Episode 125: A CLASH OF KINGS, ARYA IX: "The Third Wish (Part 2)" 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 twenty-fifth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “The Third Wish, Part 2: An Analysis of ACOK, Arya IX,” in which Arya has to say goodbye to her magical mentor Jaqen H’ghar. But at least he helps her turn Harrenhal over to some Northmen before he leaves! That’s a good thing, right? Right??

Introduces Zack

This episode is brought to you by our NotASmallCouncil: 

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack 
• Grandmaester Timbob, troubleshooter of systems and designer of circuit boards
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• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves, Captain of the war galley NIGHT WOLF, the ship that stalks the Seven Seas, and Wielder of the Valyrian Steel trident SUMMONER, the blade that brings the Deep Ones
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
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• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• The High Bearded Priest
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• Lady Xena Valyrian
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• His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
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• Laurence, Prince of Dorne
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• Lord Nick
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• Master of Zorse
• And our newest small council member: Joe Snow “King of the Metro North and protector of the Tri-State” who has been promoted from high lordship to the small council!
• Thank you to all our counsellors and welcome to Joe Snow!

Question

Our aforementioned new small council member Joe Snow, asks:

Hey Fellas,

So excited for your work on Clash to continue. I’ve been getting back into the Dunk and Egg novellas between all this extra free time during the quarantine. Which has inevitably led me to reflect and get sad about Summerhall. The image and thoughts of Dunk looking on in horror as he realizes what his lifelong friend is about to unleash dragons can’t leave my mind and imagination. If you could be given the choice, choose a chapter from GRRM about a POV of Dunk during Summerhall or get another Winds sample chapter? I would personally lean towards that Dunk chapter. 

Keep up the great work guys!

So, thank you Joe Snow himself for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get show notes, access to the NotASlack at our two highest tiers, monthly Fevre Dream chapter-by-chapter episodes and, monthly ASOIAF/pop culture episodes like part 4 of “The Second Coming” which is out for all Poor Fellow and above patrons and the conclusion of our analysis of “The Forsaken” next month!

Absolutely! One last thing about patreon: folks, if you’re watching live, tomorrow morning or listening on the release day, we have a special announcement for EVERYONE: we are revealing the designs that our friend Mallory AKA Sanrixian did for us for t-shirts in our September Update post. These designs will then be voted on by our Sworn Sword and higher patrons in a voting post on September 8th (the day after release day of this episode). Voting will be open for one week, and the winning design will then be colorized, finalized, and our Sworn Sword and higher patrons will receive their free t-shirt with the design on it. Thank you so much for your patience, and thank you so much to Mallory!

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Arya, she had bantered with Hot Pie and Gendry, watched the Bloody Mummers return to Harrenhal with northern “prisoners” and gave Jaqen the third name: his own. Let’s find out what happens after that in this synopsis of ACOK, Arya IX, Part 2!

Synopsis

Though it’s still morning, Harrenhal stirs with Vargo Hoat’s arrival. Arya sees the bear cage suspended from a span on a bridge. A couple of boys throw stones at the bear in his cage while others sing a strange-sounding song. Arya realizes that everyone is eating and drinking before they pass out, and she fears that Pinkeye would wonder where she is. 

"The hungry gods will feast on blood tonight, if a man would do this thing," Jaqen said. "Sweet girl, kind and gentle. Unsay one name and say another and cast this mad dream aside."

"I won't."

"Just so." He seemed resigned. "The thing will be done, but a girl must obey. A man has no time for talk."

"A girl will obey," Arya said. "What should I do?"

Arya is to get some hot broth from the kitchens, and then Jaqen will come and get her. So, Arya rolls out and finds Hot Pie in the kitchen working on loaves of bread while the rest of the kitchen staff works on a meal for the Brave Companions.

The head chef asks what Weasel wants, and she says that my lord wants broth. The cook thinks she means Vargo Hoat, and he says he’d rather piss in a bowl than serve him. He orders her to leave, but she says that she has to stay until the soup is complete. So, he tells her to stay or go help Pia with the butter and cheese. 

So, Arya runs over to Pia who is in mid-coitus with a Bloody Mummer, but Pia gets dressed and makes butter and cheese. Pia asks for help, but Arya says that she needs to get to work or Vargo Hoat will chop off her feet. Yikes, Arya. And then she darts off before Pia can grab her.

On the way back, she wondered why none of the captives had their hands or feet chopped off. Maybe Vargo Hoat was afraid to make Robb angry. Though he didn't seem the sort to be afraid of anyone.

Hot Pie was stirring the kettles with a long wooden spoon when Arya returned to the kitchens. She grabbed up a second spoon and started to help. For a moment she thought maybe she should tell him, but then she remembered the village and decided not to. He'd only yield again.

It was only then that she hears Rorge’s voice. She turns and sees Rorge with Jaqen and Biter behind him. Rorge demands to take the soup to Arya’s dismay. The cook says the soup isn’t up yet, but Rorge needs it now, or he’ll shove the spit up his ass and put him into the soup. Biter grabs a handful of cooking rabbit to eat, showing his teeth to the cook. 

So, the cook relents, and Jaqen H’ghar puts on a pair of gloves. He hands another pair of oven mitts to Arya, instructing her to help. They then head up to the Widow’s Tower. A guard asks what the pot is, and Rorge tells him it’s a pot of boiling piss while Jaqen says that prisoners need to eat as well. When the guard keeps pressing the matter, Arya tells him that it’s for the prisoners, not them. So, they get waved through.

Once inside, Jaqen tells Arya to stay out of the way as they enter the dungeons. There, they find eight guards with captives in the dark behind them. The guards call out to Rorge, calling him an ugly serving wench and ask what’s in the kettle. And the boys banter, yeah banter, back that it’s their cock and balls. The guards crowd around the food, asking if there’s onions in it. Finally, one guard says they need bowls and spoons.

"No you don't." Rorge heaved the scalding hot broth across the table, full in their faces. Jaqen H'ghar did the same. Biter threw his kettles too, swinging them underarm so they spun across the dungeon, raining soup. One caught the captain in the temple as he tried to rise. He went down like a sack of sand and lay still. The rest were screaming in agony, praying, or trying to crawl off.

Arya pressed back against the wall as Rorge began to cut throats. Biter preferred to grab the men behind the head and under the chin and crack their necks with a single twist of his huge pale hands. Only one of the guards managed to get a blade out. Jaqen danced away from his slash, drew his own sword, drove the man back into a corner with a flurry of blows, and killed him with a thrust to the heart. The Lorathi brought the blade to Arya still red with heart's blood and wiped it clean on the front of her shift. "A girl should be bloody too. This is her work."

Rorge grabs the key from the hook on the wall and unlocks the cage. The first one to pop out is Green Beret Robett Glover who introduces himself as Robett Glover. Jaqen bows and calls him “My lord.”

Meanwhile, the other captives strip the guards of weapons and armor, and Arya notices that the men don’t look so wounded as before.

"This of the soup, that was clever," the man Glover was saying. "I did not expect that. Was it Lord Hoat's idea?"

Rorge began to laugh. He laughed so hard that snot flew out the hole where his nose had been. Biter sat on top of one of the dead men, holding a limp hand as he gnawed at the fingers. Bones cracked between his teeth.

