Episode 102: A CLASH OF KINGS, ARYA VII: "The First Wish" 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 one hundred and second episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “The First Wish: An Analysis of ACOK, Arya VII,” in which Arya strikes back at the brutal masters of Harrenhal with the help of her new best friend Jaqen H’ghar. 

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
• 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
• 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 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 
• 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
• Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
• Queer Alex, Rainbow Commander of the They-des and Gentle-thems (ladies and gentlemen)
• Lord Clint, Esq., Master of Absolutely, Positively NOT Serving As A Spy for Several Unnamed High Lords and Ladies In Order to Further the Secret Blackfyre-Style Conspiracy to Overthrow The Oppressive Small Council
• Haldivar, The Waiter for TWOW
• A-a-ron Damphair Prophet of the Forsaken and High Priest of Euron Crows Eye
• Lieutenant Glenn Lord of H town
• Vanerys of the House Colgaryen, the First of Her Name, Princess of Dragonstone, Mistress of Art, 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, Blender of Paints and Maker of Drawings
• Seanwell the Slayer
• Lord Adam T
• Lady Alexandra of Tarth
• And our newest small council member:
  • Ser Kristoph Logas, Bloody Scorpion of the Red Field, Defender of the Letter of Kin, and the Wolverine of house Qorgyle

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

Queer Alex, Rainbow Commander of the Theydees and Gentlethems asks:

Do you feel Catelyn Stark could become a footnote in the series endgame a la "Lady Stark. She died." From the last 2 seasons of the show Catelyn is mentioned directly twice iirc, when Arya kills the Frey ('a mother of five') and during Littlefinger's trial. The later two books do have more mentions of her and Arya and Sansa do assume identities that resemble Cat and I would presume/hope that Stoneheart's resolution would bring Catelyn into focus but I fear that the House Stark post credit endgame is going to be burying Ned Stark's bones in the crypt and talking about how great and amazing he is and I fear that Catelyn isn't going to come up much after Stoneheart. I am very much a Catelyn fan and perhaps this is just me wanting too much but Cat was a major POV, death, and is just as important to her 3 POV kids as Ned was and I don't want her to be forgotten by them in the end. So I suppose a rephrase/slight addition to this question could be, after Stoneheart is 'killed'/rendered inactive what could be a fitting burial for Catelyn Tully Stark, in the rivers of the Trident or taking her bones to be buried by Ned's? Amen brothers - Queer Alex, Rainbow Commander of the Theydees and Gentlethems (sounds like ladies and gentlemen).

So, thank you for your question Queer Alex. If you’d like to ask us questions, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get early access to every episode, show notes, special patreon posts and bonus episodes -- speaking of which, our next patreon-only bonus episode “Every Rose Has Its Thorns” is now available for all of our Poor Fellow and above patrons and can be found, once again, at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF.

Absolutely! And just as a reminder: we are switching up the published order of ACOK. So, instead of rolling right into ACOK, Catelyn III next week, we’ll be tackling Sansa III followed by Jon IV and V (together as one episode), then Bran V and then we’ll have an April of Catelyn and Stannis starting, of course, on March 30th!

But enough about patreon and our schedule, let’s dive into Arya. When we last checked in with Arya Stark, she had witnessed atrocities committed by Lannister goons before being force-marched to the murder castle known as Harrenhal. Let’s find out what happens to Arya at Harrenhal in this synopsis of ACOK, Arya VII!

Synopsis

Whatever names Harren the Black had meant to give his towers were long forgotten.They were called the Tower of Dread, the Widow’s Tower, the Wailing Tower, the Tower of Ghosts, and Kingspyre Tower.

Another happy Arya chapter set at happy, happy Harrenhal. Yay, happy.

Arya sleeps on straw in a vault beneath the Wailing Tower, and she works hard. Her overseer Weasel sees to that. But it’s not all bad, I guess. Arya doesn’t have to eat bugs to survive. She gets real food. And Hot Pie (now working in the kitchens) eats even better. Arya eats her meals along with the other slaves, no wait, Weese’s charges at a trestle table, and once in a while, Arya even gets the chance to chat with Hot Pie when she goes to fetch food for Weese. Of course, Hot Pie forgets Arya’s new name and also gets caught giving Arya an extra tart. He gets beaten with a wooden spoon for that.

Meanwhile, Arya rarely sees hot man Gendry as he’s away at the forge.There were other slaves, servants around Arya now:

As for those she served with, she did not even want to know their names. That only made it hurt worse when they died.   

Harrenhal proves just as enormous on the inside as it appeared on the outside. Lady Whent had only used two of the five towers when she held the castle, but now that she’s fled, her small entourage of servants were simply not enough to take care of Tywin Lannister’s vast host. So, the Lannisters weren’t just foraging for supplies. They were foraging for people. No overt slavery references detected. We’re moving on.

Arya had heard rumors that Tywin Lannister planned to rebuild Harrenhal and make Harrenhal his new seat after the war. And so, Arya was a small cog in Tywin’s attempt to restore the castle, running errands for Weese: sometimes drawing water, fetching food and serving meals to Tywin’s soldiers in the Barracks Hall, but mostly cleaning the floor of the Wailing Tower as Tywin wanted it made habitable once again.

So, Arya scrubbed floors, wiped shit off the walls and windows, helped move broken furniture out of the Wailing Tower and did some pest control in rooting out the bats that lived in the tower and the rats that lived in the basement. But some of the people claimed something else lived in Wailing Tower: ghosts.

Arya thought that was stupid. Harren and his sons had died in Kingspyre Tower, that was why it had that name, so why should they cross the yard to haunt her. The Wailing Tower only wailed when the wind blew from the north, and that was just the sound the air made blowing through the cracks in the stones where they had fissured from the heat. If there were ghosts in Harrenhal, they never troubled her. It was the living men she feared. Weese and Ser Gregor Clegane and Lord Tywin Lannister himself.

Lord Tywin had ensconced his war criminal ass atop the Kingspyre Tower which was tall but misshapen, looking like a giant half-melted black candle. Arya wonders whether she should head up to the tower and declare herself as Arya Stark to Lord Tywin, but she’s not sure if Tywin would believe her, and she knows that Weese would beat the shit out of her if she did that.

As for Weese, who we met in Arya VI, that guy was scary -- almost as scary as Gregor Clegane. The Mountain seemed unaware of humans around him, but Weese knew you were around and where you were. Weese would beat his servants just because, and he had a large, terrible-smelling dog who he would sic on people if they annoyed him -- like a latrine boy who lost half his calf to the dog while Weese laughed.

It took him only three days to earn the place of honor in her nightly prayers. “Weese,” she would whisper, first of all. “Dunsen, Chiswyck, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Gregor, Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.” If she let herself forget even one of them, how would she ever find him again to kill him?

Arya’s thoughts turn to the vastness of Harrenhal. She was a sheep on the road to Harrenhal, but within the castle itself, she felt a mouse. The castle was enormous, three times the size of Winterfell with kitchens the size of Winterfell’s Great Hall. As for Harrenhal’s great hall (named the Hall of a Hundred Hearths), Arya judges that it had enough room to feast all of Tywin’s army, but it’s not like good lord Tywin would deign to have his army of probably peasants besmirch his potential new seat. No, ser.

Walls, doors, halls, steps, everything was built to an inhuman scale that made Arya remember the stories Old Nan used to tell of the giants who lived beyond the Wall.

And the nobles never noticed the mice beneath their feet, and that allowed her to hear secrets: like that Pretty Pia was sleeping with all the knights of Tywin’s host, the dungeon-keeper’s wife was pregnant with another man’s child (either Ser Alyn Stackspear or the singer Whitesmile Wat), Lord Lefford loudly declared that he wasn’t afraid of no ghost, but he kept a candle burning at night, a squire pissed in his bed at night, all the cooks spit into Ser Harys Swyft’s food (that’s my favorite rumor BTW lol) and then finally Arya heard that a letter arrived at Harrenhal stating that Joffrey was a bastard born of incest. Tywin had that letter burned and ordered everyone to stfu about that.

