I know a common theory is that Missandei could be a faceless man, but could she instead be a sorrowful man? Like, Dany remembers that its said that they never fail so could they just keep coming after her until she’s finally dead?

With no desire to give offense, those are really awful theories. Not only do they have no basis in the text whatsoever, not only do they stand at right angles to established characterization and motive, but they don’t even bear up to a moment’s logical consideration of their basic premises.

Consider this: Missandei has been at Dany’s side, literally at her left hand, and as one of her handmaidens, sleeps in the same tent as Dany, feeds Dany herself, for a year or more. She must have had hundreds if not thousands of opportunities to assassinate Dany, and yet Dany lives. Hell, Missandei acts to save Dany when Mero tries to kill her:

“There’s the treacherous sow,” he said. “I knew you’d come to get your feet kissed one day.” His head was bald as a melon, his nose red and peeling, but she knew that voice and those pale green eyes. “I’m going to start by cutting off your teats.” Dany was dimly aware of Missandei shouting for help…”

“Missandei was pulling Dany to her feet when she heard a crack. She thought Arstan’s staff had snapped until she saw the jagged bone jutting from Mero’s calf.” (ASOS, Dany V)

The Faceless Men are the best in the world, and even the Sorrowful Men are supposed to be competent: does that conspicuous lack of assassination sound like their modus operandi?

Politics of the Seven Kingdoms: The Reach (Part I)

credit to ser-other-in-law Hey folks, so this essay is looking like it’s going to be as long as the Westerlands essay if not longer, so I decided to pre-emptively break it up into pieces so it’s easier to read (and write, to be honest). Part I covers the geography and prehistory of the Reach, Part II will cover the rise of House Gardener and the construction of the Reach as a polity, Part III…

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“(If you doubt me on this, see the first siege of Storm’s End)” What did you meant by that?

During Robert’s Rebellion, Mace Tyrell put Storm’s End under siege and maintained the siege until the end of the war. While most fandom focus on the Siege has been on Stannis and the people inside the walls, it’s important to think about Mace and the people outside the walls:

Mace put Storm’s End under siege rather than pursue Robert Baratheon into the Riverlands, forcing Jon Connington to personally take the field to try to run down the Stormlander army.
He kept Storm’s End under siege even when Connington was beaten at the Battle of the Bells and the rebel hosts of the Starks, Tullys, Arryns, and Baratheons united.
He kept Storm’s End under siege even after Rhaegar returned and marched to the Trident.
He kept Storm’s End under siege even after Rhaegar was defeated at the Trident, and nothing stood between the rebels and King’s Landing.

Does anyone think that Lord Merryweather, Lord Connington, Lord Chelsted, or the King didn’t send letters in all that time, asking the largest contingent of loyalists in all of Westeros to come to the defense of the king? Pointing out that Mace could easily divide his enormous host and still keep Storm’s End under siege while making a decisive turn in the war by giving the loyalists a numerical advantage over the rebel host?

Mace stayed at Storm’s End because it was safe, because he is by nature a cautious and conservative man. It’s the same reason that, when Renly was marching on King’s Landing with a massive, seemingly unbeatable host, Mace stayed behind at Highgarden with 10,000 men to keep him safe and stayed there while Randyll Tarly sorted things out at Bitterbridge, and then went to Bitterbridge once things were safe.

So in a moment of profound uncertainty, with his daughter having been wed to a dead rebel and the Reach politically divided, is Mace Tyrell going to attack Stannis Baratheon on his lonesome, with only the word of Petyr Baelish as surety that he’ll get what he wants after?

No. Because that’s not what happens. Mace stays at Bitterbridge while Baelish sends riders to get Tywin to force-march down to the Reach and sign onto the deal while there’s still time. And as a result of those riders and Tywin’s speedy arrival, they arrive just in the nick of time.

But any delay, even by an hour or two, means the Battle of Blackwater would have been lost.

In regards to the question about Renly, my question would be, is there a better way forward for his general political direction? Like a permanent great council and elective monarchy in the future seems like a possibility to me.

