Category: Uncategorized

AGOT 12 Eddard II

“No, no, no,” Robert said. His breath steamed with every word. “The camp is full of ears. Besides, I want to ride out and taste this country of yours.” Ser Boros and Ser Meryn waited behind him with a dozen guardsmen, Ned saw.

The chapter starts out with Robert wanting to talk to Ned very privately. Not even Ned’s tent is private enough for whatever it is Robert wants to talk about. Boros and Meryn and a dozen guards are with him, which is kind of funny because it makes me wonder: Why did Robert bring so many people if he wanted to talk privately? The observation suggests that Ned noticed the same contradiction, because we’re in Ned’s POV, and observations are as good as thoughts as long as it’s reasonable to think the POV character understands the implications of what he’s observing.

Considering that the Kingsguard are sworn to protect the king, the situation suggests that the king may have told them to stay behind, or told them that he wants to go alone, but that they followed him anyway. So I think maybe it shows that the king has difficulty getting a private word with anybody.

When I consider that Robert spends most of his time in the Red Keep, which is full of eavesdroppers, political players and secret tunnels, maybe over the years Robert has developed a sense that he can’t be sure when his private words are actually private. So my impression is that Robert has identified this rural environment as a rare opportunity to have a conversation that he can be absolutely sure is private.

By then the guard had fallen back a small distance, safely out of earshot, but still Robert would not slow.

It seems like Robert is really trying to make sure the conversation is private. It’s unclear whether that’s what Robert is actually doing now, or if he’s just overcome with an urge to ride and enjoy nature. But judging by his earlier comment about ears, I think it’s a bit of both.

I also wonder if Robert’s monologue about the joy of riding is partly a performance meant to distract from his behavior — behavior which he’s afraid could appear to Ned to be paranoia. Maybe it alludes to one of the not-so-mad ways that the Mad King became paranoid when he was king, too.

The guard had reined up well behind them, at the bottom of the ridge. “Well, I did not bring you out here to talk of graves or bicker about your bastard. There was a rider in the night, from Lord Varys in King’s Landing. Here.” The king pulled a paper from his belt and handed it to Ned.

Ned still has his eyes on the guard, suggesting that his mind is still on Robert’s secrecy, which keeps the reader’s mind on Robert’s secrecy, too.

So what I’m trying to highlight is that the chapter builds up a context of secrecy and privacy. They ride out to the middle of nowhere, the wind is blowing noisily, Robert is being secretive, Ned and the reader are wondering why, we learn that one of the people in Dany’s retinue is a spy, and we even learn that there’s somebody in the king’s service known as a “master of whisperers”. So the perception being built up in the reader is: Privacy, secrecy, privacy, secrecy. We’re absolutely certain that nobody can hear what Ned and Robert are saying except Ned and Robert.

Then look what happens at the end as the conversation is winding down.

The king threw back his head and roared. His laughter startled a flight of crows from the tall brown grass.

Crows. Maybe this conversation wasn’t as private as it seemed. It’s a bit of comedy and magic that only has a chance of occurring to the reader on a re-read, after I already know that skinchanging is a part of the story.

When I think back to the handful of chapters I’ve read so far in this re-read, I can remember crows in the scene when Jaime pushed Bran from the tower. It’s still early in the story to judge for sure, but so far it seems like the crows have a knack for witnessing and hearing key events and conversations.

“The barrows of the First Men.”

Robert frowned. “Have we ridden onto a graveyard?”

“There are barrows everywhere in the north, Your Grace,” Ned told him. “This land is old.”

I didn’t really know what a barrow was. From context I thought it was a hill, but Robert seems to think it’s a graveyard. It turns out it’s kind of both. Here’s a definition I found.

a large mound of earth or stones over the remains of the dead

I thought it was mildly noteworthy that both of the conversations between Robert and Ned happened at a burial place — first in the Winterfell crypts and now in the barrowlands. I have no ideas for what the significance of that might be. Both characters die by the end of the book, so that’s good enough, I guess. It seems lacking to me, though, and my tendency is to think there’s a better answer that I haven’t found yet.

“Do you remember Ser Jorah Mormont?”

“Would that I might forget him,” Ned said bluntly. The Mormonts of Bear Island were an old house, proud and honorable, but their lands were cold and distant and poor. Ser Jorah had tried to swell the family coffers by selling some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver. As the Mormonts were bannermen to the Starks, his crime had dishonored the north. Ned had made the long journey west to Bear Island, only to find when he arrived that Jorah had taken ship beyond the reach of Ice and the king’s justice. Five years had passed since then.

I was surprised that that happened five years ago. I always assumed it happened more recently. It makes me wonder what Jorah has been doing for those fives years. Apparently he has spent enough time among the Dothraki to earn a trusted place in Khal Drogo’s inner circle. It’s maybe a little strange, considering the Dothraki stigma against wearing armor. They think wearing armor is cowardly. So as beneficial as the armor is in combat, I would’ve expected the stigma to raise the cost of wearing it among the Dothraki high enough to outweigh those benefits. Come to think of it, I think maybe Jorah does wear leather or something, and he only puts on his metal armor when he has a duty to protect someone else. I’m not sure about that but I’ll keep an eye out for what Jorah wears.

Jorah’s presence among the Dothraki is more than a little suspicious, too, considering the Westerosi stigmas against rape and slavery. I don’t think it’s fair to call what the Dothraki do with each other rape or slavery, because there are a lot of meanings in those two words for me that do not actually describe what the Dothraki are doing when they do those things. It would be like saying the horses are raping when the horses mate. But I think those meanings do hold true in the conscience of someone who wasn’t raised in Dothraki culture. It seems like Jorah may have come to live among the Dothraki to fight and fuck his way into an early grave, perhaps having given up on redemption.

“So the slaver has become a spy,” Ned said with distaste. He handed the letter back. “I would rather he become a corpse.”

“Varys tells me that spies are more useful than corpses,” Robert said.

Yeah but if Ned didn’t want Jorah dead, Jorah wouldn’t be a spy, either. Ned wanting Jorah dead was the reason Jorah had to flee.

“I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as their dragons, and then I will piss on their graves.”

Ned knew better than to defy him when the wrath was on him. If the years had not quenched Robert’s thirst for revenge, no words of his would help.

People tend to divide the world into good and evil, and I think that tendency, both in the characters and in the reader, is the fundamental critique that ASOIAF makes. Robert divides the world into good and evil when it comes to Targaryens. He thinks Targaryens as a collective are evil and nothing can change his mind about that. Getting Robert to look at the Targaryens as individuals, each with a unique perspective that warrants sympathetic consideration, is an impossible feat even for Ned and Jon Arryn.

So I gather that part of my job as the reader is to identify when and where the characters are dividing the world into good people and evil people. That informs me where their blind spots are likely to be, and therefore where I need to search to find what the character is missing. In the case of Rhaegar Targaryen, Robert is missing the glaringly obvious possibility that Lyanna went with Rhaegar willingly.

The act of dividing the world into good vs evil is something I sometimes refer to as moralizing or moralization. It will probably come up again, so this seemed like a good opportunity to explain what I mean by it.

“You can’t get your hands on this one, can you?” he said quietly.

The king’s mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “No, gods be cursed. Some pox-ridden Pentoshi cheesemonger had her brother and her walled up on his estate with pointyhatted eunuchs all around them, and now he’s handed them over to the Dothraki. I should have had them both killed years ago, when it was easy to get at them, but Jon was as bad as you. More fool I, I listened to him.”

I wonder if Illyrio became aware of Robert’s hired knives lurking around his mance. If he did, maybe Illyrio was trying to protect Dany by marrying her to the Dothraki. She might be safer with the Dothraki than with Illyrio.

It’s so contrary to my initial impression of the Dothraki, but it makes sense in a lot of ways after I’ve taken a close look at Dothraki society. Hardly anybody who isn’t Dothraki themselves can infiltrate Dothraki society. Their existence is too harsh for most people to manage it. Dothraki are also virtually impossible to bribe because of the way their psychology develops in their culture. As khaleesi, Dany will be surrounded by protectors for the rest of her life, because even in the worst case scenarios the khaleesis are protected and escorted to Vaes Dothraki. Once in Vaes Dothrak they’re safe too, because they’re surrounded by the visiting Dothraki, and it’s forbidden to carry a blade in the city.