And now Stannis and Renly were out in the field, having crowned themselves. And that has the Lannister goons talking. How could Joffrey survive with just an army of gold cloaks, his mom, his dwarf uncle and Varys around him? Good questions. Tywin will answer them in due course, I believe.

Speaking of rumors, there were lots of rumors about Beric Dondarrion. The Bloody Mummers killed him. No, Amory Lorch got him. Nope. Gregor Clegane killed him twice. Everyone agrees that if Beric was killed by the Bloody Mummers recently, he’s not staying dead.

Arya did not know who Bloody Mummers were until a fortnight later, when the queerest company of men she’d ever seen arrived at Harrenhal. Beneath the standard of a black goat with bloody horns rode copper men with bells in their braids; lancers astride striped black-and-white horses; bowmen with powdered cheeks; squat hairy men with shaggy shields; brown-skinned men in feathered cloaks; a wispy fool in green-and-pink motley; swordsmen with fantastic forked beards dyed green and purple and silver; spearmen with colored scars that covered their cheeks; a slender man in septon’s robes, a fatherly one in maester’s grey, and a sickly one whose leather cloak was fringed with long blond hair.

And at the front of the column was a tall man with an emaciated face and a long black beard down to his waist. Arya asks Weese who they are, and her boss answers that they’re “Tywin’s bloody mummers”, but please don’t use that name. They call themselves the Brave Companions. The nu-metal bassist in charge of the company was named Lord Vargo Hoat -- yes, lord in name, not in actuality. Don’t remind him of that, or you’ll get your ass mutilated.

Arya looked at Vargo Hoat again. How many monsters does Lord Tywin have?

A lot. It’s a lot. It’s a #Lannistermood.

The Brave Companions get stationed at the Widow’s Tower which thankfully Arya doesn’t serve at. Fighting breaks out between the Bloody Mummers and Lannister goons that night, and Ser Harys Swyft’s squire was stabbed to death while two Bloody Mummers were wounded. Tywin hanged both Bloody Mummers along with the shit-starting archer who mocked the Bloody Mummers for not getting Beric Dondarrion. Afterward, Harys and Vargo hugged and made up. Arya has to keep herself from laughing at the way Vargo Hoat “lisped and slobbered.”

But then the Bloody Mummers head out a few days later. There was word that Roose Bolton had occupied the ruby ford of the Trident, and the Lannisters goons get to arguing over whether Tywin would crush Roose Bolton or whether Roose would wait for Robb Stark to join him.

Arya had not known her brother was so near. Riverrun was much closer than Winterfell, though she was not certain where it lay in relation to Harrenhal. I could find out somehow, I know I could, if only I could get away. When she thought of seeing Robb's face again Arya had to bite her lip. And I want to see Jon too, and Bran and Rickon, and Mother. Even Sansa . . . I'll kiss her and beg her pardons like a proper lady, she'll like that.

Arya learns that some captive northmen from the Battle of the Green Fork were being held in the Tower of Dread. And they had some freedom of the castle after swearing they wouldn’t try to escape. Arya thinks that this vow wouldn’t prevent them from helping her escape. 

So, Arya scouts them out, witnessing how four Frey brothers (Jared, Hosteen and Danwell Frey and their half-brother bastard Ronel) practiced together in the courtyard until two other Freys (Aenys and Elmar) arrive to ransom them. Then there was a fat lordling with a bushy mustache who “haunted the kitchens” (This is Wylis Manderly). Then there was a northmen with a cloak made of white suns. (This is Harrion Karstark). Finally, there was Lord Cerwyn. Arya knew Lord Cerwyn since the Cerwyn lands were so close to Winterfell but Arya never saw him as he was “recovering from his wounds.” But then one morning, Arya witnesses the Silent Sisters putting a corpse with a Cerwyn battle-ax sigil sewn over the body into a wagon. Turns out this was Lord Cerwyn.

The words felt like a kick in the belly. He could never have helped you anyway, she thought as the sisters drove the wagon through the gate. He couldn’t even help himself, you stupid mouse.

Arya gets back to cleaning the Wailing Tower, hearing more rumors about Tywin marching soon to Riverrun, Highgarden, nope to King’s Landing to fight Stannis. Gregor Clegane and Vargo Hoat were out killing Roose Bolton. Tywin was going to marry Lysa Arryn. Tywin had bought silver to make swords to kill Stark wargs. It’s a goddamn Fleetwood Mac album at Harrenhal, I tell ya.

But the reality was different. Arya rarely saw Tywin Lannister. One she saw him chatting with maesters. Another time, Tywin was talking with Wylis Manderly, then riding to inspect his men in the camps outside of Harrenhal. But the most times Arya saw Tywin, he was standing above his men watching the men practice in the yard, hands “locked together.” Arya thinks Tywin looks strong despite his age, but maybe he was “putting on his lord’s face” the way Catelyn once told Ned to do.

Father had laughed at that. She could not imagine Lord Tywin ever laughing at anything.

But then the east gate opens one morning, and Arya sees men bearing a manticore sigil riding through the gate. Oh shit. It’s Ser Amory Lorch. But Arya realizes that these war criminals don’t look nearly as scary in the daytime as they did in the nighttime when they were committing war crimes. A woman tells Arya that Amory was returning having chased Beric Dondaririon around the God’s Eye and “slaying rebels.”

We weren’t rebels, Arya thought. We were the Night’s Watch; the Night’s Watch takes no side. Ser Amory had fewer men than she remembered, though, and many wounded. I hope their wounds fester. I hope they all die.

Then she saw the three near the end of the column.

Rorge had donned a black halfhelm with a broad iron nasal that made it hard to see that he did not have a nose. Biter rode ponderously beside him on a destrier that looked ready to collapse under his weight. Half-healed burns covered his body, making him even more hideous than before.

But Jaqen H’ghar still smiled. 

Sure, Jaqen’s clothing was disgusting, but a man had found the time to bathe and wash his luxurious white and red hair. All the girls love a man, except Arya. She curses herself for not letting the fire consume Jaqen, Rorge and Biter back in Arya IV.

Arya feels fear as they pass by, but Rorge and Biter don’t even look in her direction. And Jaqen only looks over her, not really seeing her. Suuuuure. Arya cleans the rest of the day and then settles down for some sleep. She does her prayer, yawning, wonders about adding Jaqen, Rorge and Biter onto her list. But she falls asleep.

Arya was dreaming of wolves running wild through the wood when a strong hand clamped down over her mouth like smooth warm stone, solid and unyielding. She woke at once, squirming and struggling. “A girl says nothing,” a voice whispered close behind her ear. “A girl keeps her lips closed, no one hears, and friends may talk in secret. Yes?”

Arya’s heart pounding, she nods anyways. Jaqen removes the hand from her mouth, and Arya sees that it’s pitch black inside of the sleeping chamber. But Arya can smell Jaqen’s clean, soapy smell and scented hair.

Jaqen comments that Arya is now a girl, and Arya retorts that she was always a girl. Jaqen knew. Arya remembers her hate and yells that Jaqen scared her, and that she should have let him burn. But Jaqen replies that he owes three to Arya. Three? Whatever the fuck do you mean, Jaqen? Jaqen owes three lives to the red god for the three that Arya saved. 

“Speak the names, and a man will do the rest.”

He wants to help me, Arya realized with a rush of hope that made her dizzy. “Take me to Riverrun, it’s not far, if we stole some horses we could—”

He laid a finger on her lips. “Three lives you shall have of me. No more, no less. Three and we are done. So a girl must ponder.” He kissed her hair softly. “But not too long.”

Arya lights a candle, but Jaqen is gone, with only his smell remaining. But as she blows out the candle, she thinks about the people she might wanna get dead from her list/prayer. Most of them were away from Harrenhal now. But Ser Amory Lorch and Weese were here.

