the Dothraki women who are targets of the mating generally object to or condemn it. However, when I revisit this first shocking scene of Dothraki sex at Dany’s wedding, I find a notable absence of objections from the Dothraki women, of either the verbal or physical kind.

Across the road, the girl was still crying, her high singsong tongue strange to Dany’s ears. The first man was done with her now, and a second had taken his place.

“She is a lamb girl,” Quaro said in Dothraki. “She is nothing, Khaleesi. The riders do her honor. The Lamb Men lay with sheep, it is known.”

“It is known,” her handmaid Irri echoed. (AGOT Daenerys VII)

After khal Ogo’s khalasar attacks a Lhazareen village, khal Drogo’s khalasar rides in on Ogo’s heels to destroy his rivals and the village together. Dany’s Dothraki handmaid Irri expresses the same attitudes towards sex as the Dothraki men, validating the rape of the Lhazareen.

The women and children of Ogo’s khalasar walked with a sullen pride, even in defeat and bondage; they were slaves now, but they seemed not to fear it. (AGOT Daenerys VII)

The Dothraki women and children of Ogo’s khalasar hold their heads high even as they enter into slavery, showing me that either the Dothraki people are truly as fearless as Jorah says, or that the Dothraki learn from a young age to conquer those instincts that show weakness, lest that weakness broadcast the Strength Right of someone else.

After them would scurry a flock of small girls, pulling arrows from the corpses to fill their baskets. (AGOT Daenerys VII)

Considering the unforgiving existence that shapes both male and female Dothraki from childhood, my assumption that Dothraki women are an exception to the Dothraki Strength Right attitudes in sex or any aspect of life is revealed to have been naive. It’s a lesson that may have never been learned as harshly as it was learned three centuries ago by the King of Gornath.

Sathar was the first of the cities of the grasslands to fall to the Dothraki, but by no means the last. Six years later, Khal Moro razed Kasath as well. In this attack his riders were aided, incredibly, by Gornath, whose king had made common cause with the Dothraki and taken one of Moro’s daughters to wife. Yet Gornath itself fell next, a dozen years afterward. Khal Horro had by that time slain Khal Moro, ending the line of the mighty Khal Mengo. The King of Gornath died at the hand of his own Dothraki wife, who despised him for his weakness, we are told. Afterward, Khal Horro took her for his own, as rats devoured the corpse of her late husband. (TWOIAF Beyond the Free Cities, The Grasslands)

Initially, Illyrio's comment comparing the Dothraki people to animals seemed dehumanizing of the Dothraki people. Upon a closer look and deeper consideration, my inability to non-judgementally look upon a people who engage in and conceive of sex differently than I do, without losing my grasp of their humanity, was the more profoundly dehumanizing point of view.

Now I'm able to see a minor tragedy in Illyrio's comment that I couldn't see before. The tragedy is that a well placed pause after the word mate would have done a better job of conveying to Dany that the way the Dothraki have sex is not inherently malicious.

“The Dothraki mate like the animals in their herds." (AGOT Daenerys II)

“The Dothraki mate, like the animals in their herds."

As I notice my own mistake reflected in Daenerys, I can consider the possibility, and perhaps likelihood, that the author’s intention in writing the story this way is to allow the reader to trip over his own attitudes about sex, in order to obscure an interpretation of the story in which Dany’s assumptions about the Dothraki have served her just as poorly in understanding the Dothraki as my identical assumptions about the Dothraki have served me in understanding Daenerys.

So, a more accurate description of what the Dothraki are doing when they have sex with one another is the word mate rather than the word rape. The reason, I gather, is that Strength Right precludes the concept of rape entirely.

Supposing a philosophy in which it is the right of the strong to take from those weaker than him, then, in the context of that philosophy, it isn’t generally possible for the taking to be immoral or undue, because the taker is excercizing a right. The taking, itself, is the proof of the right to take.

This circular bit of reasoning reveals why the Dothraki can’t accommodate the concepts of rape, trade or bribery. Those are a few ideas that slide off the Dothraki psyche like a silk saddle off a horse’s back, because the ideas can only make sense in the absence of the principle that taking things by force is normal and proper. For better or worse, that’s a principle that is rooted more deeply than any other in the Dothraki mind.

I can imagine that, for a person who was born and raised within a Dothraki khalasar, where mating and duels to the death are daily and spontaneous occurrences, no principle would appear more universally and self-evidently true to him than Strength Right.

As Dany rides into the conquered Lhazareen village to meet Drogo, she orders her khas to stop the rapes along the way.

“You heard my words,” she said. “Stop them.” She spoke to her khas in the harsh accents of Dothraki. “Jhogo, Quaro, you will aid Ser Jorah. I want no rape.”

The warriors exchanged a baffled look.

Jorah Mormont spurred his horse closer. “Princess,” he said, “you have a gentle heart, but you do not understand. This is how it has always been. Those men have shed blood for the khal. Now they claim their reward.” (AGOT Daenerys VII)

With my new understanding of the Dothraki, I’m able to better understand the baffled look between Jhogo and Quaro. Dany is speaking in the Dothraki language, so the english words that appear on the page show me what Dany thinks she’s saying. But it’s unreliable narration. Since the Dothraki don’t have a concept of rape, they don’t have a word for rape, either, as distinguished from taking. Whatever Dothraki word Dany is using to mean “rape” must be the same word that the Dothraki understand to mean “taking.”

As Jorah tries to point out, taking is a Dothraki warrior’s reward for fighting on behalf of the khalasar, the khal, and the khaleesi by extension. To remove those rewards is to remove the incentives for fighting. On the Dothraki sea, the result of that would be the certain destruction of the khalasar, its leading family and all.

To be clear, my intention in exploring Dothraki sex is not to justify, condemn, or value it in one way or another. The more important and in some ways more difficult point I hope to impress is that, to search for or demand a justification or condemnation of the way the Dothraki have sex is to misunderstand the Dothraki people in the most fundamental way. Such a demand would be equally meaningless if made regarding the mating patterns of the horses in their herds or the wild dogs that follow them. More to the point, to better incorporate that understanding is to unlock a more complete understanding of Dany’s handling of Dothraki society.

When Daenerys returned to her pyramid, sore of limb and sick of heart, she found Missandei reading some old scroll whilst Irri and Jhiqui argued about Rakharo. “You are too skinny for him,” Jhiqui was saying. “You are almost a boy. Rakharo does not bed with boys. This is known.” Irri bristled back. “It is known that you are almost a cow. Rakharo does not bed with cows.”

