Episode 92: A CLASH OF KINGS, TYRION V: "Bathing in Fire" SHOW NOTES! (Patreon)

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish. 

And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.          

Welcome to the ninety-second episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Bathing in Fire: An Analysis of ACOK, Tyrion V,” in which the street preachers ranting about the apocalypse overtaking King’s Landing don’t even know how right they are. 

This episode is brought to you by our Small Council: 

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack 
• Grand Maester Timbob
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N. 
• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
• Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
• Jancy O, Lady Commander of the Night’s Watch
• Lord Gene, Master of Coin
• Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
• Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
• Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
• Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
• Lord Micah: Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• The High Bearded Priest
• The Blue-Ringed Octoling
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian
• Hedrigal, Captain of the Air Ship Arrogance
• His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
• Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
• Laurence, Prince of Dorne
• Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs
• Steven the Steadfast, Master of Hounds
• The Blue Winter Rose Knight of Highgarden
• Lady Stephanie
• Lord Wryinn
• Lord Anonymous
• Lord Carlos
• Lord Andrew the Restless, a Priest of the Drowned God
• The King's Cook, Nolly (No-lee) Olly (Oh-lee), Master of Cannoli
• Ser Sourcedelica 
• And our newest members of the small council, promoted from our high lords patron tier!: 
  • Prince Matthew of House Targaryen - Proud Soy Boy of Summerhall, Defender of the 5th Book and Swing Dancer with Dragons
  • Ser K.W. Dent, Elsie of the Blackwood Guard, and Batman of the Seven Kingdoms

Spoiler warning: All published books,  5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!

Question

Guilty Undertaker, a Sworn Sword patron, asks:

Question: you’ve mentioned your theory that Euron was Bloodraven’s protege: might he have been Quellon’s as well? Euron was the most intelligent of his generation of Greyjoys by a fair margin and unlike his brothers, he seems to realize that the Old Way is shallow and foolish, a view he shared with his father. However, while Quellon’s view was “why reave when you can trade?” Euron’s is “why reave when you can conquer?”

So, thank you Guilty Undertaker for the question. If you guys want to ask us questions that we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to subscribe as a Sworn Sword or higher patron at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF. And for our Poor Fellow and above patrons, our next patreon-only episode is coming out for you all on the week before Christmas, and it will feature none other than Ser Joe Buckley, author of the excellent and recently published The Great Castles of Westeros: An Unofficial Guide, and we’ll be talking about the castle of Winterfell: past, present and future!

But as this is the holiday season, we come bearing good news of great joy that will be for all the people.Our episode with Ser Joe Buckley will available a week early for our patrons, but it will also be available for everyone on Christmas Eve on our public podcast feed! We love all of our listeners, and this is our special holiday gift to you all. Thank you so much for another wonderful year of listening to us, and we look forward to many more years to come! And, if you like what you hear on that episode, please consider supporting us on patreon where we release monthly bonus ASOIAF and Fevre Dream episodes for all $5/above month or more patrons again at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF!

But enough about patreon and happy tidings. Let’s get onto Tyrion Lannister. At last look, Tyrion had just Kanye’d his small counselors and heard news of Renly marching on King’s Landing. He might want to start seeing to the defenses of King’s Landing and find out which traitor on the small council was stupid enough to out himself. So, let’s delve into all that in this synopsis of A Clash of Kings, Tyrion V!

Synopsis

Tyrion is glad he listened to the pyromancers’ warning to dress appropriately as huddles into his heavy, wool clothing in the cold basement of the Guildhall of the Alchemists. Timmet, his guard, had chosen not to dress so warmly and had thus beaten feet and run for the warmth upstairs rather than face the chill of basement. Tyrion thinks they’re under Rhaenys’ hill. He notices that the stone walls were wet with spots of potassium nitrate on them. And the only light was the one carried by Wisdom Hallyne the Pyromancer. And he was being super duper careful with the lamp.

Tyrion grabs one of the jars, noting that it’s shaped to look like a fat, clay grapefruit. The clay was thin, fragile, and Tyrion takes measures not to squeeze or let his fingers get slippery, but he feels how the pot is rough. Hallyne states that this is intentional to prevent the jars from slipping and crashing onto the floor and killing fucking everyone. My god.

The wildfire oozed slowly toward the lip of the jar when Tyrion tilted it to peer inside. The color would be a murky green, he knew, but the poor light made that impossible to confirm. “Thick,” he observed.

Thank you for saying so, Hallyne says. Yeah, it’s thiccc, Hallyene says with 3 c’s, probably making a quick peek dickward before grinning and getting some sweaty palms. Oh, you meant the wildfire. Ah, well, that’s thick, because it’s cold down here. Hallyene then gets described by Tyrion as looking like a corpse with wet hands and an obsequious manner. And, of course, Hallyne is wearing very non-ominous flame and black-colored robes. But let’s get back to the wildfire, shall we?

“As it warms, the substance will flow more easily, like lamp oil.”

The substance was the pyromancers’ own term for wildfire. They called each other wisdom as well, which Tyrion found almost as annoying as their custom of hinting at the vast secret stores of knowledge that they wanted him to think they possessed.

A while back, the pyromancers were guild kings. Everybody wanted a piece of them, but the Citadel and the maesters overtook them. There were only a few pyromancers remaining, and they didn’t even claim to the power of alchemy anymore.

Tyrion states that wildfire can’t be put out by water, and Hallyne agrees. Wildfire burns through cloth, wood, leather, steel. Everything burns when wildfire touches it. This causes Tyrion to remember Thoros of Myr and how he used to coat his sword with wildfire during tourney melees. Robert would give him a new sword to replace the ruined husk of his former sword. 

But back to the present. Hallyne asks if Tyrion wants to go down south, no, not that -- down into the basement where the older pots of wildfire were stored. Those pots of wildfire were straight fire, older and more dangerous. Created in the days of Aerys II, these pots of wildfire were stored way, way down in the lowest vaults with water in them. But there was something odd about those pots. They should have been destroyed. But they weren’t. There weren’t enough pyromancer acolytes, according to Hallyne. And more of those older pots keep turning up all around King’s Landing:

“And much of stock we made for Aerys lost. Only last year, two hundred jars were discovered in a storeroom beneath the Great Sept of Baelor. No one could recall how they came there, but I’m sure I do not need to tell you that the High Septon was beside himself with terror.

Hallyne and the rest of the Pyromancers had helpfully moved the jars from out under the Great Sept by night probably to prevent mass chaos from unfolding -- which would make a lot of sense. Literally, one dude dropping one of these pots would kill hundreds of thousands of people, my god! Tyrion puts the jar back and asks whether the jars from King Aerys’ day can still be used and their current count of jars?

“This morning the Wisdom Munciter told me that we had seven thousand eight hundred and forty. That count includes four thousand jars from King Aerys’s day, to be sure.”

Hallyne says that they’ll have the ten thousand that Cersei requested but only if they have enough time. The recipe itself was a secret, but Tyrion knew that it was a mixture that took a long time to make. And though he had been skeptical of ten thousand jars, maybe they weren’t lying. He doesn’t know if he should freak out or be happy about this. Maybe both at the same time.

