In If I look back I am lost: The Corruption of a Conscience, I mentioned that the Dothraki occupy a wise fool role in Daenerys’s story. In this essay I’m going to explore the various Dothraki beliefs, customs and superstitions in the story, paying special attention to the way Dany receives them and how Dany’s decisions regarding Dothraki superstitions are working out for her and the Dothraki.
I think A Song of Ice and Fire challenges the reader to look at things from the perspectives of different characters. So this essay is part of an on-going exploration of Daenerys when she is viewed from the perspectives of other characters, in this case the Dothraki characters.
A Sacred City
As the Dothraki arrive at Vaes Dothrak, Dany learns about a Dothraki superstition.
A small army of slaves had gone ahead to prepare for Khal Drogo’s arrival. As each rider swung down from his saddle, he unbelted his arakh and handed it to a waiting slave, and any other weapons he carried as well. Even Khal Drogo himself was not exempt. Ser Jorah had explained that it was forbidden to carry a blade in Vaes Dothrak, or to shed a free man’s blood. Even warring khalasars put aside their feuds and shared meat and mead together when they were in sight of the Mother of Mountains. In this place, the crones of the dosh khaleen had decreed, all Dothraki were one blood, one khalasar, one herd. (AGOT Daenerys IV)
Vaes Dothrak is a sanctuary city in which all of the warring Dothraki tribes can come together peacefully and share in one culture. To facilitate peace, it is forbidden to carry a blade or shed blood in the city. Even the mighty Khal Drogo observes the custom and voluntarily surrenders his weapons before entering the city. I get the sense that this superstition is deeply rooted.
[Daenerys to Jorah] …the Usurper in King’s Landing would pay well for her brother’s head. “You ought to have gone with him, to keep him safe. You are his sworn sword.”
“We are in Vaes Dothrak,” he reminded her. “No one may carry a blade here or shed a man’s blood.”
“Yet men die,” she said. “Jhogo told me. Some of the traders have eunuchs with them, huge men who strangle thieves with wisps of silk. That way no blood is shed and the gods are not angered.” (AGOT Daenerys V)
During Dany’s time with the Dothraki, Jorah becomes increasingly insolent regarding Viserys, and so he isn’t very concerned with protecting him. This Dothraki superstition seems to be a convenient excuse for Jorah to forego the company of Viserys in favor of the company of Daenerys.
Jhogo has provided Dany with a little more information about the belief. The Dothraki believe that the gods are angered when the blood of a free man is shed in Vaes Dothrak.
What is the real intention behind the belief? Is it to keep the city peaceful, or to prevent the wrath of the gods? The thriving culture and marketplace might suggest the former, while the wisps-of-silk loophole might suggest the latter.
Whether the superstition is being imposed by the people or by the gods, the wisps-of-silk loophole shows me that it is applied rather technically. Strangling thieves with silk is apparently permissible because, technically, strangling doesn’t shed blood. Bloodshed of a free man is explicitly forbidden, but murder is not.
“I had Doreah sew it specially for you,” she told him, wounded. “These are garments fit for a khal.”
“I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not some grass-stained savage with bells in his hair,” Viserys spat back at her. He grabbed her arm. “You forget yourself, slut. Do you think that big belly will protect you if you wake the dragon?”
His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again, quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she’d hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her strength.
It caught him full in the face. Viserys let go of her. Blood ran down his cheek where the edge of one of the medallions had sliced it open. “You are the one who forgets himself,” Dany said to him. “Didn’t you learn anything that day in the grass? Leave me now, before I summon my khas to drag you out. And pray that Khal Drogo does not hear of this, or he will cut open your belly and feed you your own entrails.”
Viserys scrambled back to his feet. “When I come into my kingdom, you will rue this day, slut.” He walked off, holding his torn face, leaving her gifts behind him.
Drops of his blood had spattered the beautiful sandsilk cloak. Dany clutched the soft cloth to her cheek and sat cross-legged on her sleeping mats. (AGOT Daenerys IV)
In this scene, Dany shed the blood of a free man.
Drops of his blood had spattered the beautiful sandsilk cloak.
Of course, I’m sympathetic to Dany, because she didn’t intend to draw blood and Viserys deserved it anyway. But notably, my attempts to defend Dany on the grounds that her situation is sympathetic stand feebly against the inescapable technicality that Dany shed a free man’s blood in Vaes Dothrak.
It is only when I look at the situation from a Dothraki perspective, and suppose that their long-held beliefs might be more than the silly superstitions of savages, that I’m left with a foreboding sense that Dany has earned the anger of the gods.
I don’t suppose that any gods will appear in the story at any point to involve themselves directly with the events or characters, but that instead the anger of the gods can play out metatextually, where the progression of events and the fates of characters will reflect the story’s themes, or deeper meanings, and that those meanings constitute a final judgement of events and characters.
The Poison Water
Shortly after sex, Dany is trying to convince Khal Drogo to sail for Westeros and take the Iron Throne.
“The earth ends at the black salt sea,” Drogo answered at once. He wet a cloth in a basin of warm water to wipe the sweat and oil from his skin. “No horse can cross the poison water.”
“In the Free Cities, there are ships by the thousand,” Dany told him, as she had told him before. “Wooden horses with a hundred legs, that fly across the sea on wings full of wind.”
Khal Drogo did not want to hear it. “We will speak no more of wooden horses and iron chairs.” He dropped the cloth and began to dress. “This day I will go to the grass and hunt, woman wife,” he announced as he shrugged into a painted vest and buckled on a wide belt with heavy medallions of silver, gold, and bronze.
“Yes, my sun-and-stars,” Dany said. Drogo would take his bloodriders and ride in search of hrakkar, the great white lion of the plains. If they returned triumphant, her lord husband’s joy would be fierce, and he might be willing to hear her out.
