At last, at long last…manuscript revisions are done and turned in to the publisher. Words cannot describe how relieved I feel. It has been three years of trying to turn my dissertation into a proper book; ten years since I started writing it; and many sleepless nights wondering whether anyone would ever read this thing which I’ve devoted a third of my life to. Among the many things this means is…
Yeah, there’s some truth to that. For every moment that one could go back to in the past which you could call a triumph or a moment of progress for black people, it’s impossible not to find also some horror that must be set against it. You cannot tell the story of the civil rights movement without the horrific racial violence that accompanied each and every step forward; the Harlem Renaissance came on the heels of the worst years for lynching and race riots America has ever seen; the story of Juneteenth cannot be told without telling the story of slavery.
Even if you go all the way back to that early period before the Slave Codes began to formalize and institutionalize a racial divide in American society out of fear that the alliance between white indentured servants and black slaves that had resulted in Bacon’s Rebellion would come again, you’re still talking about what people would later call “slavery times.”
“Oh, my sweet summer child. What do you know of fear?”
There are places in the world of ASOIAF where Metropolis is revealed as Moloch, where the horror takes on a hideous cosmic tinge, where curses are real. Harrenhal is one, of course, and the Nightfort is another.
But I feel there’s one often left off the list.
“Bricks and blood built Astapor,” Whitebeard murmured at her side, “and bricks and blood her
people.”
“What is that?” Dany asked him, curious.
“An old rhyme a maester taught me, when I was a boy. I never knew how true it was. The
bricks of Astapor are red with the blood of the slaves who make them.”
Astapor is hell. This is made nigh-explicit by the very first sentence set there:
In the center of the Plaza of Pride stood a red brick fountain whose waters smelled of
brimstone, and in the center of the fountain a monstrous harpy made of hammered bronze.
Indeed, when we’re introduced to the Red City, it’s a sprawling charnel house dedicated to unspeakable abuses, GRRM framing its elites as human-shaped ticks grown fat on blood. Hell is a market in human suffering, in which pain is the core of the advertising.
“We give each boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs. It makes for a good strong lesson, we find.”
He stopped before a thickset man who had the look of Lhazar about him and brought his whip up
sharply, laying a line of blood across one copper cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood there,
bleeding. “Would you like another?” asked Kraznys.
“If it please your worship.”
“To win his spiked cap, an Unsullied must go to the slave marts with a silver mark, find some wailing newborn, and kill it before its mother’s eyes. In this way, we make certain that there is no weakness left in them.”
Kraznys moved to the next eunuch in line, a towering youth with the blue eyes and flaxen hair
of Lys. “Your sword,” he said. The eunuch knelt, unsheathed the blade, and offered it up hilt
first. It was a shortsword, made more for stabbing than for slashing, but the edge looked razor sharp.
“Stand,” Kraznys commanded.
“Your worship.” The eunuch stood, and Kraznys mo Nakloz slid the sword slowly up his torso,
leaving a thin red line across his belly and between his ribs. Then he jabbed the swordpoint in
beneath a wide pink nipple and began to work it back and forth.
“What is he doing?” Dany demanded of the girl, as the blood ran down the man’s chest.
“Tell the cow to stop her bleating,” said Kraznys, without waiting for the translation. “This will
do him no great harm. Men have no need of nipples, eunuchs even less so.” The nipple hung by a
thread of skin. He slashed, and sent it tumbling to the bricks, leaving behind a round red eye
copiously weeping blood.
“Douquor’s Pit has a fine
folly scheduled for the evening. A bear and three small boys. One boy will be rolled in honey,
one in blood, and one in rotting fish, and she may wager on which the bear will eat first.”
Somehow I think the man whose maiden speech in the House of Lords was in defense of the Luddites who had destroyed weaving machinery to protest wage cuts would not have approved.
Well, we know that the Wull once came to Winterfell (at least in Bran’s lifetime) to do homage (and possibly other clansmen as well):
“That’s their sigil,” said Bran. “Three brown buckets on a blue field, with a border of white and grey checks. Lord Wull came to Winterfell once, to do his fealty and talk with Father, and he had the buckets on his shield. He’s no true lord, though. Well, he is, but they call him just the Wull, and there’s the Knott and the Norrey and the Liddle too. At Winterfell we called them lords, but their own folk don’t.“
I think it likely that similar visits of clan chiefs to Winterfell occurred during the rule of Lord Rickard as well (especially since the Lady of Winterfell, Lyarra Stark, had a Flint of the mountains for a mother), and considered other Stark rulers with that particular brand of loyalty we see expressed in the story. @racefortheironthronespeculated that the mountain clansmen were among the very first bannermen of the Starks while they were trying to consolidate power in the North: though the relationship has been tinged with violence and disputes of judgment, the mountain clans – who hold the laws of hospitality paramount – may well remember the Starks’ munificence in opening up the winter town to protect them against the harshness of winter.
The Queen Regent (NFriel)
The other thing is that the winter town is a recurring thing in the present day, it’s not like it happened back in the Long Night and never again. So the hill clans more than most Northern houses have regular contact with their liege lords, which breeds a level of familiarity and identification.
Definitely the latter. If you look at the Stark family tree, they almost entirely either marry within the North or to houses outside the North that are First Men in origin. So when the Starks were looking for a bride for Beron, the First Men heritage of the Royces and the way in which the Royces have preserved that heritage (although not their religion, interestingly), definitely helped.
The thing about feudal aristocracy is that they take issues of blood relation really seriously, because it’s linked to claims of inheritance, and the key poltiical units are extended families rather than nuclear families. So you back your relatives’ claim because it might become your claim down the line, or because them being in power means you can benefit (through offices, perks, fosterages, marriages, etc.), but ultimately because it’s good for the Family Business.
Now, it’s not a guarantee – the fact that Richard Plantagenet, the Duke of York was married to Cecily Neville, the aunt of Richard Neville the Earl of Warwick, certainly helped the formation of a political alliance between the two Richards during the Wars of the Roses; on the other hand, Richard was also a cousin of the Percys through his mother (as well as through his wife, whose sister had married into the Percys), but they sided with the Lancastrians.
I’d describe it as more of a tendency than an absolute.
To give a real-world example, someone from Texas who goes to South America or Europe might be called a “Yankee” because that label has come to stand for all Americans, even though that Texan might object fiercely because, in their native Texas, that term has a different meaning and context that most people in South America or Europe don’t know. Likewise, an American might call someone with a Scottish or Irish accent “English” because their context for what those terms mean comes entirely from Hollywood and television, with no understanding of the historical background that makes those categories quite separate in their own context.
So in the context of Planetos, Westeros was conquered by the Andals 6,000 years ago, and most of the continent is Andal in heritage. Since the Andals came from Essos, to the extent that most Essosi know anything about Westeros, they know it as the land that the Andals conquered, lacking the context of the North’s continued independence, etc. Hence most people call everyone from Westeros an Andal, even when they’re actually a First Man.
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