"Who are you men?" A crease appeared between Robett Glover's brows. "You were not with Hoat when he came to Lord Bolton's encampment. Are you of the Brave Companions?"

Rorge wiped the snot off his chin with the back of his hand. "We are now."

Jaqen introduces himself as Jaqen, indicates Rorge and Biter and introduces them, but when he points to Arya, she blurts out that she’s Weasel. She wasn’t sure she could trust this man, and she especially didn’t want Rorger and Biter to hear her true name.

Robett Glover dismisses her, and then they get to the bloody business. When they get up from the dungeons, they find northmen running across the ward killing the shit out of the Lannisters.

Rorge and Biter rushed off with Glover, but Jaqen H'ghar knelt beside Arya. "A girl does not understand?"

"Yes I do," she said, though she didn't, not truly.

The Lorathi must have seen it on her face. "A goat has no loyalty. Soon a wolf banner is raised here, I think. But first a man would hear a certain name unsaid."

"I take back the name." 

Arya does wonder whether she might still have a third name, and Jaqen accuses her of being greedy. So, Arya agrees that the debt is paid. But now that a deed is done, a man must die. Wait, what? Yeah, Jaqen’s time is done. 

Jaqen passed a hand down his face from forehead to chin, and where it went he changed. His cheeks grew fuller, his eyes closer; his nose hooked, a scar appeared on his right cheek where no scar had been before. And when he shook his head, his long straight hair, half red and half white, dissolved away to reveal a cap of tight black curls.

Arya’s mouth falls open, and she asks who Jaqen is and how he did that thing he did. Was that difficult to do? Jaqen says nah, not really, flashing a now gold-toothed smile. So, Arya wants to know. Well, okay then high speed. Come with Jaqen across the Narrow Sea!

"I can't. I have to go home. To Winterfell."

"Then we must part," he said, "for I have duties too." He lifted her hand and pressed a small coin into her palm. "Here."

Jaqen places an iron coin into her hand and says it’s worth something, kid. Will it buy her a horse? Nope.

"Then what good is it?"

"As well ask what good is life, what good is death? If the day comes when you would find me again, give that coin to any man from Braavos, and say these words to him-valar morghulis."

"Valar morghulis," Arya repeated. It wasn't hard. Her fingers closed tight over the coin. Across the yard, she could hear men dying. "Please don't go, Jaqen."

"Jaqen is as dead as Arry," he said sadly, "and I have promises to keep. Valar morghulis, Arya Stark."

Jaqen asks her to say it again, and Arya repeats Valar Morghulis. Jaqen then bows and fades into the darkness, his cloak swirling very dramatically.

Alone now, Arya thinks that the men who died deserved death, especially that shit-knight known as “Ser” Amory Lorch who had done the war crimes. She heads back to her chambers, whispers the names of her prayer and says Valar Morghulis one more time, falling asleep wondering what the term meant.

The next morning, Pinkeye and the others are back, except one kid who had been killed for no reason whatsoever. Pinkeye heads out to find out what’s what and returns to say that the Bloody Mummers killed most of Ser Amory’s men in their beds or at table when they were drunk. But good news, Arya, the northern lord will be here soon. But you all need to get back to work.

All morning she watched the Bloody Mummers strip the dead of their valuables and drag the corpses to the Flowstone Yard, where a pyre was laid to dispose of them. Shagwell the Fool hacked the heads off two dead knights and pranced about the castle swinging them by the hair and making them talk. "What did you die of?" one head asked. "Hot weasel soup," replied the second.

Arya gets tasked with mopping up dried blood, and everyone stares at her. But they don’t speak to her. Arya figures Robett Glover and the other northmen must have talked. Shagwell had probably reframed what Arya did into one of his half-mad jokes.

That night, the new lord arrives. Plain-faced, clean-shaven, pale strange eyes, black ringmail, pink cloak, yoga pants. The sigil was a pink man. Yeah, pink man. A soldier orders Arya to kneel, and Vargo Hoat steps forward declaring that Harrenhal is his. The lord says something, but he speaks too softly for Arya to hear what he says. Robett Glover and Ser Aenys Frey join the party. And then the leaders head over to Rorge and Biter. 

Arya thought they would GTFO from Harrenhal, but they remain. And then Shagwell jumps on Arya 

"My lord, my lord," he sang, tugging at her wrist, "here's the weasel who made the soup!"

"Let go," Arya said, wriggling out of his grasp.

The lord regarded her. Only his eyes moved; they were very pale, the color of ice. "How old are you, child?"

She had to think for a moment to remember. "Ten."

"Ten, my lord," he reminded her. "Are you fond of animals?"

"Some kinds. My lord."

A thin smile twitched across his lips. "But not lions, it would seem. Nor manticores."

Arya’s not sure what to say to that; so, she says nothing. The lord says they call her Weasel. Is that her name? Arya bites her lip, wondering at a name. Lumpyhead, Horseface and Arya Underfoot were names she had gone by, but they wouldn’t do here.

"Nymeria," she said. "Only she called me Nan for short."

"You will call me my lord when you speak to me, Nan," the lord said mildly. "You are too young to be a Brave Companion, I think, and of the wrong sex. Are you afraid of leeches, child?"

"They're only leeches. My lord."

"My squire could take a lesson from you, it would seem. Frequent leechings are the secret of a long life. A man must purge himself of bad blood. You will do, I think. For so long as I remain at Harrenhal, Nan, you shall be my cupbearer, and serve me at table and in chambers."

Arya knows better than to say anything — even if she would rather work the stables to escape. So, she just says “Yes, my lord.” Roose Bolton then tells no one in particular to make Nan presentable. And then he orders Vargo Hoat to attend to the banners above the gatehouse.

Four Brave Companions climbed to the ramparts and hauled down the lion of Lannister and Ser Amory's own black manticore. In their place they raised the flayed man of the Dreadfort and the direwolf of Stark. And that evening, a page named Nan poured wine for Roose Bolton and Vargo Hoat as they stood on the gallery, watching the Brave Companions parade Ser Amory Lorch naked through the middle ward. Ser Amory pleaded and sobbed and clung to the legs of his captors, until Rorge pulled him loose, and Shagwell kicked him down into the bear pit.

The bear is all in black, Arya thought. Like Yoren. She filled Roose Bolton's cup, and did not spill a drop.

And that is the synopsis of ACOK, Arya IX! I love how this chapter starts at one spot, but by the end of it, you almost forget how it started. What did you gentlemen think of this chapter?

Depth

We’ve got even stronger material to work with here than last week! This is some of George’s most consistently surprising writing in the series, each turn of the plot requiring the reader to scramble and reset our expectations. Arya’s prison break turns out so differently than we thought, and then Jaqen blows our mind and then leaves, and then Roose Bolton shows up to freak everyone out. The consistent thread through all this is Arya’s struggle to achieve control over her life, and where that need leads her.

That’s exactly it, and the pinballing around at the end gives this chapter a sustained and engaging climax. It’s really agile and crafty writing on George’s part, that Arya’s own confusion regarding the shifting power play around her mirrors the reader’s experience trying to parse the consequences of the action being played out on the page. We touched on it here on Boys Gone Canon last week and in Bran’s chapters, but when George writes from the POV of a child he is so good at fleshing out subtle naïveté that causes the reader to have to read very closely or go back later after more information has been revealed in order to fully grasp the big-picture political & martial ramifications.

