Episode 128: A CLASH OF KINGS, DAENERYS IV: "House of Leaves (Part 3)" 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-eighth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “House of Leaves, Part 3: An Analysis of ACOK, Daenerys IV,” in which Dany finally joins the Undying for dinner, only to find out she’s the main course. 

This episode is brought to you by our NotASmallCouncil: 

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack 
• Grandmaester Timbob, troubleshooter of systems and designer of circuit boards
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N. 
• 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
• 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, the Quilled Lion, Warden of the West, Herald of the Golden Tooth, Master of the Banefort 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
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen's Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• 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 
• Low Energy Dent, True Master of the Banefort and True Master of Coin 
• Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
• Queer Alex, Rainbow Commander of the They-des and Gentle-thems (ladies and gentlemen)
• 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
• Lord Adam T
• Lady Alexandra of Tarth
• Ser Kristoph Logas, Bloody Scorpion of the Red Field, Defender of the Letter of Kin, and the Wolverine of house Qorgyle
• Lady Elizabeth, Mistress of Horse (Faced Lesbians)
• Ser Josh Snow Bastard Bounty Hunter of the North
• Ser Veyor, Chief of Parties in the Frozen Wastes
• Lord Peter
• Lady Ashley
• The Dead Sheppard Reborn, Preacher of the Poor Fellows
• Marshall Harrison—Absent, shipwrecked in the Jade Sea
• Grave-Robb Stark, the Cadaver King and Horror of Harrenhal
• Olaf, proponent of establishing a feudal, pseudodemocratic system of Great Councils, wherein every count votes
• Ser Tim: The Knight Who Was Guided By Voices
• Lord Nick
• Thucydides, Lord of Plagues
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen’s Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• Lord Gene the Splendid, Master of Coin, Warden of Tampa Bay who believes that the sudden vacation plans made by certain witnesses clears him of all charges  
• Lady Anna, The Lovely Castellan
• Pat Yronwood, the bloodroyal and guardian of the Boneway
• Lord Charles Tyrell of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Mander, Defender of the Marches, High Marshal of the Reach, Warden of the South, and The Heir of House Tyrell
• Luke, Lord of Lone Leaf & The Pillar of Autumn
• Squid Pro Quo
• Master of Zorse
• Joe Snow “King of the Metro North and protector of the Tri-State”
• Hedrigal, Captain of the Airship Arrogance
• Squire Matt S, future Ser Matt S, the one who will bring balance to the Kingdoms
• And our newest member of the NotASmall Council. Everyone say hi to BWord, Queen Beyond the Wall!

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

Nelson the Hammer, our NotASmallCouncil Prince of Dragonscone asked us a question, um, back in February 2019 that we originally told him we’d answer for AGOT, Daenerys IX? Sorry, Nelson! And thanks for your patience. (It was all my fault. Sorry, Nelson!). Anyways, he asks:

Dear Amen Brothers,

Love love love the show! Your first livestream was a blast and I can't wait to find out which chapter you'll be covering for the next one. Also really looking forward to the Q&A wrap up to your Fire & Blood coverage.

Speaking of Targaryens, I have a question about one of their more infamous practices: the incest. Throughout the main series and in Fire & Blood we see examples of bad incestuous Targaryen marriages (Maegor/Rhaena and Aerys II/Rhaella, among others) as well as good ones (Jaehaerys/Alysanne and Baelon/Alyssa). Other examples of incest in the series - namely Craster and his daughter-wives and Jaime and Cersei - are clearly marked as not only taboo but morally reprehensible (though for different reasons). However, as we see very clearly in Fire & Blood, George does not seem to have quite the same attitude toward Targaryen incest. My question is this: to what degree are we, the reader, meant to condemn or frown upon Targaryen incest?  What problems do you see it causing that do not occur in cases of non-incestuous Targaryen marriages?

So, thank you to Nelson for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer 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, bonus episodes, access to the NotASlack for our two highest patrons and merch, baby!

Yes indeed! As we recently announced, the two winning designs were Lightbringer and Amen Brother! Mallory is deep in the process of completing her work for them! Final designs should be back our way at the start of October, and we’ll be ordering shirts for all of our Sworn Sword and above patrons (and if you are a Sworn Sword or higher patron and haven’t sent us your address, please send us your addresses via patreon message or e mailing us at notacastasoiaf@gmail.com)!