“Rakharo is blood of my blood. His life belongs to me, not you,” Dany told the two of them. Rakharo had grown almost half a foot during his time away from Meereen and returned with arms and legs thick with muscle and four bells in his hair. He towered over Aggo and Jhogo now, as her handmaids had both noticed. (ADWD Daenerys VI)

Rakharo’s physique has captured the attentions of Irri and Jhiqui, who I notice are not arguing about which one of them Rakharo would prefer to court, but rather, which one of them Rakharo would prefer to mate. Unsurprisingly, due to Strength Right’s influence in matters of sex, this bizarre society seems to completely lack expectations and traditions of courtship.

Though I wouldn’t elect to live in a society where courtship and all of its alluring tensions are absent, I can see that one tradeoff for the Dothraki is that they’re spared the frustrations associated with too much tension and too little assertiveness.

One sleepless night during the voyage to Astapor, Daenerys tried to find sexual release.

Still, the relief she wanted seemed to recede before her, until her dragons stirred, and one screamed out across the cabin, and Irri woke and saw what she was doing.

Dany knew her face was flushed, but in the darkness Irri surely could not tell. Wordless, the handmaid put a hand on her breast, then bent to take a nipple in her mouth. Her other hand drifted down across the soft curve of belly, through the mound of fine silvery-gold hair, and went to work between Dany’s thighs. It was no more than a few moments until her legs twisted and her breasts heaved and her whole body shuddered. She screamed then. Or perhaps that was Drogon. Irri never said a thing, only curled back up and went back to sleep the instant the thing was done. (ASOS Daenerys II)

Irri’s assertiveness with Dany, and the rather abrupt and unceremonious conclusion of it, shows me again that sex isn’t a big deal to the Dothraki. Much like the way they make other decisions such as which khalasar to fight and which direction to travel, their mating seems less calculated than I would have expected with decisions of such magnitude, and driven by their instincts, impulses and those of people around them, without much thought given to the consequences.

“My khaleesi is sad?”

“Yes,” Dany admitted. Sad and lost.

“Should I pleasure the khaleesi?”

Dany stepped away from her. “No. Irri, you do not need to do that. What happened that night, when you woke … you’re no bed slave, I freed you, remember? You …”

“I am handmaid to the Mother of Dragons,” the girl said. “It is great honor to please my khaleesi.”

“I don’t want that,” she insisted. “I don’t.” She turned away sharply. “Leave me now. I want to be alone. To think.” (ASOS Daenerys II)

Dany seems to think that Irri has forgotten that Dany freed her from slavery at Drogo’s funeral pyre. It suggests that Dany thinks that the reason Irri is pleasuring her is because Irri still feels a sense of servitude leftover from her enslavement. It shows me that Dany still hasn’t realized that the sex she witnessed between the Dothraki people was mating rather than rape, and that her liberation of Irri was less liberating than she thinks it was.

Irri replies that Dany is the Mother of Dragons, and it is a great honor to please her khaleesi. The two comments together lead me to think that Irri means to express a causal relationship between them. At first it seems like a strange reply because, as Dany has just reminded her, Irri has what seems to be a much stronger reason to be devoted to Dany than dragons. That reason is that Dany freed her from slavery. But in light of what I’ve learned about the Dothraki, I think it shows me that Irri’s devotion to Dany has much to do with Irri’s Strength Right sensibilities, because Dany’s dragons and the hatching of them represent strength in many interpretations.

Dany has a conscientious objection to intimacy with Irri. I think it’s because Dany’s own values derive from Westeros, where attitudes about sex are much different, so it’s difficult for her to accommodate the Dothraki attitude in her own relationships.

“In the Seven Kingdoms there are children’s tales of frogs who turn into enchanted princes when kissed by their true love.” (ADWD Daenerys VII)

Westerosi attitudes about sex are characterized by desires and expectations of lifelong monogamy, which undergird everything from their laws to their stories. Dany’s values are deeply held, just as the Dothraki hold theirs, so by refusing to act in conflict with her values she’s protecting them from being modified within her. I think it’s a case in which Dany’s tendency to prioritize her own values over Dothraki values serves her well, even if she doesn’t always recognize when her decisions are producing internal conflicts of comparable magnitude within the Dothraki, or sufficiently take that into her calculations.

Main blog: applesanddragons.home.blog

#asoiaf #asongoficeandfire #agameofthrones #aclashofkings #astormofswords #afeastforcrows #adancewithdragons #literature #georgerrmartin #fantasy #literaryanalysis #daenerys #targaryen #khaldrogo #dothraki

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applesanddragons · 2 years

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Dothraki Superstition: The Bleeding Star

Excerpt from the essay Dothraki Superstition by Apples and Dragons

The Bleeding Star

At some time near the event of Drogo’s funeral and the hatching of Dany’s dragons, a red comet appeared in the sky.

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. (ACOK Daenerys I)

Many characters throughout the story offer an interpretation of the comet and what it means for the future. The old men of the Dothraki believe that the comet is a bad omen. Daenerys seems to dismiss that interpretation, because she had seen the comet earlier than most people, on the night of Khal Drogo’s funeral and the miraculous dragon hatching.

It’s no wonder why Dany rejects the bad omen interpretation. Some of the things that happened at the pyre were truly spectacular. Dany walked into a blazing inferno and emerged alive with three living dragons. At the same time, some of the things that happened at the pyre were truly horrific. Dany burned a woman alive in an act of cruel vengeance, in the same fire as her beloved husband, and the same fire in which Dany attempted suicide after the most traumatic series of events in her life.

Only when I adopt a Dothraki perspective, and suppose that the old men are more correct than Dany, can I see that Dany has unwittingly maligned herself by thinking that a bad omen is the herald of her coming.

Main blog: applesanddragons.home.blog

#asoiaf #asongoficeandfire #agameofthrones #georgerrmartin #literature #literaryanalysis #daenerys #targaryen #dothraki #khaldrogo #fantasy #aclashofkings

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applesanddragons · 2 years

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Dothraki Superstition: Bride Gifts

Excerpt from the essay Dothraki Superstition by Apples and Dragons

Bride Gifts

At Khal Drogo and Dany’s wedding, Dany received a variety of gifts, ranging from dragon eggs to history books to handmaids. Among these gifts were three weapons: a whip, an arakh, and a bow.