A tidy example of this comes through in just two lines right before Roose shows up, where in the first Arya thinks she should tell Shagwell to shut up- if only she weren’t so afraid of him; in the very next sentence she internally threatens to add him to her kill list if he doesn’t watch his ass! With no one around to comfort her, Arya must comfort herself- or be eaten alive.

There’s also a bit of a tonal shift here that mirrors Arya’s journey, where last week we explored Arya encountering familiar faces, relatively known quantities in Hot Pie and Gendry that have spent lots of time with Arya in her previous chapters, and this week we have Jaqen smashing all her paradigms with his sick-ass Mission Impossible mask technology and Roose upping the ante on the creep factor by several orders of magnitude. Emmett likes to point to Euron smashing not only the narrative but the genre in which the story is being told, from Arthurian fantasy to horror. Between the ghosts and the vampiric Roose with his leeches we see those elements creeping into the fantasy world of castles and knights and dragons. Part of what makes Jaqen’s maneuver and Roose’s whole… thing… so shocking and dare-i-say enticing to Arya is their lack of familiarity or analogue in her life up to this point. 

One of my favorite George touches I’ve talked about before is how he undercuts moments of triumph and catharsis with a “Hey, wait, this doesn’t feel good.” Ser Amory Lorch and his band of war criminals had earned their deaths many times over by their blatantly illegal and immoral conduct during the Reyne-Tarbeck Rebellion, Robert’s Rebellion and the War of the Five Kings. We should never forget that Amory Lorch is a child murderer twice having thrown the last lord of Tarbeck (a boy) down a well and then stabbed Rhaenys Targaryen a three year old girl dozens of times after dragging her from her bed. I have a three year old daughter. A bear feels like too good a fate for Amory Lorch. But that catharsis I feel about Amory and his soldiers getting theirs is undercut by this brutal line from the chapter when Arya learns that Pinkeye and his charges had all survived, except one person: one boy who'd been killed in the fighting for no reason that anyone could say. The triumph of watching war criminals and child murders get got is spoiled, because another act of child murder has been committed by the “liberators” of Harrenhal. And oh boy, such a liberation as we’ll find in a few months’ time in ACOK, Arya X. And that’s why I agree that this is the best Arya chapter in ACOK!