But enough about patreon! When we last checked in with Dany, she had just seen Westeros and her, the House with the Red Door, her dad doing the war crimes and Ratgaer, Rhaegar playing “Wonderwall” on his stupid-ass harp, singing about the song of ice and fire. Let’s find out what new wonders and terrors Dany will see in this synopsis of ACOK, Daenerys IV, Part 3! 

Synopsis

Dany walks for what seems like an hour, and she finds herself going down into the darkness. But as she proceeds down the stairs, the torches start to gutter out. There were only twenty left behind her. And there was something else down there too: 

And as she listened it seemed as if she heard something else coming, shuffling and dragging itself slowly along the faded carpet. Terror filled her. She could not go back and she was afraid to stay here, but how could she go on? There was no door on her right, and the steps went down, not up.

Yet another torch went out as she stood pondering, and the sounds grew faintly louder. Drogon's long neck snaked out and he opened his mouth to scream, steam rising from between his teeth. He hears it too. Dany turned to the blank wall once more, but there was nothing. Could there be a secret door, a door I cannot see? Another torch went out. Another. The first door on the right, he said, always the first door on the right. The first door on the right . . .

It came to her suddenly. . . . is the last door on the left!

She flung herself through . Beyond was another small room with four doors. To the right she went, and to the right, and to the right, and to the right, and to the right, and to the right, and to the right, until she was dizzy and out of breath once more.

She finds herself in a stone chamber, but she walks through a haunted house door that’s shaped like a mouth, and she finds Pyat Pree? Wait, the exhibit is done? So soon? Pyat has the same question, wondering whether the Undying were done with Daenerys. But Dany is confused, saying she hasn’t found them.

"You have taken a wrong turning. Come, I will lead you." Pyat Pree held out his hand.

Dany hesitated. There was a door to her right, still closed . . .

"That's not the way," Pyat Pree said firmly, his blue lips prim with disapproval. "The Undying Ones will not wait forever."

"Our little lives are no more than a flicker of a moth's wing to them," Dany said, remembering.

"Stubborn child. You will be lost, and never found."

She walked away from him, to the door on the right.

"No," Pyat screeched. "No, to me, come to me, to meeeeeee." His face crumbled inward, changing to something pale and wormlike.

Dany heads up a stairwell and climbs, remembering that the HoTU did not seem to have towers. The stair opens, and she sees wooden doors made of black ebony and white weirwood, with the grains swirling and twisting into bizarre patterns. It was beautiful and scary at the same time. Dany tells herself not to be afraid and prays to the Warrior and the Dothraki horse god for strength and continues walking forward.

Beyond the doors was a great hall and a splendor of wizards. Some wore sumptuous robes of ermine, ruby velvet, and cloth of gold. Others fancied elaborate armor studded with gemstones, or tall pointed hats speckled with stars. There were women among them, dressed in gowns of surpassing loveliness. Shafts of sunlight slanted through windows of stained glass, and the air was alive with the most beautiful music she had ever heard.

A kingly man in rich robes rose when he saw her, and smiled. "Daenerys of House Targaryen, be welcome. Come and share the food of forever. We are the Undying of Qarth."

"Long have we awaited you," said a woman beside him, clad in rose and silver. The breast she had left bare in the Qartheen fashion was as perfect as a breast could be.

"We knew you were to come to us," the wizard king said. "A thousand years ago we knew, and have been waiting all this time. We sent the comet to show you the way."

"We have knowledge to share with you," said a warrior in shining emerald armor, "and magic weapons to arm you with. You have passed every trial. Now come and sit with us, and all your questions shall be answered."

Dany steps forward, but Drogon jumps and flies to the ebony and weirwood door and begins biting into the wood. The handsome man laughs and calls Drogon a willful beast. BTW, would Dany want to learn how to speak dragon?

This causes Dany a lot of doubt. Dany pushes the heavy door with all her strength, and finally it moves. The wizards continue to call after her, but Drogon was flying ahead, and Dany passes into the worst kind of fucked up nightmare that a bad trip can bring:

A long stone table filled this room. Above it floated a human heart, swollen and blue with corruption, yet still alive. It beat, a deep ponderous throb of sound, and each pulse sent out a wash of indigo light. The figures around the table were no more than blue shadows. As Dany walked to the empty chair at the foot of the table, they did not stir, nor speak, nor turn to face her. There was no sound but the slow, deep beat of the rotting heart.