It may be too favorable a reading of Illyrio, who, according to Dany, profited enough from his part in her marriage that no additional explanation for Illyrio’s motivations is necessary. Still, Illyrio’s motivations are a constant mystery throughout the story, so I think it’s good to be on the lookout for alternate explanations.

“The barbarians have no ships. They hate and fear the open sea.”

Ned is right about that. The Dothraki fear of the sea is strong enough to prevent them from ever sailing for Westeros. If Robert’s decision to send the wine poisoner after Dany can fairly be thought of as Robert trying to prevent the Dothraki from crossing the sea, then Robert trying to prevent the Dothraki from crossing the sea caused them to decide to cross the sea.

Stannis proved himself at the siege of Storm’s End, surely.”

He let the name hang there for a moment. The king frowned and said nothing. He looked uncomfortable.

Why is Robert uncomfortable? This part made me want to know more about Robert and Stannis’s relationship. I remember that Stannis is not well liked by his brothers. Maybe that’s all this is, but it feels like it could be something more.

“The Others take your honor!” Robert swore.

This is the fifth use of “The Others take” curse in the books. I’ll try to remember to make a list of them as I re-read.

It’s a little interesting that this old curse still lingers so long after the Faith of the Seven has replaced the Old Gods religion in most places in Westeros. It’s similar to the common uses of “God” by non-theists in the curses of people in the real world. On one hand, these sayings are simply habits leftover from a time when people were more religious. On the other hand, it’s a paradox that shows the way that the culture into which we’re born can deeply characterize our behaviors, attitudes and values even when we think we’ve chosen different values.

“The Others take his eyes,” he swore. (AGOT 1 Bran I)
—Robb to Jon regarding deserter
“The Others take your mild snows,” Robert swore. (AGOT 4 Eddard I)
—Robert to Ned
“The Others take my wife,” Robert muttered sourly, (AGOT 4 Eddard I)
—Robert to Ned
“The Others take both of you,” Ned muttered darkly. (AGOT 6 Catelyn II)
—Ned to Catelyn and Luwin regarding going south
“The Others take your honor!” Robert swore. (AGOT 12 Eddard II)
—Robert to Ned regarding Lannisters

“The Others take your honor!” Robert swore. “What did any Targaryen ever know of honor? Go down into your crypt and ask Lyanna about the dragon’s honor!”

“You avenged Lyanna at the Trident,” Ned said, halting beside the king. Promise me, Ned, she had whispered.

At the beginning of the chapter there was a good example of the way the context of a situation can help me figure out what a character is thinking.

Ned was thinking about the contradiction between Robert wanting to speak privately and Robert having a bunch of guards with him. It alluded to a hidden story in which the guards may be disobeying the king in order to fulfill their duty to protect him, and perhaps to protect themselves from the repercussions they might likely suffer in the event that some tragedy befalls the king while the guards are absent, regardless of Robert’s wish to be unguarded.

These lines about Lyanna are a good example of the way a character’s thinking can help me figure out the context of a situation.

In isolation, the “promise me” sentence is completely mysterious. There’s no way to get any clues about what the promise was by looking at that one sentence. But in the context of Ned and Robert’s argument, I’m able to get some clues.

Ned is arguing that Jaime shouldn’t be made Warden of the East because the Lannisters are dishonorable because they sacked King’s Landing treacherously. Robert strongly implies that the Targaryens have no honor, citing Rhaegar’s rape and murder of Lyanna as evidence of that. Robert’s point isn’t particularly strong because it’s a two-wrongs-make-a-right argument. Ned wants to rebutt that point as strongly as he can, but the rebuttal Ned gives is weak too, in a way. He says that Robert already avenged Lyanna. It’s weak because it doesn’t contradict Robert’s point that the Targaryens have no honor. The point merely begs Robert to let go of his grudge against Targaryens as a collective, which we and Ned already know is something Robert has never been able to do.

So when Lyanna’s “promise me” line intrudes in Ned’s thoughts, it’s as though Ned is reminding himself to keep the promise. It suggests that the difficulty of keeping the promise has just surged for some reason. In the heat of the argument, that reason might likely be that Ned has a much stronger point he could have made, here, if only he were willing to break his promise to Lyanna.

For example: ‘Actually, Robert… Rhaegar didn’t rape and kill Lyanna. Lyanna chose Rhaegar over you. They had a baby and she died from childbirth.’

“I cannot answer for the gods, Your Grace . . . only for what I found when I rode into the throne room that day,” Ned said. “Aerys was dead on the floor, drowned in his own blood. His dragon skulls stared down from the walls. Lannister’s men were everywhere. Jaime wore the white cloak of the Kingsguard over his golden armor. I can see him still. Even his sword was gilded. He was seated on the Iron Throne, high above his knights, wearing a helm fashioned in the shape of a lion’s head. How he glittered!”

“This is well known,” the king complained.

This is good. I get to compare Ned’s version of the story to Dany’s version of the story from AGOT 3 Daenerys I. Here it is again.

Yet sometimes Dany would picture the way it had been, so often had her brother told her the stories. The midnight flight to Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering on the ship’s black sails. Her brother Rhaegar battling the Usurper in the bloody waters of the Trident and dying for the woman he loved. The sack of King’s Landing by the ones Viserys called the Usurper’s dogs, the lords Lannister and Stark. Princess Elia of Dorne pleading for mercy as Rhaegar’s heir was ripped from her breast and murdered before her eyes. The polished skulls of the last dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne room while the Kingslayer opened Father’s throat with a golden sword. (AGOT 3 Daenerys I)

Dany presumably heard the story from Viserys, so this is Viserys’s version of the story.

Ned’s version is more reliable in some ways. For example, I was skeptical that Jaime’s sword was golden until I heard it from Ned. Ned is giving a first-hand account of the event, and I’ve seen that Ned is an honest person. Viserys and Dany’s accounts are second- and third-hand accounts, because neither of them were actually there at the time to witness what happened in the throne room.

There were also a bunch of soldiers in the throne room by the time Ned arrived, so that’s probably how certain details of the story travelled, such as Jaime’s sword being golden.

Both versions of the story personify the dragon skulls, describing them as if they’re alive and watching.

The polished skulls of the last dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne room

“His dragon skulls stared down from the walls.”

“I rode the length of the hall in silence, between the long rows of dragon skulls. It felt as though they were watching me, somehow.”

I wouldn’t have expected that from Ned’s version. I would have guessed that the skulls in Viserys’s version were dramatized because the skulls have more meaning to him as a Targaryen. But Ned is not a Targaryen, yet the personification is present in his version too. So maybe it means Ned is a Targaryen! Just kidding.

Maybe the author is just reusing the personification for no great reason in particular. Then it doesn’t really mean anything. That’s certainly possible. But, to me, it’s the least interesting explanation, and this author does a great job of making his story interesting. So it seems less reasonable to suppose that the similarity means nothing than it does to suppose that it means something more than, say, authorial laziness, descriptive consistency or idle coincidence.

It’s a very specific kind of similarity. Viserys and Ned aren’t merely noting that there were dragon skulls on the walls, they’re both personifying them as if the dragons are watching the murder of King Aerys and what is ultimately the fall of the Targaryen dynasty. Since the dragon is the sigil of House Targaryen, the skulls could be symbolic of dead Targaryen ancestors. I think the personification of the dragon skulls evokes the idea that the Targaryen ancestors are watching and judging.

It breathes life into all kinds of questions, like:

  • What would Targaryen ancestors think of Aerys?
  • What would they think of Jaime killing him?

Each Targaryen ancestor might think differently about those things.

  • Would things have turned out differently if House Targaryen’s dragons were still alive?

One thing that might have turned out differently is the killing of Aerys. But the quality of Aerys’s reign is another thing that might have turned out differently, because dragons would have had a major effect on the outcome of certain events and challenges that Aerys faced. Even Aerys’s development as a child is one of the things that might have turned out differently, because growing up in a family with living dragons would have been different than growing up in a family with dead dragons.