Savage beasts he did not fear, nor any man who had ever drawn breath, but the sea was a different matter. To the Dothraki, water that a horse could not drink was something foul; the heaving grey-green plains of the ocean filled them with superstitious loathing. Drogo was a bolder man than the other horselords in half a hundred ways, she had found … but not in this. If only she could get him onto a ship … (AGOT Daenerys VI)
Drogo has no interest in the Iron Throne, but I get to see another Dothraki superstition. The Dothraki have a strong aversion to any body of water that their horses can’t drink.
The salt in sea water dehydrates man and horse alike, eventually killing him of thirst more quickly than if he hadn’t tried to drink from the sea at all.
Sea water isn’t really poisoned, but it’s easy to see how the Dothraki people arrived at that understanding. The effect of drinking sea water would appear very similar to the effect of poison, killing the imbiber sooner than expected and leaving observers perplexed about what exactly went wrong.
The idea that sea water is poisoned is not strictly true, but it’s true enough to protect this society that believes it.
Although the Poison Water belief protects its hosts against the follies of drinking sea water, I can’t help but wonder why Dothraki society is the only society in which the belief exists. Almost certainly, people everywhere in the world, such as in Westeros, will have found that drinking salt water to cure thirst only exacerbates the problem.
“As to that, Father,” Dale said, “I mislike these water casks they’ve given me for Wraith. Green pine. The water will spoil on a voyage of any length.” (ACOK Davos I)
But apparently the dehydration wasn’t enough of a detriment to deter Westerosi people and ancestors from the sea entirely, like it seems to have done among the Dothraki. In fact, many Westerosi people and ancestors owe their survival to sea travel, such as the Rhoynar, who sailed across the Narrow Sea to escape the Valyrians.
The observation indicates to me that my investigation isn’t over yet. The Poison Water belief must be doing more work to protect the Dothraki people than merely protecting them from dehydration.
Then I wonder, which characteristics of Dothraki society make it uniquely vulnerable to their attempts to travel by sea?
The horselords might put on rich fabrics and sweet perfumes when they visited the Free Cities, but out under the open sky they kept the old ways. Men and women alike wore painted leather vests over bare chests and horsehair leggings cinched by bronze medallion belts, and the warriors greased their long braids with fat from the rendering pits. They gorged themselves on horseflesh roasted with honey and peppers, drank themselves blind on fermented mare’s milk and Illyrio’s fine wines, and spat jests at each other across the fires, their voices harsh and alien in Dany’s ears. (AGOT Daenerys II)
The Dothraki wear painted leather vests and horsehair leggings. Much of that leather comes from horses. The Dothraki grease their hair with fat from the rendering pits. I bet the fat comes from horses too. Horseflesh is a main food source for the Dothraki, and fermented mare’s milk is their alcoholic beverage.
Dothraki society is entirely centered around horses.
For one khalasar to maintain its survival, they would require a constant supply of horses for food, drink, grease, leather, armor, clothing, riding, fighting and more.
This long list of horse-derived products and proficiencies must be accompanied by a lifetime of learning, practicing and training with these things. There have to be many Dothraki who know which parts of the horse are safe to eat, how to extract the meat, and how to cook it in ways that make it tasty. Many Dothraki will need to know how to skin a horse, cure the leather and shape it into vests, leggings, gloves, saddles, grips and whips. Every Dothraki male will need to invest years of practice during childhood and early adulthood to master the arakh, whip and bow, all from horseback.
Much of what the Dothraki know about how to function and survive in the world would become useless, and in some cases counter-productive, in the absence of thousands of wild horses and a place to ride them.
Dothraki were wise where horses were concerned, but could be utter fools about much else. (ADWD Daenerys I)
Even many of their cultural innovations, though useful in the full context of Dothraki society, would become self-defeating in a different environment. For example, the Dothraki attitude that it is cowardly to wear metal armor in battle would not fare well in some other parts of the world.
The Dothraki had mocked him [Jorah] for a coward when he donned his armor, but the knight had spit insults right back in their teeth, tempers had flared, longsword had clashed with arakh, and the rider whose taunts had been loudest had been left behind to bleed to death. (AGOT Daenerys VII)
If the Dothraki’s fear of the sea protects them from wandering to far away places where they are more likely than not to fail and die, then I can see how their fear of the sea is a sort of wisdom of its own.
Forbidden Magic
Dany trembled with relief. “Do it.”
The maegi nodded solemnly. “As you speak, so it shall be done. Call your servants.”
Khal Drogo writhed feebly as Rakharo and Quaro lowered him into the bath. “No,” he muttered, “no. Must ride.” Once in the water, all the strength seemed to leak out of him. (AGOT Daenerys VIII)
“We need the blood,” Mirri answered. “That is the Way.”
Jhogo edged back, his hand on his arakh. He was a youth of sixteen years, whip-thin, fearless, quick to laugh, with the faint shadow of his first mustachio on his upper lip. He fell to his knees before her. “Khaleesi, “ he pleaded, “you must not do this thing. Let me kill this maegi.”
“Kill her and you kill your khal,” Dany said.
“This is bloodmagic,” he said. “It is forbidden.”
“I am khaleesi, and I say it is not forbidden. In Vaes Dothrak, Khal Drogo slew a stallion and I ate his heart, to give our son strength and courage. This is the same. The same.” (AGOT Daenerys VIII
Bride Gifts
At Khal Drogo and Dany’s wedding, Dany received a variety of gifts, ranging from dragon eggs to history books to handmaids. Among these gifts were three weapons: a whip, an arakh, and a bow.
The khal’s bloodriders offered her the traditional three weapons, and splendid weapons they were. Haggo gave her a great leather whip with a silver handle, Cohollo a magnificent arakh chased in gold, and Qotho a double-curved dragonbone bow taller than she was. Magister Illyrio and Ser Jorah had taught her the traditional refusals for these offerings. “This is a gift worthy of a great warrior, O blood of my blood, and I am but a woman. Let my lord husband bear these in my stead.” And so Khal Drogo too received his “bride gifts.” (AGOT Daenerys II)
The word “traditional” tells me that there is some tradition happening here, but I have to do some thinking to find in which part of the event the tradition resides, if I want to develop a more complete understanding of it.