Tyrion warns Hallyne not to get too hasty with production so as to prevent defective wildfire or again, accidentally explode the bejesus out of King’s Landing. My god. But Hallyne’s got it covered. The wildfire is prepared in bare stone cells by acolytes. Apprentices then carry the jars to rooms filled with sand, and a “protective spell” on the floor would cause the floor to fall away with the sand smothering the blaze.

By spell Tyrion imagined Hallyne meant clever trick.

All the same, Hallyne says not to worry one bit. Everyone in the guild respects the hell out of the wildfire, but he’s concerned about giving the substance to common soldiers. One mistake could spell catastrophe. Yeah! It’s a fucking miracle catastrophe hasn’t already been spelled, my god. Hallyne’s father warned Aerys II about said catastrophe, and his grandpa said as much to Jaehaerys II. 

“They must have listened,” Tyrion said. “If they had burned the city down, someone would have told me. So your counsel is that we had best be careful?”

“Be very careful,” said Hallyne. “Be very very careful.”

Tyrion asks if he has a lot of the jars, and Hallyne says they sure do. So, Tyrion wants to take a few thousand of them -- not the ones already filled with wildfire, thank you. Just the empty pots. Those pots are to go to each of the gate captains. When Hallyne starts to ask why, Tyrion cuts him off, saying y’know don’t ask. But for now, he’s seen enough. He needs to get warm.

So, Hallyne leads Tyrion up the stairs by lamplight. He thanks Tyrion for coming, saying that the last Hand of the King who came was Rossart who was a pyromancer before Aerys promoted him to hand of the king. Aerys, you see, loved the shit out of wildfire. I mean, he promoted a fucking guildmember to the 2nd highest office in the land. But according to Hallyne, Aerys took ... interest in the substance.

King Aerys used you to roast the flesh off his enemies. His brother Jaime had told him a few stories of the Mad King and his pet pyromancers.

Hallyne wonders if Joffrey would like to come visit to maybe feast with the pyromancers, but Tyrion says that Joffrey forbade feasting until the war was won -- at Tyrion’s insistence. Well, maybe the pyromancers could come visit Joffrey then to demonstrate their powers? Ah, maybe. Tyrion will ask Cersei, but internally, Tyrion thinks it may not be the best idea to put a fucking psychopath in the presence of wildfire that could kill everyone. God knows what he would do with that shit.

Up the stairs, Tyrion meets back up with Timett, and they move through the complex maze of out into the city proper. Outside, Tyrion encounters the rest of the Burned Men (his escorts for the day), and thinks it’s quite fine that he has a bunch of scarred, scary barbarians for guards given how tense everything has been going in the city.

Not three nights past, another mob had gathered at the gates of the Red Keep, chanting for food. Joff had unleashed a storm of arrows against them, slaying four, and then shouted down that they had his leave to eat their dead. Winning us still more friends.

Surprisingly, Bronn is waiting for Tyrion down at his litter, and he’s there to be Tyrion’s mailman. Jacelyn Bywater, AKA Ironhand needs Tyrion to come to the Gate of Gods for a reason he didn’t share with Bronn. Also, Cersei has summoned Tyrion to the Red Keep. Ser Lancel delivered that message to Bronn. Tyrion judges that the more important message is from Ser Jacelyn, and he also judges keeping Cersei waiting will make her impatient, stupid and mad online. So, he opts to go visit Bywater first.

At the Gate of the Gods, Ser Jacelyn greets him and reports that Ser Cleos Frey has arrived from Riverrun with a letter from Robb Stark offering peace terms. Tyrion immediately asks to see Cleos, his cousin, and they take him over to a windowless room. Cleos immediately jumps up, proclaiming that he’s very happy to see Tyrion, but, um, where’s Cersei? Busy, Tyrion says. But let’s see that letter, shall we?

Tyrion glances over the letter, notices that Cleos is looking a bit frail.

Ser Cleos lowered himself onto a bench. “It is bad in the riverlands, Tyrion. Around the Gods Eye and along the kingsroad especially. The river lords are burning their own crops to try and starve us, and your father’s foragers are torching every village they take and putting the smallfolk to the sword.”

That was the way of war. The smallfolk were slaughtered while the highborn were held for ransom. Remind me to thank the gods that I was born a Lannister, Tyrion thought.

Boy, I was almost starting to like you again, Tyrion.

Cleos reports that his diplomatic party was attacked twice by whom he couldn’t say. They might have been bannermen to House Stark, Tully or Lannister. But now? They’re broken men. Tyrion asks about the Starks as he reads the letter and examines the map, noting that Robb was only asking for half the kingdom and what he perceives to be Lannister capitulation in the war. Cleos says that Robb’s hiding at Riverrun, so fuckin’ scared of master strategist Tywin Lannister who BTW, don’t say this too loudly, got totally strategically pantsed by Robb Stark just a little while ago. The Stark-Tully strength grows less as the river lords are off to defend their own lands. Tyrion wonders if this was what master war criminal Tywin wanted. But he rolls up the Stark map and says that this proposal won’t do. He won’t even trade Tion Frey and Willem Lannister - Tion being Cleos’ younger brother - for Sansa and Arya. But Tyrion will send his own proposal back with Cleos to Riverrun:

Clearly, the prospect did not cheer him. “My lord, I do not believe Robb Stark will yield easily. It is Lady Catelyn who wants this peace, not the boy.”

“Lady Catelyn wants her daughters,” Tyrion replies.

Tyrion tells Cleos that Jacelyn will attend to him until he’s ready to dispatch him back for Riverrun. He heads out of the room and observes Ironhand taking a gander at his new recruits.There had been a lot of recruits given that the gold cloaks were receiving the best in food and clothing. But Tyrion knows these goobers wouldn’t fare well in an actual battle. Tyrion instructs Jacelyn to take care of Cleos but don’t allow the northmen entry into the city. Tyrion doesn’t want the northmen to know how bad it is inside of King’s Landing. Finally, Tyrion tells Jacelyn - to Ironhand’s consternation - that he’ll be hand-receipted some pots from the alchemist’s guild to train to use wildfire. He’ll use paint at first, then lamp oil, then real wildfire.

Tyrion then heads out in his litter, thinking about how Cersei won’t be happy about Tyrion intercepting Robb’s letter. But he wasn’t here to make Cersei happy. All the same, Tyrion has a plan for Robb Stark:

Let the boy wait at Riverrun dreaming of an easy peace. Tyrion would reply with terms of his own, giving the King in the North just enough of what he wanted to keep him hopeful.

Well, I’ll be fucked. Is Tyrion thinking cynically here? Nooooooooo.

Tyrion imagines that it’ll be a really hilarious prank on the Starks to have Cleos riding back and forth between King’s Landing and Riverrun with pretend offers of peace while Stafford Lannister gets his army ready in the west while Tywin waits at Harrenhal. And then, again, just a prank, bro, Tywin and Stafford would make for a Robb Stark sandwich at Riverrun. The Lannister brothers-in-law are the bread, Robb the meat in this worst of all possible analogies. So, that was the Starks. That was easy street. K, Tyrion.

The real threat, in Tyrion’s mind, continued to be the Baratheons. Renly was moving up slowly from Highgarden with a massive army, but it continues to be Stannis that’s the real threat for Tyrion. If Stannis sailed from Dragonstone, they’d be in deep shit, and maybe they’d have wildfire ready to repel Stannis. But that’s a giant question mark. 