So the personification of the dragon skulls causes my imagination to reach into many other aspects of the story. And if this is what it does to me, then it gives me insight into what is happening in the minds of Viserys and Ned.

Viserys is entertaining thoughts of revenge. He’s probably thinking that the Kingslayer never would have dared to depose a Targaryen king if the dragons were still alive. Viserys may be imagining what harm a dragon could do to the likes of Jaime, Robert, Ned and Tywin.

Ned’s thoughts, on the other hand, are somewhere between ominous and respectful. There’s a sense of superstitious dread regarding the dragon’s judgement of Ned and Jaime below, as Ned walks the entire length of the throne room. And there’s also a sense that Ned has respect for the dynasty that he has helped to overthrow. Ned’s respect is apparent in the fact that Ned included the dragon skulls in his description. It’s a subtle confession of his uneasiness under the stare of the skulls and therefore their power to influence him. After a Targaryen reign that lasted nearly three-hundred years, the gravity of a moment like this would bear heavily on any rebel who has some sense.

Maybe Viserys and Ned’s matching personified descriptions of the dragon skulls are the story’s way of announcing that ASOIAF is a story where two identical observations can have different implications when made by different people.

Created Jun 23, 2021

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.dragon flying 200

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. I think 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=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.

That’s all I have for now. Thanks for reading!

Acclaim

“Great analysis!”

“Good shout!”

“Great post. I like your style and think you have a good read.”

Created Jun 15, 2021
Updated Dec 1, 2021 – Clarified some parts

AGOT 11 Daenerys II

for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man’s life must be done beneath the open sky.

The story communicates so much about the Dothraki with just one line. Dothraki place a lot of value in their traditional beliefs, ceremonies, manhood, and they like the outdoors. They also may worship the sky, or a god in the sky, or maybe there’s more to it. Since light comes from the sun, moon and stars, a roof would block out the light. So maybe it has something to do with a relationship between light and truth. Being able to see everything clearly would be a good idea during the most important moments of my life. I don’t know if that’s right, but I’m intrigued by different cultures. It’s fun to try to figure out why groups can develop such different belief systems.

“Best we get Princess Daenerys wedded quickly before they hand half the wealth of Pentos away to sellswords and bravos,” Ser Jorah Mormont jested. (…)

Magister Illyrio laughed lightly through his forked beard, but Viserys did not so much as smile. “He can have her tomorrow, if he likes,” her brother said. He glanced over at Dany, and she lowered her eyes. “So long as he pays the price.”

In my strained attempts to see things from Viserys’s point of view in a sympathetic way, I was thinking…

Viserys takes on the attitude that he doesn’t care about Dany or what happens to her. But the attitude is so extreme that it seems absurd, unnaturally so. The “and their horses too” line is the pinnacle of that. Now that I re-read the part above, it seems like Viserys’s I-don’t-care-about-her attitude is actually a way that Viserys is trying to convince himself that he doesn’t care about her, as a way to cope with losing her.

Viserys grew up with the expectation that Dany was going to be his wife. He has been taking care of Dany since he was eight years old, taking her along with him everywhere he goes, making sure she’s taken care of, teaching her about their family history and so on. He started to blame Dany for his mother’s death, and he became abusive toward her. Implicit in the abuse is a lie that his problems are Dany’s fault. So that’s a really old lie that Viserys has been acting out for a long time. He scapegoated her. But now that he’s facing the actuality of losing her, his genuine feelings for Dany are at odds with his self-delusional narrative that she’s the problem. So the strength of Viserys’s insistence that he doesn’t care about Dany is proportionate to the strength with which his deep seeded love for Dany is flaring up at the prospect of losing her to Drogo. He’s losing her as a sibling companion, a wife, and a scapegoat. 

Considering that, it’s no wonder why Viserys is so offended that he has to wait to be “paid” for her. He didn’t realize how much he valued what he had until he already agreed to losing her.

I analyzed Dany’s dream, but the analysis got kind of long and took on a life of its own, so I put it on its own page here: Dany’s First Dream 

I’m trying to track the way chapters shape and control the reader’s perceptions, so this is a list of lines that do that. They drive a sense of dread for the marriage and consummation. It’s a perception that’s built up constantly throughout the chapter, and then subverted at the end when Drogo’s gentleness, patience and respect stand in criticism of ours and Dany’s expectations of him.

  • Daenerys Targaryen wed Khal Drogo with fear and barbaric splendor (…)
  • (…) Illyrio said. “He will have the girl first, (…)
  • She had never been so afraid . . .
    . . . until the day of her wedding came at last.
  • She did her best to hide them, knowing how angry Viserys would be if he saw her crying, terrified of how Khal Drogo might react.
  • I am blood of the dragon, she told herself. I am Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of Dragonstone, of the blood and seed of Aegon the Conqueror.
  • Drogo watched without expression, but his eyes followed their movements, and from time to time he would toss down a bronze medallion for the women to fight over.
  • (…) pushed her down to the ground, and mounted her right there, as a stallion mounts a mare.
  • (…) the winner took hold of the nearest woman— not even the one they had been quarreling over—and had her there and then.
  • As the hours passed, the terror grew in Dany, (…)
  • She was afraid of the Dothraki, whose ways seemed alien and monstrous, as if they were beasts in human skins and not true men at all. 
  • Most of all, she was afraid of what would happen tonight under the stars, when her brother gave her up to the hulking giant who sat drinking beside her with a face as still and cruel as a bronze mask.
  • I am the blood of the dragon, she told herself again.
  • And after the gifts, she knew, after the sun had gone down, it would be time for the first ride and the consummation of her marriage. Dany tried to put the thought aside, but it would not leave her. She hugged herself to try to keep from shaking.
  • He lifted her up as easily as if she were a child and set her on the thin Dothraki saddle, (…)
  • “Please him, sweet sister, or I swear, you will see the dragon wake as it has never woken before.”
  • The fear came back to her then, with her brother’s words. She felt like a child once more, only thirteen and all alone, not ready for what was about to happen to her.
  • “I am the blood of the dragon,” she whispered aloud as she followed, trying to keep her courage up. “I am the blood of the dragon. I am the blood of the dragon.” The dragon was never afraid.
  • She felt as fragile as glass in his hands, her limbs as weak as water. She stood there helpless and trembling in her wedding silks while he secured the horses, and when he turned to look at her, she began to cry.

I have a lot to say about Dany’s three weapon bride gifts, but it seems I have already said it! It can be found in Dothraki Superstition: Bride Gifts. 

And for the first time in hours, she forgot to be afraid. Or perhaps it was for the first time ever.

Great line. Among other things, I think it’s a clue that Dany’s fear is chronic, being derived from her life with her brother, and therefore somewhat unreliable.

I have a pretty strong Dany bias, and it has taken me a long time to get to a point where I can look at her character with as critical an eye as I can with other characters. So what I’m trying to do in this re-read is to make a concerted effort to disconfirm that bias. I’m deliberately trying to see things through lenses that are critical of Dany. It’s a difficult thing for me to manage, but I gather that the story challenges the reader to do it, in order to find a more complete picture of the story.

So that’s why I’m not spending much time looking at Dany through a sympathetic lens. I’m already very sympathetic to her. In fact, not many types of characters or people are more sympathetic to me than a young girl. There’s a protective feature in me and in most men (that some people are all too eager to conflate with sexual motivations.) But I think my greater sympathies for females, young people, and young females are part of the reason why my favorite characters tend to be young girls: Arya and Dany. Even Sansa has grown on me in this re-read. Another reason is common interest and personality. Dany and Sansa are very interested in stories, Arya is very interested in people, and I’m very interested in stories and people. 

One problem with making criticism primary in my approach to something is that it inevitably causes me to overshoot the target. I’ll tend to veer into too-critical interpretation, overcompensating for my bias.

So I haven’t actually solved the bias problem by trying to disconfirm my Dany bias. All I’ve done is adopt a new bias. But that’s the only way to do it, because that’s how the human mind works. It’s really good at championing one idea and trying to make everything else fit into it.

Because of that, I fully expect my criticisms of Dany to go a little too far once in a while, because there’s no other way to do it. If I allow my sympathetic eye to interfere with my critical eye then I’ll sabotage my ability to see the most substantial of the critical interpretations that I haven’t seen yet. 