. . . mother of dragons . . . came a voice, part whisper and part moan . . . . dragons . . . dragons . . . dragons . . . other voices echoed in the gloom. Some were male and some female. One spoke with the timbre of a child. The floating heart pulsed from dimness to darkness. It was hard to summon the will to speak, to recall the words she had practiced so assiduously. 

Dany declares that she is Dany of House Targaryen. She wonders if they can hear her. She sits down, and then asks the undying for their wisdom and counsel. What she sees, well, it’s not good! There was an old wrinkled hairless man with violet-blue lips and blue nails. That beauty stares at an old woman with a silk gown rotting around her body with one withered breast with a blue nipple. And suddenly Dany realizes that the Undying weren’t breathing, and their eyes weren’t seeing. Are … are the Undying dead?

Her answer was a whisper as thin as a mouse's whisker. . . . we live . . . live . . . live . . . it sounded. Myriad other voices whispered echoes . . . . And know . . . know . . . know . . . know . . .

Dany wants to know truth. She wonders if the things she had been seeing her visions were true or lies? Are they things from the past or events from the future? WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?

. . . the shape of shadows . . . morrows not yet made . . . drink from the cup of ice . . . drink from the cup of fire . . .

. . . mother of dragons . . . child of three . . .

'Three?" She did not understand.

. . . three heads has the dragon . . . the ghost chorus yarnmered inside her skull with never a lip moving, never a breath stirring the still blue air. . . . mother of dragons . . . child of storm . . . The whispers became a swirling song. . . . three fires must you light . . . one for life and one for death and one to love . . . Her own heart was beating in unison to the one that floated before her, blue and corrupt . . . three mounts must you ride . . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love . . . The voices were growing louder, she realized, and it seemed her heart was slowing, and even her breath. . . . three treasons will you know . . . once for blood and once for gold and once for love . . .

Dany whispers that she doesn’t understand. She asks that they help her and show her.

. . . help her . . . the whispers mocked. . . . show her . . .

Oh okay. Obviously, the Undying are GOOD.

Then phantoms shivered through the murk, images in indigo. Viserys screamed as the molten gold ran down his cheeks and filled his mouth. A tall lord with copper skin and silver-gold hair stood beneath the banner of a fiery stallion, a burning city behind him. Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman's name. . . . mother of dragons, daughter of death . . . Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire. . . . mother of dragons, slayer of lies . . . Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . . mother of dragons, bride of fire . . .

Mm-hm go on.

Faster and faster the visions came, one after the other, until it seemed as if the very air had come alive. Shadows whirled and danced inside a tent, boneless and terrible. A little girl ran barefoot toward a big house with a red door. Mirri Maz Duur shrieked in the flames, a dragon bursting from her brow. Behind a silver horse the bloody corpse of a naked man bounced and dragged. A white lion ran through grass taller than a man. Beneath the Mother of Mountains, a line of naked crones crept from a great lake and knelt shivering before her, their grey heads bowed. Ten thousand slaves lifted bloodstained hands as she raced by on her silver, riding like the wind. "Mother!" they cried. "Mother, mother!" They were reaching for her, touching her, tugging at her cloak, the hem of her skirt, her foot, her leg, her breast. They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them . . .

Wow, this is amazing. So much to see. Hey, uh, wait, why is Drogon suddenly angry and screaming?

Suddenly the visions were gone, ripped away, and Dany's gasp turned to horror. The Undying were all around her, blue and cold, whispering as they reached for her, pulling, stroking, tugging at her clothes, touching her with their dry cold hands, twining their fingers through her hair. All the strength had left her limbs. She could not move. Even her heart had ceased to beat. She felt a hand on her bare breast, twisting her nipple. Teeth found the soft skin of her throat. A mouth descended on one eye, licking, sucking, biting . . .

This is normal, right? Just some normal undying, maybe dead people eating Daenerys. NORMAL.

Then indigo turned to orange, and whispers turned to screams. Her heart was pounding, racing, the hands and mouths were gone, heat washed over her skin, and Dany blinked at a sudden glare. Perched above her, the dragon spread his wings and tore at the terrible dark heart, ripping the rotten flesh to ribbons, and when his head snapped forward, fire flew from his open jaws, bright and hot. She could hear the shrieks of the Undying as they burned, their high thin papery voices crying out in tongues long dead. Their flesh was crumbling parchment, their bones dry wood soaked in tallow. They danced as the flames consumed them; they staggered and writhed and spun and raised blazing hands on high, their fingers bright as torches.