That is absolutely not Renly’s “general political direction” and it points to how Renly is profoundly misunderstood by the fandom. Despite his pretentions to meritocracy and popularity, Renly does not believe in the concept of an elective monarchy or Great Councils at all. He says this directly:

“Robb will set aside his crown if you and your brother will do the same,” she said, hoping it was true. She would make it true if she must; Robb would listen to her, even if his lords would not. “Let the three of you call for a Great Council, such as the realm has not seen for a hundred years. We will send to Winterfell, so Bran may tell his tale and all men may know the Lannisters for the true usurpers. Let the assembled lords of the Seven Kingdoms choose who shall rule them.”

Renly laughed. “Tell me, my lady, do direwolves vote on who should lead the pack?” Brienne brought the king’s gauntlets and greathelm, crowned with golden antlers that would add a foot and a half to his height. “The time for talk is done. Now we see who is stronger.” Renly pulled a lobstered green-and-gold gauntlet over his left hand, while Brienne knelt to buckle on his belt, heavy with the weight of longsword and dagger.”

When you take away the witty repartee, Renly’s political theory is naked tyranny – his personal excellence or popularity only matter to the extent that they attract soldiers to install him as king by force of arms, and you can see how paper-thin those rationalizations are when Catelyn tells him to put his money where his mouth is and stand for election in front of the political community and Renly says no.

I’m honestly perplexed how people keep missing the fact that Renly is a hollow man: the thematics are everywhere, from Donal Noye comparing him to copper to Maester Cressen remembering him as a pageantry-obsessed attention-seeking child. The tragedy of Brienne in ACOK is that Renly doesn’t give a damn about her (as Loras says later, “Renly thought she was absurd. A woman dressed in man’s mail, pretending to be a knight”), he only gives her the cloak because Barristan didn’t show up and he knows he can make use of her (“He said that all his other knights wanted things of him, castles or honors or riches, but all that Brienne wanted was to die for him”), he knows she’s in love with him and treats her like a dog he can summon and dismiss whenever he wants (”His words seemed to strike the girl harder than any blow she had taken that afternoon. “As you will, Your Grace.” Brienne sat, eyes downcast.”).

And as I’ve explained in my recaps of AGOT and ACOK, Renly does all of this knowing that Joffrey is not Robert’s heir, that Stannis is telling the truth, that he himself has no right to be king. HE IS A BAD MAN WITH GOOD PR.

Is the Wildlings being so under developed significantly due to culture, ie refusing to organize into larger polities and shunning wargs who could be useful in many ways such as hunting better? After all the Thenns have managed to have a sophisticated civilization despite living in the same environment and there was even hardhome. If say hardhome was never destroyed and both it and the thenns managed to expand to a greater degree and open up trade with northerners could they have managed to create a society capable of matching other planetos ones politically and technologically?

Man, people are really, really interested in economic development of a region that’s really not suited to economic development.

No, wildling underdevelopment is mostly not due to culture, but the fact that A. most wildlings lack very important technologies like agriculture and metal-working, and B. Beyond-the-Wall is an incredibly harsh natural environment that doesn’t allow for much in the way of surplus food – this forces most people to spend their time on acquiring the necessities of survival, makes specialization difficult if not impossible, etc.

Of the wildlings, really only the Thenns have managed to maintain the level of technology (bronze-working, subsistence agriculture) that the First Men had back in the Dawn Age, and I’m pretty sure that’s only because the Valley of the Thenns provides enough of a protection from winter storms to allow for crops to be planted and harvested.

Anon Asks:

Timeline question: How old was Aegon when Volantis was defeated during the bleeding years? It seems confusing since Argilic was said to have slain the king of the reach twenty years after it, Aegon would seem to have been only a boy at the time, since he was born less than three decades before he began his conquest of westeros, how do you make sense of this, could he really have participated at such an age or is this a case of the dates being wrong?