In the morning, Arya yawns, and Weese threatens to pull her tongue about and feed it to his dog. She thinks maybe Weese might be the first name to say -- especially as he twists her ear. Arya goes to work on scrubbing the steps, and she wonders at everyone she wants dead. Maybe she should kill people fighting her family? She’s unsure. But she’s also unsure about this Jaqen fellow. A man might be untrustworthy. Besides, she should kill her family’s enemies on her own just like her dad used to do with Ice.

Faced with indecision, she decides to avoid Jaqen -- something she could do as Harrenhal was massive. But then Ser Gregor Clegane returns with a herd of goats instead of slaves, captives. Same thing, really. Four of his shit-eating monsters had been killed by Beric, but they turn out not to be people on Arya’s list. Weese orders her go serve them drinks and ask about any clothes that need to be mended.

So, Arya runs up the stairs. No one pays attention to her as Chiswyck tells one of his “funny” stories, and listener beware: this story is among the most stomach-churning in ASOIAF and involves rape, murder and child abuse. So, skip ahead about three minutes to get past this section if needs be (and no judgment if you do!)

Chiswyck relates what happened after the Tourney of the Hand from AGOT, Sansa II when Ser Gregor and his boys headed back to Clegane lands. However, the rains had swollen the river; so, they found an alehouse to hang out at while they waited for the water to go down. The innkeeper had welcomed them in at first, getting them brown beer in exchange for promised silver, chatting away at the boys. But Gregor Clegane just stayed silent, brooding over his loss to Ser Loras Tyrell in the joust. And his boys had stayed quiet, knowing what Gregor was like in his moods. And then we get the first turn to ugliness:

"Meanwhile, this daughter of his has been fetching and pouring, a fat little thing, eighteen or so -"

"Thirteen, more like," Raff the Sweetling drawled.

Mercy can’t come soon enough for Raff.

Eggon, one of the Mountain’s men, starts committing casual sexual assault against this thirteen year old girl, and Chiswyck joins in. They all egg on Gregor’s squire Stilwood to rape the girl to “make hisself a man”. And then Joss reached up under the girl’s skirt. And the girl ran away screaming. 

The innkeeper rushed over to Gregor demanding that his boys leave the men alone. At that, Gregor finally stirred and demanded that the innkeeper’s daughter be brought to him. The innkeeper complied and dragged his daughter to the kitchen. Gregor called her a whore. The innkeeper protested that she wasn’t that. 

‘She is now.’

And then Gregor Clegane threw a silver at the innkeeper and raped the thirteen year old girl on the kitchen table. Chiswyck laughs at the batrocity being committed in front of him, and then the innkeeper’s son runs up, and Raff the Sweetling murders him for attempting to interfere.

After Gregor was done, all of the Mountain’s Men gang raped the girl. I am leaving out all of the horrific details, because it’s hard for me to write this. I’m sorry. After the initial rape, the murder and the gang rape, just to add one horrifying detail, we get this from Chiswyck:

“And now here's the best bit . . . when it's all done, Ser tells the old man that he wants his change. The girl wasn't worth a silver, he says . . . and damned if that old man didn't fetch a fistful of coppers, beg m'lord's pardon, and thank him for the custom!” 

Everyone laughs, Chiswyck most of all, and Arya stares at him before melting away back down to the cellars. 

Weese beats her Arya when she returns for not asking about the clothes the Mountain’s men needed mending, but Arya just closes her eyes and thinks of the teachings Syrio Forel taught her. Two nights later, Weese dispatches Arya for the Barracks Hall with wine, and she glimpses Jaqen. She looks around to ensure no one is around that would be watching her, thinking Fear cuts deeper than swords. 

She took a step, and another, and with each she felt less a mouse. She worked her way down the bench, filling wine cups. Rorge sat to Jaqen's right, deep drunk, but he took no note of her. Arya leaned close and whispered, "Chiswyck," right in Jaqen's ear. The Lorathi gave no sign that he had heard.

After emptying her flagon of wine, Arya heads back down to the cellars to refill the cask and returns to find that no one had noticed her absence.

Nothing happens for two days, but on the third day, Arya heads down to the kitchens with Weese and learns that one of the Mountain’s men very accidentally fell off a wallwalk and broke his neck. He might have been a little drunk. Or it could have been ghosts. Maybe even Harren’s ghost that flung Chiswyck off the wallwalk.

It wasn't Harren, Arya wanted to say, it was me. She had killed Chiswyck with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was through. I'm the ghost in Harrenhal, she thought. And that night, there was one less name to hate.

And that is ACOK, Arya VII. Wow, this chapter. I knew it was coming for a while now, having read it a number of times while doing former Arya chapters and reading it a few more times before sitting down to write this synopsis, but yeah. What a difficult chapter to get through, and yet a total masterpiece. What did you think, Emmett?

Depth

This is easily the best Arya chapter in the book so far. Arya VII ramps up every element of her arc in ACOK by placing them in the outsized context of Harrenhal. The violence Arya faces, the system of power in which that violence is embedded, Arya’s response to that violence and that power...all of it feels heavier, scarier, bigger like the castle itself. George spent the first half of Arya’s storyline in this book burning down her last connections to her old world, stranding her (appropriately) in the scorched and melted hellhole of Harrenhal. Now he has to build her new world, like a mosaic made up of Jaqen, Weese, Gregor’s men, the Bloody Mummers, and Tywin looming over them all (again like the castle itself). Arya has passed through the looking glass to find on the other side a fairytale world of fear and desire, a garden of forking paths among which she has to choose.

Agreed about this being the best Arya chapter yet! Something I love about this chapter is how the writing matches tone and setting. No, no. I’m not just talking about how George reflects tone, setting and character beats in the writing, I’m talking about the technical aspect of writing this chapter: the way that Arya is constantly feeling the need to over-explain in exposition, because Harrenhal can’t be adequately explained in a neat, tidy sentence. Just one example to illuminate what I mean:

[Harrenhal’s] stables housed a thousand horses, its godswood covered twenty acres, its kitchens were as large as Winterfell’s Great Hall, and its own great hall, grandly named the Hall of a Hundred Hearths even though it only had thirty and some (Arya had tried to count them, twice, but she came up with thirty-three once and thirty-five the other time) was so cavernous that Lord Tywin could have feasted his entire host, though he never did. Walls, doors, halls, steps, everything was built to an inhuman scale that made Arya remember the stories Old Nan used to tell of the giants who lived beyond the Wall.

That’s one sentence. One! It’s a sentence that goes on and on and on. And I think it’s intentional on GRRM’s part to show how Arya can’t neatly summarize this oversized and gargantuan haunted castle. It's an effective way to add just another layer of discomfort to the reader, because this place is WEIRD.