1. Would the tradition be broken if the khal’s bloodriders had offered Dany three saddles rather than three weapons? Is the tradition that the gifts should be weapons?
I think so.
2. Would the tradition be broken if the same three weapons had been gifted to Dany by non-bloodriders? Is the tradition that the gift-givers should be bloodriders?
I think so. Only the khal can have bloodriders, and hierarchy in Dothraki culture is centered around the khal, especially ceremonially, such as can be observed at a feast where it’s regarded as an honor to sit at a table near the khal.
3. Would the tradition be broken if the arakh were a longsword instead? Is the tradition that these specific weapon types should be the gifts?
I think so. Whips, arakhs and bows are near and dear to the Dothraki people. Whips and arakhs in particular are pretty unique to the Dothraki, and the Dothraki are renowned for their ability to shoot bows from horseback.
4. Would the tradition be broken if Dany had recited the refusal incorrectly?
“This is a gift worthy of a great warrior, O blood of my blood, and I am but a woman. Let my lord husband bear these in my stead.”
Maybe, but I think not. Dany is reciting this in Dothraki, a language that is new to her, so my impression is that the reason she needed to memorize and recite it is because she doesn’t speak Dothraki very well yet. I think the specific words themselves are not particularly important, and that Dany could have made the same points using different words, without breaking the tradition.
It shows me that the traditional part is not in the specific words of the bride’s refusal. Rather, the tradition is that the bride should refuse.
All of these elements together make up the whole tradition. The essence of the tradition may be found in the relationship between its parts.
So then I wonder, what is the relationship between the khaleesi refusing the weapons, and passing them along to her husband?
The most obvious relationship is that the weapons should sensibly go to the person who can best use them. Men tend to be physically stronger than women, so the transfer is a smart division of labor. As a point of fact, Dany would find it impossible to draw the bow for a shot. But I think the relationship goes deeper than that.
Weapons are tools for conquest and defense, so maybe the weapon gifts represent opportunities for power. Symbolically, the gesture could represent that the khaleesi will relinquish power when opportunities for power arise.
What is the relationship between the gifts being weapons, and the bloodriders being the givers of the weapons? 
The khaleesi relinquishing power somehow relates to the bloodriders.
But how?
Jhiqui had taught her that a bloodrider was more than a guard; they were the khal’s brothers, his shadows, his fiercest friends. “Blood of my blood,” Drogo called them, and so it was; they shared a single life. The ancient traditions of the horselords demanded that when the khal died, his bloodriders died with him, to ride at his side in the night lands. If the khal died at the hands of some enemy, they lived only long enough to avenge him, and then followed him joyfully into the grave. (AGOT Daenerys IV)
The bloodriders’ fates are intertwined with the khal in a way that the khaleesi’s fate is not. When the khal dies it is the bloodriders, not the khaleesi, who are required to die with him.
I think the reason the bloodriders gift weapons to the khaleesi is to find out what the khaleesi will do with them.
The Dothraki believe that only a man can or should be a khal — the most powerful Dothraki role. Or more specifically, they believe that a woman can not and should not be a khal. In Dothraki culture, leadership and masculinity go hand in hand, with the one great exception being the dosh khaleen.
In conclusion, the bride’s refusal of the weapons is a symbolic gesture that gives the khaleesi an opportunity to demonstrate to the bloodriders that, should the opportunity arise for the khaleesi to occupy a masculine role, she intends to refuse masculine roles.
Maybe one purpose of such a sentiment is to highlight the truth of the reverse — that the khaleesi intends to occupy a feminine role. It reminds me of the Ghiscari wedding tradition in which the bride washes the feet of the groom. Where the Ghiscari tradition seems to reinforce that the bride should occupy a feminine role, the Dothraki tradition seems to reinforce that the bride should reject opportunities to occupy a masculine role. It’s a subtle difference that shows me that Dothraki culture has abnormally strong protections against female ambition, which suggests to me that Dothraki society has historically been more vulnerable to female ambition than Ghiscari culture has been.
As the story unfolds on the Dothraki Sea, the Dothraki society is tested by a female’s ambition. Because of Khal Drogo’s death, Dany is presented with an opportunity to seize the role of khal for herself.
Dany called the Dothraki around her. Fewer than a hundred were left. How many had Aegon started with? she wondered. It did not matter.
“You will be my khalasar,” she told them. “I see the faces of slaves. I free you. Take off your collars. Go if you wish, no one shall harm you. If you stay, it will be as brothers and sisters, husbands and wives.” The black eyes watched her, wary, expressionless. “I see the children, women, the wrinkled faces of the aged. I was a child yesterday. Today I am a woman. Tomorrow I will be old. To each of you I say, give me your hands and your hearts, and there will always be a place for you.” She turned to the three young warriors of her khas. “Jhogo, to you I give the silver-handled whip that was my bride gift, and name you ko, and ask your oath, that you will live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm.”
Jhogo took the whip from her hands, but his face was confused. “Khaleesi, “ he said hesitantly, “this is not done. It would shame me, to be bloodrider to a woman.”
“Aggo,” Dany called, paying no heed to Jhogo’s words. If I look back I am lost. “To you I give the dragonbone bow that was my bride gift.” It was double-curved, shiny black and exquisite, taller than she was. “I name you ko, and ask your oath, that you should live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm.”
Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes. “I cannot say these words. Only a man can lead a khalasar or name a ko.”
“Rakharo,” Dany said, turning away from the refusal, “you shall have the great arakh that was my bride gift, with hilt and blade chased in gold. And you too I name my ko, and ask that you live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm.”
“You are khaleesi,” Rakharo said, taking the arakh. “I shall ride at your side to Vaes Dothrak beneath the Mother of Mountains, and keep you safe from harm until you take your place with the crones of the dosh khaleen. No more can I promise.”