Good question! As one might expect, Volantis’ rise and fall in the Century of Blood was a somewhat drawn-out process. So here’s my best guess of how the timeline works out:

We know that the Doom of Valyria provoked “immediate political upheaval,” with revolutions in Tyosh, Lys (and presumably Myr) against the dragonlords. (This is a bit confusing since WOIAF tells us the Free Cities had bought their right to self-government from Valyria, but it’s possible that this right was somewhat honored in the breach, especially in a crisis, or that the Free Cities acted out of fear that their rights would be taken by the dragonlords in said crisis.)
We also know that the Volantenes “quickly laid claim to Valyria’s mantle,” which suggests that the war began pretty quickly after the Doom, so probably within a year or two of 114 BC.
We also know how long the ascendancy of Volantis lasted: “a Volantene fleet took Lys and a Volantene army captured Myr, and for two generations all three cities were ruled from within the Black Walls.” (ADWD) Given that a generation is roughly 30-35 years, that suggests that the Volantenes were successful in their expansionist offensive from around 114 to around 53-44 BC.
Then we learn of a whole bunch of stuff happening in quick succession: Volantis tries to conquer Tyrosh, Pentos joins the war on Tyrosh’s side, Lys and Myr rebel, Braavos finances Lysene resistance, and the Storm King defeats Volantene attempt to retake Myr. This lets us know roughly when Argilac was warring in the Disputed Lands – given his age (Argilac was born roughly 60 BC), and the fact that this campaign is the first campaign after his boyhood that’s mentioned in the text), but also comes after all of the previous events, it probably happened closer to 44 BC. This would place the Battle of Summerfield around 22 BC.
We then get a bunch of details that give us some hints as to when Aegon was involved. We learn for example that Aegon was “still-young,” that his intervention came “near the end” of the Century of the Blood, and that he joined the war at the behest of Pentos and Tyrosh (which places it definitely after their alliance). Now Aegon was definitely born in 27 BC, which means that he really couldn’t have partaken much before 13 BC – but this is only problematic if we get overly finicky about the “Century” part of the “Century of Blood.”
So Aegon gets involved very late in the war, burns “a Volantene fleet that was preparing to invade” Lys in what must have been a very last-ditch counter-offensive, and then Dagger Lake and the Dothraki show up and the elephants overthrow the tigers – which we know happened right around 0 AC, since Aegon VI describes the elephants as having “ruled the city for three hundred years” in the year 300 AC. This suggests that Aegon’s intervention must have happened only a few years before the Conquest, at most around 4 BC, when he was in his early 20s. (Which counts as still-young, I suppose.)
Moreover, we also learn that “shortly after his role in defeating Volantis it is written he lost all interest in the affairs of the east…’[and] turned his gaze west,” which are the last words in WOIAF before the account of the Conquest begins. This is further evidence that Aegon’s involvement must have happened only a few years before the Conquest.

As long as we’re willing to accept that the Century is more of a handy moniker than a precise chronological metric, the problem resolves itself nicely.

Maester Steven, I can’t find anything on the borders of the Valyrian Freehold. They don’t seem to have ever spread east of the Bone Mountains, but there’s also nothing stating the Sarnorians or Qartheen were under their control. So, what are your thoughts on the extent of their territory?

Good question!

The Valyrian empire did not extend into the lands of the Sarnori: “the confederation of cities later called the Kingdom of Sarnor survived the Valyrian expansion thanks to the great plain that separated one from the other.” Indeed, the Valyrians tended to look west rather than east (”once the Ghiscari wars had ended, the dragonlords of Valyria turned their gaze to the west…With the destruction of the Rhoynar, Valyria soon achieved complete domination of the western half of Essos, from the narrow sea to Slaver’s Bay, and from the Summer Sea to the Shivering Sea.”) for conquest.

The Lands of Ice and Fire are also helpful here:

Essaria (now known as Vaes Khadokh) was a Valyrian colony due east of Qohor, connected to the Free Cities by the Valyrian roads that connected the Freehold to its trading partners – to the port city of Saath in the north and Sarnath of the Tall Towers in the east. So we can conclude with a high degree of confidence that Valyria’s eastern border was somewhere around Essaria (perhaps at the banks of that enormous river?) and that at some point Valyria managed to work out a treaty allowing them to extend their roads into the Kingdom of Sarnor for the purposes of trade.