Tyrion’s just in the middle of this thought when he notices a commotion. Turns out it’s a prophet, dressed in his monastic best, and boy does he have some things to say!

“Corruption!” the man cried shrilly. “There is the warning! Behold the Father’s scourge!” he pointed at the fuzzy red wound in the sky.

The prophet goes on to denounce the Lannister incest, the psychotic king, the lie that Littlefinger put out about Selyse and Patchface, the gluttony of fat High Septon, Robert and his whoremongering and oh yes, the prophet thinks that “twisted little monkey demon” is a giant piece of shit. Twisted little monkey demon? Who’s that? Tyrion. Yup our protagonist of A Clash of Kings. Hard to believe, isn’t it.

The prophet demands that all repent lest they be cleansed.

“Bathe in the wine of righteousness, or you shall be bathed in fire! Fire!”

No foreshadowing there whatsoever. We’re moving on.

Some of the crowd repeats fire, fire, but others hoot derision at the prophet. Tyrion thinks that it’s funny (for the moment) that he’s being called a demon little monkey man, and he agrees that the High Septon is obese. But he moves on, and as he moves, he thinks that things are about to go right. He only needed time and his chain to be completed. He climbs up to the Tower of the Hand and runs headlong into a metaphorical buzzsaw.

Cersei turned away from the window, her skirts swirling around her slender hips. “How dare you ignore my summons!”

At long last, we get to Emmett’s favorite recurring part of ACOK: Tyrion and Cersei “converse.”

Tyrion is annoyed that Cersei is here and demands to know how she got up to his tower. Well, it’s not his tower. It’s Joffrey’s. Tyrion, very annoyed now, says that he was on his way to Cersei, but she doubts him. So, he goes and fills a wine cup. He asks what could he possibly have done to incur such wrath from Cersei. Remember Tyrion IV? Turns out, she’s pretty fucking angry that Tyrion was going to send Myrcella away. 

Myrcella, Tyrion thought. Well, that egg has hatched. Let’s see what color the chick is.

Tyrion responds that Myrcella is a princess, and that she was going to be married off regardless -- that is, unless Cersei planned for Myrcella to marry Tommen. In the words of Ser Dennis Reynolds, it’s about the implication. Cersei slaps the wine out of Tyrion’s hand, completely getting the implication, telling her brother that she’s Joffrey’s regent. And Myrcella will not be shipped off to Dorne!

Tyrion shook wine off his fingers and sighed. “Why not? She’d be a deal safer in Dorne than she is here.”

But Cersei is unappeased. The Dornish fucking hate the Lannisters. And for no good reason! The Lannisters only murdered Doran and Oberyn Martell’s sister as well as their niece and nephew. No big deal. Get over it. 

But Tyrion says the hatred is only a generation deep. The antipathy between Dorne and the stormlands is deeper. Renly has taken the Dornish for granted. But sending Myrcella to Dorne as an honored guest keeps the Dornish out of the war. Besides, if Cersei is really concerned for Myrcella’s safety, Doran Martell will likely be nicer to her than Joffrey is to Sansa. And he’ll be sending Ser Arys “Simple Himmler” Oakheart with her. And he’s also promised Doran certain things - castles, justice for Elia Martell - little things that’ll keep Dorne off their backs or joining with Renly.

Well, those aren’t little things to Cersei. Cersei states that Tyrion promised too much. Worse, Tyrion had done it all without Cersei’s consent. And boy, you have to wonder if the Lannister siblings had anything resembling a good relationship and shred of mutual trust, they’d be able to work this out much easier. But no. Tyrion gets sarcastic instead and asks if Cersei planned to offer, and I’ll quote Tyrion here, “that hole between your legs.” She slaps him hard, and I don’t blame her.

“Sweet sister,” Tyrion said. “I promise you, that was the last time you will ever strike me.”

Cersei, getting all evil queen-y here, says that Tyrion can’t threaten her. Nothing will keep Tyrion safe from Cersei. Mwahahaha. Not even a letter from Tywin. Ned Stark had a piece of paper too, and that did fuck-all to save him. But Tyrion is a little more cunning than Ned. He has the City Watch, clansmen and sellswords -- all loyal to him or his cash money. But Tyrion isn’t as trusting as Ned Stark anyways. He knows he can be betrayed by them. So, he says nothing. Instead, Tyrion pours a cup of wine for himself and tells Cersei to get fucking real. How safe Myrcella will truly be in King’s Landing if the city falls to Stannis and Renly? Like, seriously, Cersei.  

“Renly and Stannis will mount Myrcella’s head beside yours.”

And Cersei began to cry.

Tyrion Lannister could not have been more astonished if Aegon the Conqueror himself had burst into the room, riding on a dragon and juggling lemon pies.

Tyrion hadn’t witnessed Cersei crying since they were kids. He goes to console her, but she spits at him not to touch her. 

It should not have hurt, yet it did, more than any slap.

Cersei demands that Tyrion not look at her, and Tyrion, polite finally, turns away. He promises that nothing will happen to Myrcella, and Cersei calls him a liar which yeah, Cersei’s got a bit of a broken clock right twice a day going on as we’ll find out in AFFC. Regardless, Tyrion had said he would free Jaime, but that’s gone nowhere. Cersei should have been born a man instead of Tyrion and Jaime. She wouldn’t have allowed herself to be captured like Jaime. P.S. where the fuck was daddy Tywin, and what was he doing?

“Making war.”

“From behind the walls of Harrenhal? She said scornfully. “A curious way of fighting. It looks suspiciously like hiding.”

Tyrion tells her to do a 2nd look. He’s not hiding. He’s waiting for Robb to make a move. And whatever way Robb moves, he’ll strike and win. Lol, I cannot wait for this to not come true. Cersei says that if Tywin was captured, Jaime wouldn’t be sitting around waiting like Tyrion is    , and Tyrion agrees, thinking that Jaime would be impatiently getting him and his men killed attacking Riverrun. 

But Cersei is still not satisfied. Tywin’s out at Harrenhal, but they’re vulnerable here in King’s Landing with Renly marching up the roseroad. He could be here any day. But Tyrion already has that figured out. Renly couldn’t take the city in a day, and Tywin would come riding south to smash Renly’s host against the walls of King’s Landing if that were to occur.

But what if Robb marches south? Well, in that case, Tywin is well-situated at Harrenhal to block any attempted link-up of Roose Bolton and Robb’s armies. And Robb would need all his men to take Harrenhal. Even then, it wasn’t likely. Besides, there’s that other Lannister army led by Stafford forming up in the Westerlands. Everything is going exactly to plan. Yeah, buddy. Yeah.

Cersei regarded him suspiciously. “How could you know all this? Did Father tell you his intentions when he sent you here?

“No. I glanced at a map.”

Her look turned to disdain. “You’ve conjured up every word of this in that grotesque head of yours, haven’t you, Imp?”

Tyrion tsked. “Sweet sister, I ask you, if we weren’t winning, would the Starks have sued for peace?”

Tyrion produces the letter that Cleos Frey brought to read, stating that Robb has sent unacceptable terms. Maybe she’d like to read the letter? Yes, yes. She would. So, Tyrion hands her the letter, his face still hurting from the earlier slap, thinking that it was a small price to pay for his send Myrcella to Dorne gambit to work out. He figures he’s got that as good as won now. And he has something else too:

And certain knowledge of an informer too … well, that was the plum in his pudding.