• Daily life at Harrenhal
  • As I said in Arya VI, Harrenhal’s a complex, ambiguous setting, made up of equal parts political scheming, metaphysical weirdness, and the mundane daily grind
  • This allows the castle to signify in many directions at once: here’s what the politics of Westeros look like, here’s what the magic of Westeros looks like, and here’s what it looks like to keep your head down and try to survive in Westeros
  • But as I’ve been hammering on about all through ACOK, what elevates this book is that it doesn’t just trace these political and magical expansions: it brings them together to see what they make of each other, and Arya VII is a perfect example
  • The chapter begins by Arya telling us that whatever names Harren the Black meant to give his towers were long gone. Harren’s ambitions are not only ash and dust, they aren’t even remembered by anyone. He’s denied the memory of story and song that Brienne says will immortalize her fellow summer knights
  • Instead, the names of the towers belong to Aegon the Conqueror and Balerion the Dread. They belong to the night stone ran like melting wax, the night that high castle walls for which Harren bled the Riverlands were made obsolete
  • For dragons fly! Aegon used the magical world as a blunt instrument to sweep away the old political world and replace it with his new one
  • Yet in the process, he took an already blood-soaked castle and made it even worse. Just as Harrenhal, the castle the size of a country, is sagging under its own weight and impossible to maintain, so too has Aegon’s kingdom fallen from his family’s hands and now splintered into civil war
  • The opening two lines of Arya VII feel like she’s reading them to us out loud around a campfire, like one of Old Nan’s stories
  • That perfectly fits the dark fairytale tone to Arya’s time in Harrenhal: a world haunted by forgotten names, left only with names that speak to ruin and death
  • Yet George then immediately swerves on us, by zooming in on the mundane realities of Arya’s life in this gigantic crumbling mausoleum
  • Arya has a bed to sleep in. Arya has soap to wash with. Arya has food, consistently; not the most nourishing diet, but it’s better than hunting for bugs 
  • That’s the key point: Arya’s life has improved by entering Harrenhal. Hot Pie is better off. Gendry is better off, though Arya doesn’t get to see him much. This is a deliberate upending of expectations, just like “King Aerys, gods grace him”
  • You’re not supposed to prefer living in the haunted castle! It’s supposed to be the place you have to live because it’s where your strange new husband Vlad lives, or you’ll get a big inheritance if only you stay the night, etc.
  • If you do prefer life in the haunted castle (or the Overlook Hotel), it’s a sign that you belong with the ghosts, and we’ll get into that when we get to Arya X
  • That’s not what’s going on here. George is drawing our attention to how for all the creepy imagery and backstory surrounding Harrenhal, ghosts matter less than food and sleep at the end of the day
  • It’s perfectly fitting that such a theme would emerge in Arya Underfoot’s story, because her chapters in ACOK are about showing you how the other half lives, the stories erased and forgotten (like Harren’s names for his towers) from the narrative of the war
  • It’s easy for Catelyn, in relative comfort at Riverrun, to dread Harrenhal for its place in the songs and stories, but for Arya, Harrenhal is the place where she gets bread to eat, where before there was no bread to eat. It’s that simple!
  • Similarly, Harrenhal’s monstrous size contributes to the spookiness on one hand: Arya describes it as almost a constant optical illusion, reducing everyone to mice
  • On the other hand, what that amounts to in practicality is more space to clean! Harrenhal’s size isn’t intimidating, it just makes more work for its occupants
  • One thinks of unrealistic sci-fi skyscrapers...but also the real-world attempts by authoritarians to reflect their control in imposing architecture. It’s both.
  • Arya takes a stubbornly secular approach to Harrenhal at first, insisting that there are no ghosts in the Wailing Tower--that’s just wind through the gaps in the walls
  • Again, this is appropriate for her because she’s the POV who has to fight for every inch of ground, the POV most rooted in day-to-day realities
  • Let Dany have her dragons, let Team Dragonstone have their shadowbabies; Arya’s gonna focus on her work, thank you very much
  • But even before Jaqen shows up to shatter that illusion, George gives us a glimpse of how Arya’s young mind still hasn’t totally given up on the stories:
  • I love that Arya could grant the existence of ghosts, but insists they would follow some sort of logical procedure. That’s Arya’s POV in a nutshell
  • Arya delivers a thesis statement for Harrenhal when she says that regardless of whether the ghosts are real or not, it’s the living men she fears most
  • Harrenhal always finds a new generation of monsters willing to feed it blood, like the Overlook Hotel. You are the caretaker. You have always been the caretaker.
  • It’s that contrast of an overwhelming environment with the smallness and pettiness of its occupants that allows Harrenhal to stradde these worlds
  • Harrenhal might blacken Arya’s soul like radiation, but morning, noon, and night, her primary obstacle isn’t ghosts. It’s Weese, Weese’s hands, Weese’s dog
  • It’s everyday cruelty captured inside Gothic cruelty, and the point is that these are two sides of the same coin. Some villains bathe in the blood of their enemies, and so live forever in ghost stories. Some just abuse nameless peasants because they can, and Arya’s POV forces us to take in both. It’s Grand Guignol
  • It’s also a glass candle!
  • At the end of Dany’s story in ACOK, Xaro will tell Dany: It is said that the glass candles are burning in the house of Urrathon Night-Walker, that have not burned in a hundred years.
  • So, we know that the concept of glass candles exist for George all the way back here in ACOK.
  • That line you were referencing earlier: about Arya fearing men rather than the ghosts and monstrosity of the castle. The way George concludes it sends a shiver down the spine:
    • It was the living men she feared, Weese and Ser Gregor Clegane and Lord Tywin Lannister himself, who kept his apartments in Kingspyre Tower, still the tallest and mightiest of all, though lopsided beneath the weight of the slagged stone that made it look like some giant half-melted black candle.
  • In AFFC when Samwell Tarly meets up with Marwyn, Sam describes glass candles this way:
    • The candle was unpleasantly bright. There was something queer about it. The flame did not flicker, even when Archmaester Marwyn closed the door so hard that papers blew off a nearby table. The light did something strange to colors too. Whites were bright as fresh-fallen snow, yellow shone like gold, reds turned to flame, but the shadows were so black they looked like holes in the world. Sam found himself staring. The candle itself was three feet tall and slender as a sword, ridged and twisted, glittering black.
  • A twisted black candle and a lopsided black tower that looks like a black candle -- I want to say that George is intentionally drawing the parallel!
  • What’s fascinating is that GRRM integrates the imagery of the mystical, mysterious glass candles with the day-to-day operations in Harrenhal.
  • It’s just the place where Tywin Lannister lives while he’s here in Harrenhal. But it’s also a tower twisted by “fire made flesh”, by a thing that defies reason
  • And yet the story of ASOIAF calls us to consider the union of the secular and magical, and I just love how George layers the union in ghost stories, in history and in imagery all wrapped in the mundane of Arya scrubbing of floors, wiping grime off windows and knowing where individual knights and lords live in this castle!
• Introducing the Bloody Mummers and plotting escape
  • Arya dashes about the castle running errands for Weese, absorbing all the gossip like the little sponge she’s always been
  • The gossip runs the gamut from sex to spitting in Harys Swyft’s food to Stannis’ letter, which is starting to spread the word of the twincest far and wide; this is one of the only times we see Tywin engage with his family’s dirty little secret
  • George is framing Harrenhal as a microcosm of the realm itself. The castle is big enough to recreate every stratification of society within its massive walls
  • Yet Arya keeps herself at a distance, not wanting to know anyone’s name because that makes it hurt when they die; it’s the same sentiment Jaime expresses regarding his horses, and it’s an interesting inversion of her list
  • The servants are mice before the lords, but the lords are mice before the castle; Harrenhal speaks to both the ambition of man and how death topples those ambitions. Tywin fits right in with this aura of patriarchy gone overripe and rotting
  • We hear rumors about all the different moves he might make next, which just emphasizes how many problems he has, how much trouble the Lannisters are in
  • In a military sense, rumors will always be a part of how grunts cope with being in shitty circumstances with not a lot of information.
  • But the wildness of these particular rumors are showing how desperate the Lannisters are growing. 
  • And they have every reason to be growing desperate! Just to re-emphasize where we’re at in ACOK, Tywin Lannister is at Harrenhal with 15-20K soldiers. He’s got Joffrey/Tyrion down in King’s Landing with about 7000 gold cloaks, sellswords, Rosby/Stokeworth knights/squires and mountain clansmen. Finally cousin Stafford Lannister’s army of some 10-15K is out west (and is very likely destroyed or dispersed at this point in the story)
  • Against that, Tywin faces:
    • Roose Bolton’s army having marched south from the Twins and positioned just north of Harrenhal at the Ruby Ford (a key piece of terrain and something I’ll expand on come Arya IX)
    • Robb Stark is allegedly at Riverrun to Tywin’s west but is actually at the Golden Tooth or even out in the Westerlands at this point.
    • Renly Baratheon and the Tyrells marching up the Rose road to Tywin’s southwest
    • Stannis Baratheon and his fleet is to the east.
  • The Lannisters are surrounded on four sides with their only line of retreat to the south to King’s Landing and after that, there’s nowhere else to go.
  • So, the feeling among the Lannisters is that they’re on the losing side -- again, something that Arya picks up on:
    • Even Lannister men questioned how long Joffrey would hold the Iron Throne. "The lad's got no army but them gold cloaks, and he's ruled by a eunuch, a dwarf, and a woman," she heard a lordling mutter in his cups. "What good will the likes of them be if it comes to battle?"  
  • So, naturally, the Lannisters are at the bargaining stage, turning to rumor-mongering -- Tywin will make silver swords to kill Stark wargs being my favorite of the rumors Arya overhears.
  • Of course, on the meta side, this is George stacking the odds against the Lannisters so that they seem destined for defeat before the dramatic reversals occur after Renly’s death and the Blackwater.
  • But don’t also discount something worth emphasizing: The Lannisters are really fuckin’ lucky to have survived ACOK.