So the best, truest and most complete interpretations live at the midpoint between those two biases. After I’ve allowed both the sympathetic eye and the critical eye to have their turn, then I still have to weigh the two interpretations against each other, negotiate the differences to figure out what it is, exactly, that I really think about the character or the situation. Doing that properly becomes less impossible only gradually over the days, months and years that pass as the critical or sympathetic attitude’s possession over me subsides. This is definitely a kind of story where the reader’s interpretation is meant to evolve and mature along with him. 

In Dany’s first chapter, I did a little bit of testing of the idea that Dany is ungrateful for the marriage. I went through the chapter and gathered up lists of all the gifts she received as a consequence of the betrothal, and all the slaves and servants who served her in some way. So I’m going to make the same kind of lists for this chapter. Dany’s gifts, treasures, servants and slaves could stand in criticism of her fear, attitudes and faulty assumptions about the wedding, Drogo, the Dothraki people and things like that, both in the past and in the future. I predict that I’ll be glad to have these lists for future reference.

Three handmaids: Irri, Jhiqui, Doreah
Small stack of books: Westerosi histories and songs
Great cedar chest bound in bronze
Piles of the finest velvets and damasks the Free Cities could produce
Three petrified dragon eggs
Slippers
Jewels
Silver rings for her hair
Medallion belts
Painted vests
Soft furs
Sandsilks
Jars of scent
Needles and feathers and tiny bottles of purple glass
A gown made from the skin of a thousand mice
A prized horse: Silver

Noteworthy quotes:

The gifts mounted up around her in great piles, more gifts than she could possibly imagine, more gifts than she could want or use.

When he returned, the dense press of Dothraki giftgivers parted before him, and he led the horse to her.

Food was brought to her, steaming joints of meat and thick black sausages and (…)

Created Jun 14, 2021
Updated Jun 15, 2021 – Small clarifications and expansions, moved Dany’s dream
Updated Jun 19, 2021 – Expanded

AGOT 9 Tyrion I

Here was something about Sansa and Joffrey that was neat.

“Send a dog to kill a dog!” he exclaimed.

“Winterfell is so infested with wolves, the Starks would never miss one.”

Tyrion hopped off the last step onto the yard. “I beg to differ, nephew,” he said. “The Starks can count past six. Unlike some princes I might name.”

Joffrey had the grace at least to blush. (AGOT 9 Tyrion I)

In passing, the line can be read as though Tyrion is making a baseless insult simply to hurt Joffrey’s feelings.

But upon further consideration, Tyrion is shown to be a witty character, and a baseless insult would not be very witty at all. Additionally, Joffrey is shown to be haughty and egotistical, which do not seem like characteristics of somebody who can be made to blush with a baseless insult. So the initial ‘baseless insult’ interpretation is not holding up to scrutiny.

The reader has just enough information to figure out that the baseless-insult interpretation actually makes less sense than if there exists some missing background information about Joffrey and Tyrion, in which Joffrey has shown himself to be incompetent with numbers, and Tyrion has noticed it. Over the years, an uncle might have overheard his nephew during lessons, from time to time, or heard reports from the Maesters who instruct Joffrey, or noticed the young prince’s ineptitude at counting during his day-to-day interactions with him.

So, hidden behind my initial interpretation, there was a more complex and colorful interpretation that makes more sense than my first one. It evoked my imagination, causing it to fill out the missing information with scenes and stories that give A Song of Ice and Fire depth and life. And it emerged out of mere suggestion — the subtle clues in the characters’ choices of words, their reactions, personalities and attitudes.

But there’s still more to see.

It hurt that the one thing Arya could do better than her sister was ride a horse. Well, that and manage a household. Sansa had never had much of a head for figures. If she did marry Prince Joff, Arya hoped for his sake that he had a good steward. (AGOT 7 Arya I)

Two chapters earlier, I learned from Arya that Sansa is not very good with numbers. Her thoughts draw attention to the potential for a minor comical tragedy if Joffrey is bad with numbers, too, because Sansa is supposed to marry Joffrey, and a household headed by two people who are bad with numbers might be in a lot of trouble. Hopefully they would have an honest and mathematically inclined steward around to do the numbers for them.

So the revelation that Joffrey is, in fact, bad with numbers is something funny for the reader to find. More than comedy, however, it might also be understood as foreshadowing that Joffrey will be a bad match for Sansa.

And of course, as you’ll already know from having read the story before, Joffrey turns out to be a horrible person who enjoys tormenting Sansa. Thus, the potential foreshadowing gets imbued with consequence, and we get to call it actual foreshadowing.

So, which interpretation did you like better? The one where Tyrion was making a baseless insult? Or the one that challenged us to interrogate the story, evoked our imaginations, created a funny irony in Joffrey and Sansa’s betrothal, and foreshadowed future events?

The degree to which the interpretation stimulates me, awes me, grows tendrils that reach into, enrich and illuminate other parts of the story is the strongest evidence that can exist that the interpretation is more correct than others.

That’s a fact about stories that is unbelievably difficult to teach to people who do not automatically understand it.

And that’s a difference between people that the story draws attention to all the time. I’ve taken to calling it the Story theme, though I haven’t worked out how to explain it very well yet. I guess this was practice.

The sellsword grew more serious. “There’s a moneylender from Braavos, holding fancy papers and the like, requests to see the king about payment on some loan.”

“As if Joff could count past twenty. Send the man to Littlefinger, he’ll find a way to put him off.” (ACOK Tyrion IV)

I found this quote in ACOK. I wonder if there’s some hidden greater significance to Joffrey’s ineptitude with numbers that I haven’t noticed yet…

The queen shuddered. “There is something unnatural about those animals,” she said. “They are dangerous. I will not have any of them coming south with us.”

Jaime said, “You’ll have a hard time stopping them, sister. They follow those girls everywhere.”

In light of future events, it seems like Cersei did actually manage to stop the direwolves coming south, in various ways. She definitely played a big role in stopping Summer, Lady and Nymeria from coming south. It doesn’t lead me anywhere, but it’s a neat bit of dramatic irony when a character says something early on that seems insignificant or unlikely, and then I don’t realize that it came true until I reread the story with the middle and end in mind. Same thing happened with Viserys’s comment in AGOT Daenerys I when he said Dany would learn to like Drogo in time.

But I should point out that I don’t take it as an indication that ‘The bad guys win in ASOIAF,’ as many readers seem to do. Nor as ‘The bad guys are really the good guys.’ They can be, but being right about something doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good, either. I take it as ‘The bad guys don’t have to be wrong about everything in ASOIAF.’ Sometimes they can be more right than the ‘good guys.’ And often the thing they’re right about goes overlooked by the good guy and the reader, specifically because I’m wearing blinders of one kind or another. And in many cases, the blinders are that I have prematurely decided that this is a good guy and that is a bad guy. George R.R. Martin is using his knowledge of us and our expectations about stories to surprise us, teach us, and also to explore the dilemmas in the story himself.

“The prince will remember that, little lord,” the Hound warned him. The helm turned his laugh into a hollow rumble.

“I pray he does,” Tyrion Lannister replied. “If he forgets, be a good dog and remind him.” (AGOT Tyrion I)

This is a great example of one of the ways Power Corrupts powerful people. Sandor points out that Tyrion is taking a big risk by slapping Joffrey. The implication is that one day Joffrey will be king, and he will remember how Tyrion treated him and then make Tyrion’s life a living hell in retaliation for it. Tyrion doesn’t seem very worried about it, which might be a little foolish considering how poorly behaved Joffrey is, but I think it’s more brave and wise than foolish.

The problems that the noble family invites upon themselves and all of Westeros by neglecting to discipline their future kings easily outstrips whatever Joffrey might do to Tyrion when he becomes king. Royal children being deprived of the harsher teachings they need in order to develop into strong people is a kind of corruption that occurs most severely in this environment of power.

I compare it to my own family or to the commoner families in Westeros, where children are not given authority over adults. I imagine how I would have acted as a kid if I had authority over adults who were too afraid to tell me no or punish me when I did something wrong. It would have utterly ruined the development of child and teenage me. The prince’s power and future power is what causes the adults around him to be too afraid to discipline him so that he can develop into the kind of person he, his family and the kingdom need him to be. 