She nodded, as calmly as if she had not heard his answer, (…) (AGOT Daenerys X)
Jhogo, Aggo and Rakharo each reject Dany’s attempt to make herself a khal, citing the Dothraki traditions that the khal should be a man and that the khaleesi should be escorted to Vaes Dothrak in the event of his death. Their responses all together form a multi-faceted opposition to the prospect of a woman leader, and they show me where I should search to find the ways that Dany’s attempt to make herself khal may have costs to the Dothraki people.
Jhogo points out a cost that would be paid by himself and the other members of Dany’s khas. It would shame him to be bloodrider to a woman. Initially it seems prejudiced at worst and petty at best. However, Jhogo’s history shows me that he has neither a dislike of Dany nor of women. He protected Dany from Viserys and from the poisoner. Rather, Jhogo is uncomfortable with the implicit dilemma that Dany has posed to him. The dilemma is whether or not to break this tradition — that only a man can lead a khalasar — by making an exception for Dany.
As to the pettiness of Jhogo’s objection, I only need to look to the story of Khal Rhaggat to see that the price of shame in Dothraki society is very real and very high.
Khal Drogo had offered him a place in a cart the next day, and Viserys had accepted. In his stubborn ignorance, he had not even known he was being mocked; the carts were for eunuchs, cripples, women giving birth, the very young and the very old. (AGOT Daenerys IV)
Aggo refuses Dany’s offer by simply stating the tradition clearly.
Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes. “I cannot say these words. Only a man can lead a khalasar or name a ko.”
Due to Dany’s unresponsiveness, I think Aggo is unsure if she is offending Dothraki tradition deliberately or accidentally. It’s doubtful that after a year among the Dothraki, Dany wouldn’t know that a woman khal is not permissible, so Aggo seems to be giving Dany the benefit of the doubt.
To the Dothraki, there are three possibilities that could explain Dany’s behavior.
1. Dany is unaware that she isn’t allowed to be a khal.
2. She’s aware of it but avoiding the fact out of fear for her future.
3. She’s aware of it but avoiding the fact in order to persuade these Dothraki to abandon their traditional values and make an exception for both Dany and themselves.
The first case appears unlikely to the reader and to the Dothraki, upon first consideration, and then impossible upon further consideration, because Dany has spent a year with the Dothraki and must already know that a woman khal is out of the question. So there are only two possibilities remaining — one sympathetic and one unsympathetic — and neither the reader nor the Dothraki can be entirely sure which one more accurately describes Dany’s motivation.
paying no heed to Jhogo’s words. If I look back I am lost.
Dany’s mantra shows me that she knows that what she’s doing is wrong. Not only is she deliberately breaking Dothraki tradition, but she’s leveraging the residual authority in her position as khaleesi to pressure the people subordinate to her to break it too.
“You are khaleesi,” Rakharo said, taking the arakh. “I shall ride at your side to Vaes Dothrak beneath the Mother of Mountains, and keep you safe from harm until you take your place with the crones of the dosh khaleen. No more can I promise.”
Rakharo refuses Dany’s offer by reasserting the traditional procedures, the subtext being, I think, that he won’t forsake his responsibilities to Dothraki society, nor allow her to forsake her own responsibilities to it.
Rakharo’s refusal is firm but reassuring. He’s reminding Dany that a good future awaits her in the dosh khaleen in Vaes Dothrak, and that she’ll be escorted there safely. I think Rakharo recognizes the possibility that Dany is acting out of fear rather than selfishness, and that he’s giving Dany the benefit of the doubt.
While the words of Jhogo, Aggo and Rakharo seem to reject Dany clearly, their actions seem to contradict their words, because each man ultimately accepts and keeps the weapon that Dany has offered to him.
Jhogo took the whip from her hands, but his face was confused.
Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes.
“You are khaleesi,” Rakharo said, taking the arakh.
I think Dany is hoping that the weapons will make the three men more cooperative with her attempt to make herself a khal, by causing them to feel like they owe her something in return. However, these Dothraki aren’t likely to feel like they owe Dany anything in return.
Ser Jorah grunted. “Yes, Khaleesi, but . . . the Dothraki look on these things differently than we do in the west. I have told him as much, as Illyrio told him, but your brother does not listen. The horselords are no traders. Viserys thinks he sold you, and now he wants his price. Yet Khal Drogo would say he had you as a gift. He will give Viserys a gift in return, yes . . . in his own time. (AGOT Daenerys IV)
The Dothraki don’t understand trading the same way Dany or most people in the story do. They understand it as gift- giving and receiving. The giving of something doesn’t seem to cause the Dothraki to feel like they owe the giver something in return.
Because of that, I think the Dothraki’s acceptance of the weapons is not incompatible with their refusal of Dany’s leadership. Similarly, their acceptance of the weapons doesn’t indicate acceptance of Dany’s leadership either. Dany’s attempt to bribe these Dothraki has fallen flat, due again to her disregard for Dothraki perspectives.
Moreover, Dany’s gifts are not hers to give.
On the platform they piled Khal Drogo’s treasures: his great tent, his painted vests, his saddles and harness, the whip his father had given him when he came to manhood, the arakh he had used to slay Khal Ogo and his son, a mighty dragonbone bow. Aggo would have added the weapons Drogo’s bloodriders had given Dany for bride gifts as well, but she forbade it. “Those are mine,” she told him, “and I mean to keep them.”
All of Drogo’s treasures were added to the funeral pyre to be burned. Dany rescued the bride gifts from the burning, claiming them as her own and declaring that she wants to keep them. From a Dothraki perspective, Dany may have offended the part of the bride gift tradition in which the khaleesi passes the weapons to her husband. Dany’s symbolic gesture from the wedding is revealed to have been insincere.
Worse still, from a Dothraki perspective, Khal Drogo’s bloodriders were killed on Dany’s orders, and killed by the very same men to whom she’s offering the bloodriders’ gifts now.
“Stop him,” she commanded her khas, “kill him.” (AGOT Daenerys VIII)
These magnificent weapons appear not so unlike rewards for betrayals well done.