• Weasel soup
  • Arya steps back outside the oasis of the godswood to find that Harrenhal has woken up, all abustle with life thanks to Vargo Hoat’s arrival
  • The plunder has all mysteriously vanished, but the bear is still there, a naked threat, being made angrier by torment. All the men are drinking, which Arya thinks of as a distraction...and so it is, but not for her!
  • George’s brilliant gambit here is to nestle Arya’s master plan within Roose Bolton’s. The two plans intersect without ever knowing about one another
  • They unfold simultaneously, so even as George keeps our POV down low with Arya and her plan, we see Roose’s plan go to work around the edges
  • As Jaqen tells Arya, the hungry gods will feed on blood tonight if they go through with her plan. In truth, they would have anyway! 
  • Jaqen gives Arya one last chance to pull back. She refuses, and so he puts her to work. Go to the kitchens and help them make lots of broth
  • As Attewell touched on, there is a wonderful mundanity to this plan, in stark (heh) contrast to Jaqen’s mysterious otherworldly powers
  • He doesn’t take over Harrenhal with sparks flying from his wand. He gets Arya to go back to the kitchens where she started the chapter and engage in the grounded tangible tasks of servitude they all do every day here
  • These are the instruments of Arya’s rebellion: the sustenance of the material world, the labor and sweat demanded by their overseers
  • The story of ACOK is political and magical power coming together to transform into something singular, something both new and old
  • Arya used her third wish with her weird wizard mentor in order to spark a political takeover of Harrenhal, waged with nothing but metal and water
  • Was this a plan Jaqen had conceived all along or was it improv?
  • There are no prior mentions of Vargo Hoat’s fondness for broth or soup anywhere in ACOK.
  • But Jaqen snaps into motion like he’s had this all figured out for months.
  • The best improv doesn’t look like improv at all, I suppose. 
  • Regardless, the plan, as it stands, rests on a few facts and assumptions.
  • The first fact is that Ser Amory Lorch’s garrison is spread out and not able to mass together to fight off the soup attack.
  • An assumption is that Arya will be able to order the cook around given her status as working for Pinkeye who works for Amory Lorch.
  • The irony here is that the system set-up by the nobility at large to force the smallfolk into slavish obedience to authority is now being turned against the nobility.
  • Perhaps the cook should have questioned a girl giving an order for broth at midnight, realizing that order didn’t make sense.
  • But the conditioning imposed by the Amory Lorches of the world ensures that Arya and Jaqen can get away with it.
  • The nobility eats soup and itself. 
  • Arya gets sent to fetch Pia, who’s fucking one of the Mummers. Again, ACOK Arya IX is about the intersection between fear and desire, a primal dynamic that largely defines the emotional state of human beings
  • As such, the chapter foregrounds both sex and violence in a queasy ambiguous interplay that affects how Arya will view both going forward
  • Arya tells Pia to fetch butter and cheese quickly or Vargo Hoat will chop off her foot. We’ve gone from sex to violence that quickly, in a heartbeat
  • It’s not the last time Arya uses Vargo Hoat as a boogeyman this way, threatening Gendry with mutilation to get him to leave Harrenhal with her
  • Certainly Arya does not bear any responsibility, but this is part of the dynamic in her story where she recoils from all this violence while also beginning to understand how to use it rhetorically to wield power. Is it not the childish equivalent of Jaime threatening the trebuchet in AFFC?
  • Even as Arya dashes off, however, George does some terrific setup work by having Arya wonder why none of the prisoners were mutilated like that
  • Huh, yeah, Arya! That’s weird! I wonder why that might be? It’s almost like they’re not actually prisoners, but allies of the Bloody Mummers
  • [there’s that subtle naïveté/sleight of hand]
  • Arya used the threat of Vargo as a lie to get Pia moving, and similarly, Vargo is weaving the image of imprisonment around the Northmen
  • Arya returns to the kitchen and briefly considers letting Hot Pie in on the plan...but then remembers the village by the lake. He’d only yield again
  • As we saw with Gendry, that time in the village is a primal scene to which these kids keep returning, reforging their worldviews around it
  • It has sadly not served to bring them together so much as drive them apart, because it led them to very different conclusions about the world and each other. Gendry can’t quite trust Arya; she can’t quite trust Hot Pie
  • So instead, she gets the worst companions imaginable: Rorge and Biter, the demons Jaqen summoned up from hell. They play an important role
  • That role is getting Arya to doubt the righteousness of what she’s doing. Rorge and Biter love killing, and she’s giving them more men to kill
  • The phrase “bloody broth” is repeated several times in this scene, a blunt way of communicating to the reader that this broth is about to spill blood
  • Jaqen continues to make Arya complicit in the bloodletting, having her help carry the broth even though her tiny muscles are barely useful 
  • Together, they hurl the broth in the faces of the guards. George dwells on this moment, emphasizing the agonized shock of their screaming and the callous brutality with which Rorge and Biter kill them one by one
  • Only one even gets a chance to fight back; Jaqen takes him down quickly, and then wipes his sword clean on Arya’s shift. It’s an important moment
  • This blood is on your hands. Jaqen called Arya an “evil child,” and now he carries that forward. Not as condemnation, but something arguably more frightening: initiation, baptism in blood. Welcome to the ranks of killers.
  • The other point I pulled from Jaqen wiping the blood onto Arya’s shirt is that Arya is being anointed as high priest to go before the holy of holies.
  • In Tabernacle and Second Temple Judaism (and you guys can both come at me on this: I’m basing this off Sunday School memories!), the high priest would be consecrated as a high priest by the killing of a spotless lamb
  • The blood of the lamb would then be smeared onto his garments in order to stand in front of the almighty and holy presence of God.
  • Here, the blood marks Arya’s initiation into a priesthood of sorts as Arya will discover in AFFC. 
  • But the god the Faceless Men worship is not the red god but the god of death.
  • Arya has sacrificed Chiswyk, Weese and now a dozen or more proximate Lannister goons to the god of death, and she stands ready to enter the ranks.
  • Arya has been initiated in blood, and Jaqen will extend the formal invitation in a bit. 
  • As Jaqen says, this counts as Arya’s third wish; unlike Chiswyck and Weese, we don’t even know his name. The kill list doesn’t shrink
  • And then George shows his hand, unraveling the puzzlebox of Arya IX and in the process, undercutting any triumph Arya might possibly feel
  • The Northmen file out of their cell...but none of them seem injured any more. More to the point, none of them seem surprised to be let loose
  • The only thing their commander Robett Glover is surprised by is “this of the soup, that was clever. I did not expect that. Was it Lord Hoat’s idea?”
  • All at once, our understanding of the situation has been shattered. These men were not prisoners at all! They made a deal with Vargo Hoat, who has switched sides to the Northmen in the wake of Lannister losses
  • There was already a plan in place to free them, wipe out Amory Lorch’s men, and take over the castle. Arya needn’t have done anything at all
  • On first read, what stands out is the intricately crafted irony of this, the way George springs the revelation that all Arya’s efforts were for nothing
  • On reread, however, what lingers is the emotional quality, the sense of wretchedness and nihilism that sets in as a result of how this plays out
  • George cuts from Robett’s revelation to Rorge laughing. It’s a hideous sight; one of the worst people in the stories reveling, snot flying. Biter sits nearby, gnawing on bones. Arya has inadvertently saved their lives again
  • Robett wonders at their presence. They weren’t members of the Brave Companions before. Are they now? They sure are, says Rorge!
  • They can turn cloaks again, finding new patrons to support their atrocities, just as with the Bloody Mummers themselves. This is what Arya has done
  • She thought she was changing the world for the better, but the practical effect of her actions was that the worst people in Westeros keep going
  • Meddling in both magical and political power with the best of intentions has led to ruin--and not only that, but to irrelevance and neglect
  • Arya did it all for Robett Glover, to free someone she regarded as practically kin, but she doesn’t want to reveal her identity to Rorge and Biter, the men she didn’t want there, the men she has once more saved
  • So she sticks with “Weasel.” The name she wanted to leave behind forever. And Robett Glover dismisses her on that basis like she’s not even there; he’s a well-intentioned man, but bears the prejudices of his classes
  • We’ve been talking about the differences in worldview between Arya and her friends who were raised as smallfolk, but in the beholder’s eyes, she’s one of them, a nonperson. She has not escaped, for all her efforts
  • This is not the last time that Arya will bear witness to a surprise massacre, because it’s here that George (and Roose Bolton) do a dry run for the Red Wedding, just one book hence.
  • We have ostensible allies coming into a castle and feasting together, everyone getting drunk together.
  • But it’s all a ruse for Amory Lorch’s men to let down their guard before the Bloody Mummers and the “captive” northmen/Freys come with hidden sword and axe.