Dany gets up to her feet and charges through the fire and the flames (and the Undying) and carries on as the room burns behind her. She calls for Drogon, and he follows her through the fire.

She finds herself in a hallway, searching for a door to her right, but there are only doors to her left. But finally, she sees a door straight ahead, a door like an open mouth. She races for it.

When she spilled out into the sun, the bright light made her stumble. Pyat Pree was gibbering in some unknown tongue and hopping from one foot to the other. When Dany looked behind her, she saw thin tendrils of smoke forcing their way through cracks in the ancient stone walls of the Palace of Dust, and rising from between the black tiles of the roof.

Howling curses, Pyat Pree drew a knife and danced toward her, but Drogon flew at his face. Then she heard the crack of Jhogo's whip, and never was a sound so sweet. The knife went flying, and an instant later Rakharo was slamming Pyat to the ground. Ser Jorah Mormont knelt beside Dany in the cool green grass and put his arm around her shoulder.

And that is ACOK, Daenerys IV, Part III and the conclusion of a top-five most important chapter in all of ASOIAF! The end of this chapter is wonder and terror, baffling and exciting, skin-tinglingly fun and horrifying. This is  it! What did you think, ser?

Depth

There’s three chapters in ACOK I love most, the holy trinity of Dany IV, Davos II, and Catelyn VII. In all three of those chapters, George builds to the reveal of a shadowy light in the darkness, the corruption of life and beauty unveiling itself to the POV. In Catelyn VII, that figure is purely human--it’s Jaime Lannister! But in this chapter, as in Davos II, the revelation is magical in origin, and so functions as a window onto how the author sees the forces of life, death, and beyond that define this world. Davos II danced around the shadow, the thing that killed Renly which no one could name, until it was reborn to kill again. Dany IV draws us closer and closer as we go to the Undying, who are central to George’s conception and conveyance of this story despite this being their sole appearance. As with Melisandre’s shadowbirth, all the buildup could not prepare us. 

George’s writing achieves a level here that approaches the mythological. Its naked ambition could’ve proved catastrophic in lesser hands, but form meets content at every turn. Pure unfiltered imagery exploding into the mind’s eye is matched by a master craftsman’s attention to structure. Steven Attewell compared Varys to a classical composer and Littlefinger to a jazz improviser. In this chapter, George is both at once.

This chapter is simply impressive in how it’s written. Beyond visions, beyond prophecy, beyond emotional callbacks to Dany’s past, we’re deep in George’s outstanding ability to convey plot and mood through writing the good words. It’s color: copper skin, silver hair, a flaming horse. It’s evocative wording painting expressionistic pictures: rubies flying like drops of blood. It’s the intensely horrifying imagery when the Undying come for Dany: the mouth on Dany’s eye licking, sucking and biting. YEEEEEEESH. So, look, the content of this chapter is just magnificent from soup to nuts, but I want to highlight the way George words his classical composition and jazz improvisio, how he WRITES: by god, it’s a green lime wedge perched atop the blue mountains of my perspiring Coors Light. (Did I do the words right, George? Please say yes.) The true magician here isn’t those cannibal druggies. It’s George at the keyboard.   