And that is ACOK, Tyrion V! Boy, it feels like we’re covering a lot of plot ground in this chapter! Do you think George needs another Tyrion chapter between now and the Blackwater? *Flips ahead.* Apparently, the answer is yes. 

Depth

I’m running out of superlatives for these early Tyrion chapters! They really are that good, George’s best work in the series on political systems and how leaders navigate them (outside Jon and Dany in ADWD, #bestbook). Tyrion V is especially difficult to summarize given how many distinct little scenes it contains, Tyrion going through the full gamut of tests of his skills.

The thread running through them is fire, as our title indicates: the wildfire of the Alchemists, the common fires Cleos Frey reports raging in the Riverlands, the metaphorical fire in Cersei’s eyes. The sense you get throughout is of King’s Landing as a powder keg almost ready to blow, a clenched fist with smoke billowing out between the fingers, fueled by the Mad King’s “ripe fruits.” 

You mentioned the many distinct scenes at work here, and you also mentioned ADWD. So, thank you for this opportunity to put my writer’s cap on and talk about how well George does actual not metaphorical character movement from location to location to develop the plot! 

As we’ve talked about in the past, Feast, Dance and some sample Winds chapters get criticized for a number of travelogue chapters -- Brienne searching the Crownlands and Riverlands for Sansa, Tyrion floating down the Rhoyne, Arianne riding for Storm’s End and Aegon. Here, in Tyrion V, we get have travelogue scenes in miniature. George could have jumped between the four distinct locations - Guildhall to the Gate to the street preacher stage to the Tower of the Hand and probably cut 25-30% of the words from the chapter. Instead he allows readers to marinate in Tyrion’s thoughts as he progresses to each location.

It both flavors the setting; so, King’s Landing feels like a real city (This chapter has Tyrion passing a market square and noticing the square devoid of customers and the market stalls empty of good to sell). It also develops readers’ appreciation and understanding of how Tyrion processes and analyzes events. How he thinks. as Small example: I love how as Tyrion is moving on from the street preacher, he’s going into analytical mode, piecing together how the smallfolk are reacting to the street prophet’s words. It’s story development in the context of a POV. And it all starts with an extended scene at a brand new location we’ve never seen before in King’s Landing!

• Touring the Guildhall of the Alchemists
  • We open in a part of King’s Landing unfamiliar to us, and indeed it’s unfamiliar to most; the Alchemists like to hide from the people of the city they almost blew up!
  • Tyrion is descending beneath the hill of Rhaenys, which is of course the hill topped by the Dragonpit; the Alchemists fit in perfectly here, another testament to grasping at the fiery star, overreaching, and falling like Rhaenys
  • Like Winterfell and Dragonstone, King’s Landing turns out to have fire at its heart. But not a natural fire: a manmade one that cannot be made to live in harmony
  • Throughout this scene, we’re gradually made aware of the horrors contained within these cold crypt-like walls, and the hubris involved in playing with them
  • So far in ACOK, Tyrion’s been gradually accumulating power by largely conventional means, if less earnestly and straightforwardly than his predecessor
  • This is the first real high fantasy tool George slips into Tyrion’s toolbox, and it’s no accident that he’s framing Tyrion as crossing a dangerous line in doing so
  • Sorcery is a sword without a hilt; there is no safe way to wield it. We generally associate that sentiment more with characters like Dany or Bran or Melisandre, but it absolutely applies here to Tyrion and the alchemists’ “substance”
  • Because my wife and I are in the middle of our annual Christmas LOTR watch, I can’t help but see the parallels!
  • In this case, wildfire reminds me of how Denethor views the one ring. 
  • "It should have been brought back to the Citadel to be kept safe. Hidden. Dark and deep in the vaults, not to be used. Unless at the uttermost … end of need."
  • Tyrion considers himself to be above the common man. A rare intellect. He’s so much smarter than Cersei! 
  • That’s why only he should have the power to wield the sorcerous power of wildfire.
  • But, like the ring, magic superweapons can only corrupt, only bring destruction. And if you use the power one time, why not a second? Why not a third? The parallel to Stannis’ use of the shadowbaby later in ACOK is strong.
  • But that darker side of wildfire and what it means thematically clashes against the tone of this scene!
  • Then again, the actual tone of this scene is more comedic than dreadful, especially for the first-time reader 
  • Like Pycelle, Hallyne is an insufferably pretentious old man, thinking far too highly of his institution, his place within it, and his rightful place near the king
  • As a more modern*** thinker and alo a perpetual snark machine, Tyrion’s job is to puncture that pretentiousness in the privacy of his thoughts as a POV
  • Even his appearance as “a ball of striped fur” adds a comedic touch to the proceedings (while reminding us of the ice-fire interplay that defines the story)
  • Tyrion rolls his eyes at the alchemists’ heavy-handed shorthand, referring to each other as “wisdom” and the wildfire as “the substance”
  • As Tyrion points out, this is a front to paper over the fact that the alchemists are on a long-standing decline, replaced by the maesters of the Citadel
  • Which makes sense, because the maesters are sworn enemies of the supernatural. Ask Marwyn the Mage, black sheep among the archmaesters:
    • “The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less for dragons.”