It seems to me that the story is trying to expand and sophisticate our understanding of the corruption when we say that power “corrupts.” I often hear corruption discussed as though there’s some threshold of evilness that the ruler crosses by committing one atrocious deed or another, at which point he suddenly transitions from non-corrupt to corrupt. It’s a binary and simplistic view of corruption that squashes discussion of the wide array of nuanced and covert ways that power ruins the lives of powerful people. It’s a process that happens incrementally over time, usually beginning with the way the person is raised and the environment he was raised in. It is often produced by the beliefs and practices that are widely accepted in environments of power, taken for granted as normal and appropriate, such as giving royal children power over adults. 

 

Created Jun 9, 2021
Update Sep 11, 2022 – Bad with numbers, Tyrion ACOK

AGOT 10 Jon II

“I prayed for it,” she said dully. “He was my special boy. I went to the sept and prayed seven times to the seven faces of god that Ned would change his mind and leave him here with me. Sometimes prayers are answered.”

This is really sad. She blames herself for Bran’s fall, and maybe she’s having difficulty keeping faith in the Seven too.

The idea that things come true in unexpected ways is one that runs through the dreams, prophecies and foreshadowings of the story. It’s cool to see it foregrounded like this once in a while. Maybe it further shows that Catelyn has a good sense of signs and the more mysterious workings of their world. But at the same time, this is the second instance of Catelyn’s interference with fate inadvertently getting her a negative version of what she asked for. The first one was when she convinced Ned to go south, in order to interfere with what she thought the dead direwolf portends.

In this chapter, I’m on the lookout for why Jon is angry, according to Bran at the beginning of Bran II. I may be chasing the wind, here, but Bran’s thoughts made me curious.

He thought Jon was angry at him. Jon seemed to be angry at everyone these days. (AGOT 8 Bran II)

During Jon and Benjen’s talk in AGOT 5 Jon I, Benjen pointed out that Jon doesn’t understand the gravity of the Night’s Watch vow because he hasn’t been with a woman yet. Jon’s response was something like “I don’t care about that!” But I wonder if it was a kneejerk response in his anger/drunkenness. I can imagine it might have been something he hadn’t given serious consideration yet. So that could be stressing him and what he’s angry about. But also in that case, he might have spent some of his last fortnight in Winterfell on the prowl for sex, perhaps a non-bastard producing kind or perhaps not. And if that’s the case, maybe he was rejected or had a bad experience, and that could explain his anger too.

It’s just speculation, but I do wonder if there’s a point in the books when Jon says or thinks about how he spent his last days at Winterfell, perhaps revealing some details I didn’t know. It’s something I’ll try to remember to keep an eye out for during the reread, anyway.

Jon did not know what to say. “It wasn’t your fault,” he managed after an awkward silence.

Her eyes found him. They were full of poison. “I need none of your absolution, bastard.”

Regarding Catelyn and Jon, I’m settled on the position that ultimately Catelyn was right to keep Jon at a distance, because of the way Westerosi politics work (Blood Right) and the social norms and stigmas that come out of that. That was a really hard position for me to arrive at, and it took a lot of time, because I sympathize with Jon so strongly and Catelyn is being horrible in this chapter. But it does ultimately appear to be the most level-headed conclusion when I take their setting into consideration and give it due weight. That said, I think Catelyn didn’t have to be quite as mean or negligent toward Jon as I’m led to believe she was by the little bits of information the story gives me about Jon and Catelyn’s dynamic.

That said, I think Catelyn’s behavior in this chapter is probably an extreme case, considering her emotional state. So I wouldn’t want to make the mistake of assuming this is how she treated Jon in general. This seems like Catelyn finally giving voice to her darkest feelings about Jon, suggesting to me that she has mostly been silent to Jon, instead directing her dislike of him toward Ned, like I see her doing at the feast and in the bedroom.

Benjen Stark gave Jon a long look. “Don’t you usually eat at table with your brothers?”

“Most times,” Jon answered in a flat voice. “But tonight Lady Stark thought it might give insult to the royal family to seat a bastard among them.” (AGOT 5 Jon I)

I can also imagine that, in situations where Catelyn compels Ned to exclude Jon, or otherwise to impose a cost of bastardy upon him, Ned might tell or suggest to Jon that the decision comes from Catelyn, thereby protecting his relationship with Jon by directing Jon’s resentment away from himself. It doesn’t seem very Ned-like in that Ned tends to absorb costs on behalf of other people, but it does seem Ned-like in that it’s honest, and it directs the costs to the person responsible for it.

Then again, Ned might consider himself responsible for Catelyn’s dislike of Jon, too. So who really knows how their family dynamic works. I’m just pointing out that there’s a lot of room for complexity and sympathy all around, and it isn’t an easy situation to judge without the finer details.

I think the main focus of the situation is the stigma, rather than the characters or their plights. The stigma against bastards is what’s being premiered here. The story challenges the reader to look at all perspectives closely before judging people. Then after I find the sympathetic case for Catelyn’s position, that properly orients my attention to the stigma itself. I can ask why it’s so deeply rooted in people, where it comes from, what function it’s serving to hold the society together, and compare all of that to the costs suffered by bastards like Jon, to see if the benefits are worth the costs, or challenge myself to consider a change to their society that would not result in even greater catastrophe of one kind or another. And that’s no trivial thing to do, when I take the challenge seriously.

He was at the door when she called out to him. “Jon,” she said. He should have kept going, but she had never called him by his name before. He turned to find her looking at his face, as if she were seeing it for the first time.

“Yes?” he said.

“It should have been you,” she told him. Then she turned back to Bran and began to weep, her whole body shaking with the sobs. Jon had never seen her cry before.

A question that often comes up regarding Jon and Catelyn is whether it’s fair to use the word abuse to describe Catelyn’s treatment of Jon. I think this particular instance is certainly an abusive use of language and emotions and power, even, because Catelyn threatens to deprive Jon of a good-bye with Bran. I can imagine Catelyn has intentionally driven wedges between Jon and her children for as long as Jon has been alive. In my world, I would call that abuse.

But in their world, I don’t think it’s fair to call it abuse. As crappy as it is, their world exists such that bastards are a very serious threat to, well, everyone. They’re a threat to trueborns, the mother, the whole family, their allies who depend on them, the lesser houses who depend on them, the smallfolk who depend on them for defense and stability, and the realm who depends on the stability of that region of the kingdom. One glance at Westerosi history reveals half a dozen horrible wars, atrocities, feuds and destroyed Houses that never would have happened if somebody somewhere on the timeline hadn’t made a bastard, legitimized one, or failed to adhere to the stigma against bastards strongly enough.

The same situations are brewing in present day characters. According to Roose Bolton, Ramsay will kill any son that Roose gets on Walda Frey. To compel Walda to welcome Ramsay into her home to live side-by-side with her own children would be something between foolish and malevolent.

The nameday gifts that Robert Baratheon sent to his bastard Edric Storm no doubt nurtured Edric’s characteristic pride.

“Yes, good morrow, my lord,” Edric echoed. The boy could be fierce and proud, but the maesters and castellans and masters-at-arms who’d raised him had schooled him well in courtesy. (ASOS 10 Davos II)

Edric Storm’s pride may as well be a Chekhov’s gun hung upon the wall, warning of a bloody claim dispute between various Baratheons at some point in the future.

A Targaryen could be forgiven for losing count of how many Blackfyre rebellions needed thwarting because of one asshole king who decided to legitimize his bastards with his dying breath. No doubt the great bastard liberation felt more liberating for Aegon IV Targaryen’s bastards than it did for anybody else’s bastards, or for the hundreds of thousands of people who died in the wars that followed for five generations because of it.

So was Catelyn mean to keep Jon at a distance from her family? Kind of. Was she wrong to do it? No.

If I may momentarily alleviate Jon of the victimhood that we tend to be so eager to bestow upon him, I will point out that Jon grew up in a castle with a family who mostly loves him. As cruddy as it is to be a bastard, ultimately Jon has more to be thankful for than almost every other boy in the world. But sshh, we aren’t supposed to notice that until we’re older. 