  • But with the numbers decidedly against Tywin and rumors flying, the Lannisters turn to an unconventional (in every possible way) force to even the odds. 
  • The Bloody Mummers seem to emerge from this cloud of gossip, as if summoned into being by the war and the tides of gold, blood, and information that go with it
  • As Arya thinks, Tywin seems to have no end of monsters on his payroll, as if he opened Pandora’s box and let loose a series of plagues on the Riverlands
  • So it’s worth asking: why have the Bloody Mummers? What flavor do they add to the stew as characters that makes them separate from Gregor and Amory Lorch?
  • On the one hand, they’re even more outlandishly villainous, dedicating their lives to spectacle, a theater of cruelty on par with Ramsay’s experiments
  • There’s an aura of fairytale around Gregor as well (a giant who lives like Bluebeard), and Amory Lorch is forever associated with the manticore
  • But the Mummers ramp up the wild imagery among these Harrenhal based goons, resulting in what Arya calls the queerest company she’s ever seen, a riotous assemblage of comic book villains clashing with the browns of Harrenhal
  • Zorses, Shagwell’s motley, painted forked beards, feathered cloaks...it’s another of those busy explosions of color that define ACOK, as in Bitterbridge and Qarth
  • Gregor and Amory are Lannister cronies to the bitter end (and beyond, in Gregor’s case), but the flamboyance of the Bloody Mummers, the sense that they all come from different places and different levels of society, separates them out
  • They don’t work for Tywin, or for House Lannister. They work for the war. They are its worshippers, offering sacrifices to the Many-Faced God in all his forms
  • They are feasting crows, following the war around in the hopes of picking up scraps. The Bloody Mummers are the perfect mirror image of the Brotherhood without Banners, assembled like the Brotherhood from all levels of society, but they prey on the people for both sides rather than defend them from both sides
  • That’s terrifying! But it’s also doomed and fragile in a way that the exploits of Gregor and Amory are not. On the one hand, if Tywin goes down, those two go down; they can’t jump ship to Robb as easily as Vargo Hoat and his followers can
  • On the other hand, though, their service to Tywin guarantees them land, income, support against their rivals. They are protected, after a fashion. Vargo is not
  • As we’ll see throughout ASOS and AFFC, when the walls close in around the Bloody Mummers, they turn out to have no foundation for power beyond force
  • As Roose says, there’re no pardons for them. Landless sellswords, most of them foreign, easily disavowable assets for lords on all sides seeking an advantage
  • So on the one hand, the Mummers are even worse than Tywin’s other monsters. That’s why George has Weese warn Arya away; how bad must the Mummers be if a wretched sadistic person like Weese considers them beyond the pale?
  • But on the other hand, when the chips are down in AFFC, they have nothing to fall back on, unlike Lannister soldiers demobilized and set home. They try to escape the war, but having made its use of them, the war eats them all alive
  • It is the combination of the two that makes the Mummers interesting to me: they show you the kind of people attracted to the war, attracted to a place like Harrenhal, and they show you what happens to those people after they’ve ridden the wave of blood high as they can. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell…
  • And that’s perfectly appropriate for Harrenhal, because like the war, it is always luring ambitious unscrupulous people like Vargo Hoat to their doom
  • For this chapter’s purposes, the Mummers are here to jolt Arya out of her willingness to keep her head down and survive in Harrenhal. She’s not safe at all, she’s surrounded by monsters, and she needs to get out and get home!
  • Getting out is inextricable from getting home, of course, because Arya’s chosen vessel for escape in this chapter is the Northern captives taken by Tywin
  • In particular, she wants to reveal herself to Lord Cerwyn, because she knows him; Castle Cerwyn, after all, is a half day’s ride from Winterfell
  • She is haunted by Winterfell. Her home is one of the ghosts inside Harrenhal. Winterfell has been replaced by Harrenhal, hence Tywin having Ned’s face
  • Arya is drawing from her childhood relationships here, and so it’s fitting that her plan is more than a little naive; as always, death crushes her hopes 
  • When Lord Cerwyn dies, it’s a punch to the gut not only because an escape hatch has slammed shut, but because it’s like she’s lost home and family again
  • Arya is still counting on adult authorities to deliver her, but by book’s end, she knows she has to free herself; she’s coming of age, just like Bran in the North
  • We can also start to see the shape of the downfall of the oldest brother in this chapter: Robb Stark
  • It’s also noted in this chapter that Tywin gives the captive northmen and Freys “freedom of the castle” and treats them as a cut far above just about everyone at Harrenhal.
  • The Freys get ransomed with a bag of gold, and Arya observes Tywin chatting with Wylis Manderly on the wallwalk.
  • My thinking is that Tywin is developing the intelligence picture of the Stark-Tully alliance here, sussing out the strengths and weaknesses.
  • And though I think Tywin Lannister didn’t start actively wooing Walder Frey and Roose Bolton until after the Blackwater and after he learns that Robb Stark is in the Westerlands, it’s entirely possible that ransoming the Freys was the opening move on Tywin’s part.
    • Love the idea that GRRM is camouflaging the opening dance between Walder Frey and Tywin Lannister in the usual practice of war -- they’re just noble prisoners that are being ransomed. Nothing to see here!
  • And as Wyman Manderly will note in ADWD, Tywin Lannister had written Wyman Manderly with an offer for the Manderlys to return to the king’s peace.
    • “Before he was slain, Lord Tywin offered White Harbor full pardon for our support of the Young Wolf. He promised that my son would be returned to me once I paid a ransom of three thousand dragons and proved my loyalty beyond a doubt. Roose Bolton, who is named our Warden of the North, requires that I give up my claim to Lord Hornwood's lands and castles but swears my other holdings shall remain untouched.” 
  • My suspicion is not that Wylis was a traitor to his father (though, I guess that’s a possibility), but rather that Tywin took whatever information Wylis conveyed and used it in his negotiations with Lord Wyman.
  • Both Tywin’s dealings with the Freys and Manderlys read as an effort on Tywin’s part to assuage his shitty rep to his fellow nobles: see, he’s not so bad. He operates within normal bounds of warfare. You can work with a guy like Tywin Lannister, Lords Walder and Wyman!
    • Joffrey, when your enemies defy you, you must serve them steel and fire. When they go to their knees, however, you must help them back to their feet. Elsewise no man will ever bend the knee to you. 
  • It’s also politically interesting to note that Tywin is operating within bounds (again, towards nobles. Not smallfolk. Very important!) when he’s at significant military and political disadvantage. When he’s at a place of superiority (Reyne-Tarbeck Rebellion, Red Wedding), norms don’t mean shit.
• Reintroducing Jaqen H’ghar
  • So far in the chapter, George has done an excellent job of immersing us in the complex contradictory world of Harrenhal, as well as giving us a sense of how Arya operates within it and how that reflects back on her story so far
  • But now we need a narrative spark, someone to force Arya’s hand so she has to do more than describe Harrenhal to us as she tries to survive it day to day
  • That spark takes the form of Jaqen H’ghar: Arya’s new mentor to replace Yoren/Syrio/Ned, and the embodiment of the magical age of wonder and terror in this storyline like Jojen/Melisandre/Quaithe in other storylines in ACOK
  • He is reintroduced in the context of Amory Lorch’s arrival at Harrenhal; Arya feels a stab of hate at the sight of him, which only grows when she hears people gossiping about how Amory rode around the lake “slaying rebels”
  • Something George focuses on throughout the series but especially in this chapter is the role storytelling plays in manufacturing a consensus
  • “Rebel” is not an immutable status, but a political label dependent on context. Tywin started this war a rebel, and his status changed through no action of his
  • Amory is being framed as someone enforcing the law, when in truth, his actions are worse than any robber knight and are leading to a breakdown of society
  • The outlaws are, in fact, the ones defending the realm! I think you can see there both George’s politics and his approach in the series of insisting that the romantic values of the stories and songs are being upheld by silenced ignored outcasts
  • One of those silenced is Arya Underfoot. Now, her noble background definitely influences her thoughts and actions, separating her from Gendry and Hot Pie
  • But her intense reaction to seeing Amory Lorch again speaks to not simply her desire for Stark victory over House Lannister, nor even revenge for Yoren
  • Instead, it is about justice: about fighting back against the narrative that Yoren and his charges deserved what happened to them, about restoring the truth
  • That’s why it’s so disarming for her when she sees the three men at the end of the column: Rorge, Biter, and Jaqen H’ghar, now in service to Amory Lorch
  • She feels a sense of real betrayal, and I think it’s worth exploring why. It’s not like she was ever friends with these guys; this isn’t like Gendry leaving her later
  • What’s really going on here is guilt. Arya saved their lives, risking her own to do so, against Gendry’s advice as she notes. And now they’re Lannisters?!
  • This isn’t really rational, of course! As Jaqen says in the show, they did what they had to in order to survive in a Westeros at war, a Westeros being set on fire
  • It’s not really about them, it’s about how Arya feels about her own place in this. She keeps hearing about wolves eating babies, she keeps seeing people spit at the name of House Stark. She’s seen institutions she was raised to believe in, like the crown and the Night’s Watch, turn out to be corrupt or just failures
  • In the face of this, she did what feels like one good thing, one heroic thing in a cynical world burning down around her: she saved three lives at risk of her own
  • And look what happened. All she did was put three more swords in the hands of her enemies, the people who killed Yoren, who killed Syrio, who killed her father
  • In a Westeros at war, in the topsy-turvy world of Harrenhal, everything is zero sum and there is no way to do any lasting good. The system is broken.
  • As such, Arya regrets her humanitarian impulse, falling back on her new coping mechanism, her kill list. She falls asleep before she can add three new names...only for Jaqen to wake her up demanding she give him three names
  • This is what makes Jaqen such a brilliant addition to Arya’s cast: his offer builds so perfectly on the list and all the questions and issues it brings up