  • And Tyrion, as an intellectual bibliophile skeptical of the magical age of wonder and terror, is inclined to think of the alchemists as pathetic frauds and charlatans
  • He continually interrupts Hallyne, doubts the promised payload of ten thousand jars, and interprets “spell” as “clever trick” because he doesn’t believe in magic
  • My favorite example is how he comments that the Alchemists will extinguish their wildfire torches as soon as he leaves. That perfectly captures the dynamic here: you have the eerie mystical fantasy imagery, and George drops in Tyrion to point out that this is all just a shadow on a wall, and the bottom line still rules all
  • Parallel to Maester Luwin’s skepticism of magic
  • Luwin was a true believer in magic as a child -- similar to Tyrion as true believer in dragons
  • But through life experiences and education, Tyrion and Luwin’s childlike wonder was extinguished, replaced by cynicism and higher learning respectively …
  • … only to be reborn through Bran’s magical ability and Tyrion’s gradual exposure to dragons 
  • But Tyrion’s cynicism leads him to conclude that he needs every tool available to him to stay on top, even if he neither trusts nor respects the alchemists
  • He takes rational steps to make his new toy less dangerous, training the men with empty pots and then pots with paint to get them ready for wildfire
  • But as I’ve said before, a lot of Tyrion’s more sensible moves as Hand come off as arranging deck chairs on the Titanic
  • How much should we praise him for a more effective, competent use of a substance that melts the flesh off the bones like tallow? Maybe just...don’t!
  • Maybe some tools can’t be rationalized. Maybe some power can’t be fixed, can’t be used by smart people for good ends. It just has to be gotten rid of, for good.
  • Another nuke parallel in ASOIAF? Maybe it’s also the use of napalm during the Vietnam War?
  • Do you use nuclear weapons to end the Second World War?
  • Do you use napalm to clear out enemy guerillas in a jungle but scorch the earth in the process?
  • Regardless of your personal opinions on either ethical issue, George wants us to question the moral efficacy of using superweapons to achieve ends.
  • Regardless of the morality, George really wants us to see the cost associated with the usage of wildfire as we’ll see in ACOK, Davos III. 
  • The cost is the horrible, painful, fiery deaths of human beings.
  • As this scene ends, Tyrion reminds us of the stakes, of what happens when less adroit managers get their hands on this stuff. You get the Mad King. 
  • Even more skin-crawling is the alchemists’ eagerness to get back into the inner circle, and you realize they’ve learned nothing from Aerys’ day
  • They’ll burn anyone they have to if it means they can get royal patronage again, and Tyrion knows that Joffrey would be only too eager to help them
  • That’s a commentary not only on what an individual monster Joffrey is, but on the limits of what even relatively decent people like Tyrion can do in this environment
  • No matter what incremental improvements Tyrion makes as Hand, the bare fact of the situation is a pack of remorseless pyromaniacs who just need one audience with the sadistic child-king to get back into power like the bad old days
  • And as soon as Tyrion gets outside, he finds himself thinking about how Joffrey just can’t seem to stop killing and enraging civilians! Boys will be boys!
  • That’s what it always comes back to, and Tyrion’s embrace of both Burned Men and wildfire speaks to his willingness to use fear and violence to keep Joffrey’s butt on his stolen throne. Is being slightly better than monsters good enough?
  • It goes back to what you were saying when we did ACOK, Sansa I a few months ago: the “good” people who serve in the evil regime legitimize the bad behavior.
  • Arys Oakheart didn’t hit Sansa as hard as the other kingsguard knights. Tyrion isn’t sadistically inflicting pain on the smallfolk
  • But he sure is getting ready to inflict pain on King’s Landing all the same!
  • The conceit of Tyrion’s arc in ACOK is that he appears to be the “good guy”, but that’s only in contrast to the psychopaths at the very top.
  • It’s also more than that.
  • To paraphrase you, because I thought what you said was so powerful back when we did Sansa I: Tyrion’s sardonic inner dialogue covers up the bruises Joffrey and Cersei are giving King’s Landing, and Tyrion’s incisive wit and modernistic outlook covers up the fact that he’s hurting the people in King’s Landing.
  • Tyrion is normalizing/legitimizing the reign of Joffrey in King’s Landing, but the target audience this time isn’t the nobility of Westeros.
  • Martin is subversively targeting us: the readers and our sympathies!
  • So, when we sympathize with a POV who BTW is supporting an illegitimate regime while plotting to use a mass-casualty producing superweapon to bolster an evil king and rule, is it our, as the reader’s, in-kind contribution to Joffrey’s re-election campaign?
• Receiving Cleos Frey
  • Here we get the followup to Robb’s peace proposal in Catelyn I, and the response on the Lannister side is...not good. But what did you expect?
  • Even before we get into specifics, George lets us know this isn’t going to go well just from how Tyrion takes in Cleos’ news about the Riverlands
  • Cleos looks like he’s been through hell, and he has, shaken by just a passing glimpse of the nightmare in which we’ve been mired in recent Arya chapters
  • Not only are Tywin’s goons deliberately sowing terror, but the Riverlords are burning crops in response with no concern for their people (again, fires everywhere), and the first broken men are appearing to spread further chaos
  • What is Tyrion’s response to the news that the War of Five Kings has already spun out of control, shattered norms, destroyed resources, and killed thousands?

