Previous: Chapter 2 – The World of Ice and Fire
Plumming the Depths
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 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 would have been discredited already by the simple fact that Mushroom was not there, because Mushroom is apparently the source of the rumor. Both versions agree that the cause of Ossifer Plumm’s death was his arousal. Both versions agree that Ossifer Plumm remained in the bedroom for the bedding, though disagree about for how much time he was alive in there. 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, while Ossifer’s corpse wobbled morbidly on the bed beside. Being the king, Aegon 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?
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)
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 descendents would exist at all if Aegon hadn’t fathered Viserys, because Ossifer Plumm didn’t have an heir, and he died on his wedding night before he could conceive one. House Plumm went extinct.
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.
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)
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. Let’s try it.
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 Tully’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.
A century earlier, Ser Duncan the Tall exhibited the same attitude about marriages between old lords and soiled brides that Catelyn does.
Lord Butterwell had broad lands, and pots of yellow gold. Why would he wed a girl who’d been soiled by a kitchen scullion, and give away his dragon’s egg to mark the match? The Freys of the Crossing were no nobler than the Butterwells. They owned a bridge instead of cows, that was the only difference. Lords. Who can ever understand them? (—Thoughts of Dunk, AKOTSK: The Mystery Knight p277)
Not so unlike Ambrose Butterwell, Lady Frey, Elaena Targaryen, Jon Arryn, Hoster Tully and even Lysa Tully, Ossifer Plumm is not as concerned with 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 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.
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. (—Maester Yandel, TWOIAF: Baelor I)
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.
- How often do you get to rescue a House by fucking your cousin?
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 on page 172.
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 p172)
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 desiring 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. So, House Plumm’s secret was safe. 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, sealing House Plumm’s secret full Targaryen-blooded heritage in the annals of history with the duration of his reign.
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.
The Lewdest Terms
This next instance of Complete the Rhyme can be found in the Alayne chapter (Sansa II) of A Feast for Crows (p618), where Myranda Royce tells Alayne a shocking story that should sound familiar to us.
Lady Myranda snorted. “I pray he gets the pox. He has a bastard daughter by some common girl, you know. My lord father had hoped to marry me to Harry, but Lady Waynwood would not hear of it. I do not know whether it was me she found unsuitable, or just my dowry.” She gave a sigh. “I do need another husband. I had one once, but I killed him.”
“You did?” Alayne said, shocked.
“Oh, yes. He died on top of me. In me, if truth be told. You do know what goes on in a marriage bed, I hope?”
She thought of Tyrion, and of the Hound and how he’d kissed her, and gave a nod. “That must have been dreadful, my lady. Him dying. There, I mean, whilst … whilst he was …”
“… fucking me?” She shrugged. “It was disconcerting, certainly. Not to mention discourteous. He did not even have the common decency to plant a child in me. Old men have weak seed. So here I am, a widow, but scarce used. Harry could have done much worse. I daresay that he will. Lady Waynwood will most like marry him to one of her granddaughters, or one of Bronze Yohn’s.” (AFFC 41 Alayne p618)
Sansa is immersed in her fake identity Alayne Stone and pretending to be Petyr Baelish’s bastard daughter. Myranda says she needs a new husband because she killed her last one. The rhyme with the Ossifer and Elaena situation goes like this: Old lord dies from arousal at the bedding of his wedding to his noble bride and fails to impregnate her. With these unifying principles, Myranda is symbolizing Elaena Targaryen, and Myranda’s old lord husband is symbolizing Ossifer Plumm.
Sansa says that the experience must have been dreadful for Myranda, but Myranda’s “It was disconcerting” response stops short of dread, indicating that although the experience was unpleasant, it was not traumatic for her. To complete the rhyme, Ossifer Plumm’s death was not traumatic for Elaena Targaryen, either.
Myranda’s comment “He did not even have the common decency to plant a child in me” suggests that Myranda would have preferred if her husband had been successful at impregnating her, even though he died while doing it, and even though Myranda would still come out of the situation a widow, and even though the baby would have been fatherless. It’s a sentence that shows me again that Myranda’s main interest in her marriage was in inheriting control of her husband’s house, wealth and properties.
To complete the rhyme, just as Myranda would have preferred that her impregnation happened at the same time as her husband’s death, the story is suggesting that so, too, would have Elaena preferred it, and for the same reason. In this way, Myranda’s husband’s infertility is paired with Ossifer Plumm’s frailty of heart from arousal, triangulating impregnation by a wealthy and expiring old lord as the essence of these womens’ wishes.
[Spoilers TWOW Sample Chapters: Skip to the last paragraph.]
This rhyme continues in The Winds of Winter sample chapter, Alayne I, where a new character named Ossifer is introduced. Let’s read it and find the new Ossifer, and see how the situation is a clue about the Ossifer Plumm situation from history.
Petyr was not at the quintains, nor anywhere in the yard, but as she turned to go a woman’s voice called out. “Alayne!” cried Myranda Royce, from a carved stone bench beneath a beech tree, where she was seated between two men. She looked in need of rescue. Smiling, Alayne walked toward her friend.