  • Does the list represent Arya’s desire to right the wrongs of Westeros, a spark of her soul that will not be extinguished, or does it run the risk of transforming her into that which she hates, leaving her unable to return to a life of love and peace?
  • I think we can come back semi-confident after Season 8 that Arya’s story is ultimately going in the former direction, but Jaqen is an important temptation figure for the other path
  • He can’t help her get home. He can’t help her find peace. He can’t restore her dead. All he can do is kill, and if she becomes like him, that’s all she’ll ever do
  • This is especially potent coming back knowing that Jaqen is a Faceless Man. “Jaqen H’ghar” isn’t even his name! It’s the face of some Lorathi he’s wearing
  • Who he really is, is no one. No name. No family. No side in the war, no stake in the fight, no banner in the wind but that of death. No home to long for like hers.
  • The Faceless Men offer Arya an attractive temptation because they tell her that she can’t outrun death and should instead embrace it so it can’t hurt her
  • Wear death like armor and it can’t be used against you. Sacrifice your name, your identity, your family, and the loss of these things cannot hurt you
  • There is a parallel to the serenity sought for by anti-materialists from Christianity to Buddhism, but with the end result being endless death instead of peaceful life
  • Become the monster in the darkness, Jaqen is saying to Arya. Become the god of death, the ghost of Harrenhal, and your enemies will suffer instead of you
  • The temptation is only enhanced by how Jaqen seems unbound by his environment even before the reader knows he’s a literal wizard
  • In a world of grime and grease and the smell of shit, Jaqen always smells like soap, his red hair a pop of color in Arya’s otherwise visually drab ACOK chapters
  • Jaqen personifies the queer smell of roasting meat intermingling with the corruption of dead men from the Lannister camp at the village in Arya V.
  • Amidst gray or blackened stone, the grime Arya is washing every day, amidst the ring of overflowing latrines around Harrenhal, Jaqen is there washed and smelling nice.
  • It’s seduction, and it’s supposed to strike as this head-tilting moment! It’s why the girls giggle and whisper to each other at the sight of Jaqen H’ghar and his long, combed hair amidst the ruined castle.
  • He’s an alluring contrast to the secular world of atrocity that Arya has seen all around her: a world of death
  • But does Jaqen represent a better alternative to the horrors Arya has witnessed? Jaqen is the mystical other, the one who tempts Arya to embrace a mystery cult -- one dedicated to death 
  • As we’ll find out, Jaqen is constantly bathing and his hair is always at “11”. I wonder whether it’s not so much that Jaqen is into personal hygiene so much as he’s keeping his body constantly prepared for the grave, for death -- something we see historically with the Spartans combing their hair just prior to the Battle of Thermopylae when they were reported to be combing their hair and making their bodies ready for the grave.
  • He sees and recognizes Arya without giving himself away; he emerges as if from her dream; he’s gone by the time she lights a candle, like he too was a dream
  • Harrenhal as a setting is all about how the combined forces of magic and death rain down on mortal men, and Jaqen has mastered magic and works for death. He seems to transcend the castle’s gravity, and promises that Arya can, too
  • Arya has fallen, not literally like Bran but figuratively: a fall from innocence, and we associate the fall from childhood innocence with a reckoning with mortality
  • Arya’s kill list is the most intimate expression of that reckoning, whispered to no one but herself. Harrenhal represents that reckoning on a colossal scale. 
  • Jaqen is the glue, the go-between. He’s a way of getting from point A to point B, the connective tissue between Arya’s intimate relationship to death and the atrocities of the war. He can translate her pain and anger into concrete action
  • He is her kill list brought to life, Death given a temporary name and put at her service, just like the shadow with Stannis’ face that removes Renly for him
  • And as with Melisandre (and Jojen, and various folks in Qarth), there is a fairytale structure to this relationship that allows George to comment on the nature of magic as well as place his story in context with other stories and mythologies
  • Jaqen is like a genie offering three wishes, as well as a mystical assassin building on (ahistorical but fun) conceptions of the Hashashin order
  • He invokes the Red God, and talks in a flowery stilted manner unlike anyone else in Arya’s story right now...but similar to Syrio, Beric, the Ghost of High Heart, and of course the Kindly Man, his comrade back in Braavos
  • There’s always someone in Arya’s story who stands in for the fiery ladder, the possibility of transcending a world full of death, misery, the banality of evil
  • Arya’s relationship to those characters increasingly feels like the backbone struggle of her story. Will she become like them, or will she rejoin the pack?
  • The dynamic is temptation v. identity. Arya processes this offer as something that would feel good in the short term, but betray the identity she’s kept safe inside
  • As always, Ned’s children fall back on him in moments of crisis. Who am I, they ask themselves? I am Ned Stark’s kid. I want to be like him when I grow up.
  • And Arya knows that Dad would not approve of this, not one bit. He would wear his lord’s face like Tywin, brow furrowed, lips pursed, eyes ice cold, and tell her that this is not the way. The Stark way. The way of the First Men. Their way.
  • You’re not allowed to cheat. You’re not allowed to take advantage of Death, because that implies a selfish disrespect for Death’s power, and that is unacceptable for the Starks because the Starks are the guardians against the Army of the Dead! Arya is essentially being seduced by the enemy here!
  • This is the same temptation we talked about in Bran IV: religion and magic offer to save you from death, but they die too. Jaqen is empty, alive in name only.
  • It’s the same temptation we talked about in Dany’s story: she tries to use magic to bring Drogo back, but it only makes everything worse. Same deal here.
  • These storylines all have these themes in common for a reason. We see power as a shadow on a wall before Varys’ big speech about it (with Mirri Maz Duur) and after it (with Renly’s death) for a reason
  • George isn’t expanding his story willy-nilly for the sake of it, he’s presenting these similar political and magical and dramatic situations because these are the ideas that led him to write this story; these are the elements that will define endgame
  • So there are clear similarities between Jaqen and characters like Jojen and Quaithe and Melisandre: characters who stand out from the political grind, standing in for mysterious game-changing elements of magic and transformation
  • They crack open a door to another world, and look back at our heroes with eyebrows raised. Will you climb the fiery ladder? Will you break your chains and become the winged wolf? Will you embrace your status as the son of fire, lord of light, chosen savior of the world? Will you give three names to the god of death?
  • This allows not only for character development, not only for worldbuilding and setup for later events, but all of that at once. From the very beginning of ACOK with the red comet, we’ve seen these different narrative strands tied together. These temptations and collisions of worlds are what the book is about
  • But we shouldn’t paper over the differences. If ACOK is a rainbow, we have to examine each individual ray of light to see how its shade differs from the rest
  • There’s a major difference between Jaqen as a magical mentor, as a temptation figure heralding the age of wonder and terror, and Jojen/Quaithe/Melisandre
  • The latter actively sought out their chosen ones. Jojen traveled from Greywater Watch to Winterfell to find Brandon Stark, the Winged Wolf. Melisandre traveled from Asshai to Dragonstone to find Stannis Baratheon, Azor Ahai (or so she thinks). Quaithe is blunt about why she traveled from Qarth to Vaes Tolorro: “We come seeking dragons.” These characters orbit the protagonists and have dedicated themselves to overseeing their rise (Quaithe less so, but still)
  • They are supporting characters in every sense of the word. But that’s not the case with Arya’s new best friend. Despite having given himself body and soul to a religious organization, the Faceless Man currently calling himself Jaqen H’ghar is not here to proselytize and convert. He’s on the job, the sorcerous equivalent of a company man relative to lone wolves like Melisandre and Quaithe
  • We’ll talk more about Jaqen’s mission and where he’s going in the wider story in later Arya episodes, but it’s important that Jaqen is the most opaque of these magical mentors in terms of backstory and overall narrative thrust
  • Jojen is selectively honest, Melisandre mixes lies with truth, and Quaithe only speaks in riddles, but they’re positively straightforward compared to Jaqen
  • He doesn’t tell Arya where he came from, he doesn’t tell her why he’s doing this other than the fairly abstract notion of paying back Death, and most ominously, he doesn’t tell her what’s going to happen after the three wishes are done
  • This builds tension and adds to the dreamlike fairytale structure of Arya’s time with Jaqen, but it also separates her story out from those of Dany/Bran/Stannis
  • Their mentors tell them how important they are. Jaqen tells her she owes the universe and he’s come to collect, less a mentor than a creditor’s hired goon
  • He’s auditioning her for membership in his little club, of course, but he didn’t come to Westeros to do that. This is a lark for him, a side quest. Why not?
  • That’s so fitting for Arya’s story, because she’s Arya Underfoot, the mouse in the vast echoing spaces of castle and country. Of course she wasn’t sought out by a grand narrative! Of course her magical mentor figure tripped over her in passing
  • On the surface, that might make Arya feel less important, that her arc of mystical temptation and revelation feels accidental, marginal by comparison
  • But on a deeper level, it makes her more important, because she’s earned her sudden place in the pantheon of gods. She’s being swept up in this magical tide not because someone said she would be important, but because of her actions
  • Again, it’s appropriate for a story so low to the ground that the stakes are much more intimate than in the other magical temptations
  • Jaqen stands in for the age of wonder and terror, but he doesn’t directly allude to it, unlike the others. Even as the Arya-Jaqen dynamic intersects with the political big picture thanks to “weasel soup,” the focus is always on what their dynamic says about Arya’s relationship to the world around her, more than the apocalypse
  • That’s because Arya’s story is ultimately less about how she fits into the cosmic puzzle unfolding in the margins, and more about how her brushes with death struggle against her desire to return to home and family and be once more whole
• Chiswyck’s story and the first kill
  • Arya VII is such an accomplished chapter because it keeps introducing new elements that wash over the previous ones, changing the situation completely