• Hallway of doom
  • So far, HOTU has only teetered on the edge of outright horror, keeping its feet firmly planted in the territory of high fantasy. Sure, many of the images were shocking, but they were contextualized as passing images
  • The vision of Rhaegar title-dropped the series and seemed to serve as the still-point core of fantasy itself. Now it’s gone; we’re alone in the dark
  • Dany keeps going down the hallway, until she reaches a stairway going down. She’s not supposed to go down. She’s not supposed to go left, but there haven’t been any doors to her right. And when Dany looks back, the torches are going out, one by one. She hears something coming for her...
  • The threat suddenly seems real. It’s stepped out of the rooms, the visions, the story, to hunt Dany the reader through the fourth wall. Effective scares!
  • Now, it’s possible that nothing is there at all. Dany is extremely high right now, and George pointedly refuses to confirm its existence visually
  • Then again, Drogon screams as if something is there, if only another illusion. What does it represent, this beast hunting Dany in the dark?
  • In terms of the plot, George is communicating to us that the Undying might not be playing by the rules. Dany has done it all right, yet seems doomed
  • Oh, sure, she figures out that the last door on the left is the first on the right, which fits the “go back to go forward” motif of her story…
  • ...but c’mon, Pyat Pree did not warn her about monsters in the hallway itself! This seems to me like a clue that once again, the Qartheen cheat
  • The Pureborn fleeced her even as she followed their byzantine social norms; the same thing is happening here on a psychedelic magic level 
  • Just as the prophetic images will be turned against Dany by the Undying themselves, the rules of their House are there to trap her in place. Dany will have to break through that structure of text around her to escape
  • Speaking of text, the weight of history and myth weighs heavily on this part of the chapter. A monster in a labyrinth has one major association
  • In terms of the Greek legendarium, the Minotaur and his maze retain cultural fascination as much as the structure of the Odyssey
  • This is an archetype that we can’t seem to leave alone, in part because it seems to uncannily mirror the workings of our own minds
  • The Cretian King Minos declared that the gods would bestow upon him anything he could pray for, just as the Undying promise Dany 
  • Poseidon sent a bull for him to sacrifice, but Minos sacrificed a lesser bull instead. Poseidon cursed Minos’ wife Pasiphae (or got Aphrodite to do it) to become attracted to the bull. The Minotaur was the result
  • Half bull and half man, caught in between, embodying the dysfunctional relationship between god, nature, and man. He haunts the labyrinth
  • Athens paid tribute to Crete by offering up victims to wander the labyrinth before being devoured by the Minotaur, until the hero Theseus slew it
  • Has Dany been sacrificed to this beast like the Athenians? Or Theseus, come to slay it? She certainly becomes a figure of in-universe legend
  • Like Grendel, his fellow beast of legend, the Minotaur has been recast as a misunderstood figure of loneliness, including by our man Borges
  • His is a perspective we cannot access, forever a monster in our eyes; Dany literally can’t see this Minotaur. It’s all about what it means to see
  • Here’s a piece of it that really speaks to the complex work George is doing with this scene, and really with all of the House of the Undying.
  • Even though the images might be mirages, even though the warlocks might be cosplaying Rhaegar Targaryen and Willem Darry, even though the warlocks are cheating, there’s truth conveyed in the imagery.
  • Here in this hallway, Dany is pursued by a monster. What is the monster precisely? Fans have said that it’s the Long Night, the Others.
  • And there’s a degree of truth in that. We can look to the story of the Last Hero with his torch going out as the White Walkers pursued him through the darkness and see that this may be hinting at Dany’s true enemy: the Others.
  • However, I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that I think that the monster pursuing Daenerys is both the Others and Daenerys Targaryen herself!
  • In AGOT, Viserys Targaryen repeatedly calls himself “the blood of the dragon” and when Viserys dies quite peacefully, Dany takes on both monikers.
  • Dany draws an identity from the ancestral heritage of the Targaryens and finds an inner strength in that identity -- brought about even more strongly with the birth of the dragons at the end of AGOT.
  • ASOS gives that identity more meaning with her using dragon fire to free the slaves in Astapor and liberate most of the slaves in Slaver’s Bay.
  • But then at the end of her ASOS arc, she crucifies 163 Great Masters in vengent response to their murder of slave children along the mileposts to Meereen.
  • And when she was crucifying these men, she felt like an “avenging dragon.” But as they died, she was feeling guilty.
  • Come Dany’s first chapter in ADWD, she finds out that Drogon burned and ate a child: Hazzea.
  • Her next chapter in ADWD closes with this haunting line:
    • Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.
  • So, yes, it’s the Others pursuing Daenerys with all the Last Hero imagery. But it’s also the darker version of herself pursuing her too -- her father’s and brother’s memory and ghost and also her own inner dragon and the potential monster that lives within her.