  • Emmett, you were bringing up the cook’s statement that the “bloody broth” is not “bloody ready”, and Sandor Clegane will tell Arya that he’s hoping to make it to the Twins in time for her uncle’s “bloody wedding.” 
  • The difference here is that it’s one hundred Lannister goons who get got instead of thousands of northmen who are murdered at the Twins.
  • Now, it’s not entirely clear who came up with the whole plan of getting everyone good and drunk and then killing them as it’s only stated that Vargo Hoat approached Roose Bolton’s camp. There is one hint that it may have been Vargo Hoat’s idea as Robett Glover asks if the soup was Vargo’s idea.
  • That might imply that it was Vargo, rather than Roose, who came up with the plan to infiltrate Harrenhal, get the Lannisters drunk and kill them from within the castle.
  • But Roose Bolton was watching, observing, seeing if this plan would work.
  • Now, as we talked about back in AGOT, Tyrion VIII and ACOK, Arya VII, Roose Bolton wasn’t planning the Red Wedding yet.
  • The Starks were winning, the Lannisters were losing, and Roose Bolton wasn’t planning on switching to the losing side.
  • Beyond that, Tywin hadn’t entered King’s Landing yet, and he wasn’t sending birds to Harrenhal to work out an arrangement with Roose Bolton and Walder Frey (that starts to occur by the next Arya chapter).
  • Regardless of Roose still being a Stark “loyalist” here, when the plan did work out, you get the sense that Roose tucked it into his pocket for later.
  • Come Storm, he took Vargo Hoat’s plan to take Harrenhal and remixed it to put a stake (or a sword)  through the heart of Robb Stark’s cause. 
  • Right, that ties right back in with Arya’s lack of direct familiarity with Roose and her degrees of removal from the politics at hand that we’ve been talking about over the course of these episodes
  • and makes the Red Wedding planning that much more insidious
  • She ends up filling this man’s cup while he’s starting to turn the gears that will end with her brother being betrayed and stabbed through the heart,
  • While manifesting her mother’s primal, exhausted grief through those thoughts and actions
  • A grief so strong that it can’t be killed!
  • This type of magical thinking is something I will explore here in a bit, but I love that George plays with these different levels of strategy and scheming between the lines of the sudden & bloody action
• A changing face
  • At this point, the reader is working hard just to keep up with what’s going on, and George slyly mirrors that process with Arya
  • She’s a little too young, too over her head, and also too stressed to pick up on what just happened around and through her
  • It is only Jaqen left to explain things to her, because everyone else immediately moved on, to play their roles in a story bigger than hers
  • Jaqen puts everything in animal terms, as Michal said in Arya VIII; his perspective is detached, viewing man’s affairs like a nature documentary
  • The goat has no loyalty, and has turned on the lions. Soon, a wolf banner will be raised here instead. Your army, your pack, is coming in force
  • The kill list filled that hole inside, the sense of justice and meaning that died with her father. And then Jaqen made her feel more than a mouse, bringing that kill list to life, allowing her to strike back and retake control
  • And now, that journey appears to be over. The wolves have come again. Arya is free of her tormentors, and does not need Jaqen H’ghar anymore. All part of the hero’s journey; the mentor prepares you, then lets you go
  • But Arya still asks for that third death. She is greedy, as Jaqen says, trying to extend the deal as long as she can. It’s not out of bloodthirst that Arya makes this request; it’s out of a desire to feel in control of her own life
  • She thought she had done so with weasel soup, but that spun out of her control and turned out to be redundant. Without Jaqen, she has no power
  • But when Jaqen tells her that the debt has been paid with blood several times over, she understands. She makes her peace, her deal with death
  • Arya’s never going to be able to snap out of what a violent world has made of her, but she proves here that she does not love violence itself
  • Rather, she grew accustomed to its taste because it was the closest she could find to the taste of justice. She had three wishes to make a better world. She tried her best. But this is still a fallen and forsaken world
  • Arya was clever enough to manipulate Jaqen into bending the rules of the three-wish structure. But now her cleverness and luck have run out
  • Now, as she says, she was just a mouse again, having glimpsed the structure of power, taken part in it, and been spat out the other side
  • And it is in this moment that Jaqen H’ghar changes Arya’s understanding of that structure of power, permanently blowing her little mind
  • A strange smile touches his lips. He passes his hand over his face, and his flesh ripples and swells and transforms, magic reshaping his body
  • Nothing could possibly have prepared Arya for this, save Old Nan’s stories, made real in a way she still never could’ve seen coming
  • She is too astonished to even be afraid, wonder briefly overtaking terror, the giddy dizziness of having one’s worldview smashed to pieces
  • The reader feels the same way. Even in the middle of a very busy chapter, trying to keep up with the plot and Arya’s unfolding character arc, Jaqen changing his face brings everything to a halt to absorb the implications
  • We’ve heard the phrase “faceless men” bandied about in King’s Landing politics, but with no exposition beyond that they’re expensive assassins
  • We’ve seen plenty of hints that there’s something strange, even sorcerous, about Jaqen, but that’s all they were: hints, signs, inferences
  • Now we get the proof of concept. A miracle in the daylight. A seismic instantaneous transformation of matter by no means but one’s will
  • This is one of the big magical moments in ACOK, in which the age of wonder and terror coinciding with the game of thrones makes itself known
  • It’s the climax of the magical aspect of Arya’s storyline in the book, as with Bran opening his third eye or Dany wandering the House of the Undying
  • It’s the spotlight scene for her magical mentor figure, his equivalent of Melisandre birthing a deadly shadow beneath Storm’s End
  • You can clearly map this moment onto other moments in the book, part of the overall structural rampup of the book going into its third act
  • But as with those other magical moments in the book, it also bears characteristics unique to this storyline, this setting, and these characters
  • Once Bran opens his third eye, his commitment to Jojen’s agenda is made ironclad, and Jojen follows that path unflinchingly even unto his own death
  • Once Melisandre has seduced Stannis (literally and figuratively) and birthed shadows, the die is cast that will lead to the sacrifice of Shireen
  • The warlocks pursue Dany (until running afoul of Euron, anyway), and Quaithe pops in to check on her throughout ASOS and ADWD
  • In this storyline, however, the moment of truth with the magical mentor works differently. Jaqen performs this miracle, and Arya’s desire wins out over fear. All she wants in that moment is to be able to change her face
  • And can you blame her? What makes this moment so poignant is that Arya has already been changing faces. It’s her main survival strategy
  • From the start of the book, she’s been disguising herself. Pretending to be a boy, pretending to be lowborn, pretending not to be angry at everything
  • She’s been Arry, she’s been Weasel, and she’s always been Arya Stark underneath those other faces. Jaqen makes the comparison explicit:
    • “Jaqen is as dead as Arry.”
  • And it’s not just her, it’s everyone! The Bloody Mummers just “changed faces” to become Northmen; Rorge and Biter “changed faces” to join them
  • All Jaqen has done is make the metaphor literal. He can change his actual physical face, not just change his attitude and personality as needed
  • Arya sees the possibilities of that, the relief from pain. Her connections to her old identity keep bringing her pain. Her memories of family and home make her feel their loss all the keener. Crying out “Winterfell!” turned out to be a bad thing. Even freeing the Northmen didn’t bring her old life back
  • At some level, she’s wondering if she might be better off leaving it all behind. If she can’t get it back no matter how she tries, why hurt herself?
  • Maybe it would be better to drift in the void like Jaqen, always smelling like soap in his eerily perfect pocket universes, serving all gods, and so none
  • We don’t want that for Arya. We want her back with the pack. Harrenhal itself is a cautionary tale for climbing the fiery ladder: you lose your soul. But we feel the temptation, which is why this is such a good character arc
  • She will eventually follow that temptation in AFFC/ADWD...but not here, which is what separates this storyline from the rest in ACOK
  • Her magical and political paths are diverging, sprung loose from one another as a result of her intervening on the wider stage of Harrenhal
  • So when Jaqen asks her to come with him, far and away across the narrow sea, she says no. She still just wants to go home to Winterfell
  • And Jaqen doesn’t even put up a fight! He just peaces out! This is what makes him so different from all those other magical mentors
  • He doesn’t have the obsessive all-consuming focus on The Messiah that defines Jojen and Melisandre and (probably) Quaithe. He didn’t come here for her. As he says, he has other duties. She remains underfoot
  • What George is doing here is putting a take on several sub-steps in the “The Departure” part of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey.
  • The Departure is broken down into five sub-stages known as:
    • The Call to Adventure
    • Refusal of the Call