The khal’s bloodriders offered her the traditional three weapons, and splendid weapons they were. Haggo gave her a great leather whip with a silver handle, Cohollo a magnificent arakh chased in gold, and Qotho a double-curved dragonbone bow taller than she was. Magister Illyrio and Ser Jorah had taught her the traditional refusals for these offerings. “This is a gift worthy of a great warrior, O blood of my blood, and I am but a woman. Let my lord husband bear these in my stead.” And so Khal Drogo too received his “bride gifts.” (AGOT Daenerys II)

The word “traditional” tells me that there is some tradition happening here, but I have to do some thinking to find in which part of the event the tradition resides, if I want to develop a more complete understanding of it.

1. Would the tradition be broken if the khal’s bloodriders had offered Dany three saddles rather than three weapons? Is the tradition that the gifts should be weapons?

I think so.

2. Would the tradition be broken if the same three weapons had been gifted to Dany by non-bloodriders? Is the tradition that the gift-givers should be bloodriders?

I think so. Only the khal can have bloodriders, and hierarchy in Dothraki culture is centered around the khal, especially ceremonially, such as can be observed at a feast where it’s regarded as an honor to sit at a table near the khal.

3. Would the tradition be broken if the arakh were a longsword instead? Is the tradition that these specific weapon types should be the gifts?

I think so. Whips, arakhs and bows are near and dear to the Dothraki people. Whips and arakhs in particular are pretty unique to the Dothraki, and the Dothraki are renowned for their ability to shoot bows from horseback.

4. Would the tradition be broken if Dany had recited the refusal incorrectly?

“This is a gift worthy of a great warrior, O blood of my blood, and I am but a woman. Let my lord husband bear these in my stead.”

Maybe, but I think not. Dany is reciting this in Dothraki, a language that is new to her, so my impression is that the reason she needed to memorize and recite it is because she doesn’t speak Dothraki very well yet. I think the specific words themselves are not particularly important, and that Dany could have made the same points using different words, without breaking the tradition.

It shows me that the traditional part is not in the specific words of the bride’s refusal. Rather, the tradition is that the bride should refuse.

All of these elements together make up the whole tradition. The essence of the tradition may be found in the relationship between its parts.

So then I wonder, what is the relationship between the khaleesi refusing the weapons, and passing them along to her husband?

The most obvious relationship is that the weapons should sensibly go to the person who can best use them. Men tend to be physically stronger than women, so the transfer is a smart division of labor. As a point of fact, Dany would find it impossible to draw the bow for a shot. But I think the relationship goes deeper than that.

Weapons are tools for conquest and defense, so maybe the weapon gifts represent opportunities for power. Symbolically, the gesture could represent that the khaleesi will relinquish power when opportunities for power arise.

What is the relationship between the gifts being weapons, and the bloodriders being the givers of the weapons?

The khaleesi relinquishing power somehow relates to the bloodriders.

But how?

Jhiqui had taught her that a bloodrider was more than a guard; they were the khal’s brothers, his shadows, his fiercest friends. “Blood of my blood,” Drogo called them, and so it was; they shared a single life. The ancient traditions of the horselords demanded that when the khal died, his bloodriders died with him, to ride at his side in the night lands. If the khal died at the hands of some enemy, they lived only long enough to avenge him, and then followed him joyfully into the grave. (AGOT Daenerys IV)

The bloodriders’ fates are intertwined with the khal in a way that the khaleesi’s fate is not. When the khal dies it is the bloodriders, not the khaleesi, who are required to die with him.

I think the reason the bloodriders gift weapons to the khaleesi is to find out what the khaleesi will do with them.

The Dothraki believe that only a man can or should be a khal — the most powerful Dothraki role. Or more specifically, they believe that a woman can not and should not be a khal. In Dothraki culture, leadership and masculinity go hand in hand, with the one great exception being the dosh khaleen.

In conclusion, the bride’s refusal of the weapons is a symbolic gesture that gives the khaleesi an opportunity to demonstrate to the bloodriders that, should the opportunity arise for the khaleesi to occupy a masculine role, she intends to refuse masculine roles.

Maybe one purpose of such a sentiment is to highlight the truth of the reverse — that the khaleesi intends to occupy a feminine role. It reminds me of the Ghiscari wedding tradition in which the bride washes the feet of the groom. Where the Ghiscari tradition seems to reinforce that the bride should occupy a feminine role, the Dothraki tradition seems to reinforce that the bride should reject opportunities to occupy a masculine role. It’s a subtle difference that shows me that Dothraki culture has abnormally strong protections against female ambition, which suggests to me that Dothraki society has historically been more vulnerable to female ambition than Ghiscari culture has been.

As the story unfolds on the Dothraki Sea, the Dothraki society is tested by a female’s ambition. Because of Khal Drogo’s death, Dany is presented with an opportunity to seize the role of khal for herself.

Dany called the Dothraki around her. Fewer than a hundred were left. How many had Aegon started with? she wondered. It did not matter.

“You will be my khalasar,” she told them. “I see the faces of slaves. I free you. Take off your collars. Go if you wish, no one shall harm you. If you stay, it will be as brothers and sisters, husbands and wives.” The black eyes watched her, wary, expressionless. “I see the children, women, the wrinkled faces of the aged. I was a child yesterday. Today I am a woman. Tomorrow I will be old. To each of you I say, give me your hands and your hearts, and there will always be a place for you.” She turned to the three young warriors of her khas. “Jhogo, to you I give the silver-handled whip that was my bride gift, and name you ko, and ask your oath, that you will live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm.”

Jhogo took the whip from her hands, but his face was confused. “Khaleesi, “ he said hesitantly, “this is not done. It would shame me, to be bloodrider to a woman.”

“Aggo,” Dany called, paying no heed to Jhogo’s words. If I look back I am lost. “To you I give the dragonbone bow that was my bride gift.” It was double-curved, shiny black and exquisite, taller than she was. “I name you ko, and ask your oath, that you should live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm.”

Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes. “I cannot say these words. Only a man can lead a khalasar or name a ko.”

“Rakharo,” Dany said, turning away from the refusal, “you shall have the great arakh that was my bride gift, with hilt and blade chased in gold. And you too I name my ko, and ask that you live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm.”

“You are khaleesi,” Rakharo said, taking the arakh. “I shall ride at your side to Vaes Dothrak beneath the Mother of Mountains, and keep you safe from harm until you take your place with the crones of the dosh khaleen. No more can I promise.”