The symbolic meaning in the transfer of the bride gift weapons from khaleesi to khal was that the khaleesi was promising that she would not threaten the lives of the khal’s bloodriders or the stability of the khalasar by attempting to make herself khal. The transfer is an acknowledgement that the position of khaleesi is one that has a great capacity for destruction in Dothraki society. The truth of that can be seen in the internal and external conflicts of the Dothraki characters who are divided between loyalty to the khaleesi and loyalty to Dothraki traditional values.
Rakharo sprang forward, howling, swinging his arakh down with both hands through the top of Haggo’s head. (AGOT Daenerys VIII)
The Dothraki traditions and superstitions don’t mean as much to Dany as they do to people like Jhogo and Cohollo. These men have been Dothraki for all their lives, so Dothraki values are ingrained in them as thoroughly as their certainty that the sun will rise. Their beliefs elicit genuine emotions in them like fear, revulsion and elation.
Khal Drogo laid his hand on Dany’s arm. She could feel the tension in his fingers. Even a khal as mighty as Drogo could know fear when the dosh khaleen peered into smoke of the future.
That’s only to acknowledge that, while it may be easy to fall into the habit of treating Dothraki beliefs, values and superstitions as obviously fictitious, misplaced, or otherwise easily discarded, I think the story is demonstrating that to discard a belief without having first developed a complete understanding of it and all the functions it may be serving in the society is a recipe for catastrophe.
However, that isn’t to say that I think Dany should necessarily always entirely adhere to Dothraki traditions.
The immediate result for Dany is that she wins the loyalties of the Dothraki who stayed behind, who otherwise would not have sworn themselves to her, and who would have taken her to Vaes Dothraki to join the dosh khaleen.
The Dothraki follow strength in the traditional sense, such as strength of body, combat prowess and bravery. They believe it is the right of the strong to lead. They also believe that some magics such as bloodmagic are evil and forbidden. The miracles or magics that occurred at Drogo’s pyre place those two Dothraki attitudes in conflict with one another, making it difficult for the Dothraki to know what is the right thing for them to do.
Certainly, Dany surviving the fire and hatching dragons is a compelling display of power. Is power so different from strength? Is power forged through bloodmagic a valid or invalid kind of strength? Was the pyre really an instance of bloodmagic? What exactly happened at the pyre anyway? And to what extent can we credit this power to Dany? The answers to these questions and others we might imagine regarding the events at the pyre may be as unclear to the Dothraki as they are to the reader. In any case, the Dothraki such as Jhogo, Aggo and Rakharo were ultimately moved to make an exception for Dany.
Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted.
And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki, men and women and children, and Dany had only to look at their eyes to know that they were hers now, today and tomorrow and forever, hers as they had never been Drogo’s. (AGOT Daenerys X)
I think the long term results of Dany’s decision to disregard the bride gifts tradition may become chiefly observable in the stories and endings of Jhogo, Aggo and Rakharo, who carry those weapons through the story, and whose loyalties were won in such a questionable way at Drogo’s pyre, from a Dothraki perspective.
Thematically, I think the Dothraki who chose loyalty to Dany over loyalty to Dothraki tradition will ultimately meet unhappy endings. They seem to have placed themselves in contradiction with the Identity theme, in which rejecting one’s heritage too much has bad results for the character.
The Bleeding Star
At some time near the event of Drogo’s funeral and the hatching of Dany’s dragons, a red comet appeared in the sky.
The Dothraki named the comet shierak qiya, the Bleeding Star. The old men muttered that it omened ill, but Daenerys Targaryen had seen it first on the night she had burned Khal Drogo, the night her dragons had awakened. It is the herald of my coming, she told herself as she gazed up into the night sky with wonder in her heart. The gods have sent it to show me the way. (ACOK Daenerys I)
Many characters throughout the story offer an interpretation of the comet and what it means for the future. The old men of the Dothraki believe that the comet is a bad omen. Daenerys seems to dismiss that interpretation, because she had seen the comet earlier than most people, on the night of Khal Drogo’s funeral and the miraculous dragon hatching.
It’s no wonder why Dany rejects the bad omen interpretation. Some of the things that happened at the pyre were truly spectacular. Dany walked into a blazing inferno and emerged alive with three living dragons. At the same time, some of the things that happened at the pyre were truly horrific. Dany burned a woman alive in an act of cruel vengeance, in the same fire as her beloved husband, and the same fire in which Dany attempted suicide after the most traumatic series of events in her life.
Only when I adopt a Dothraki perspective, and suppose that the old men are more correct than Dany, can I see that Dany has unwittingly maligned herself by thinking that a bad omen is the herald of her coming.
Valiant Death
A fire, I’ll have a fire, and clean garb. Where’s Wex? I’ll not go to my grave in dirty clothes.
“You have no hope of holding here,” the maester went on. “If your lord father meant to send you aid, he would have done so by now.” (ACOK Theon VI)
When Theon’s situation at Winterfell becomes hopeless, his thoughts show me that he thinks he’s likely to die. Theon watches from atop Winterfell’s battlements as a Dreadfort army destroys Ser Rodrik’s sieging forces.
Ser Rodrik seemed to have the numbers, but the Dreadfort men were better led, and had taken the others unawares. Theon watched them charge and wheel and charge again, chopping the larger force to bloody pieces every time they tried to form up between the houses. He could hear the crash of iron axeheads on oaken shields over the terrified trumpeting of a maimed horse. The inn was burning, he saw.
Black Lorren appeared beside him and stood silently for a time. The sun was low in the west, painting the fields and houses all a glowing red. A thin wavering cry of pain drifted over the walls, and a warhorn sounded off beyond the burning houses. Theon watched a wounded man drag himself painfully across the ground, smearing his life’s blood in the dirt as he struggled to reach the well that stood at the center of the market square. He died before he got there. He wore a leather jerkin and conical half-helm, but no badge to tell which side he’d fought on.
The crows came in the blue dust, with the evening stars. “The Dothraki believe the stars are spirits of the valiant dead,” Theon said. Maester Luwin had told him that, a long time ago.