• As he said in Tyrion IV: “I believe they call that war.” He has no concern for the short-term effect on the people nor even the long-term effect on Lannister power
• Instead, he just dryly comments to himself that he’s glad he was born a Lannister, and so was taken hostage rather than just killed outright
• Coming right off of Lommy Greenhands’ death at the hands of Lannister men, this detachment feels unbelievably smug, callous, and self-centered
• Tyrion keeps talking about the way things are as if he is not remaking them that way every day, as if he is not in power and making choices that affect others
• A shadow on a wall is not a fixed thing. It is fluid and changeable, like the flames that cast it. It is convenience, not calculation, that leads Tyrion to this conclusion
• We see in Tyrion’s reaction to the proposal itself that while he may tell himself he’s doing the best he can in a bad world, he’s actually making that world worse
• No one (in-universe or among the readers) would expect Tyrion to actually accept this offer as it stands; this is a negotiation, and a counter-proposal is the next logical step
• But Tyrion is a POV, and so George can show us that under the surface, the primary Lannister authority in the capital is operating in profoundly bad faith:
  • It seemed to him that Robb Stark had given them a golden chance. Let the boy wait at Riverrun dreaming of an easy peace. Tyrion would reply with terms of his own, giving the King in the North just enough of what he wanted to keep him hopeful. Let Ser Cleos wear out his bony Frey rump riding to and fro with offers and counters. All the while, their cousin Ser Stafford would be training and arming the new host he'd raised at Casterly Rock. Once he was ready, he and Lord Tywin could smash the Tullys and Starks between them.
• And indeed, Tyrion will go on to use the counter-offer as a cover to break Jaime out, which both breaks custom in itself and signals that the Lannisters aren’t interested in making an open-faced good-faith trade of hostages
• This is key to an assessment of Robb Stark and the overall plotting of the War of Five Kings: there was no way for him to make peace with the Lannisters, because they were never interested at any point in making peace with him.
• We can (and will) debate how genuine the slavers in Essos were in making peace with Dany, or whether Jaime’s peace in the Riverlands is worth anything
• But there’s no debate to be had here. It takes two to tango, and Tyrion ultimately looks at Robb the same way Tywin does: as an irritant to be stamped out decisively so they can deal with the real problems, namely Robert’s brothers
• The Lannisters don’t want a better deal out of Robb. They want him to stand still until they once more have the strength to wipe him off the game board for good
• As such, his only move is to move: to reshape the map, force the Lannisters to respond to him instead of the other way around, keep his army together, threaten the Lannister homeland, and above all, remove Stafford’s knife from his back
• This, of course, is the move he takes, because Robb Stark is actually pretty smart! Who knew?
• He has to force the Lannisters to the table, and while I agree with the anti-war critique presented so vividly by Arya’s chapters, I think some people miss how complex peace-making actually is: it’s not just dropping your weapons
• It’s laying out terms and establishing the trust it takes to make that work, and sometimes that means a continuation of warmaking in the short-term
• Exactly. Cessation of hostilities isn’t peace. It’s just a cease fire until war can resume or peace can overtake it.
• Taking an objective view of it, not a whole lot has changed since Tyrion’s declaration that Robb Stark was winning the war back at the Lannister war criminal council back AGOT, Tyrion IX.
• Some river lords are back home, but Robb and most his host are still in the field. 
• Stafford Lannister is forming up in the west, but his army is mostly untrained, untested smallfolk who were press-ganged into a Lannister army. They’re soon about to meet the business end of Robb Stark’s all-cavalry force.
• But looking at it from a sheer numbers perspective: at this point, the Lannisters are likely in parity with the Stark-Tully host. But factor in what Renly and Stannis have, they’re badly outnumbered.
• Of course, Tyrion has to posture back at Robb (in complete bad faith as you were saying) as if they’re military co-equals. That’s politics. But you have to factor in the human element too.
• However, George is unsparing in terms of the attitudes that persist behind the cold face of military and political logic
• Edmure’s desperate desire to make his Dad proud leads him to inadvertently sabotage Robb’s big plan, and Tyrion makes callous use of Cleos at cost of the man’s brother, who will remain a hostage until murdered by Rickard Karstark
• Again, there is a logic and thought process to Tyrion’s means, but the terrible ends throw a harsh light on the worthiness of those methods
• The overall takeaway is that Robb is struggling to hold onto both his crown and humanity, and while he definitely makes mistakes along the way, the struggle is admirable in a way that Tyrion’s surrender to crude Machivellianism is not
• Something that caught my attention on this re-read is the character of poor, poor Ser Cleos Frey.
• I like how he changes his story about Robb Stark in his interaction with Tyrion
• Story 1: "The boy sits idle at Riverrun," Ser Cleos said. "I think he fears to face your father in the field. His strength grows less each day.”
• But then when Tyrion says that he won’t conduct the hostage trade that will result in his close family being released, he changes his story
• Story 2: "My lord, I do not believe Robb Stark will yield easily. It is Lady Catelyn who wants this peace, not the boy."
• So, why does Cleos change his story about Robb Stark?
• The easy answer is that Cleos is just a cowardly, weak-chinned Frey, but I think it’s a little more than that. He’s not acting like Tyrion’s cousin or Walder Frey’s son. 
• He’s a supplicant attempting to negotiate with power.
• In the first example, he’s trying to work on Tyrion’s Lannister pride to get an advantage for what he really wants: Tyrion to send Sansa and Arya to Riverrun in exchange for his younger brother Tion. Your family is just so strong, Tyrion. You can give up Sansa and Arya for Tion and Willem. You’re going to win anyways.
• But after Tyrion says that he won’t trade the Stark girls for Tion and Willem, he grows desperate. His first answer was a lie as we saw back in Catelyn I. 
• Robb Stark isn’t afraid to face Tywin. If you’ll recall, Robb told Cleos that if Tywin didn’t accept his offer that he would give Tywin another Whispering Wood.
• So, Cleos changes his tune and tells the truth. Robb Stark isn’t scared of Tywin. But you need to free my close kin, or they’re going to die. 
• Please, Tyrion, please. Trade the Stark girls for Tion and Willem. Please.
• Echoes of the Please? Please? woman from Arya’s chapter there, yeah?
• But Tyrion won’t trade the Stark girls for Willem and Tion. He has the game of thrones to consider after all.
• He’s just going to need Cleos to ride back and forth between King’s Landing and Riverrun with bad faith offers from the Lannisters so that Tyrion can win.
• What’s the result of Tyrion turning Cleos into a cog in the gears of war?
• Tyrion’s actions (and Robb and Catelyn’s actions too Hell, how about the game of thrones in totality), ultimately costs Cleos his life. It costs Tion and Willem’s life too when Rickard Stark murders them in ASOS. 
• The street preacher
  • Just in case you managed to read this far into the chapter without getting the sense of a realm shaking itself to pieces and unholy fire oozing up through the cracks, George throws in an apocalyptic street preacher to drive it all home
  • As in the Guildhall of the Alchemists, Tyrion’s POV as a skeptic of such things focuses the preacher’s monologue through a scornful, even satirical lens, while also hinting at the deeper currents giving it power
  • Tyrion notes and draws reassurance from the people in the crowd mocking the doomsaying, but the fact that he needs reassurance speaks to how he’s spooked
  • After all, he has to acknowledge that the preacher picked a panorama that seems to make his points for him. Can anyone deny the sense of dreadful synchronicity between the comet, the Red Keep, and the flames growing and spreading?
  • And the preacher’s more grounded critiques hit home for Tyrion: he admits that the High Septon is indeed a corrupt debached elite, because that’s the only part of the critique he can afford to admit is true!
  • That fits comfortably with his dislike of religion and the performance of power
  • To acknowledge that Joffrey is unworthy and that he, the twisted monkey demon, is implicated in everything Joffrey does? Tyrion is unwilling to fully go there
  • And of course, he completely dismisses the eschatological implications, the idea that all these different fires add up to a judgment day closing in on King’s Landing
  • Tyrion’s dismissal of the end times is a mood, a theme for Tyrion’s ACOK story
  • We’re going to see this again in Tyrion VI when Ser Alliser Thorne shows up to tell the royal court that dead men are walking at the Wall
  • Tyrion is again going to zero in on the mockery to gain a short term political advantage
  • It’s also a character trait of Tyrion’s. Think about what Tyrion told Jon back in AGOT: "Let them see that their words can cut you, and you'll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name, take it, make it your own. Then they can't hurt you with it anymore."
  • Tyrion, here, follows his advice and lets the moniker “twisted little demon monkey” bounce off him.
  • But later, he “makes the name his own”, but it’s not in the context of owning it as an identity to grow from. Instead, he lets the name get under his skin later on in ACOK: "The good folk don't have Jaime to protect them, nor Robert nor Renly nor Rhaegar nor their precious Knight of Flowers. Only me, the one they hate." He laughed again. "The dwarf, the evil counselor, the twisted little monkey demon. I'm all that stands between them and chaos."