She nodded, as calmly as if she had not heard his answer, (…) (AGOT Daenerys X)

Jhogo, Aggo and Rakharo each reject Dany’s attempt to make herself a khal, citing the Dothraki traditions that the khal should be a man and that the khaleesi should be escorted to Vaes Dothrak in the event of his death. Their responses all together form a multi-faceted opposition to the prospect of a woman leader, and they show me where I should search to find the ways that Dany’s attempt to make herself khal may have costs to the Dothraki people.

Jhogo points out a cost that would be paid by himself and the other members of Dany’s khas. It would shame him to be bloodrider to a woman. Initially it seems prejudiced at worst and petty at best. However, Jhogo’s history shows me that he has neither a dislike of Dany nor of women. He protected Dany from Viserys and from the poisoner. Rather, Jhogo is uncomfortable with the implicit dilemma that Dany has posed to him. The dilemma is whether or not to break this tradition — that only a man can lead a khalasar — by making an exception for Dany.

As to the pettiness of Jhogo’s objection, I only need to look to the story of Khal Rhaggat to see that the price of shame in Dothraki society is very real and very high.

Khal Drogo had offered him a place in a cart the next day, and Viserys had accepted. In his stubborn ignorance, he had not even known he was being mocked; the carts were for eunuchs, cripples, women giving birth, the very young and the very old. (AGOT Daenerys IV)

Aggo refuses Dany’s offer by simply stating the tradition clearly.

Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes. “I cannot say these words. Only a man can lead a khalasar or name a ko.”

Due to Dany’s unresponsiveness, I think Aggo is unsure if she is offending Dothraki tradition deliberately or accidentally. It’s doubtful that after a year among the Dothraki, Dany wouldn’t know that a woman khal is not permissible, so Aggo seems to be giving Dany the benefit of the doubt.

To the Dothraki, there are three possibilities that could explain Dany’s behavior.

Dany is unaware that she isn’t allowed to be a khal.

She’s aware of it but avoiding the fact out of fear for her future.

She’s aware of it but avoiding the fact in order to persuade these Dothraki to abandon their traditional values and make an exception for both Dany and themselves.

The first case appears unlikely to the reader and to the Dothraki, upon first consideration, and then impossible upon further consideration, because Dany has spent a year with the Dothraki and must already know that a woman khal is out of the question. So there are only two possibilities remaining — one sympathetic and one unsympathetic — and neither the reader nor the Dothraki can be entirely sure which one more accurately describes Dany’s motivation.

paying no heed to Jhogo’s words. If I look back I am lost.

Dany’s mantra shows me that she knows that what she’s doing is wrong. Not only is she deliberately breaking Dothraki tradition, but she’s leveraging the residual authority in her position as khaleesi to pressure the people subordinate to her to break it too.

Rakharo refuses Dany’s offer by reasserting the traditional procedures, the subtext being, I think, that he won’t forsake his responsibilities to Dothraki society, nor allow her to forsake her own responsibilities to it.

Rakharo’s refusal is firm but reassuring. He’s reminding Dany that a good future awaits her in the dosh khaleen in Vaes Dothrak, and that she’ll be escorted there safely. I think Rakharo recognizes the possibility that Dany is acting out of fear rather than selfishness, and that he’s giving Dany the benefit of the doubt.

While the words of Jhogo, Aggo and Rakharo seem to reject Dany clearly, their actions seem to contradict their words, because each man ultimately accepts and keeps the weapon that Dany has offered to him.

Jhogo took the whip from her hands, but his face was confused.

Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes.

“You are khaleesi,” Rakharo said, taking the arakh.

I think Dany is hoping that the weapons will make the three men more cooperative with her attempt to make herself a khal, by causing them to feel like they owe her something in return. However, these Dothraki aren’t likely to feel like they owe Dany anything in return.

Ser Jorah grunted. “Yes, Khaleesi, but . . . the Dothraki look on these things differently than we do in the west. I have told him as much, as Illyrio told him, but your brother does not listen. The horselords are no traders. Viserys thinks he sold you, and now he wants his price. Yet Khal Drogo would say he had you as a gift. He will give Viserys a gift in return, yes . . . in his own time. (AGOT Daenerys IV)

The Dothraki don’t understand trading the same way Dany or most people in the story do. They understand it as gift- giving and receiving. The giving of something doesn’t seem to cause the Dothraki to feel like they owe the giver something in return.

Because of that, I think the Dothraki’s acceptance of the weapons is not incompatible with their refusal of Dany’s leadership. Similarly, their acceptance of the weapons doesn’t indicate acceptance of Dany’s leadership either. Dany’s attempt to bribe these Dothraki has fallen flat, due again to her disregard for Dothraki perspectives.

Moreover, Dany’s gifts are not hers to give.

On the platform they piled Khal Drogo’s treasures: his great tent, his painted vests, his saddles and harness, the whip his father had given him when he came to manhood, the arakh he had used to slay Khal Ogo and his son, a mighty dragonbone bow. Aggo would have added the weapons Drogo’s bloodriders had given Dany for bride gifts as well, but she forbade it. “Those are mine,” she told him, “and I mean to keep them.”

All of Drogo’s treasures were added to the funeral pyre to be burned. Dany rescued the bride gifts from the burning, claiming them as her own and declaring that she wants to keep them. From a Dothraki perspective, Dany may have offended the part of the bride gift tradition in which the khaleesi passes the weapons to her husband. Dany’s symbolic gesture from the wedding is revealed to have been insincere.

Worse still, from a Dothraki perspective, Khal Drogo’s bloodriders were killed on Dany’s orders, and killed by the very same men to whom she’s offering the bloodriders’ gifts now.

“Stop him,” she commanded her khas, “kill him.” (AGOT Daenerys VIII)

These magnificent weapons appear not so unlike rewards for betrayals well done.

The symbolic meaning in the transfer of the bride gift weapons from khaleesi to khal was that the khaleesi was promising that she would not threaten the lives of the khal’s bloodriders or the stability of the khalasar by attempting to make herself khal. The transfer is an acknowledgement that the position of khaleesi is one that has a great capacity for destruction in Dothraki society. The truth of that can be seen in the internal and external conflicts of the Dothraki characters who are divided between loyalty to the khaleesi and loyalty to Dothraki traditional values.

Rakharo sprang forward, howling, swinging his arakh down with both hands through the top of Haggo’s head. (AGOT Daenerys VIII)

The Dothraki traditions and superstitions don’t mean as much to Dany as they do to people like Jhogo and Cohollo. These men have been Dothraki for all their lives, so Dothraki values are ingrained in them as thoroughly as their certainty that the sun will rise. Their beliefs illicit genuine emotions in them like fear, revulsion and elation.