“Dothraki?”
“The horselords across the narrow sea.”
“Oh. Them.” Black Lorren frowned through his beard. “Savages believe all manner of foolish things.” (ACOK Theon VI)
Theon witnesses the dying moments of a man who was wounded in the battle. It isn’t possible for Theon to know to which army the man belongs, because the man doesn’t have a badge or other identifying feature on his armor. Because of that, I think Theon doesn’t know how he should feel about the man’s death, and that’s why Theon’s subsequent thoughts take on an existential nature.
Theon’s attention to the Dothraki belief seems strange and out of place, until I remember that Theon is faced with the likelihood of his own death.
I think that gives me some insight into the function of this Dothraki belief. Not all deaths are valiant. I can see how the belief that the stars are spirits of the valiant dead would cause a person to be brave in the face of death. Maybe the belief provides a reason for bravery and excellence to those who hold it. When I find myself in a situation in which my death is unavoidable, maybe the reason the belief provides is that it is best not to die without having put up a good fight, so that in the afterlife I might become a star in the night sky.
If two competing armies, cultures or civilizations are otherwise perfectly equal, the side who is able to muster the most valor in life-or-death situations would out-compete the side who objects to death less effectively. Valor and excellence in the face of certain death maximizes my chance of surviving, in the event that my death wasn’t as certain as I thought.
Hallowed Ground
Other searchers returned with tales of other fruit trees, hidden behind closed doors in secret gardens. Aggo showed her a courtyard overgrown with twisting vines and tiny green grapes, and Jhogo discovered a well where the water was pure and cold. Yet they found bones too, the skulls of the unburied dead, bleached and broken. “Ghosts,” Irri muttered. “Terrible ghosts. We must not stay here, Khaleesi, this is their place.”
“I fear no ghosts. Dragons are more powerful than ghosts.” And figs are more important. “Go with Jhiqui and find me some clean sand for a bath, and trouble me no more with silly talk.” (ACOK Daenerys I)
Strength Right
The fundamental attitude at the heart of Dothraki society is one I will call Strength Right. It’s the attitude that the strong have the right to rule and take from the weak.
“They took Khal Drogo’s herds, Khaleesi,” Rakharo said. “We were too few to stop them. It is the right of the strong to take from the weak. They took many slaves as well, the khal‘s and yours, yet they left some few.” (AGOT Daenerys IX)
The primacy of strength can be seen all throughout Dothraki beliefs and behaviors, such as in their propensity for conquest and enslavement. Strength Right can be seen influencing Dothraki society in subtler ways, too. For example, the growth of a trade economy is stunted due to the Dothraki attitude that trading is unmanly.
For us, however, the only true importance of Vaes Dothrak is the trading that takes place there. The Dothraki themselves will neither buy nor sell, deeming it unmanly, but in their sacred city, by leave of the dosh khaleen, merchants and traders from beyond the Bones and the Free Cities come together, to haggle and exchange goods and gold. (TWOIAF: Beyond the Free Cities, The Grasslands)
Though manliness and strength aren’t exactly the same thing, they’re particularly indistinguishable in everyday Dothraki life.
However, wherever manliness is an inadequate description of strength, I find Dothraki society beginning to break down.
They want a glimpse of dragons to tell their children of, and their children’s children. (ASOS Daenerys III)
To own baby dragons, for example, affords the owner much influence and power, but it isn’t a kind of power or influence that the word “strength” describes quite as well as it describes more traditional kinds of strength, such as physicality.
Wealth is another kind of power that doesn’t fit neatly into this masculine concept of strength. Trade is a system of wealth creation that doesn’t directly involve physicality, so it’s an area where Dothraki society encounters its limitation, unable to accommodate the innovation of trading at large scale due to the mismatch between “masculine strength” and “power,” or “masculine strength” and “influence.”
The Dothraki conflate power and masculinity so strongly that indirect kinds of power sometimes confuse the Dothraki value system and the Dothraki people, causing instability throughout the system and society.
When it comes to Dany’s treatment of Dothraki superstitions, the effect of her decisions at Drogo’s funeral pyre and the resulting miracles is that this weakness in Dothraki society is exposed, penetrated, and consequences both good and bad are set into motion early in the story for readers to consider.
Sex
One of the most unflattering features of Dothraki society is the way Strength Right manifests in Dothraki attitudes towards sex. In a society where nearly every weakness is perceived by the strong as an opportunity to exercise one’s right to take what one wants, such opportunities are scarcely more evident or commonplace than those found in the physiological differences between men and women.
The warriors were watching too. One of them finally stepped into the circle, grabbed a dancer by the arm, pushed her down to the ground, and mounted her right there, as a stallion mounts a mare. Illyrio had told her that might happen. “The Dothraki mate like the animals in their herds. There is no privacy in a khalasar, and they do not understand sin or shame as we do.” (AGOT Daenerys II)
Dany is understandably horrified by the rape. She has never seen anything like Dothraki society before, and, in Westeros, where Dany’s attitudes derive, rape is a heinous crime for which severe punishments are given. However, the more I pay attention to the Dothraki people, the more I come to realize that it is innaccurate to describe this or other instances of Dothraki sex as rape. A comparable kind of inaccuracy would be to describe a khal as the King.
The word King carries other meanings and implications attached to it. For example, in Westeros, the King is someone who wears a crown, who rules over a territory, and whose claim to power is based in a claim to Blood Right. But on the Dothraki sea, the word King is only an approximate translation of the word khal, because none of those three meanings accurately describe a khal. A khal doesn’t wear a crown. A khal doesn’t rule over a territory, because the khalasar is nomadic and there are many khals. A khal’s claim to power is based in Strength Right rather than Blood Right.
Likewise, the word rape carries other meanings in the minds of Dany and the reader that don’t accurately describe what is happening when the Dothraki mate. For example, one implication in the word rape is that the Dothraki women who are targets of the mating generally object to or condemn it. However, when I revisit this first shocking scene of Dothraki sex at Dany’s wedding, I find a notable absence of objections from the Dothraki women, of either the verbal or physical kind.