    • Supernatural Aid
    • The Crossing of the First Threshold
    • Belly of the Whale
  • Here, we see in microcosm the first three stages, but George remixes the order of things. 
  • In George’s telling, it goes: supernatural aid -> the call to adventure -> refusal of the call
  • Jaqen provides supernatural aid in being the magic murder genie (while using ordinary means) of killing Chiswyk, Weese and a slew of guards guarding the northmen.
  • Then Jaqen calls Arya to come with him across the Narrow Sea to learn the skill of changing his face.
  • Arya refuses this call as her first thought is returning to Winterfell and reuniting with her family.
  • (The Belly of the Whale and Crossing of the First Threshold comes quite literally at the end of ACOK, Arya X when Arya makes her first deliberate kill and walks out of Harrenhal as we’ll cover this in a few months’ time)
  • Now, George has talked about Joseph Campbell’s work, stating: 
    • Well, I'm certainly familiar with [Joseph Campbell], but no. Consciously I've not included a lot of that. GRRM Interview, 10/12/2002
  • It’s unclear whether Arya IX is one of those spare moments where George consciously emulated Joseph Campbell’s work.
  • Even if it wasn’t the conscious attempt to replicate the hero’s journey ala George Lucas and the Star Wars original trilogy, it’s impossible not to inadvertently write Campbell into the story.
  • He’s just one more adult with better things to do, like how there was already a plan to take over Harrenhal being pitched over Arya’s head
  • He’s going to walk away from her, like Yoren, like Ned, and while he doesn’t die like they did, he’s also not really alive like they were
  • He leaves her not with a grand eschatological arc, but with a simple humble coin. It is not for the buying of horses. So Arya doesn’t understand what good it is, because she wants horses, tangible physical power
  • Jaqen says she might as well ask what good is life, what good is death? The coin belongs to that realm, the philosophical, the metaphysical
  • It’s the coin from No Country for Old Men, basically: a symbol of chance and fate intersecting, intertwining, the individual caught among them
  • The end result is always death, and that’s the other totem Jaqen leaves behind: valar morghulis. It’s something else pitched over Arya’s head, a language she can’t understand like she couldn’t understand Roose’s plan
  • But the deeper concept is something she knows all too well. All men must die. A stranger walks away from her wearing Jaqen’s clothes. She never knew him at all, and he was ultimately only the Stranger, the god of death
  • She’s left alone with corpses. They deserved to die, she tells herself. But that doesn’t change the fact that she is alone, with no one living to love 
  • Such are the wages of the kill list, the three wishes, the fiery ladder and the game of thrones alike. This is what Harrenhal always leaves you with
  • Arya is marked by death, drowning in corpses; for all her magical mentor’s pretensions to mastery, he drew her deeper into the mass grave
  • She said it herself: I am the Ghost in Harrenhal...
• The new lord of Harrenhal 
  • As Jeff noted earlier, everyone in Arya’s little work group makes it back to their beds alive...except for one boy, who’d been killed for no reason at all
  • Such are the wages of Arya’s coup, striking back in force against her oppressors only to find she has done nothing but keep the wheel turning
  • As for the living, they are sentenced to sweat for the new lord as they were for the old. For Arya of House Stark, it matters a great deal who holds Harrenhal. For the laborers who maintain the place, it doesn’t matter at all. As Gendry said, they’re going to just keeping working regardless
  • Arya has to watch them strip and burn the bodies; she has to mop up the blood. Her face is shoved in the brutality of her ostensibly good works
  • What has changed is how Arya herself is perceived by the people around her, just like how Jaqen said it was her true name that mattered, not his
  • Pinkeye regards her differently. Everyone seems to be staring and whispering. Worst of all, Shagwell does a gruesome puppet show with some knights’ heads, in which he says they died of weasel soup
  • I highly doubt Arya can see a severed head without thinking of Ned and having her PTSD triggered. Her relationship with Ned is always right there on the edge of her story.
  • Right here, we’re getting a taste of the new batch of brutality and horror which will enfold Harrenhal under new management.
  • Shagwell reads as George’s take of the killer clown stock character we see in horror — perhaps best seen in Stephen King’s It.
  • Like almost everyone at Harrenhal, Shagwell is not supernatural, but his appearance, his actions speak to the type of monster which arises from dark fairytales.
  • But he also seems based on real-world people like John Wayne Gacy: the serial killer, rapist and torturer who killed over thirty-three people
  • Everywhere we meet Shagwell, he’s doing some new form of shittery: kicking Jaime to the ground in ASOS so Zollo can hack off his hand, attempting to rape Brienne, murdering Nimble Dick Crabb and only finally getting Brienne’d when he tries to murder her as well.
  • Shagwell serves as yet another beat in George’s layered critique of war: in a Westeros without war, Shagwell would have never arrived as a sellsword.
  • But now that he’s here, he acts with sociopathic impunity, unpunished by the Tywins and Roose Boltons of the world, because he serves their purpose: He brings fear.
  • Where other people shrink away at the brutal slaughter that’s just unfolded and even Arya is forced to rationalize all the death, Shagwell is laughing, swinging severed heads by the hair, making them talk.
  • You can almost make a metaphor of what Shagwell does as similar to what the White Walkers do in forcing the dead to do their will.
  • And coming off the end of “The Second Coming, Part 4” (our full analysis of TWOW, The Forsaken): he works as the prologue to Euron and the woman with white fire hands laughing as horrors unfold below them.
  • Shagwell is just a wretched individual and character, and he’s not alone among the evil characters that comprise the Brave Companions.
  • Even though Robett Glover lacked interest in her as an individual, seemingly a peasant girl, he couldn’t resist telling a good story
  • All Arya can think to do about this is add Shagwell to her list. Arya clings to her list, even after her three wishes are up. What else does she have?
  • Everything has changed, yet at the same time, nothing has changed. And it is in that context that Roose Bolton arrives to take charge of Harrenhal
  • We have met him before, back in Bran and Catelyn’s chapters in book one when Robb was getting his army together. George took time to establish in those chapters that Roose is creepy, with his stares and soft voice
  • But this chapter, along with Arya X, is really the coming-out party for perhaps the fan favorite villain in ASOIAF, the Leech Lord of the Dreadfort
  • In his own way, he’s a nowhere man like Jaqen, as hard to define as he is to ignore. They have similar color schemes: red and white v. pink and pale
  • George describes him as neither handsome nor ugly, neither thin nor fat, neither tall nor short. This could make Roose unmemorable in our mind’s eye, but it’s quite the opposite. Everyone remembers Roose the Noose!
  • That’s because of the signature tone that defines him, the chill in the room that seems to accompany him like the white walkers, an all-encompassing aura of dread which is only appropriate given the name of his castle
  • What makes Roose so terrifying is not easy to pin down, which is by design. He is a man of contrasts: languid in his affect but monstrous in his works, intricate in his planning yet evanescent in his motivations
  • What drives Roose Bolton? This is both a simple and complex question. On the one hand, his drives are clear: he loves domination in every respect. Politically, sexually, even physically over himself via leeching
  • Roose is the embodiment of control. His scenes wield a sick fascination over the reader because we are watching a barely restrained beast
  • At any moment, we know he could snap. George does an incredible job conveying this constant tension to both the reader and other characters
  • What’s lurking behind those misty eyes? What is he barely keeping at bay with those leeches? As rereaders, we know the answer: Ramsay
  • Ramsay is Roose minus restraint, just like how Tyrion is Tywin minus restraint, and that’s why those relationships end precisely the same way
  • The unfettered id inevitably turns on the superego; fictional families don’t come much more Freudian than the Lannisters and the Boltons
  • Roose lets loose exactly once: the Red Wedding. That’s what’s waiting for us. That’s his primal driving desire, what he really looks like inside
  • Up until that point, he is playing along with a society that will not allow him to unleash his dark dreams until he has amassed enough power to do so
  • Roose is more restrained than Ramsay not in that he refrains from committing atrocities, but in that he always keeps an eye on the audience
  • He always keeps in mind how this is gonna play with the Starks, how to keep the information from them, how to filter what they do hear about
  • As such, his mask goes very deep, and that’s what makes him both a complex and popular character: despite that simple power drive, the execution of his character leaves us with all these ambiguities to discuss
  • Take this scene, for example. If I just tell you what happens, Roose sounds like a pretty okay guy! He’s the hero of this situation, in fact!
  • Roose calls Arya over, teases her gently about “weasel soup,” asks her true name, compliments her bravery, mildly reminds her about her manners, and then takes her under his wing as his new cupbearer