Khal Drogo laid his hand on Dany’s arm. She could feel the tension in his fingers. Even a khal as mighty as Drogo could know fear when the dosh khaleen peered into smoke of the future.

That’s only to acknowledge that, while it may be easy to fall into the habit of treating Dothraki beliefs, values and superstitions as obviously fictitious, misplaced, or otherwise easily discarded, I think the story is demonstrating that to discard a belief without having first developed a complete understanding of it and all the functions it may be serving in the society is a recipe for catastrophe.

However, that isn’t to say that I think Dany should necessarily always entirely adhere to Dothraki traditions.

The immediate result for Dany is that she wins the loyalties of the Dothraki who stayed behind, who otherwise would not have sworn themselves to her, and who would have taken her to Vaes Dothraki to join the dosh khaleen.

The Dothraki follow strength in the traditional sense, such as strength of body, combat prowess and bravery. They believe it is the right of the strong to lead. They also believe that some magics such as bloodmagic are evil and forbidden. The miracles or magics that occurred at Drogo’s pyre place those two Dothraki attitudes in conflict with one another, making it difficult for the Dothraki to know what is the right thing for them to do.

Certainly, Dany surviving the fire and hatching dragons is a compelling display of power. Is power so different from strength? Is power forged through bloodmagic a valid or invalid kind of strength? Was the pyre really an instance of bloodmagic? What exactly happened at the pyre anyway? And to what extent can we credit this power to Dany? The answers to these questions and others we might imagine regarding the events at the pyre may be as unclear to the Dothraki as they are to the reader. In any case, the Dothraki such as Jhogo, Aggo and Rakharo were ultimately moved to make an exception for Dany.

Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted.

And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki, men and women and children, and Dany had only to look at their eyes to know that they were hers now, today and tomorrow and forever, hers as they had never been Drogo’s. (AGOT Daenerys X)

I think the long term results of Dany’s decision to disregard the bride gifts tradition may become chiefly observable in the stories and endings of Jhogo, Aggo and Rakharo, who carry those weapons through the story, and whose loyalties were won in such a questionable way at Drogo’s pyre, from a Dothraki perspective.

Thematically, I think the Dothraki who chose loyalty to Dany over loyalty to Dothraki tradition will ultimately meet unhappy endings. They seem to have placed themselves in contradiction with the Identity theme, in which rejecting one’s heritage too much has bad results for the character.

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applesanddragons · 2 years

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Dothraki Superstition: The Poison Water

Excerpt from the essay Dothraki Superstition by Apples and Dragons

The Poison Water

Shortly after sex, Dany is trying to convince Khal Drogo to sail for Westeros and take the Iron Throne.

“The earth ends at the black salt sea,” Drogo answered at once. He wet a cloth in a basin of warm water to wipe the sweat and oil from his skin. “No horse can cross the poison water.”

“In the Free Cities, there are ships by the thousand,” Dany told him, as she had told him before. “Wooden horses with a hundred legs, that fly across the sea on wings full of wind.”

Khal Drogo did not want to hear it. “We will speak no more of wooden horses and iron chairs.” He dropped the cloth and began to dress. “This day I will go to the grass and hunt, woman wife,” he announced as he shrugged into a painted vest and buckled on a wide belt with heavy medallions of silver, gold, and bronze.

“Yes, my sun-and-stars,” Dany said. Drogo would take his bloodriders and ride in search of hrakkar, the great white lion of the plains. If they returned triumphant, her lord husband’s joy would be fierce, and he might be willing to hear her out.

Savage beasts he did not fear, nor any man who had ever drawn breath, but the sea was a different matter. To the Dothraki, water that a horse could not drink was something foul; the heaving grey-green plains of the ocean filled them with superstitious loathing. Drogo was a bolder man than the other horselords in half a hundred ways, she had found … but not in this. If only she could get him onto a ship … (AGOT Daenerys VI)

Drogo has no interest in the Iron Throne, but I get to see another Dothraki superstition. The Dothraki have a strong aversion to any body of water that their horses can’t drink.

The salt in sea water dehydrates man and horse alike, eventually killing him of thirst more quickly than if he hadn’t tried to drink from the sea at all.

Sea water isn’t really poisoned, but it’s easy to see how the Dothraki people arrived at that understanding. The effect of drinking sea water would appear very similar to the effect of poison, killing the imbiber sooner than expected and leaving observers perplexed about what exactly went wrong.

The idea that sea water is poisoned is not strictly true, but it’s true enough to protect this society that believes it.

Although the Poison Water belief protects its hosts against the follies of drinking sea water, I can’t help but wonder why Dothraki society is the only society in which the belief exists. Almost certainly, people everywhere in the world, such as in Westeros, will have found that drinking salt water to cure thirst only exacerbates the problem.

“As to that, Father,” Dale said, “I mislike these water casks they’ve given me for Wraith. Green pine. The water will spoil on a voyage of any length.” (ACOK Davos I)

But apparently the dehydration wasn’t enough of a detriment to deter Westerosi people and ancestors from the sea entirely, like it seems to have done among the Dothraki. In fact, many Westerosi people and ancestors owe their survival to sea travel, such as the Rhoynar, who sailed across the Narrow Sea to escape the Valyrians.

The observation indicates to me that my investigation isn’t over yet. The Poison Water belief must be doing more work to protect the Dothraki people than merely protecting them from dehydration.

Then I wonder, which characteristics of Dothraki society make it uniquely vulnerable to their attempts to travel by sea?

The horselords might put on rich fabrics and sweet perfumes when they visited the Free Cities, but out under the open sky they kept the old ways. Men and women alike wore painted leather vests over bare chests and horsehair leggings cinched by bronze medallion belts, and the warriors greased their long braids with fat from the rendering pits. They gorged themselves on horseflesh roasted with honey and peppers, drank themselves blind on fermented mare’s milk and Illyrio’s fine wines, and spat jests at each other across the fires, their voices harsh and alien in Dany’s ears. (AGOT Daenerys II)

The Dothraki wear painted leather vests and horsehair leggings. Much of that leather comes from horses. The Dothraki grease their hair with fat from the rendering pits. I bet the fat comes from horses too. Horseflesh is a main food source for the Dothraki, and fermented mare’s milk is their alcoholic beverage.

Dothraki society is entirely centered around horses.