• Vision #6: Fake Pyat Pree
  • The vision of a fake Pyat Pree isn’t as depthful as the rest, but it’s notable in its own right in terms of how HOTU works and what the Undying want
  • It works along the same lines of the vision of the house with the red door. It’s a familiar space, not a vision of the unfamiliar past/future, and someone Dany knows tries to lure her into stepping through the door
  • It’s part of HOTU as a temptation, Qarth trying to get Dany stuck in place. Dany solves it in the same way a reader realizes details don’t add up
  • Unlike Willem Darry, this Pyat Pree is potentially the real deal. It’s conceivable that Dany somehow found her way back here
  • I think about characters in stories like Dark City or Total Recall that don’t know whether or not they’re in virtual reality and have to examine clues
  • But Dany quickly sees through him. He says she took a wrong turning; we know she didn’t. Dany sees another door to the right; he says that’s the wrong way. He says the Undying won’t wait forever; Dany remembers that Pyat said the Undying don’t think of time like we do. They will wait forever
  • This is a parallel to what we talked about in Arya IX with Zack, about how Arya outfoxed Jaqen due to her understanding of the rules of fairytales
  • Dany kept in mind the rules of HOTU, the rules of Wonderland and the labyrinth, even though they don’t make sense, so she passes the test
  • The visions so far can be sorted into two trios, two tryptichs curated for her. In the first trio, we had two images of the horrors of war, and then a temptation of peace. Dany must resist it despite the other images
  • In the second trio, we had two images of the folly of prophecy. Now Dany must outwit a false image by remembering the rules she must follow
  • This vision, however, ends very differently from the Willem Darry one. In this one, the fake Pyat Pree suddenly gives away the game, calling out to Dany threateningly as she runs away, crumbling into something wormlike
  • It’s so metal that it’s his face that collapses and turns into something wormlike.
  • This is what we see in “The Forsaken” when Damphair looks at what he thinks is his brother Urrigon.
  • And what is it that Urri says to Aeron? “Worms. Worms await you, Aeron.”
  • Immediately after that, Urri’s face sloughs off, and we find out that it’s not Urrigon at all. It’s Euron’s face underneath.
  • Given that touchstone of what Aeron sees in “The Forsaken”, we can probably attribute Pyat Pree’s face dissolving into worms to the shade of the evening having its impact.
  • Having never done the drugs, can we say that the worm is turning? 
  • This is the bad trip battling with the good trip throughout this chapter: a comforting sunny image that hides a hideous vision of decay and death
  • The shiny lures of story are used to cover up entropy, the City of Bones that will dominate Dany’s story in the end. It’s poking through the surface
  • I talked last week about the Willem Darry that Dany sees potentially being a spirit-world resident of HOTU, but it seems like this one definitely is
  • As with the hallway, the horror is ramping up as the trip gets heavier in Dany’s mind, culminating with the Undying; it’s intense for the audience
  • Dany just barely avoided being claimed by whatever that thing is, a grasping entity of the reflected world beyond the physical
  • It’s powerful, but also pitiful in its screeching crumbling state. Not something you want to be like. And that leads perfectly to the Undying
  • When we get in-depth on each of the visions - to include this one - we see more and more the different temptations that the warlocks and undying are using to keep Dany in the HoTU forever.
  • Last week, it was visions, weaponized nostalgia, utilizing the House with the Red Door, visions of Rhaegar, terrifying visions of Aerys and the rape of Westeros too.
  • Here, this seems like a minor temptation. Mislead Daenerys to go through the wrong door in order to keep her trapped in the HoTU.
  • On the question about whether this was Pyat Pree or Fake Pyat Pree, it’s kind-of fascinating.
  • At chapter’s end, Dany emerges from the HoTU and sees Pyat dancing from one foot to the other and speaking in tongues.
  • Maybe Pyat is in the HoTU with Dany in some sense, skinchanging a version of himself? I don’t know. It’s all weird. It’s the fuckin’ Catalina Wine Mixer (It’s the HoTU).
  • Anyways, the temptation here read as an appeal to authority. Pyat is the authority figure, and he uses his seeming wisdom and knowledge to push Daenerys in the wrong direction.
  • And ain’t this the Daenerys Targaryen story in miniature? Illyrio, Jorah and many, many others attempt to use their authority figure status to drive Dany in one direction or another. Think: Jorah constantly being Dany’s tour guide and attempting to use that knowledge and authority to push her away from Westeros and other men.
  • And they do so not out of concern for Dany, but for their own reasons. So, what Pyat is doing here is very much in keeping with the archetypal shitty men that Dany has encountered.
  • Thankfully, Dany easily sees through this deception on Pyat Pree’s part, and in time, she’ll see through Jorah and Illyrio too.
  • But first she has more proximate deceptions to see through in the form of the Undying.
• Vision #7: Fake Undying