Wary but excited, Arya checked the hall. “Nymeria, here. Guard.” She left the wolf out there to warn of intruders and closed the door.

A direwolf understanding language again! The fact that it keeps happening is what reveals the story’s guilt. George R.R. Martin is definitely teasing us with suggestions of magic in the direwolves. They have all the characteristics we expect from a fantasy beast — rare, exotic, large — except for the magic abilities which are withheld except as allusions and suggestions. 

I think their magic abilities are:

  1. They can understand what people are saying, either as language or as intended meaning. (Summer squirms when Theon tries to kill him.)
  2. They can sense where the other direwolves are and where they’re going. (Nymeria “smells” Ghost coming to Arya’s bedroom.)
  3. They can sense where the other Starks are and where they’re going. (Nymeria meets Arya after needlework.)
  4. They can sense which characters are going to be future trouble for the Starks. (Ghost bares teeth at Tyrion.)
  5. They can sense which decisions are going to be future trouble for the Starks. (Summer howling when Bran climbs.)

AGOT 8 Bran II

This chapter leaves a hell of an impression. It’s my favorite chapter so far in the reread. The story spends the whole chapter making me fall in love with Bran, having him thinking about his hopes and hobbies and future, and then it just kills him, seemingly. What a jaw dropper.

“Lord Eddard has never taken any interest in anything that happened south of the Neck,” the woman said. “Never. I tell you, he means to move against us. Why else would he leave the seat of his power?”

“A hundred reasons. Duty. Honor. He yearns to write his name large across the book of history, to get away from his wife, or both. Perhaps he just wants to be warm for once in his life.”

Their conversation has so much subtext. It makes it really challenging. I love it. I notice GRRM does this with other overheard convos too like Varys and Illyrio.

It’s funny how Jaime starts out correct and then gets progressively more wrong as he keeps talking. It gives me the impression that he cares less about the conversation the longer it goes on. Then of course he admits that a little later.

“All this talk is getting very tiresome, sister,” the man said. “Come here and be quiet.”

Cersei’s comment is an interesting mix of exactly right and profoundly wrong. She’s right that Ned has no interest in what happens in the south, but wrong that he never has interest, because he played a major role in Robert’s Rebellion. So she’s on point as it concerns her now, but missing the obvious too.

With her other comment, Cersei is kind of right that Ned means to move against the Lannisters, but not quite right because what Ned really means to do is to move against Jon Arryn’s murderers, whoever they happen to be, pending investigation. So Cersei’s comment is predicated on Lannister guilt, but guilt for the bastardy rather than the murder, which is something an investigation into Jon Arryn’s murder might reveal. So again it’s a cool mix of right and wrong, this time right meaning accurate enough for Cersei’s concerns (watch out, Lannisters!) and wrong meaning morally unacceptable (mothering bastards+incest).

“Let Lady Arryn grow as bold as she likes. Whatever she knows, whatever she thinks she knows, she has no proof.” He paused a moment. “Or does she?”

“Do you think the king will require proof?” the woman said. “I tell you, he loves me not.”

“And whose fault is that, sweet sister?”

Cersei dodges the question.

“Lord Eddard has never taken any interest in anything that happened south of the Neck,”

This part takes on a funny new meaning when Cersei fails to seduce Ned in the godswood of the red keep.

Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf was howling. Crows circled the broken tower, waiting for corn.

The direwolves are clearly prophetic. I’ll write about that in a different essay.

The last line of the chapter is brilliant. It gives me a strong sense that, with this story, the world is treated as superordinate to the characters.

What I care about at this moment is Bran, not the tower or the crows or the corn. I want to know if this lovable boy is going to be alright, if some bird or miracle or character or deus ex machina is going to swoop in at the last moment and save him from certain death. The only thing remaining in the scene that could do it is the crows. The idea that the crows are going to save Bran is a silly one, but it’s one my mind goes to because I’m emotionally invested in Bran, and my mind will reach for anything that could save him.

So what does the author do? He focuses on the crows, and their indifference to the falling Bran. All they care about is the corn.

But it goes deeper than that, because of the POV style. It isn’t just the author showing the indifferent crows to the reader. These are Bran’s thoughts and perceptions. Bran’s last thoughts as he falls to his death are a childlike concern for the crows and what they want. He was looking forward to feeding the crows out of his hand, and the first thing that occurs to him as he falls is that he won’t get to do that. It’s heartbreaking.

His loving and innocent nature shines in contrast to the profound tragedy of his situation, casting his love and innocence in a naive and negative light. It’s wrong and ugly, but so is life sometimes, and so is their world, and I love this story and this author for having the guts to portray it unflinchingly, and take my breath away. 

Created Jun 7, 2021

AGOT 7 Arya I

Arya is one of my favorite characters, but surprisingly, I find myself sympathizing with Sansa as much or more than Arya this time around. Arya blames Sansa for attracting the attention of Septa Mordane.
It was just like Sansa to go and attract the septa’s attention.
But in truth it was Arya who attracted her attention by being loud.
“He’s our brother,” Arya said, much too loudly. Her voice cut through the afternoon quiet of the tower room.
Septa Mordane raised her eyes.
Sansa also does a good job of accomodating everybody in the scene. With Beth, she demonstrates honesty and an ability to criticize people with kindness.
“Beth, you shouldn’t make up stories,” Sansa corrected the younger girl, gently stroking her hair to take the harshness out of her words.
She invites her sister to join in the conversation, demonstrating an awareness of Arya’s needs.
“What did you think of Prince Joff, sister? He’s very gallant, don’t you think?”
I’m seeing how my first impressions of Arya were skewed by my own tendency to sympathize with rebels. I think most of it comes from Martin knowing that his audience tends to sympathize more with characters who buck convention. I think it’s partly a western culture thing and partly a young person thing, because young people everywhere rebel, first against their parents and then society. And the audience for the fantasy genre is predominantly young adults.
Sansa sighed as she stitched. “Poor Jon,” she said. “He gets jealous because he’s a bastard.”
Even Sansa’s comment about Jon turns out to be true after a closer look at Jon’s chapter. Jon is dripping with jealousy and resentment about being a bastard. He assumes the worst of Myrcella, for example, thinking she’s insipid, and that Robb is stupid not to notice it. But I think that’s juxtaposed with what I think might be subtle clues of Myrcella’s awareness in this Arya chapter.
“What are you talking about, children?”
“Our half brother,” Sansa corrected, soft and precise. She smiled for the septa. “Arya and I were remarking on how pleased we were to have the princess with us today,” she said.
Septa Mordane nodded. “Indeed. A great honor for us all.” Princess Myrcella smiled uncertainly at the compliment.
Myrcella’s uncertainty might indicate that she recognizes that Sansa is lying, because Sansa’s explanation doesn’t fit with the talk of a brother.

It wasn’t fair. Sansa had everything. Sansa was two years older

I think these 2 lines might show that Arya is being too hard on herself.

“I could do just as good as Bran,” she said. “He’s only seven. I’m nine.”

It doesn’t seem to occur to Arya that maybe a lot of the reason Sansa is better than her at most things is because Sansa is 2 years older, the same reason Arya is better than Bran at most things.

Arya glared at her. “I have to go shoe a horse,” she said sweetly, taking a brief satisfaction in the shock on the septa’s face.

Superb! The Septa’s blacksmith comment was really uncalled for. Adults don’t realize how much of their gossip kids can overhear, how well kids are able to understand it, and how big of an effect it can have on them. It reminds me that I wasn’t completely off base with my first impression of Arya. She is still very sympathetic, and she’s in the annoying position of having unconventional talents and interests for a girl.

“The Lannisters are proud,” Jon observed. “You’d think the royal sigil would be sufficient, but no. He makes his mother’s House equal in honor to the king’s.”

Jon being super observant again.

I thought this was a peculiar little thing at the end of the chapter.

“Nothing is fair,” Jon said. He messed up her hair again and walked away from her, Ghost moving silently beside him. Nymeria started to follow too, then stopped and came back when she saw that Arya was not coming.

Reluctantly she turned in the other direction.