  • It is only in the execution, the lived experience of standing in front of Roose Bolton, that things get very weird and very frightening
  • Only Roose’s eyes move: pale eyes, unnaturally pale, the color of ice. Roose isn’t literally a white walker (that’s Euron’s arc), but he is meant to evoke their presence. Not a blustering brute like Rorge; more detached
  • Roose’s thin smile and whispered words don’t reassure Arya, even though he’s objectively praising her work. There’s something off, as though Roose is something profoundly inhuman only playing at being a man
  • Thus Roose emerges as the literary heir to Damon Julian, the vampiric villain of George’s novel Fevre Dream we’ve been covering for patrons:
    • ...a tall handsome animal in burgundy, and there was nothing the least bit human about it...
  • In the context of Fevre Dream, the aim of this dynamic is to impress upon the audience how the genteel cultured surface of Old Europe (embodied by the vampires in that novel) papered over hideous violence rooted in greed, the original sin that took root and spread in American slavery
  • In the context of ASOIAF, Roose represents how far the nobility can go in Westeros before someone intervenes. “A man can deal with Roose.” He has made it so. That reputation is his triumph, and the condemnation of the society that has allowed him to prosper. They deem him acceptable
  • This is because he wields power over information, of course. But it’s also because the men of his class are not inclined to respond to the suffering he creates unless it disturbs their customs, their rights, their sleep
  • And Roose - like Walder Frey - has a significant army that he can bring to bear on the battlefield.
  • Similar to the Freys, Roose Bolton works as a “necessary evil”: the size of Bolton-sworn men who could show up for a battle is quite large
  • Roose Bolton has four thousand Bolton bannermen on the field: making him second only to the Manderlys in the #s of northmen soldiers he can bring to a fight.
  • Roose Bolton may scare Robb, he may have weird, pale eyes, and he may come from a castle called “The Dreadfort”, but in war, you need those men at your side, right?
  • (Given Roose’s conduct in the Wot5K, I’d say a very definitive NO, but the numbers are the numbers).
  • This feels like commentary on George’s part about the compromises with evil that leaders feel they have to make.
  • Ned provides the counterpoint, stating that some bannermen are not worth keeping.
  • To be fair, Roose is very clever to cover up his tracks and not let on that he probably tried to get as many loyal Stark men killed at the Green Fork.
  • Roose is a polite surface ladled over a mass grave, exposing how superficial those norms are. Tywin functions in a similar way
  • Tywin, however, is rooted in Greek and Shakespearean villains, and so is made legible on a human level. Roose as a character is rooted in horror, southern gothic horror as much as vampire stories, and so remains fundamentally illegible in terms of his deeper currents beyond domination
  • It’s so chilling how casually he enforces the class hierarchy on Arya in this scene, only “mildly” reminding her that she is to call him my lord
  • The mildness is what terrifies us. We see from Roose’s actions that he is capable of far worse, so when he holds back, we feel no lasting relief; we feel that we have barely dodged a bullet, and more will be coming soon
  • Arya is made presentable, taught to pour wine without spilling a drop. Everything is in its right place. But beneath that placid surface seethes nameless fear, jaws perpetually trembling about you, held back by restraints that are permanently on the verge of snapping
  • That is life under Roose Bolton, the door through which Arya walks gladly, because it means the downfall of her hated foes, the Lannisters
  • Amory Lorch is dragged, naked and sobbing, through the castle before being tossed into the bearpit in view of his previous allies
  • Now, of course: Amory Lorch is the absolute worst. Much as I’m inclined against our modern systems of capital punishment, a swift execution by the commander on the scene would be the most just resolution here
  • But this? It’s hard to call this justice, because the cause being served here is not redress for the many crimes of Amory Lorch. The cause being served here is the dominion of Roose Bolton and the bloodlust of Vargo Hoat and his Brave Companions. Is justice really being done here?
  • Sigh. Probably not. Someone getting tossed into a bear pit in order to be ripped to pieces by a bear is cruel and unusual under any circumstances.
  • I was thinking that the casual cruelty of the Bloody Mummers in throwing rocks at the bear might have been to stir up the rage in the bear to attack a human being as bears very rarely attack humans unless mistreated or threatened by humans.
  • Vargo Hoat brought that bear into Harrenhal in order to kill a man in the most brutal way possible.
  • So yeah, not justified, but I feel the emotions Arya is experiencing over Amory’s death.
  • An argument can be made that Arya manifested Amory’s death through magical thinking:
  • A notion ascribed to by someone like Aleister Crowley, as a sort of dark magic wherein one's ideas, thoughts, wishes, or actions can influence the course of events in the physical world
  • Often achieved through prayer, rituals, and mantras
  • Not magic like, “I will now pull a zorse out of this hat,”
  • But magic as in, 3 monkey-paw wishes from a murder genie
  • And if you want to go down that rabbit hole it can actually go as far as you want to follow it:
  • Did magical thinking on the part of Daenarys allow her dragon eggs to hatch? She hatches them during a funeral pyre that included a ritual sacrifice in the form of Mirri Maz Duur while asking “Is it so far from madness to wisdom?”
  • Is that how Melisandre was able to conjure & birth the Shadow baby?
  • Melisandre & Stannis consciously (or unconsciously) came together to create this monster and therefore willed it into existence
  • It has real-world ramifications - we see Stannis weak & drained after the experience. 
  • He coupled with Melisandre and gave an essence of himself in order to manifest his hopes and desires-
  • Namely, defeating his enemies, strengthening his military positioning, and solidifying his attempt to win da Game o’ T’rones
  • Is magical thinking the spiritual reality behind Thoros’ prayers that bring back Beric time after time? 
  • In the hit HBO tv show that these tie-in novels are based upon, Thoros’ perspective is fleshed out a bit more explicitly: “I knelt beside his cold body, and said the old words. Not because I believed in them, but... he was my friend. And he was dead. And they were the only words I knew. And for the first time in my life, the Lord replied.”
  • Beric was brought back simply because Thoros wanted him back.
  • He was tuned in to the frequency, through his grief, that gave real power to his formerly empty prayers.
  • We’ll get to that in a couple more years maybe.
  • But here and now in Harrenhal, Amory Lorch is on Arya’s list for the death of Yoren
  • And the repetition of her kill list, like a prayer, conjured her death angel
  • Whispering Amory’s name to the darkness enough times could have manifested the magical circumstances that brought Jaqen and Vargo along to fulfill that desire to see him punished-
  • And punished he is.
  • Despite the er, ah, execution of the, um… execution... Arya is still satisfied in crossing a name off of her list.
  • Arya still thinks it’s righteous. As she says, the bear is black, like Yoren. This is payback for Yoren’s death. But it’s being carried out by men who don’t give a shit about Yoren’s death, some of whom have been just fine carrying out atrocities in the Lannister name. Have things gotten better?
  • That same question applies to the big picture politics. On first read, this seems like George taking away from the Starks with one hand and giving unto them with the other. Tyrion will make this explicit in his next chapter:
  • In truth, it’s even worse than Tyrion makes it appear. Roose taking Harrenhal fits Edmure’s plan to trap Tywin, but Tywin escapes that trap by barging down the Blackwater with the Tyrells to bring down Stannis
  • Meanwhile, on reread, we know that Roose begins actively working against the Starks (and for the Lannisters) after the Battle of Blackwater
  • That simply would not be possible without a base of operations wherein Roose wields total control over the means of communication
  • In other words, if Roose does not take Harrenhal and remains in the field, there’s a big obstacle in the way of the Red Wedding. Not an insurmountable one; Tywin can still contact the Freys, and so can Roose
  • But the point is how much the fall of Harrenhal winds up backfiring on every possible level, and what that says about its place in Arya’s story
  • The only real improvement is the fire inside Arya’s heart, a name off her list, and that is very meaningful...to her, but only to her, and only for now
  • By the time we check in with Arya again, we will see that things are just as bad if not worse inside the walls of Harrenhal. This castle, and the realm it stands in for, seem cursed. There is no way for magic to set it all to rights
  • Jeff touched on this a bit last week and it stuck with me-
  • Even if you concede that Harrenhall is magical and/or cursed, think of the parade of men that have laid claim to it in some form or another:
  • Tywin Lannister; Janos Slynt (Hey Jeff, its your pal Janos!); Amory Lorch; Vargo Hoat and Roose Bolton
  • These are some of the worst people in the entire narrative! War criminals left and right!
  • It follows that fucked up things will follow these fucked up people through this fucked up castle through this fucked up time of war and atrocity
  • So yes, the magic and curse are real; but they are refracted by the prisms of humanity (or lack thereof) that try to wield or control it