Across the road, the girl was still crying, her high singsong tongue strange to Dany’s ears. The first man was done with her now, and a second had taken his place.
“She is a lamb girl,” Quaro said in Dothraki. “She is nothing, Khaleesi. The riders do her honor. The Lamb Men lay with sheep, it is known.”
“It is known,” her handmaid Irri echoed. (AGOT Daenerys VII)
After khal Ogo’s khalasar attacks a Lhazareen village, khal Drogo’s khalasar rides in on Ogo’s heels to destroy his rivals and the village together. Dany’s Dothraki handmaid Irri expresses the same attitudes towards sex as the Dothraki men, validating the rape of the Lhazareen.
The women and children of Ogo’s khalasar walked with a sullen pride, even in defeat and bondage; they were slaves now, but they seemed not to fear it. (AGOT Daenerys VII)
The Dothraki women and children of Ogo’s khalasar hold their heads high even as they enter into slavery, showing me that either the Dothraki people are truly as fearless as Jorah says, or that the Dothraki learn from a young age to conquer those instincts that show weakness, lest that weakness broadcast the Strength Right of someone else.
After them would scurry a flock of small girls, pulling arrows from the corpses to fill their baskets. (AGOT Daenerys VII)
Considering the unforgiving existence that shapes both male and female Dothraki from childhood, my assumption that Dothraki women are an exception to the Dothraki Strength Right attitudes in sex or any aspect of life is revealed to have been naive. It’s a lesson that may have never been learned as harshly as it was learned three centuries ago by the King of Gornath.
Sathar was the first of the cities of the grasslands to fall to the Dothraki, but by no means the last. Six years later, Khal Moro razed Kasath as well. In this attack his riders were aided, incredibly, by Gornath, whose king had made common cause with the Dothraki and taken one of Moro’s daughters to wife. Yet Gornath itself fell next, a dozen years afterward. Khal Horro had by that time slain Khal Moro, ending the line of the mighty Khal Mengo. The King of Gornath died at the hand of his own Dothraki wife, who despised him for his weakness, we are told. Afterward, Khal Horro took her for his own, as rats devoured the corpse of her late husband. (TWOIAF Beyond the Free Cities, The Grasslands)
Initially, Illyrio’s comment comparing the Dothraki people to animals seemed dehumanizing of the Dothraki people. Upon a closer look and deeper consideration, my inability to non-judgementally look upon a people who engage in and conceive of sex differently than I do, without losing my grasp of their humanity, was the more profoundly dehumanizing point of view.
Now I’m able to see a minor tragedy in Illyrio’s comment that I couldn’t see before. The tragedy is that a well placed pause after the word mate would have done a better job of conveying to Dany that the way the Dothraki have sex is not inherently malicious.
“The Dothraki mate like the animals in their herds.” (AGOT Daenerys II)
“The Dothraki mate, like the animals in their herds.”
As I notice my own mistake reflected in Daenerys, I can consider the possibility, and perhaps likelihood, that the author’s intention in writing the story this way is to allow the reader to trip over his own attitudes about sex, in order to obscure an interpretation of the story in which Dany’s assumptions about the Dothraki have served her just as poorly in understanding the Dothraki as my identical assumptions about the Dothraki have served me in understanding Daenerys.
So, a more accurate description of what the Dothraki are doing when they have sex with one another is the word mate rather than the word rape. The reason, I gather, is that Strength Right precludes the concept of rape entirely.
Supposing a philosophy in which it is the right of the strong to take from those weaker than him, then, in the context of that philosophy, it isn’t generally possible for the taking to be immoral or undue, because the taker is excercizing a right. The taking, itself, is the proof of the right to take.
This circular bit of reasoning reveals why the Dothraki can’t accommodate the concepts of rape, trade or bribery. Those are a few ideas that slide off the Dothraki psyche like a silk saddle off a horse’s back, because the ideas can only make sense in the absence of the principle that taking things by force is normal and proper. For better or worse, that’s a principle that is rooted more deeply than any other in the Dothraki mind.
I can imagine that, for a person who was born and raised within a Dothraki khalasar, where mating and duels to the death are daily and spontaneous occurrences, no principle would appear more universally and self-evidently true to him than Strength Right.
As Dany rides into the conquered Lhazareen village to meet Drogo, she orders her khas to stop the rapes along the way.
“You heard my words,” she said. “Stop them.” She spoke to her khas in the harsh accents of Dothraki. “Jhogo, Quaro, you will aid Ser Jorah. I want no rape.”
The warriors exchanged a baffled look.
Jorah Mormont spurred his horse closer. “Princess,” he said, “you have a gentle heart, but you do not understand. This is how it has always been. Those men have shed blood for the khal. Now they claim their reward.” (AGOT Daenerys VII)
With my new understanding of the Dothraki, I’m able to better understand the baffled look between Jhogo and Quaro. Dany is speaking in the Dothraki language, so the english words that appear on the page show me what Dany thinks she’s saying. But it’s unreliable narration. Since the Dothraki don’t have a concept of rape, they don’t have a word for rape, either, as distinguished from taking. Whatever Dothraki word Dany is using to mean “rape” must be the same word that the Dothraki understand to mean “taking.”
As Jorah tries to point out, taking is a Dothraki warrior’s reward for fighting on behalf of the khalasar, the khal, and the khaleesi by extension. To remove those rewards is to remove the incentives for fighting. On the Dothraki sea, the result of that would be the certain destruction of the khalasar, its leading family and all.
To be clear, my intention in exploring Dothraki sex is not to justify, condemn, or value it in one way or another. The more important and in some ways more difficult point I hope to impress is that, to search for or demand a justification or condemnation of the way the Dothraki have sex is to misunderstand the Dothraki people in the most fundamental way. Such a demand would be equally meaningless if made regarding the mating patterns of the horses in their herds or the wild dogs that follow them. More to the point, to better incorporate that understanding is to unlock a more complete understanding of Dany’s handling of Dothraki society.