Myranda was wearing a grey woolen dress, a green hooded cloak, and a rather desperate look. On either side of her sat a knight. The one on her right had a grizzled beard, a bald head, and a belly that spilled over his swordbelt where his lap should have been. The one on her left was no more than eighteen, and skinny as a spear. His ginger-colored whiskers only partially served to disguise the angry red pimples that dotted his face.
The bald knight wore a dark blue surcoat emblazoned with a huge pair of pink lips. The pimply-ginger lad countered with nine white seagulls on a field of brown, which marked him for a Shett of Gulltown. He was staring so intently at Myranda’s breasts that he hardly noticed Alayne until Myranda rose to hug her. “Thank you, thank you, thank you” Randa whispered in her ear, before she turned to say, “Sers, may I present you the Lady Alayne Stone?”
“The Lord Protector’s daughter,” the bald knight announced, all hearty gallantry. He rose ponderously. “And full as lovely as the tales told of her, I see.”
Not to be outdone, the pimply knight hopped up and said, “Ser Ossifer speaks truly, you are the most beautiful maid in all the Seven Kingdoms.” It might have been a sweeter courtesy had he not addressed it to her chest.
“And have you seen all those maids yourself, ser?” Alayne asked him. “You are young to be so widely travelled.”
He blushed, which only made his pimples look angrier. “No, my lady. I am from Gulltown.”
And I am not, though Alayne was born there. She would need to be careful around this one. “I remember Gulltown fondly,” she told him, with a smile as vague as it was pleasant. To Myranda she said, “Do you know where my father’s gotten to, perchance?”
“Let me take you to him, my lady.”
“I do hope you will forgive me for depriving you of Lady Myranda’s company,” Alayne told the knights. She did not wait for a reply, but took the older girl arm-in-arm and drew her away from the bench. Only when they were out of earshot did she whisper, “Do you really know where my father is?”
“Of course not. Walk faster, my new suitors may be following.” Myranda made a face. “Ossifer Lipps is the dullest knight in the Vale, but Uther Shett aspires to his laurels. I am praying they fight a duel for my hand, and kill each other.”
Alayne giggled. “Surely Lord Nestor would not seriously entertain a suit from such men.”
“Oh, he might. My lord father is annoyed with me for killing my last husband and putting him to all this trouble.”
“It was not your fault he died.”
“There was no one else in the bed that I recall.”
Alayne could not help but shutter. Myranda’s husband had died when he was making love with her. (TWOWSC 10 Alayne I)
Alayne finds Myranda Royce sitting between two suitors and in need of rescue from them, and one of those suitors is named Ossifer Lipps.
Since I know by now that Elaena Targaryen’s reason for marrying Ossifer Plumm was that she meant to intercept the Plumm fortune by becoming pregnant with a male Plumm heir, one thing Elaena’s defenders in the audience are likely to say is that it wasn’t Elaena’s fault that Ossifer Plumm died from his arousal.
As if to echo the audience’s defense of Elaena, Alayne offers the same defense to Myranda after Myranda describes her husband’s death as a killing.
“My lord father is annoyed with me for killing my last husband and putting him to all this trouble.”
“It was not your fault he died.”
“There was no one else in the bed that I recall.”
Myranda seems to take pride in causing her husband’s death, and that feeling of pride seems entangled with the satisfaction of annoying her father, because her father arranged her marriage to the old lord. Now that the old lord is dead (along with her father’s political arrangements) her father has to find and arrange a new marriage for her and House Royce.
This passage informs the Ossifer and Elaena situation with a twist I suspected ever since I learned that Elaena was vying for House Plumm’s wealth. Elaena was trying to kill Ossifer Plumm on purpose by overexciting him so that she wouldn’t have to wait for him to die of old age before she could inherit House Plumm’s wealth. (Or before people learned that the baby was a girl, in the event that the baby was a girl.)
Now I have a good clue to the answer to a question I’ve secretly been wondering about since I first read about it.
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: Baelor I)
What did Mushroom write about Elaena’s nakedness that was so lewd that Maester Yandel felt he had to exclude it from the official record?
If Elaena was trying to kill Ossifer Plumm on purpose by overexciting him, the lewdness of Mushroom’s terms are probably a more truthful description of what happened. In that case, Maester Yandel is characterizing Mushroom as a silly pervert in order to hide the real reason for excluding the detail of Elaena’s nakedness. If the lewdness resides as much or more-so in Elaena’s actions while naked than in her nakedness itself, then it’s a detail that’s troublesome for an official narrative that relies upon Elaena seeming like a victim.
Uther Shett’s fixation on Myranda’s and Alayne’s breasts directs my attention to breasts in general, perhaps signaling which part of Elaena’s nakedness attracted Ossifer Plumm’s attention, too.
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
Acclaim
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Update History
Updated Dec 5, 2023 – added The Lewdest Terms section
Updated Dec 19, 2023 – small additions and changes
Apples and Dragons 