  • The whole chapter has been interrogating the borders between image and observer, thought and action. The Undying exist beyond all of them
  • Dany climbs the Tower of Babel, the fiery ladder to the source of these godlike visions. She remembers that HOTU didn’t seem to have towers
  • So this is the ultimate fantasy space. It’s an Olympian plane of divinity; it’s the room at the end of 2001. It’s the garden of unearthly delights sought by every shaman, stoner, and seeker of knowledge in our own history
  • This is where you can be whatever you want to be. It is the physical projection of consciousness, a font of divinity where word becomes flesh
  • Time stops. Space falls away. The elements of creation belong not to an uncaring god nor the whims of chance but to you, the mind’s eye
  • Dany passes through doors of ebony and weirwood. Black and white. Yin and yang, night and day, tragedy and comedy. Stannis and Renly! The marriage of heaven and hell. The extremes of humanity in Dany’s story
  • These are the doors of perception. The doors of wisdom, as Pyat Pree called them. This is the process that every human being goes through
  • Most of us aren’t wizards. Most of us aren’t the Mother of Dragons. But all of us must wake up to the limitations of our own perception, the fact that the lens through which we access everything is fatally flawed
  • We don’t live in reality. We live in our minds, which are hopelessly divided frameworks we can’t help but impose on everything, distorting it
  • So much of human activity is spent just trying to get outside our own heads. Art. Faith. Empathy, community, love. But there’s only one way out
  • That way is death...but we’re in the House of the Undying. They found a different way out: transcendence via drugs, prophecy, and story itself
  • It’s no accident that Arya journeys to the House of Black and White, like the doors of the chamber of the Undying. The Faceless Men too are mired in death in order to transcend it. It’s another all-consuming death cult
  • As such, these doors are both beautiful and frightening for Dany. They twist and interweave, the opposite colors feeding on each other, just like how she prays to both the Seven and the Dothraki gods for support
  • Always these binaries with blurring borders in HOTU and Dany’s story as as a whole. The doors tempt her toward wisdom, but their ambiguous nature also frightens her, as does the sense of unreality at work
  • After all, there’s suddenly sunlight in a house that has no windows, at the top of a tower invisible from the outside. Where are we? We are nowhere and yet everywhere, omnipotent and invisible, like a god, like a reader
  • And it is in those terms that the Undying present themselves to Dany, in one of the most brilliant fourth-wall-breaking gambits in a story full of them 
  • The Undying present themselves as “a splendor of wizards” with luscious robes and glittering armor. They tell Dany that she is a Protagonist beloved of Prophecy, that they have awaited her arrival for centuries and sent the red comet to bring her to them. She has passed every trial, and now they have sacred information and magic weapons to share with her
  • This is pure wish fulfillment shorn of conflict. It’s like the last line of Willy Wonka: “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted...he lived happily ever after.”
  • The Undying are tempting Dany with the resolution of everything that eats away at her from the inside. There’s a plan for her, and there always was
  • Turns out she’s been carrying out that plan expertly through all her trials and tribulations without even knowing it. Good job, Dany! You win at life!
  • The most perfect and powerful people in the universe think she’s just the best, and now they want to make everything easy for her forever
  • Dany was right that the comet was a sign sent to her. She was right to seek wisdom amidst all the snares and false faces of Qarth
  • She has completed her character arc, and she shall now be rewarded. With power, of course, but also that sense of completion, satisfaction
  • The Undying offer Dany the serenity that will continually be denied to her in Slaver’s Bay. Nothing there is ever as simple as she wants it to be
  • The Undying fashion the external world around Daenerys, utilizing signs and portents to paint a narrative that all points to Daenerys.
  • Is it objectively true that all the signs and portents are pointing to Daenerys? Maybe! Check back at our conversations on AGOT, Dany X and ACOK, Dany I for more of that discussion.
  • But do the Undying actually know all of this, or are they taking the true signs and wonders, and saying it points to them?
  • This reads like the latest iteration of something we saw at the start of ACOK: everyone is fashioning the comet to fit their narrative
  • The comet was heading east. This meant that the comet was telling Dany to come east to Qarth and to the Undying, right?
  • Probably not! And the Undying know this. That’s what makes this specific bullshittery appear so galling.
  • But I say appear because what’s the functional difference in endstate  between Melisandre fashioning nature around Stannis in stating that it’s his comet and what the Undying do to Dany here?
  • Prophecy and wonder are mummer’s tricks, shadows on walls (drink) that ensnare people into falling behind whatever ideology the magician, priest or priestess wants people to fall behind
  • The HoTU is not the endgame for Daenerys Targaryen. It’s a pitstop along her road to destiny.