  • But it’s even more complicated in that. Tyrion has internalized his own mockery as the dwarf, as ugly and then externalized it into a sardonic outlook and conversational style.
  • He over-relies on it to win a few laughs, gain some short-term advantages.
  • And we laugh a lot in Tyrion’s chapters. They’re fun! But there’s consequences to all the laughing. 
  • Sometimes, the only consequence is getting threatened by a direwolf or two.
  • And sometimes, the consequence is that King’s Landing stays ignorant about the threat of the apocalypse -- both in a fiery apotheosis of the city and the advance of the Long Night.
  • Regardless of whether there really is a R’hllor casting hungry glances from beyond the stars at the dragon city promised him by Aerys, that pattern is real
  • We see it with Stannis in this book, framed by Sansa as the Stranger come to judge the capital for all its accumulated sin, and we see it again with Cersei
  • In all likelihood, the climax of this motif is coming with Daenerys in TWOW/ADOS
  • We see this great give-and-take with how George handles the rise of magic, especially as it intertwines with the political machinations in ACOK
  • Tyrion isn’t wrong about the holes he’s poking in these grandiose meta-narratives
  • But even when he’s right about the specifics, he’s missing the big picture, both in the larger moral sense of war and sorcery and in the metaphysics at play
• Sweet sister
  • Speaking of the conflict between Tyrion’s short-term successes and long-term failures, let’s talk about Cersei
  • Throughout this chapter, Tyrion finds himself in the position of managing Cersei: taking over wildfire production, prioritizing Jacelyn and Cleos over her, etc.
  • Part of this, of course, is because Tyrion (unlike Ned Stark) knows how politically important it is to make sure big government projects are being done in your name with your input and final say
  • But it’s also because Cersei doesn’t have a clear view of the big picture, as this dialogue scene with Tyrion at the end of the chapter demonstrates
  • This is not to say that Cersei is unintelligent; I’d put her in the medium tier of ASOIAF plotters, not as good as Tywin but better than Pycelle
  • There’s an AU where the relationship between Tyrion and Cersei is a good one and where they utilize their unique skill sets to address and solve problems.
  • Imagine Tyrion as the brains and power behind the throne, orchestrating political movements within and without King’s Landing while burnishing his reputation as the half-man to the smallfolk
  • Imagine Cersei as the beautiful queen, smart, plotting marriage and diplomatic alliances. Basically, imagine her as Catelyn Stark!
  • Regardless, Cersei and Tyrion have such a toxic relationship, they can never do more than antagonize each other. 
  • Hell, as we’ll talk about in our next Tyrion chapter, Tyrion poisons Cersei in their tenderest moment to get her out of the way to do his scheming.
  • The problem, as always, is that Cersei is so unwilling to look at other people as people that she is ignorant of and therefore unprepared for their motivations
  • She can’t conceive of other players doing things she doesn’t expect or which don’t fit her plans, which holds her back regardless of the specifics of those plans
  • If she was able to get outside her own head a little, she has the capacity to understand why Tyrion and Tywin are making the moves they’re making
  • But in her mind, you’re either with her or against her, a problem compounded by her inability to accept equal partners, as we see with both Jaime and the Tyrells
  • She bursts into Tyrion’s chambers not as a cleverly constructed power play, but a blunt force move that would only work if Tyrion is cowed by her, which he is not
  • He just knows her better than Ned Stark did, and he has her over a barrel: she may hate that Tywin sent Tyrion rather than an army, but now he’s all she has
  • That’s why she breaks down seemingly so easily in this scene: because the panicked tears are always just under the surface of the anger iceberg
  • Cersei was the triumphant villain of AGOT, her plan snapping together to sweep Robert out of the way and replace him with her perfect golden son
  • And now it’s all come to pieces in her hands, and she’s not willing to face why
  • “Why” being that Cersei had no plan, no program, no worthwhile allies, no way to deal with Robert’s brothers; nothing affirmative behind triumph itself, power itself
  • I don’t think that makes her categorically distinct from Tywin and Tyrion, however, so much as the logical endpoint of their approach to politics
  • Stripped of pretense, the way things shake out for the Lannister men resemble how it shakes out for Cersei: your grand ambitions undone by your own folly
  • Cersei’s ahead of the curve in the worst way; where she is now is where Tyrion ends up in ADWD, and Tywin too is consumed by his own sins in the end
  • All Cersei has in the affirmative column, the only thing she wants to build on, is her children, and this chapter finds her starting to realize that she’s doomed them
  • She can’t control Joffrey; this is the source of her misery, even though she won’t admit it. Jaime is still imprisoned. And now Myrcella is being taken away from her
  • As Tyrion points out, Myrcella might actually be safer in Dorne than in King’s Landing, given how precarious their situation currently is
  • It’s only precarious because of how badly things have gone awry under Cersei!
  • You can really sense the walls closing in around the Lannisters in this chapter, no  matter how Tyrion tries to paper over the darkness with a pep talk
  • To be clear, while Tyrion isn’t entirely full of shit here, he’s mostly full of shit. This strategy only works if a) Stannis doesn’t sail b) Robb does nothing at all and c) Tywin’s army proves big enough to defeat Renly when he reaches King’s Landing
  • All of these are very dubious prospects! The Lannisters survive thanks to a series of unlikely domino falls: Stannis goes for Renly, Renly dies, Randyll butchers Stannis supporters at Bitterbridge, Edmure halts Tywin just long enough at the Fords, Littlefinger shows up to forge the Lannister-Tyrell alliance…
  • Cersei might not be empathetic enough to cue into everyone’s motivations, but she can tell that her coup is backfiring on the biggest stage possible
  • This adds perfectly to the Aerys-like aura of instability, paranoia, and potential disaster that defines this chapter, all of which will ramp up to Blackwater
  • And while Tyrion is taking more sensible steps, it all builds to a battlefield atrocity that claims Davos’ sons, and even then, it takes Tywin and the Tyrells to win
  • Underneath the politics, the personal relationships are also playing out
  • As I’ve said, Tyrion and Cersei have one of my favorite relationships in the series, and this scene exemplifies why: you run the full emotional range
  • Cersei opens with several verbal slaps before the literal one, and I’m already chuckling at how over the top her dialogue is and how Tyrion runs for the booze
  • Tyrion, meanwhile, can’t control himself either, going all in on the sexual insults
  • It’s the icily antagonistic dynamic between Ned and Cersei from book one cooked over an open flame until everything simmers, boils over, and explodes
  • Because while Cersei blows up more on Tyrion than Ned, she’s also vulnerable to breaking down, as we see her carefully crafted persona collapsing all at once
  • Tyrion simply does not know what to do with this. This intimacy, this vulnerability, this helplessness. He has not been prepared emotionally to know what to do!
  • He observes the forms of comfort, and Cersei rejects it angrily. In part because them’s her emotional walls, in part because she can tell it’s not genuine
  • But it’s also because she hates him, and he knows it, and it still hurts
  • That, right there, exposes the weakness in Tyrion’s arguments that you have to wear the world’s hatred of you like armor: it doesn’t actually stop the pain
  • All it does is drive the pain deeper, hidden beneath every sarcastic aside
  • Killing the part of you that cares, hiding behind irony and nihilism--not only are these bad ideas in themselves, they just don’t work. They don’t protect you.
  • Long before Tyrion’s trial and patricide, long before Cersei breaks with Jaime and burns it all down around her, here is the doom of the lions, writ small
  • So much of this chapter is about how Lannister dysfunction is working itself out on the larger political landscape, laying kindling across a continent
  • But as the chapter ends, George lays out the connective tissue, showing us how these ripple effects return home to play out in the individual relationships
  • How many stories could be described as neglecting characters for worldbuilding or vice versa? Here, we see a perfect marriage: why Westeros is the way it is, why this fucked-up family is the way it is, and how the two intertwine
  • One final big picture note: this conversation, in which Cersei points out that on the surface no one is doing anything while Tyrion argues that subtler currents are about to break the surface, feels like a message from the author to the reader
  • What this message says is that the first act of ACOK is just about done, and these pieces are going to move
  • From here, we get Stannis laying siege to Storm’s End and Renly responding, Robb invading the Westerlands and Tywin responding, and the Ironborn invading the North and...well, a bunch of people respond, but we’ll get into that later
  • Yet as I’ve argued before, even these opening wheels within wheels trickle down to have devastating effect on the smallfolk caught in war’s grinding gears
  • That’s why Arya and Tyrion chapters track each other so closely throughout the first half or so of ACOK before Tyrion takes off toward the Blackwater
  • George is playing these chapters off each other, the most prominent characters in the book revealing starkly different sides of the war consuming Westeros