Further to the south, we can look to the extent of Ghiscari territory to guess at how far east Valyria extended once old Ghis was conquered. Krazaaj Has, Vaes Mejhah, Vaes Efe, were all Ghiscari colonies, but Yinishar and Adakhakileki were not. So I’d say the furthest east Valyria got through its conquest of Old Ghis is Vaes Efe.

Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis: Tyrion II, ASOS

“And my father? Who does he have spying on me?”
This time the eunuch laughed aloud. “Why, me, my lord.”
Synopsis: Tyrion meets with Varys (yay!) and then with Shae (boooo!).
SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.
(more…)

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Do you think the theory about Gendry being Cersei’s son might be true?

Oh not this again!

This theory is doubly stupid, because Gendry remembers his mother!

poorquentyn:

So if Jojenpaste is a theory I understand even though I think it’s unlikely, this one just baffles me to no end. Cersei has no motivation whatsoever to bear Robert’s child, and the text from AGOT to AFFC makes it clear she didn’t:

“Your Robert got me with child once,” she said, her voice thick with contempt. “My brother found a woman to cleanse me. He never knew. If truth be told, I can scarcely bear for him to touch me, and I have not let him inside me for years. I know other ways to pleasure him, when he leaves his whores long enough to stagger up to my bedchamber. Whatever we do, the king is usually so drunk that he’s forgotten it all by the next morning.”

Whilst you snored, I would lick your sons off my face and fingers one by one, all those pale sticky princes. You claimed your rights, my lord, but in the darkness I would eat your heirs.

Also, I mean, she’s the Queen. Pulling off assignations with Jaime is tricky enough. Carrying a pregnancy to term in secrecy is simply not possible.

“He asked me questions is all, m’lord.”

“What sort of questions?”

The boy shrugged. “How was I, and was I well treated, and if I liked the work, and stuff about my mother. Who she was and what she looked like and all.”

“What did you tell him?” Ned asked.

The boy shoved a fresh fall of black hair off his forehead. “She died when I was little. She had yellow hair, and sometimes she used to sing to me, I remember. She worked in an alehouse.”

So it’s not just Cersei acting completely out of character based on both dialogue and inner monologue, it’s not just the complete logistical absurdity of the Queen hiding a pregnancy to term, this theory involves the complete erasure of another person.

Now, there are some people who willingly misinterpret the detail about the hair color to argue that this woman was Cersei in disguise, when it is blindingly obvious that it’s just one more piece of evidence for the “seed is strong”/Baratheon dominant hair color gene. This is even more logistically insane: it’s impossible enough for Cersei to hide a pregnancy to term; how the hell is she going to sneak away from the Red Keep to be a single mother to Gendry and hold down a low-wage service sector job?

But what really irritates me about this theory is that (as best as I can recall) it only came about because of that stupid added scene from Game of Thrones Season 1 where Cersei decides to tell Catelyn about a made-up black haired baby. So I blame Benioff and Weiss for this one.

Tywin has made somewhat famous the saying “any man who must say ‘I am the king’ is no true king.” Could you explain what he is supposed to mean by that. I can’t really figure it out. I know it’s Tywin and the cornerstone of his character is that he is full of shit, but I would still like to understand.

Ah, good question.

As I understand it, it’s similar to the difference between the first face of power (the coercive authority to achieve compliance) and the second and third (agenda-setting and hegemonic ideological power) faces of power. Namely, that a strong king’s authority is so secure that they don’t need to engage in displays of coercive authority because everyone already accepts them as the true source of legitimacy.

What he’s really talking about is Aerys. Aerys was paranoid and insecure, so he kept lashing out with displays meant to emphasize his kingship – burning people alive, having people’s tongues torn out, etc. The effect was the opposite, to make him seem like a weak, mad king who didn’t deserve to be on the Iron Throne.

Contrast Aerys to Jaehaerys I – a king so secure that he doesn’t need to make open displays of force to get what he wants. All he has to do is show up on a royal progress with all of his dragons and his force of personality and his expert administrators and people knuckle under because they already believe resistance is futile.