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

This won’t be the last we see of that bear! The Bloody Mummers toss Brienne into the bearpit in ASOS; Jaime saves her life at cost of the bear’s. Always felt bad for that bear.

Amory Lorch getting thrown into a bear pit comes back in ASOS, Jaime VI when Jaime jumps down into the bear pit to save Brienne and finds a jawbone with green flesh and crawling with maggots and uses it in vain to try to ward off the bear. This jawbone is most likely all that remains of the war criminal Amory Lorch.

The iron coin that Arya receives from Jaqen will be used in Arya’s final ACOK chapter when she offers it to the guard, drops it and then slits his throat to get out of Harrenhal.

The coin will also mark her as a Faceless Man, and she’ll give this coin to Captain Ternesio Terys who will assume Arya is a Faceless Man and take her to Braavos.

Valar Morghulis is left as a mystery phrase throughout this chapter, and while George drops numerous hints in this chapter what the phrase means (coupling men and death together in several paragraphs surrounding Arya and Jaqen’s use of the phrase), he won’t reveal this until ASOS, Daenerys III when Missandei says the thing, and Dany translates it to All men must die.

Roose’s leeches foreshadow Stannis’ leeches, adding another layer of depth & credence to the existence of blood magic and the power of royal or high-born blood

Groundwork in Arya’s continuing string of mentors and father figures that all have something or other to teach her about both death and survival - Ned, Syrio, Yoren, Jaqen, Beric & Thoros, Sandor Clegane, and the kindly man.

Theory/Discussion

What does Jaqen get up to after leaving Harrenhal?

• He reappears in Oldtown as “the Alchemist,” manipulating Pate to his death in the Prologue to AFFC in order to get his hands on a Citadel skeleton key
• By the time we see him again at the very end of the book, he’s taken Pate’s face and has wormed his way into Marwyn the Mage’s inner circle
• In ADWD, Tyrion inadvertently lets us know what he might be after:
  • ...the fragmentary, anonymous, blood-soaked tome sometimes called Blood and Fire and sometimes The Death of Dragons, the only surviving copy of which was supposedly hidden away in a locked vault beneath the Citadel.
• This could be part of a Faceless Man plot against Daenerys...though I wonder whether we really have time for that. Is this among the excised Braavosi plotlines George referenced, and so it’ll peter out? Or will Arya be ordered to kill Dany?
• Another question: did Jaqen kill Balon Greyjoy in between Harrenhal and Oldtown? Or was that another Faceless Man? Per the Ghost of High Heart:
  • “I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings.”
• Euron officially takes credit for Balon’s death in “The Forsaken,” and confirms that it was not by his own hand. He might’ve used the dragon egg he claims to have thrown into the sea in order to pay them; the Faceless Men would charge a lot for a king, as Littlefinger tells us in book one:
  • "Do you have any idea how costly they are?" Littlefinger complained. "You could hire an army of common sellswords for half the price, and that's for a merchant. I don't dare think what they might ask for a princess."
• Maybe that ties into the Alchemist’s mission in Oldtown. Are the Faceless Men anti-dragon, or perhaps trying to grow their own?
• I accept the interpretation that Euron throwing the dragon egg into the sea is him giving his dragon egg to the Faceless Men in exchange for them killing Balon.
• It’s entirely possible that Jaqen was the Faceless Man who did it, but what I’m unclear on is how Jaqen would be in contact with the Faceless Men when Euron is likely in Qarth long before Jaqen was in the black cells.
• That said, I really like the interpretation that the Faceless Men are attempting to find The Death of Dragons book that will teach them either how to kill dragons or how to birth/control them.
• Of the two interpretations, I favor the latter as it lines up with them having a dragon egg.
• In this, I find a parallel with the Children of the Forest and their desperate attempt to defeat the First Men.
• As was revealed in Season 6 and I think likely in the books too, the COTF decided on an ultimate superweapon to bring about the end of the war with the First Men: namely bringing about the Others.
• That experiment went badly for the COTF ultimately, but it helps us understand why the FM might be interested in bringing about a dragon after TWOIAF hints that the FM may have been behind the Doom of Valyria and the death of the dragons and their riders.
• In a way, you can understand the logic behind the Faceless Man wanting to bring about a weapon that would kill the largest number of people. It ties in with their death cult ideology.
• That said, I will note that George was asked once whether the Faceless Men have been hired to kill Dany’s dragons, and he responded “Not yet.”
• So, maybe Jaqen is down at the Citadel simply to get a book about killing dragons to be used in an attempt to kill Dany’s dragons.
• Whatever the direction George is taking Jaqen H’ghar’s story, his and the overall FM story in TWOW/ADOS looks to be quite different from the one portrayed in the Thrones Show, and I’m reluctantly excited for it.

Conclusion

• Thanks for listening!
• Thank you to Zack for joining us! Where can people find you online?
• On twitter @ wolfmanzack_, on instagram @ wolfmanzack, and if you can find me on reddit then you win a prize
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  • Red Rahloo Himself who has renounced his allegiance to the Squishers 
  • Lady of a Thousand Words
  • Septon Eastwood of Introvert Isle
  • Septon Merrybald, the Shoeless Sage
  • 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 
  • Lady Dilsdale, the StarSpear of Crescent Hill
  • Ser Way of Course
  • Matt, Warden of the Sanguine Shore
  • Lord MarConnington, Heir to Griffin's Roost
  • Lord Sam K
  • Ser Michael Mertyns
  • Wisdom Benjicot, Alchemist of Sets and Quanta, Mage of the Arts of Boole and DeMorgan
  • Tibs the Great of House Catnapping
  • Lord J Manderly, Baker of the Frey Pies
  • Septon Merifullheadofhair
  • Lady Silverwing
  • Kaboth the Unfrozen, Lord of the Bricks and Castle Crimson Light
  • Ser Keith of House Corbray, wielder of Lady Forlorn
  • Lord Andrew - Warden of the Dubai Sands
  • Ryan Noye forger of the mighty hammer and keeper of the kings anvil
  • Lord Young of the Ghost Woods
  • Lady Meera Reed, Wielder of Dark Sister, slayer of tinfoil
  • Lady of Rainy Afternoons
  • Ser Will of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune
  • Lord Clay
  • And our newest high lord: Lord DK former window washer of the Winterfell glass gardens
• Join us next week for Part 1 of ACOK Dany IV in which Dany hangs out in the creepy opium den known as the House of the Undying! Dany, if your friends want you to take drugs, they’re not really your friends.