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Riot Watch! We see Joffrey turning on the starving civilians from Sansa II, this time from Tyrion’s perspective.

Lancel’s status as an obnoxious little social climber will become more plot-relevant in later Tyrion chapters. 

“Lady Catelyn wants her daughters.” And indeed, that will drive Catelyn to free Jaime. 

The Martells and their reaction to Tyrion’s offer will only grow in prominence as the series goes on...to the ruin of House Lannister.

Theory/Discussion

So, now that we’ve, I think, quite thoroughly covered everything in this chapter, let’s cover it some more and talk about wildfire!

As with Tyrion’s chain (which also gets a brief shoutout in this chapter), George prevents Tyrion from thinking directly about what he plans to do with the wildfire. But since wildfire is more attention-grabbing and obviously a gamechanger than the chain, George knows he needs to placate us with a stated purpose (flinging from the walls) so we don’t see the wildfire-stuffed ships coming any more than Stannis’ fleet does.

But before we get to wildfire at the Blackwater, let’s do some real-world and in-universe history of the substance.

First, let’s talk about the historical inspiration for wildfire. In a 2012 interview, Martin was asked about the Battle of the Blackwater and gave some information as to what he was inspired by:

Wildfire, of course, is my magical version of Greek fire—to go back to the Constantinople reference. And once again, fantasy is bigger, so wildfire is Greek fire times 10. It’s Greek fire but it’s worse than Greek fire, and it’s got a little magical element to it. It’s really nasty stuff, and it burns with green flames, which is a nice pyrotechnical effect. - GRRM Interview, 2012

So, wildfire was seemingly inspired by Greek Fire, but like we talked about in the cast, there’s a strong possibility that Martin was also inspired by the U.S. Military’s use of napalm during the Vietnam War -- both in physical properties and the themes communicated by the use of the substance.

So, what’s the history of wildfire in ASOIAF itself. It’s quite complex, but to save some time, let’s bullet-point a few things:

• Tyrion thinks that the pyromancer’s guild is an ancient one, but it’s unclear from both the show and the books how old the guild actually is -- only that the maesters eventually supplanted the pyromancers “in recent centuries.”
• GoT, S02 has Pyromancer Hallyne stating that Maegor the Cruel was a patron of the Pyromancer’s guild, but that has yet to be confirmed in the books.
• The first canonical mention comes when Aegon IV created “dragons”, AKA primitive canons that could shoot jets of wildfire. He intended to use them in his attempted conquest of Dorne, but they all ended up burning in the Kingswood
• Bloodraven later used wildfire to burn the dead from the Great Spring Sickness
• Then in 259 AC, King Aegon V Targaryen used wildfire at Summerhall, resulting in the Tragedy of Summerhall.
• That takes us to Aerys II Targaryen who gets a number of interesting references in this chapter -- or more accurately: foreshadowings of future revelations. 

"It was good of you to visit us. A great honor, hmmm. It has been too long since the King's Hand graced us with his presence. Not since Lord Rossart, and he was of our order. That was back in King Aerys's day. King Aerys took a great interest in our work.”

King Aerys used you to roast the flesh off his enemies. His brother Jaime had told him a few stories of the Mad King and his pet pyromancers.

Jaime will follow up on these stories at length, starting in Catelyn’s final chapter in this book and continuing with Brienne in the Harrenhal bathhouse come ASOS. 

He’ll also follow up on Hallyne’s mention of the murdered pyromancer masters during the Sack of King’s Landing; while that was necessary to prevent the ignition of the wildfire, it ironically also ensured the pots would never be removed…

Another piece of foreshadowing from this chapter is that Hallyne promises that he’ll have ten thousand pots of wildfire ready for the queen as he promised. Intriguingly, right before the Battle of the Blackwater, our annoying as shit Pyromancer Hallyne shows back up with some interesting news about wildfire production in King’s Landing:

"This cannot be true," said Tyrion as he pored over the ledgers. "Almost thirteen thousand jars? Do you take me for a fool? I'm not about to pay the king's gold for empty jars and pots of sewage sealed with wax, I warn you."

"No, no," Hallyne squeaked, "the sums are accurate, I swear. We have been, hmmm, most fortunate, my lord Hand. Another cache of Lord Rossart's was found, more than three hundred jars. Under the Dragonpit!

Thirteen thousand pots of wildfire, and Hallyne assures Tyrion that they aren’t defective pots. Events on the Blackwater prove Hallyne to not be lying. But wait, they only found 300 additional pots. What’s with over-producing wildfire by 2700 pots? 

My brothers and I have been laboring day and night from the first, I assure you. It is only, hmmm, we have made so much of the substance that we have become, hmmm, more practiced as it were, and also"—the alchemist shifted uncomfortably—"certain spells, hmmm, ancient secrets of our order, very delicate, very troublesome, but necessary if the substance is to be, hmmm, all it should be . . ."

Tyrion was growing impatient. Ser Jacelyn Bywater was likely here by now, and Ironhand misliked waiting. "Yes, you have secret spells; how splendid. What of them?"

"They, hmmm, seem to be working better than they were." Hallyne smiled weakly. "You don't suppose there are any dragons about, do you?"

"Not unless you found one under the Dragonpit. Why?"

"Oh, pardon, I was just remembering something old Wisdom Pollitor told me once, when I was an acolyte. I'd asked him why so many of our spells seemed, well, not as effectual as the scrolls would have us believe, and he said it was because magic had begun to go out of the world the day the last dragon died."

That ominous note takes us nicely into the future of wildfire in King’s Landing. In a now-deleted post by a redditor who also deleted his account. (I swear this thing existed. Read the show notes as a patron. I’ll link to this post!), GRRM was asked by the redditor There's a lot of wildfire caches still hidden around King's Landing isn’t there? GRRM’s response:

Yes.

So, now with all that wildfire sitting underneath the city of King’s Landing, the power of wildfire production growing with dragons returned to the world and the dragon queen finally realizing that her war is in Westeros, Emmett, I have to ask: what’s the endgame for King’s Landing, and why will it be destroyed by dragonfire and wildfire?

Conclusion

• Thanks for listening!
• Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Soundcloud, Podbean etc.
• Check out our Patreon at patreon.com/notacastasoiaf
• Follow us on Twitter @NotACastASOIAF, email us at NotACastASOIAF@gmail.com
• Emmett’s social media, Jeff’s social media
• Thank you to our High Lords and Ladies on patreon!
  • Lord of the Squishers and Warden of the Deep
  • Lord Clint Esq., the Wolf in the West
  • Lady Vanerys of the House Colgaryen, the First of Her Name, The Overworked, Queen of the Pencils, the Eraser and the First Draft, Queen of Monochrome, Devotee of the Great GOT, Portraitist of the Realm, Lady Realist of the Seven Kingdoms, Creator of Arts and Maker of Drawings 
  • Lady of a Thousand Words
  • Septon Eastwood of Introvert Isle
  • Septon Merrybald, the Shoeless Sage
  • Lady Madeleine Rivers, Justiciar of the Trident
  • Sister Winter - Lady of the Wolfswood
  • Nessie the Elusive, warden of the Neck, Defender of the North and Keeper of Secrets
  • Sandie the Dragon, Blood of Queen Daenerys & Lady of Jameson
  • Lady Britt, Bastard Mistress of Harrenhal
  • Ser Thomas the Raven Knight, Lord of Blackwood 
  • Ser Tim: The Knight Who Was Guided By Voices
  • Ser Cortnay, "What did the Five Fingers Say to the Face" Penrose
  • Lady Dilsdale, the StarSpear of Crescent Hill
  • Ser Way of Course
  • Matt, Warden of the Sanguine Shore
  • And our newest high lords:
    • Lord MarConnington, Heir to Griffin's Roost
    • Lord Sam K
    • Ser Michael Mertyns
• Join us next week as we return to Winterfell for Bran III, in which the Northmen dig into the harvest feast promised to us in Bran II. And we will be joined by our favorite Stark-loyalist dinner guest, Chloe aka liesandarbor from Girls Gone Canon!