Nymeria started to follow Jon and Ghost, and then turned back to reluctant Arya. I’m not sure what it means, if anything, but I could see it being a number of things. Maybe it just shows that Arya wants to stay with Jon, and so Nymeria is acting out Arya’s subconscious desire. Maybe it shows that Nymeria is drawn to follow Ghost, and so Ghost is the natural leader of the pack. I like the first one the best. It matches with something that happened when Arya first found Jon.

Nymeria stalked closer on wary feet. Ghost, already larger than his litter mates, smelled her, gave her ear a careful nip, and settled back down.

Ghost nipped at Nymeria’s ear. It’s the wolf version of Jon messing up Arya’s hair all the time.

Jon grinned, reached over, and messed up her hair. Arya flushed.

Here was something funny from the practice yard.

“I am a prince. And I grow tired of swatting at Starks with a play sword.” “You got more swats than you gave, Joff,” Robb said.

Joffrey got embarrassed by Robb during their first sword fight, so when Rodrik calls upon Robb and Joffrey for round two, Joffrey acts like he’s too cool to play with practice swords. It’s a transparent excuse because Joffrey has used practice swords once already. Joff suggests live steel, knowing full well that it won’t be allowed, which allows him to evade a second round of embarassment and bruises. His retinue plays along with the ploy.

Some of the Lannister men laughed.

But what does Sandor do?

“This is your prince. Who are you to tell him he may not have an edge on his sword, ser?”

Sandor seems to come to Joffrey’s aid too, pressuring Rodrik to allow live steel as Joffrey requested. But in light of Joffrey’s treatment of Sandor that we see later on…

“And you, dog, away with you, you’re scaring my betrothed.” The Hound, ever faithful, bowed and slid away quietly through the press. (AGOT Sansa II)

It recontextualizes Sandor’s behavior at the practice yard. Sandor was using the plausible deniability that Joffrey’s bluff affords him to rob Joffrey of his flimsy excuse, maybe in the hopes of earning Joffrey the beating he desperately needs.

“Are you training women here?”

Sandor goes hard into the paint, playing on the testosterone of the guys involved. He’s determined to get Joffrey’s ass kicked.

“I killed a man at twelve. You can be sure it was not with a blunt sword.”

I fucking lost it.

Maybe it’s a piece of Sandor’s characterization in some ways. He plays the role of dumb violent brute, but beneath the surface he has his emotions under more control than even Ser Rodrick, who gets red-faced at the challenge to his masculinity. But I can see how the dumbness of the role is necessary in order for Sandor to create and protect the plausibility of his denial, to curb against the risk that Joffrey or the Lannisters will one day notice a pattern in his behavior of propelling Joffrey into precarious situations, in stark contradiction with his vow to protect him.

AGOT 6 Catelyn II

I thought the Myrish lens situation was pretty cool.

“I asked the same question,” Maester Luwin said. “Clearly there was more to this than the seeming.”

Under the heavy weight of her furs, Catelyn shivered. “A lens is an instrument to help us see.”

Maester Luwin receives a mysterious box that has a lens inside. It’s a weird thing to receive and a weird way to receive it, so the weirdness clues him in that there’s probably more to the gift than it seems. Catelyn shivers. From what I know of Catelyn so far, she has an affinity for signs.

a direwolf dead in the snow, a broken antler in its throat. Dread coiled within her like a snake, but she forced herself to smile at this man she loved, this man who put no faith in signs. (AGOT Catelyn I)

“The king is a stranger to you.” Catelyn remembered the direwolf dead in the snow, the broken antler lodged deep in her throat. She had to make him see. (AGOT Catelyn II)

At this point in the story I have seen that Catelyn is clever, too.

“Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a direwolf either,” Catelyn reminded him.

“I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully,” (AGOT Catelyn I)

The Starks were made for the cold, he would tell her, and she would laugh and tell him in that case they had certainly built their castle in the wrong place. (AGOT Catelyn II)

Catelyn offers what seems like a silly interpretation of the gift. It’s almost childlike.

“A lens is an instrument to help us see.”

Catelyn could feel dread stirring inside her once again. “What is it that they would have us see more clearly?”

But I can see how Catelyn’s interpretation would have been successful in leading her to find the hidden message, by causing her to look at the gift and box more closely.

“The very thing I asked myself.” Maester Luwin drew a tightly rolled paper out of his sleeve. “I found the true message concealed within a false bottom when I dismantled the box the lens had come in, but it is not for my eyes.”

Luwin thought of the same symbolism that Catelyn did, and found the hidden message. So it’s a result that stands in judgement of my initial feelings that Catelyn is being silly and childlike.

Ned frowned. He had little patience for this sort of thing, Catelyn knew. “A lens,” he said. “What has that to do with me?”

The story is illustrating a personality difference between characters regarding their affinity for signs, symbols, metaphors and puzzles. In this instance, that affinity serves Catelyn and Luwin well, and Ned is left looking like a dolt. But there are also times when characters’ affinity for signs gets them into trouble, and/or the Neds of the story are rewarded for paying signs no heed.

This is also an example of one of those times.

Catelyn’s thoughts show me that her mind is preoccupied with the symbolism of the dead direwolf with an antler in her throat. That causes her to compel Ned to travel south, for fear that refusing Robert’s offer will make an enemy of him and sow the seeds of a future conflict between the houses that the stag and the wolf represent.

Catelyn thinks she knows what the dead direwolf sign means, and that she can divert it from coming true. But Catelyn’s attempt to prevent the sign from coming true is what caused it to come true, by convincing Ned to go south.

We don’t know yet that going south will end badly for the Starks, so that realization is only visible in retrospect or upon a reread, but I think it shows me something important about the role of signs in the story. Even though the characters can and do try to affect the outcomes of signs, it isn’t possible for the characters to succeed in doing so. Their attempts to intervene with the sign will always be somewhere between useless and counter-productive.

Thematically, maybe signs are there to torment the characters who are arrogant enough to try to manipulate the strings of fate from the top down, perhaps as opposed to humbly focusing on one’s own life and small domain of agency to improve his fate from the bottom up.

AGOT 5 Jon I

Jon wants to join the Night’s Watch, but Benjen thinks he’s too young. So Jon tries to argue his case by referencing the story of Daeron Targaryen.

“Daeron Targaryen was only fourteen when he conquered Dorne,” Jon said. The Young Dragon was one of his heroes.

“A conquest that lasted a summer,” his uncle pointed out. “Your Boy King lost ten thousand men taking the place, and another fifty trying to hold it. Someone should have told him that war isn’t a game.” He took another sip of wine. “Also,” he said, wiping his mouth, “Daeron Targaryen was only eighteen when he died. Or have you forgotten that part?”

“I forget nothing,” Jon boasted.

Jon points out that Daeron was only 14 years old when he conquered Dorne. His conquest of Dorne is the most memorable thing about him, so that’s what people remember the most. But Benjen points out that Jon hasn’t considered this part of Daeron’s story in full context. 60,000 people died for Daeron’s conquest: From The World of Ice and Fire I can find that 10,000 died taking it and 50,000 over the next 3 years trying to keep it.

Some of those people have famous names like Lyonel Tyrell and Olyvar Oakheart, but no doubt most of them were common knights and militia.

Benjen brings their lives back into the equation as if they really matter, so I think it has the subtle effect of signaling to me that this isn’t a story where I can neglect to calculate the suffering of minor or unnamed characters.

Jon gets belligerent when his oversights are pointed out to him. I could easily see him try to make excuses for Daeron instead.

I notice an ironic duality happening with Daeron’s nickname, The Young Dragon. The word young suggests, at least on the surface, that his deeds are especially impressive because of his young age. That’s certainly Jon’s interpretation of Daeron’s story and the interpretation I tend to come away with too when the name is accompanied by the most notable part of Daeron’s story, his conquest of Dorne. But once I have the full story of the conquest I can see another more tragic meaning in the nickname, because Daeron died at a young age, and the conquest of Dorne was the big mistake that led to it. So the nickname echos through the ages as a reminder that Daeron’s foolishness is why Daeron didn’t live long enough to grow into an older dragon and earn a more mature nickname.

This kind of ironic duality is something I notice in many other nicknames too. Maybe it highlights that reputations are hard to shake, and that they’re just as often misleading as they are useful shortcuts.