  • Harren the Black’s names for his towers get replaced, and then Arya ignores them in favor of her daily routine. Then we move on from that to the Bloody Mummers, who make everyone else look normal. Then Lord Cerwyn offers her hope, then dies. Then Jaqen shows back up to reframe it all with his offer
  • And it’s very important that we have that offer in mind when we transition into the final setpiece of Arya VII: Chiswyck’s story, the hardest-to-read part of ASOIAF
  • Why is that? There’s no shortage of atrocities in this story. Some are shown, some described. Many are committed against women. Many are committed against powerless people. Most go unpunished by the powers that be
  • What Chiswyck describes in this chapter combines all of those elements, but it goes deeper than that. It’s how George structures it, the details he works in
  • First of all, we have the framing device of the story. There’s no indication of an unreliable narrator here; rather, we’re being shown how a person like Chiswyck sees the world and justifies their abominable behavior in retrospect
  • It also ties into the power of rumor we touched on, Jaqen as a figure out of stories, Arya’s POV as a vessel for stories that have been erased and forgotten
  • Chiswyck tells his story to appeal to an audience, his fellow soldiers. That’s part of what makes this so memorably awful--this isn’t being forced out of him, he’s telling it as part of a relaxed good time with his bros. This is fun for him
  • The first words out of his mouth are so important:
  • This was before the war came. This can’t be blamed on the war. This was not made possible by the breakdown of social order in the wake of a civil war. This happened in a Westeros at peace, united north to south by King Robert
  • This is once more an upending of expectations, forcing us to confront the context in which we consider the atrocities dominating these Arya chapters
  • They’re not just war crimes--they’re seemingly regular occurrences in peacetime. So can that meaningfully be called peace? Is that a time we really want to restore, or will the Westeros emerging from war have to be stronger to survive?
  • Now, of course, the war makes all of this worse, and we already saw Mycah chopped up during peacetime, so this isn’t exactly news
  • But it’s part of a process in these Arya chapters in which George drops us in the middle of soul-shattering violence and then denies us a cathartic understanding
  • Our perspective on the blunt horrors at the heart of these chapters is constantly being challenged. Arya’s relationship to her world is changing, and so must ours
  • Chiswyck also takes great care to mention the other factors that were at play that night. The rains kept them from crossing. The ale was weak. The inkeep kept bothering them. Gregor was pissed off about the trick Loras pulled during the Hand’s Tourney. On and on and on
  • Why do this? Is he just setting the scene like a good storyteller does? Well, that’s what George is doing: building the agony and tension, because we know what kind of men these are, and so we know the story can’t possibly end well
  • But what Chiswyck is doing is laying the grounds for a justification of his actions. This is a pre-emptive case for the defense, with Arya as silent judge and jury
  • What he’s saying, basically, is that they committed gangrape and murder because they were bored and cranky and their heads hurt, and you get it, fellas!
  • And they do. That’s what makes it extra chilling. That’s what makes the framing device of the story so effective to communicating George’s point
  • It’s not just Chiswyck, this one terrible guy. They all get it, they all think it’s funny, they would all do it in his place
  • They would all take out their vague discomforts and inconveniences by ruining the lives of whatever innocent people trying to get by happen to be in their path
  • Chiswyck’s storytelling bias reasserts itself when he lies about the girl’s age, and when he says he “maybe” started touching her initially
  • Why is he hedging his bets here? It’s not like these guys are going to judge him! I think it becomes clear when Chiswyck blames the innkeep for the gangrape
  • This is, of course, so galling I almost choke on it, every time. Chiswyck honestly seems to believe that everything was fine up until that point, until this asshole stuck his nose in, and then everything that ensued was his responsibility
  • Even though all the innkeep did was ask Gregor to live up to his title. To preserve the rights of the young and innocent. To be a knight who remembered his vows
  • Gregor’s response to being called on the carpet is to demonstrate that the combination of physical force and wealth entitles him to do whatever he wants
  • He immediately rips the girl’s clothes off and rapes her; a scene dominated by growing tension has now become an unimaginable nightmare
  • And Chiswyck laughs. He laughs at the father’s face. He laughs at the idea that they could be called upon to do their duty. Instead, they do the opposite
  • Somehow, the story gets even worse from there. It turns out the innkeep has another child, a son, who races up from the cellar at the noise and heroically comes to the defense of his sister
  • It immediately comes to nothing. Raff casually kills him, Chiswyck casually mentions this, and both the rape and the story about it proceed unhindered
  • Again, Chiswyck frames this as the fault of the victims: Raff “had” to kill the young man, because he might’ve interfered with their pleasure in raping his sister
  • Gregor’s men follow him in turn, and all at once you realize how normal this is for them, how routine; Chiswyck even knows each of their sexual preferences
  • As for Chiswyck’s preferences, he would’ve preferred her to fight, but in his mind, she’s decided she likes it. Again, he’s trying to retroactively establish consent
  • That’s what feeds into the punchline of Chiswyck’s big joke, and here is where the full scope of George’s argument in telling this story becomes clear
  • Gregor demands his change. Because she wasn’t worth it. Because she’s nothing. Because she’s a subhuman peasant woman I took because I was bored, because my head hurt, because I was angry at another nobleman for a trick he pulled in our fake battle, because her father dared to ask me to protect her.
  • This is a level of cruelty and control that goes beyond the animal instincts generally associated with Gregor Clegane. There is a specific worldview being hammered home: you are worthless not only because we can rape and kill you, but also because we can buy and sell you. You are property, not people
  • Imagine having your family casually destroyed before your eyes and then being told they were worth copper, not silver. Imagine being forced to hand these monsters some of their money back over the trembling bruised body of your daughter, over the dead body of your son. Imagine thanking them for the custom
  • This is a thesis statement moment for ASOIAF, in which George lays bare the connections between sexual violence on one hand and widespread political and economic exploitation on the other. The latter props up the former, always.
  • That’s why it’s so significant that this happened in peacetime. This is the status quo. This is the system working as intended, as far as the people in power are concerned. This is the world allowed for by the generation that raised Arya Stark
  • It’s a world in which inequalities of power inevitably lead to abuses of power. The political marginalization of the smallfolk, their economic dependence on the higher classes, makes them vulnerable to attack by their landlords’ pet thugs
  • Bearing silent witness to this story is a moment of radicalization for Arya Stark, in which all the chaotic violence and loss and disillusionment she’s been put through is crystallized, clarified into a single hideous action and her own reaction 
  • When I say radicalization, I mean that this is the moment in which Arya stops counting on anyone or anything else to set this cursed unjust world to rights
  • She has to do it herself, and she has to use any available tool, even if it would shock and sadden her father; it’s a generational moment of political change
  • Arya realizes in full, at last, that this is not a world Ned prepared her for, and so she has to (at least partially) let Dad go and step into a realm of uncertainty; that’s the essence of both coming-of-age stories and many fairytales
  • In making this decision, she momentarily achieves serenity, and I can’t express how much I love the way in which George writes this
  • He does not give us an italicized paragraph of inner monologue in which Arya’s horror and anger at this story are expressed. He knows he doesn’t need that
  • He knows all the horror and anger are in our heads because of how well he constructed that nightmare of a story; he knows that we will project all that horror and anger into Arya when she whispers “Chiswyck” into Jaqen’s ear
  • It’s such strong confident storytelling! And then he wraps the chapter up perfectly by Arya declaring herself the true ghost of Harrenhal, killing with a whisper
  • This is the ideal note of ambiguity with which to close off Arya VII after the intense rush of emotions evoked in us by Chiswyck’s hideous story
  • George throws everything he can at us to ensure that the killing of Chiswyck feels justified. More than justified--righteous
  • He committed these unspeakable deeds for no real reason, and is laughing about it afterwards. What really haunted me about this on reread is how all of this started because Chiswyck and the other Mountain’s men were trying to induct young Joss Stillwood, a squire, into their gang
  • Just as Arya is coming of age, just as she is being initiated in the various dark ways of Westeros, Chiswyck is training a next generation of rapists and killers
  • That’s why he has to die, more than anything in my opinion. Revenge is futile, of course; the innkeep’s daughter won’t ever know that Chiswyck died for his crimes
  • But Chiswyck has to be stopped before he can make any more young men like him, before he can help cement this worldview in people of Arya’s generation
  • As an isolated act, this is pure justice, and I think we are supposed to pump our fists in triumph as finally, finally, one of the brutes burning the Riverlands gets his
  • It feels for a moment like all the downtrodden are striking back with Arya, a blow aimed upward after so many aimed down, and it’s immensely cathartic
  • But of course, this doesn’t take place in isolation. It’s only the first wish out of three. Things are going to get much more complicated as Arya goes, just as Dany goes from righteousness to complex power plays in Slaver’s Bay
  • Coming back on reread, there’s a note of sadness and fear to Arya declaring herself one of the ghosts; that’s not going to make her happy in the long run
  • Here’s where we see how Jaqen himself stands in for Harrenhal, like all the spookiness and violence hovering around the castle swirled together into a man
  • He can wield the invisible power of Harrenhal on her behalf, but in doing so, she gets embroiled in the atmosphere of corruption and death along with him
  • So the question becomes not only how Arya will strike back, but what she will do with herself after the striking back is done--and that applies to her entire story!