When Daenerys returned to her pyramid, sore of limb and sick of heart, she found Missandei reading some old scroll whilst Irri and Jhiqui argued about Rakharo. “You are too skinny for him,” Jhiqui was saying. “You are almost a boy. Rakharo does not bed with boys. This is known.” Irri bristled back. “It is known that you are almost a cow. Rakharo does not bed with cows.”
“Rakharo is blood of my blood. His life belongs to me, not you,” Dany told the two of them. Rakharo had grown almost half a foot during his time away from Meereen and returned with arms and legs thick with muscle and four bells in his hair. He towered over Aggo and Jhogo now, as her handmaids had both noticed. (ADWD Daenerys VI)
Rakharo’s physique has captured the attentions of Irri and Jhiqui, who I notice are not arguing about which one of them Rakharo would prefer to court, but rather, which one of them Rakharo would prefer to mate. Unsurprisingly, due to Strength Right’s influence in matters of sex, this bizarre society seems to completely lack expectations and traditions of courtship.
Though I wouldn’t elect to live in a society where courtship and all of its alluring tensions are absent, I can see that one tradeoff for the Dothraki is that they’re spared the frustrations associated with too much tension and too little assertiveness.
One sleepless night during the voyage to Astapor, Daenerys tried to find sexual release.
Still, the relief she wanted seemed to recede before her, until her dragons stirred, and one screamed out across the cabin, and Irri woke and saw what she was doing.
Dany knew her face was flushed, but in the darkness Irri surely could not tell. Wordless, the handmaid put a hand on her breast, then bent to take a nipple in her mouth. Her other hand drifted down across the soft curve of belly, through the mound of fine silvery-gold hair, and went to work between Dany’s thighs. It was no more than a few moments until her legs twisted and her breasts heaved and her whole body shuddered. She screamed then. Or perhaps that was Drogon. Irri never said a thing, only curled back up and went back to sleep the instant the thing was done. (ASOS Daenerys II)
Irri’s assertiveness with Dany, and the rather abrupt and unceremonious conclusion of it, shows me again that sex isn’t a big deal to the Dothraki. Much like the way they make other decisions such as which khalasar to fight and which direction to travel, their mating seems less calculated than I would have expected with decisions of such magnitude, and driven by their instincts, impulses and those of people around them, without much thought given to the consequences.
“My khaleesi is sad?”
“Yes,” Dany admitted. Sad and lost.
“Should I pleasure the khaleesi?”
Dany stepped away from her. “No. Irri, you do not need to do that. What happened that night, when you woke … you’re no bed slave, I freed you, remember? You …”
“I am handmaid to the Mother of Dragons,” the girl said. “It is great honor to please my khaleesi.”
“I don’t want that,” she insisted. “I don’t.” She turned away sharply. “Leave me now. I want to be alone. To think.” (ASOS Daenerys II)
Dany seems to think that Irri has forgotten that Dany freed her from slavery at Drogo’s funeral pyre. It suggests that Dany thinks that the reason Irri is pleasuring her is because Irri still feels a sense of servitude leftover from her enslavement. It shows me that Dany still hasn’t realized that the sex she witnessed between the Dothraki people was mating rather than rape, and that her liberation of Irri was less liberating than she thinks it was.
Irri replies that Dany is the Mother of Dragons, and it is a great honor to please her khaleesi. The two comments together lead me to think that Irri means to express a causal relationship between them. At first it seems like a strange reply because, as Dany has just reminded her, Irri has what seems to be a much stronger reason to be devoted to Dany than dragons. That reason is that Dany freed her from slavery. But in light of what I’ve learned about the Dothraki, I think it shows me that Irri’s devotion to Dany has much to do with Irri’s Strength Right sensibilities, because Dany’s dragons and the hatching of them represent strength in many interpretations.
Dany has a conscientious objection to intimacy with Irri. I think it’s because Dany’s own values derive from Westeros, where attitudes about sex are much different, so it’s difficult for her to accommodate the Dothraki attitude in her own relationships.
“In the Seven Kingdoms there are children’s tales of frogs who turn into enchanted princes when kissed by their true love.” (ADWD Daenerys VII)
Westerosi attitudes about sex are characterized by desires and expectations of lifelong monogamy, which undergird everything from their laws to their stories. Dany’s values are deeply held, just as the Dothraki hold theirs, so by refusing to act in conflict with her values she’s protecting them from being modified within her. I think it’s a case in which Dany’s tendency to prioritize her own values over Dothraki values serves her well, even if she doesn’t always recognize when her decisions are producing internal conflicts of comparable magnitude within the Dothraki, or sufficiently take that into her calculations.
Acclaim
An anonymous redditor liked your submission so much that they’ve given it the Silver Award. They’ve included this note: “I love Dany’s arc & this just made me contemplate it in a whole different light. Great thread!”
An anonymous redditor liked your submission so much that they’ve given it the Silver Award. They’ve included this note: “You should just take this while I finish reading, the amount of work you put in here is crazy”
“This is a great analysis.”
“Very in depth essay btw well done!”
“I say this as someone who has read a lot of long and detailed posts on this sub: Sir, this is an Arby’s.”
“Nice and thorough analysis, thanks for the read. I loved the detailed look at the wedding refusal ceremony.”
“Strong analysis!”
Update Feb 20, 2021 – Work in progress.
Update Mar 5, 2021 – Valiant Death WIP
Update Mar 15, 2021 – Bride Gifts WIP
Update Mar 19, 2021 – The Bleeding Star WIP
Update Mar 21, 2021 – Bride Gifts complete, Added Strength Right
Update Mar 25, 2021 – The Poison Water complete
Update Apr 1, 2021 – Strength Right WIP
Update Apr 5, 2021 – Strength Right WIP
Update Apr 18, 2021 – Strength Right WIP
Update Jan 5, 2022 – Strength Right WIP Added Illyrio Minor Tragedy
Apples and Dragons 