To judge by the chapters so far, Tyrion’s nickname seems to have some irony too. We first hear about “The Imp” from Ned, who doesn’t spare any thoughts of Tyrion good or bad, so the nickname itself is allowed to do the lifting from then until now.

The tall boy beside him could only be the crown prince, and that stunted little man behind them was surely the Imp, Tyrion Lannister.

Yet the huge man at the head of the column, flanked by two knights in the snow-white cloaks of the Kingsguard, seemed almost a stranger to Ned . . . (AGOT Eddard I)

For me, it makes me think Tyrion will be annoying, devious, evil or at least provocative. Then I meet him in Jon I and he’s one of the most polite and caring people I’ve seen so far. He handles Jon’s clumsiness and insecurities with a lot of tact. And to give advice is an inherently caring thing to do. At least, this advice seems to be.

Robert Baratheon’s reputation and nickname, demon of the Trident, also has elements of irony and unreliability. The story makes his explicit and shows the mismatch between expectation and reality all at once, and often.

In those days, the smell of leather and blood had clung to him like perfume.

Now it was perfume that clung to him like perfume, and he had a girth to match his height. (AGOT Eddard I)

The king was a great disappointment to Jon. His father had talked of him often: the peerless Robert Baratheon, demon of the Trident, the fiercest warrior of the realm, a giant among princes. Jon saw only a fat man, red-faced under his beard, sweating through his silks. He walked like a man half in his cups. (AGOT Jon I)

Golden Collars P2 & Bias Disconfirmation

This is a contination of an analysis of the chapter AGOT Daenerys I.

Link to Part 1

Insane

In Part 1, Golden Collars & Confirmation Bias, I found an interpretation of AGOT Daenerys I that runs almost perfectly contrary to my initial interpretation of the chapter. (Read Part 1 before reading Part 2.) Dany being too afraid to see things clearly is quite opposite to Dany being discerning. Let’s quickly review what happened in Part 1.

First, the story shaped my perceptions to make me skeptical. Second, my skepticism prevented me from noticing Dany’s logical mishap. Third, the story drew my attention to my failure to notice that, by allowing my skeptical mind to fill in Dany’s meaning for her.

His collar, she noted, was ordinary bronze.

It shows me that the story isn’t merely telling me what’s happening, it’s controlling the way I perceive it. Now the story is pointing at me, and challenging me to challenge my initial interpretation of Daenerys in the same way. If Dany’s judgement is clouded, and I didn’t notice it, then is my judgement of Dany clouded too?

This is the point of maximum abstraction in the analysis, so it’s the point at which formulating useful questions is the most difficult. I want to keep going with it, using what I’ve found to interrogate the story, but where do I go from here?

As a general rule, the nature of the character’s unreliability will direct me. Dany’s judgement is clouded by her fear about her marriage to Drogo, so the marriage and Dany’s attitude toward it are the topics I should center my next questions around.

Supposing that Dany’s thoughts and feelings about the wedding are backwards, as the metatext seems to hint, and supposing that there are more things hidden in the chapter to support that idea, what might those things be? I want to take up the story’s challenge and make a concerted effort to disconfirm my initial thoughts and feelings about Dany.

As demonstrated by Dany’s logical mishap with the golden collar, it’s always harder to see things that disconfirm my beliefs than it is to see things that confirm it, so I can expect that the investigation going foward will feel inherently distasteful and not worthwhile.

Now I’ll try to come up with a line of inquiry that is deliberately backwards to my Dany bias.

Is Dany being ungrateful for the marriage?

Since I’ve already read the chapter once, I have a general idea of the things in it, so I can formulate some predictions about what I might find.

Something to be grateful for is a gift. I remember that there were some gifts in the chapter. What were they? And how many of them can I remember? I remember a collar and a dress. I can remember 2 gifts. So maybe some things I’ll find when I reread the chapter with a keen eye for gifts and for Dany’s ingratitude for the marriage are:

  • There are more gifts than I realized before.
  • The gifts are more valuable than I realized before.

Beginner

Now I have reread the chapter, found all of Dany’s gifts, and the results of the investigation can be compared to those two predictions above.

  • Deep plum silk gown
  • Gold as well
  • Jewels of all sorts
  • Wisps that Magister Illyrio had sent up
  • Gilded sandals
  • Tiara in her hair
  • Golden bracelets crusted with amethysts
  • Collar, a heavy golden torc emblazoned with ancient Valyrian glyphs

The predictions were right. There are many more gifts than I remembered, and they’re more valuable than I remembered too. How in the world did I forget a tiara?

The results of this first inquiry are evidence of the predictive power of this backwards interpretation of Dany. The degree to which the interpretation is useful for predicting things in the story that I didn’t notice before is the degree to which it becomes reasonable to say it is correct. So far it’s off to a great start, but I’m not convinced yet that there’s anything particularly correct about it. I need more proof of its predictive power.

Intermediate

Is Dany being ungrateful for the marriage?

Now I return to my backwards interpretation to try to formulate another useful line of inquiry that might disconfirm my Dany bias.

Something to be grateful for is help. I remember that Dany received some help in this chapter from slaves. What kind of help can I remember Dany receiving? And how many different slaves helped her that I can remember? I remember the chattering girl who put the golden collar on her neck, and another woman was with her too. I remember 2 slaves who helped Dany. So maybe some things I’ll find when I reread the chapter with a keen eye for slaves helping Dany and for Dany’s ingratitude for the marriage are:

  • There are more slaves than I realized before.
  • More of the slaves help Dany than I realized before.

Now I have scoured the chapter again, found all the slaves, and here are the results.

  • 19 slaves in total
  • 2 servants: old woman and chattering girl
  • 2 slaves carrying lanterns ahead of the palanquin
  • 12 slaves carrying the palanquin
  • 1 Unsullied with bronze Dothraki skin
  • 1 slave offered a hand to help Daenerys out
  • 1 eunuch singer

It looks like both predictions were right again. There are far more slaves than I realized, and all but one of them are doing something for Dany.

They filled her bath with hot water from the kitchen, scented it with fragrant oils, undressed her, helped her into the tub, washed and combed her hair, scrubbed her back and feet, helped her out of the tub, toweled her dry, brushed her hair, perfumed her, dressed her in silk and jewelry, carried lanterns, carried her palanquin, helped her out of the palanquin, and announced her arrival.

As an added bonus, I even found a moment when the chattering slave girl directly tells Dany that she’s lucky.

The girl scrubbed her back and her feet and told her how lucky she was.

In Part 1 I supposed that the girl was entirely lying to Dany at the behest of Illyrio, in order to warm Dany up to the marriage. So maybe what this reveals is that the girl was only partially lying, and that this line is an authentic part of her comments that also happens to serve her and Illyrio’s purposes.

The results of this second inquiry are more evidence of the predictive power of this backwards interpretation of Dany. So far, it’s proving to be less backwards than it first seemed.

Expert

Is Dany being ungrateful for the marriage?

I return to my backwards interpretation once again to try to formulate another useful line of inquiry that might disconfirm my Dany bias. If Dany is really being ungrateful for the marriage, maybe something I might expect to be able to find in the chapter is that Viserys, who arranged the marriage and compels Dany to cooperate with it, is kind of right about some things.

I scan the chapter one last time, this time with greater familiarity and a keener sympathy for Viserys’s point of view.

“Be grateful it is only Drogo. In time you may even learn to like him. Now dry your eyes. Illyrio is bringing him over, and he will not see you crying.”

This backwards interpretation of Dany is proving to be quite good at predicting things in the story that I didn’t notice were there.

Hey! If you made it to the end, thanks for reading and for any thoughts you want to share. I was trying to give a small but comprehensive demonstration in one chapter of what seems to me to be the most elusive way that the story can and is meant to be engaged with. Maybe somebody will find these essays useful. Thanks again and valar morghulis!

Acclaim

“This is wonderful. I get so tired of hearing how the Dothraki are just racist tropes or stereotypes or that these storylines are just throwaway chapters to shuttle Danny around as if she (and they) were merely passive character carve-outs when they were one of my favorite part of the books.”

“I think you’ve really struck on something here regarding Danys gifts and our biased interpretations towards them / her position in this chapter.”