For one khalasar to maintain its survival, they would require a constant supply of horses for food, drink, grease, leather, armor, clothing, riding, fighting and more.

This long list of horse-derived products and proficiencies must be accompanied by a lifetime of learning, practicing and training with these things. There have to be many Dothraki who know which parts of the horse are safe to eat, how to extract the meat, and how to cook it in ways that make it tasty. Many Dothraki will need to know how to skin a horse, cure the leather and shape it into vests, leggings, gloves, saddles, grips and whips. Every Dothraki male will need to invest years of practice during childhood and early adulthood to master the arakh, whip and bow, all from horseback.

Much of what the Dothraki know about how to function and survive in the world would become useless, and in some cases counter-productive, in the absence of thousands of wild horses and a place to ride them.

Dothraki were wise where horses were concerned, but could be utter fools about much else. (ADWD Daenerys I)

Even many of their cultural innovations, though useful in the full context of Dothraki society, would become self-defeating in a different environment. For example, the Dothraki attitude that it is cowardly to wear metal armor in battle would not fare well in some other parts of the world.

The Dothraki had mocked him [Jorah] for a coward when he donned his armor, but the knight had spit insults right back in their teeth, tempers had flared, longsword had clashed with arakh, and the rider whose taunts had been loudest had been left behind to bleed to death. (AGOT Daenerys VII)

If the Dothraki’s fear of the sea protects them from wandering to far away places where they are more likely than not to fail and die, then I can see how their fear of the sea is a sort of wisdom of its own.

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applesanddragons · 2 years

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Dothraki Superstition: A Sacred City

Excerpt from the essay Dothraki Superstition by Apples and Dragons

I think A Song of Ice and Fire challenges the reader to look at things from the perspectives of different characters. So this essay is part of an on-going exploration of Daenerys when she is viewed from the perspectives of other characters, in this case the Dothraki characters.

A Sacred City

As the Dothraki arrive at Vaes Dothrak, Dany learns about a Dothraki superstition.

A small army of slaves had gone ahead to prepare for Khal Drogo’s arrival. As each rider swung down from his saddle, he unbelted his arakh and handed it to a waiting slave, and any other weapons he carried as well. Even Khal Drogo himself was not exempt. Ser Jorah had explained that it was forbidden to carry a blade in Vaes Dothrak, or to shed a free man’s blood. Even warring khalasars put aside their feuds and shared meat and mead together when they were in sight of the Mother of Mountains. In this place, the crones of the dosh khaleen had decreed, all Dothraki were one blood, one khalasar, one herd. (AGOT Daenerys IV)

Vaes Dothrak is a sanctuary city in which all of the warring Dothraki tribes can come together peacefully and share in one culture. To facilitate peace, it is forbidden to carry a blade or shed blood in the city. Even the mighty Khal Drogo observes the custom and voluntarily surrenders his weapons before entering the city. I get the sense that this superstition is deeply rooted.

[Daenerys to Jorah] …the Usurper in King’s Landing would pay well for her brother’s head. “You ought to have gone with him, to keep him safe. You are his sworn sword.”

“We are in Vaes Dothrak,” he reminded her. “No one may carry a blade here or shed a man’s blood.”

“Yet men die,” she said. “Jhogo told me. Some of the traders have eunuchs with them, huge men who strangle thieves with wisps of silk. That way no blood is shed and the gods are not angered.” (AGOT Daenerys V)

During Dany’s time with the Dothraki, Jorah becomes increasingly insolent regarding Viserys, and so he isn’t very concerned with protecting him. This Dothraki superstition seems to be a convenient excuse for Jorah to forego the company of Viserys in favor of the company of Daenerys.

Jhogo has provided Dany with a little more information about the belief. The Dothraki believe that the gods are angered when the blood of a free man is shed in Vaes Dothrak.

What is the real intention behind the belief? Is it to keep the city peaceful, or to prevent the wrath of the gods? The thriving culture and marketplace might suggest the former, while the wisps-of-silk loophole might suggest the latter.

Whether the superstition is being imposed by the people or by the gods, the wisps-of-silk loophole shows me that it is applied rather technically. Strangling thieves with silk is apparently permissible because, technically, strangling doesn’t shed blood. Bloodshed of a free man is explicitly forbidden, but murder is not.

“I had Doreah sew it specially for you,” she told him, wounded. “These are garments fit for a khal.”

“I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not some grass-stained savage with bells in his hair,” Viserys spat back at her. He grabbed her arm. “You forget yourself, slut. Do you think that big belly will protect you if you wake the dragon?”

His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again, quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she’d hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her strength.

It caught him full in the face. Viserys let go of her. Blood ran down his cheek where the edge of one of the medallions had sliced it open. “You are the one who forgets himself,” Dany said to him. “Didn’t you learn anything that day in the grass? Leave me now, before I summon my khas to drag you out. And pray that Khal Drogo does not hear of this, or he will cut open your belly and feed you your own entrails.”

Viserys scrambled back to his feet. “When I come into my kingdom, you will rue this day, slut.” He walked off, holding his torn face, leaving her gifts behind him.

Drops of his blood had spattered the beautiful sandsilk cloak. Dany clutched the soft cloth to her cheek and sat cross-legged on her sleeping mats. (AGOT Daenerys IV)

In this scene, Dany shed the blood of a free man.

Drops of his blood had spattered the beautiful sandsilk cloak.

Of course, I’m sympathetic to Dany, because she didn’t intend to draw blood and Viserys deserved it anyway. But notably, my attempts to defend Dany on the grounds that her situation is sympathetic stand feebly against the inescapable technicality that Dany shed a free man’s blood in Vaes Dothrak.

It is only when I look at the situation from a Dothraki perspective, and suppose that their long-held beliefs might be more than the silly superstitions of savages, that I’m left with a foreboding sense that Dany has earned the anger of the gods.

I don’t suppose that any gods will appear in the story at any point to involve themselves directly with the events or characters, but that instead the anger of the gods can play out metatextually, where the progression of events and the fates of characters will reflect the story’s themes, or deeper meanings, and that those meanings constitute a final judgement of events and characters.

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applesanddragons · 2 years

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Dany’s First Dream

This is a deep analytical dive into Dany’s first dream in AGOT 11 Daenerys II that I did during a re-read. As with most things, it is best read after reading the chapter. But rejoice, for there be dragon in it. Enjoy!

Yet that night she dreamt of one. Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She was naked, clumsy with fear. She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly. He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her. “You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.” Her thighs were slick with blood. She closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in answer, there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great head slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . .

I’m a big lover of metaphor and symbolism. I like to abstract what the words mean a lot. But I’ve learned that I tend to get too abstract too fast. Usually I find that a grounded look at the dream or prophecy has more information in it than I found before I became ungrounded in my thinking and began looking for symbolic meanings. I find that the grounded interpretation provides invaluable starting points and guard rails to prevent me from wandering too far into abstract nonsense. So now I try to start as grounded as I can be.

The first question I have is: Are the events in the dream connected? Because maybe they aren’t. Maybe they’re flashes of random images, memories or events that don’t necessarily relate to one another. There’s a pivotal phrase in the dream that actually answers that question for me:

As if in answer,

It ties the second half of the dream to the first half, even if only through suggestion. Dreams are made of suggestion, so suggestion is plenty to go on. The second half is presented as potentially a consequence of the first half. And it inherently creates a mystery. The mystery is: Was the dragon a response to something Dany did? Like closing her eyes and whimpering?

So the parts of the dream are related, and it’s a causal relationship, which suggests that the dream is chronological too, because an effect can only occur after its cause.

So the dream tells a story. It’s a simple story, but I think it provides the overarching framework for how to approach it. The story is roughly: Dany is being abused by Viserys, then a dragon appears and rescues her from Viserys. There’s room to quibble about the details, like maybe the dragon is motivated by hunger rather than rescue, but that’s a good enough starting point. If I get stuck later I can return to this spot and challenge assumptions like that that I’ve made.

Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She was naked, clumsy with fear. She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly. He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her. “You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.” Her thighs were slick with blood.

The next question I have is whether or not the first part of the dream is something that really happened. After all, a dream that depicts an event that really happened in Dany’s past would be a dream that’s more grounded in reality and lends itself more to literal interpretation than a dream that depicts an event that didn’t really happen in Dany’s past and lends itself more to symbolic interpretation. So I would like to start with the most literal interpretation to see how it holds up.

When I recall the previous Daenerys chapter, AGOT Daenerys I, I find a line that confirms that the abuse that Viserys is visiting upon Dany in the first half of the dream has already happened in reality.

His anger was a terrible thing when roused. Viserys called it “waking the dragon.” (AGOT Daenerys I)

So as it turns out, I was asking the wrong question. I asked whether or not the first part of the dream is something that really happened, but given as fact that it has really happened already, the question I should ask now is how much sense it makes to suppose that the first half of the dream is not depicting it? It’s the kind of abuse that is so traumatic and memorable that the idea that the dream is not depicting it is revealed to make little or no sense at all.

So the first half of the dream is in fact a real memory — or majorly derived from one — of something that happened to Dany in the past.

There’s one part of it that actually tells me when it happened. And it might even give me a big hint about why it happened.

Her thighs were slick with blood.

Remember, I learned in AGOT Daenerys I that Dany has already “had her blood.”

“She has had her blood. She is old enough for the khal,” Illyrio told him, not for the first time. (AGOT Daenerys I)

So maybe Dany received this attack when she had her blood. And maybe the reason for the attack had something to do with her having her blood.

There are a number of questions that can come out of that, like: Did Viserys not want Dany to have her blood yet? If so, why not? Did Dany say or do something that set him off? What is that likely to be? Then I can look at Viserys’s character and his rampages to see what kind of things actually set him off, to help me make a better guess at what set him off in the past. But I’ll shelve that for now so I can finish the dream.

She was naked, clumsy with fear.

Dany being naked in the dream could mean Dany was actually naked at the time of this attack, or it could be a manifestation of Dany’s feelings of vulnerability from the day/time when she’s having the dream. But the second one is a symbolic interpretation, and I’m trying to stay grounded. So I’ll suppose that Dany is actually naked in the dream and at the time of the attack.

“Clumsy with fear” also seems to track with vulnerability.

She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly.

“Thick and ungainly” tracks with vulnerability too. She’s trying to run away from Viserys but she’s immobilized by her body. Maybe “having her blood” is what slowed down her body.

He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her. “You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.”

Then Viserys strikes Dany again and she stumbles and falls while he kicks her and screams “You woke the dragon.” More rampage, more vulnerability.

The first half of the dream was pretty easy to understand. I think if I had launched into metaphorical interpretation too quickly, I would have missed the possibility that the first half of it was something that really happened.

Onto the second half!

She closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in answer, there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great head slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . .

Dany closes her eyes and whimpers, no doubt a response to being kicked and shouted at. I want to point out that each sentence logically follows from the one before it, and that’s how I can tell that the events are all happening in the same scene and chronologically, rather than being random flashes of unrelated or loosely related images. I don’t have any reason in particular to think that Dany closing her eyes and whimpering is not caused by Viserys’s rampage, or that “As if in answer” is not referring to Dany closing her eyes and whimpering.

there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire.

Dany’s eyes are closed now. I’ve seen everywhere else in the story that the story sticks to a POV writing style in which the amount of information that the reader is allowed to perceive is strictly limited to what the POV character can perceive. So when Dany closes her eyes, she loses vision, and so do I. Instead, there are only sounds to go by.

As of this line, there’s nothing I’ve seen yet that could reasonably explain these two sounds. Neither Viserys nor Dany are the sort of things that would make a hideous ripping sound or a fire sound. So the line immediately creates a question of: What the heck is going on out there, beyond Dany’s closed eyes?

When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon.

Dany opens her eyes, and I see some big clues to help me answer the question. Viserys is gone and there’s a dragon where he was standing, surrounded by great columns of flame that presumably surround Dany, too.

So maybe the hideous ripping sound was the dragon eating Viserys. Maybe it was the dragon’s wings when he flew in. Maybe it was the sound of the dragon magically appearing, as things can do in a dream. Or maybe it was Viserys transforming into a dragon. Those are a few ideas that occur to me.

Considering that Viserys was attacking Dany, I feel safe to assume that Viserys was facing Dany. And since Viserys was facing Dany, I think the dragon is not Viserys, because the dragon had to turn its head to look at Dany.

It turned its great head slowly.

So that strongly suggests that the dragon was not facing her, and so the dragon is not a transformed Viserys. With that possibility ruled out, I can see that the only possibilities remaining that make sense to me are the ones in which the dragon got rid of Viserys. Maybe he squashed him, burned him, or ate him, I don’t know. But Viserys is definitely gone, so is Dany’s problem, and the dragon definitely did it.

When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . .