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

We learn in passing that Amory Lorch doesn’t much care for Vargo Hoat and his pretensions to lordship. Their mutual loathing will be built up over the next couple of Arya chapters, paying off when Vargo turns cloak and joins Roose Bolton, who promptly feeds Amory to a bear. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Speaking of which, Roose the Noose is mentioned in this chapter! The gossip is that he’s occupied the ruby ford with the Northern infantry under his command. This sets up his presence in the area, so it doesn’t come out of nowhere when he takes Harrenhal in Arya IX with a little help from the Bloody Mummers....and weasel soup, of course.

Once again, Beric Dondarrion haunts the fringes of these Arya chapters in ACOK before reappearing in the fiery flesh come ASOS. In this chapter, we hear about how many times Beric has supposedly been killed, which seems like just crazy rumormongering to a first time reader...until you learn that Beric has been actually killed each time, and is being resurrected.

Arya learns for the first time in this chapter that Robb is in the area, and so Riverrun replaces Winterfell as the refuge of family and safety which she will desperately try--and fail--to reach over the course of this book and the next one.

Theory/Discussion

The Harrenhal curse: fact or fakery???

• I think people get hung up on the word “curse” because it reminds them of goofier stories than ASOIAF, which we all have a vested interest in presenting as very serious
• But the magical side of this story includes characters referred to as Coldhands and Patchface, so it’s not like self-consciously silly elements are unprecedented in this series
• Regardless, I think there is strong evidence that something beyond the material world is at work in this castle, for two main reasons
• Construction
  • Built on blood and suffering
  • Made in part out of weirwood
  • On the shore of the Gods Eye, neighbor to the Isle of Faces
  • Promptly set on dragonfire
  • All of these are repeatedly stressed as the main ingredients of magic in this universe; they’ve caused terrible transformative events elsewhere, why not here?
• A history of horrors
  • Jaime says it best: Harrenhal has seen more obscenely grotesque violence and over-the-top indulgences than Casterly Rock despite being only a tenth as old
  • That’s written all over the backstory; every time George returns to Harrenhal, it’s to tell another freaky ghost/vampire/minotaur story
  • We see it in the main story as well. All these monsters: Gregor, Amory, Chiswyck, the Bloody Mummers, Roose...not a coincidence!
• The counterargument is that Harrenhal is a white elephant, that the downfall of those within its walls can be explained politically, and that naturally such a divisive prize handed off to so many families has played host to some rather heated disagreements
• To which I say it’s not “or” but rather “and.” As I said earlier, Harrenhal’s defining characteristic is how it signifies in multiple directions, broadcasting on multiple planes
• It’s a white elephant and a haunted deadzone. After all, Harrenhal’s politically contentious nature isn’t what killed Tywin, or Gregor, or Janos Slynt...

Conclusion

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