The dragon looks Dany in the eyes, and then she wakes up. Here I learn that the dragon’s eyes are molten. His molten eyes and great head are the only identifying characteristics I get to see. Since there are only a few known living dragons in the story, as of ADWD, that’s plenty of information for me to narrow down the possibilities.

Viserion: When Dany passed his eyes came open, two pools of molten gold. (ADWD Daenerys I)

Drogon: His scales were black, his eyes and horns and spinal plates blood red. (ADWD Daenerys IX)

Drogon: His eyes were molten. I am looking into hell, but I dare not look away. (ADWD Daenerys IX)

Drogon: In the smoldering red pits of Drogon’s eyes, Dany saw her own reflection. (ADWD Daenerys IX)

Two of Dany’s dragons have eyes that are described as molten. Since the dream doesn’t say gold, and since Drogon is Dany’s main dragon and largest dragon, I think the dragon in the dream is most likely Drogon.

As an aside, that gives me an idea of how long this story is willing to withhold some of its secrets. The color of Drogon’s eyes aren’t given until ADWD, that I could find. So if the dragon is Drogon, the identity of a dream dragon in the first book is held in ambiguity until the fifth book.

she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . .

When Dany woke she was shaking, sweaty and she had never been so afraid. It doesn’t seem like part of the dream, but since dreams are made of suggestion I think it’s fair to say that the way she feels in the dream is part of the dream. And when the way she feels immediately after the dream matches with the way she felt in the dream, it’s fair to say that is a product of the dream and therefore part of the dream, too, at least for my purpose of trying to understand it.

Phew. So that is the most grounded version of my interpretation of Dany’s dream. So far, I haven’t tried to explore symbolic meanings of the dragon, of Viserys, of the blood or anything. The dragon is very much a dragon, not three dragons or a symbolic representation of power or anything like that. Viserys is very much Viserys, not Drogo.

But when I look at the dream in the context of the chapter, I can see why I would tend to want to interpret the dream in the context of Dany’s marriage to Drogo. The marriage is the premiere event of the chapter. It’s certainly where Dany’s fear is placed in the chapter. Look what the story is doing immediately after the dream.

She had never been so afraid . . .

. . . until the day of her wedding came at last.

The ceremony began at dawn (…)

The story deliberately pulls my attention back to the wedding before I’ve had time to give the dream due attention in the context of Viserys’s actual death and the greater story.

Our author is a sly man, indeed. But don’t let me jump the gun. I’m not finished with this dream yet!

Using the powers bestowed upon me by Daenerys V, I can see that this dream foreshadows a whole lot about Viserys’s death. Viserys wasn’t killed by Drogon, but he did die, and that’s significant enough to call this dream foreshadowing of it. What catches my attention the most is how Dany’s role in the dream mirrors her role in Viserys’s death.

In both situations, there’s an impenetrable layer of ambiguity regarding the question of Dany’s involvement with Viserys’s death. In the dream, the ambiguity is created with the phrase “As if in answer.” At least a few questions come out of that, like: Did Dany somehow summon the dragon? Did she want it to kill Viserys? How does she feel about it afterwards?

At Viserys’s execution, the ambiguity is created in a number of ways, and the same questions are present.

Did Dany somehow summon Drogo? — Dany translated Viserys’s damning insults and threats from the common tongue to the Dothraki tongue for Drogo, and the reader is left in the dark about whether or not Dany used the opportunity to try to save Viserys’s life, or at least earn him a less painful execution, by softening or changing Viserys’s words through the translation.

Did Dany want Drogo to kill Viserys? — Another layer of ambiguity is the question of to what extent, if any, a khaleesi is culpable when her khal executes her brother.

How does Dany feel about it afterwards? — And another layer of ambiguity is the question of why Dany insisted on watching the execution when Jorah advised her to look away.

He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon. (AGOT Daenerys V)

So what the dream and Viserys’s execution have in common is ambiguity surrounding Dany’s involvement in Viserys’s death. That ambiguity may very well be another thing that the dream foreshadows.

When I look at Viserys’s death in Daenerys V, an obvious symbolism grabs my attention. Drogo is the person who killed Viserys, and Drogon is named for Drogo. So that seems to retroactively confirm that the identity of the dragon is Drogon.

Taking a step back, my initial tendency, based on the context of the chapter, was to see Viserys in the dream as a symbolic representation of Drogo, because Dany is afraid of marrying Drogo, and Dany is afraid of Viserys, so the most obvious relationship between Drogo and Viserys is that Dany is afraid of both of them. But when I consider the dream in context of a greater portion of the story, it turns out that the dragon is a symbolic Drogo, and that Drogo plays a more protective role in the dream than a threatening one.

This is one of countless expressions of the Good and Evil theme that I’ve stumbled across in my journeys analyzing this story . It was my prejudgement that “Drogo is a scary bad guy” that blinded me to the possibility that “Drogo is a protective good guy” in the dream.

Looking back on the whole investigation, I can see the way that my revelation with the dream mirrors my revelation with this chapter. Drogo is built up in Dany’s thoughts as a scary figure who might hurt her.

“I am the blood of the dragon,” she whispered aloud as she followed, trying to keep her courage up.

I’m instilled with a sense of dread for the consummation of the marriage, because Dany is understandably afraid of it throughout the chapter and leading up to it.

“No?” he said, and she knew it was a question.

When Drogo asks the question, it shows that Drogo cares about Dany's feelings and respects her freedom to refuse him if she wants to.

Dany recognized it as a question and therefore as respect for her feelings, driving home the loudest implication of the whole sex scene from beginning to end: “You and Dany were wrong about Drogo!” Drogo’s every Dothraki word and touch stands in contradiction to Dany’s and the reader’s expectations of him.

She took his hand and moved it down to the wetness between her thighs. “Yes,” she whispered as she put his finger inside her.

And that’s why Dany became comfortable enough with Drogo to become aroused and consent to sex in unmistakable terms. The lesson of the chapter is “You and Dany were wrong about Drogo.” The lesson of the dream is the very same one. It’s a good example of the way the story conceals its bigger mysteries, such as those found in the symbolic images of dreams and prophecies, by hiding them in the fog created by the reader’s unchallenged perceptions.

Another thing I notice is that my adherence to a grounded interpretation was, in the end, rewarded with some pretty awesome and resilient symbolism. (Dragon=Drogon=Drogo) I think that’s a pattern in the story too. The story seems to reward the reader for walking a middle path between taking things too symbolically and taking things too literally.

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