  • But as we’ve been saying, HOTU is about the reader as much as the character, our own doors of perception along with Dany’s
  • The Undying aren’t being framed here only as Dany’s dreamweavers. They are the embodiment of the most basic narrative elements of fantasy
  • The tropes are as simple and unadorned as they could possibly be. Pointy wizard hats! Stilted declarative dialogue! Magic weapons for the hero!
  • This is George breaking past all the sedimentary layers of history built into the genre, all the adult complications, to reach the childish core of it
  • For kids, fairytales are spaces of projection, acting out the stories with yourself as the characters. The Undying, in this scene, are deliberate stock archetypes, empty vessels of awesome to imagine yourself into
  • They’re creatures of song. Hence music with no musicians. No hay banda. We hear music because we’re inside music, the song of ice and fire
  • What the Undying say is the temptation for Dany. How the Undying look and talk is the temptation for the reader. In both cases, we yearn for simplicity. She wants everything to work out; we want childish comfort
  • And in both cases, George is encouraging us to check our instinctive desires and dig deeper with our critical faculties; that’s the true arc
  • We’re being shown what everything working out for our favorite character would look like. And it’s a trap, nothing but an image, lacking substance
  • We have to grow up. We have to put aside our childish things, our wish fulfillment relationship to the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves
  • George understands the gut visceral appeal of fantasy: a better world realized. But when he grew up, he looked back with a skeptical eye
  • The surface can easily be mistaken for substance, so people who absolutely do not believe in a better world can pretend they do
  • The Undying weave a web of propaganda around Dany, reshaping everything into a narrative that seems to empower her, but really empowers them. We sent the comet; we hold the key to your destiny
  • It’s comforting in the way storybook fantasy is comforting, the way Willem Darry’s loving outstretched hand was comforting. But Willem Darry is ash and dust, and these comforts are being framed as deceptive disguises
  • The Undying are cosplaying as perfect fantasy characters, and this is where the mirror of HOTU fully finally turns on the audience
  • This is us. This is what we do as fantasy readers. This is what we do as cosplayers, as podcasters, as panelists, as fanfiction writers, etc. We wear these glittering suits of imaginary armor--like BryndenBFish, PoorQuentyn
  • This is what all the teasing around the edges of the fourth wall has been leading to: a reflected tableau of you, the reader, the seeker of knowledge
  • It’s in part a critical portrait, as we’ll see very soon when Dany gets to the Undying as they actually are. You can’t live inside projected story forever
  • But it’s also a loving tribute to the genre, as with the chapter as a whole. This is a portrait of a warm loving community welcoming a newcomer
  • Fantasy, sadly, isn’t always as good at that as it should be. But you can see George imprinting his own wonder at being welcomed to the pantheon. What must it have felt like to see AGOT so praised? Like this!
  • The Undying offer to teach Dany “the secret speech of dragonkind,” a most tempting phrase. Dany’s never quite able to command her dragons
  • This becomes an increasingly important part of her story in ADWD; again, the Undying are offering to easily resolve this central conflict for her
  • By resisting this temptation, Dany gives up on being able to completely control the forces of both creation and destruction dragons represent
  • Once again, the emphasis is on text--the secret speech of dragonkind. Hidden text, mistranslated text, whose meaning will be lost in time; those are the concerns of HOTU, like so many of its metafictional forebears
  • It’s the rush of literary accomplishment, even apotheosis in this magical semi-divine context...but one of the major animating ideas of ASOIAF is that apotheosis is temporary. Trying to make it permanent is unwise
  • It is Drogon, Dany’s id, who senses the corruption at work and forces her to literally look outside the doors of perception. There’s another door
  • It’s older, splintered, and plain. Critically, it’s grey--the merging of the black and white on the other doors. This is reconciliation, the emerging truth
  • It stands to the right of the doors of perception, and so Dany goes through the grey door, once again proving (like Arya) that mastering fairytale rules through literary analysis wins the day, despite Dany being high as balls
  • The projected Undying chase her with voices sweeter than song, like the song of ice and fire Rhaegar was talking about. It’s the lure of pure narrative, overwhelming in its appeal, but always a manipulated image
  • Those colors: black and white: they’re powerful ones that George does a lot of work with.
  • The trunk and branches of weirwoods are white (with red leaves). 
  • The wights have white faces with cold, black hands.
  • The temple of the Faceless Men is called “The House of Black and White.”
  • And yet, this is not a black and white world, much as our own isn’t.
  • GRRM’s talked about how he doesn’t like black and white characters in the story, black and white plots. He likes gray, and all of his characters are gray.
  • I love that detail that you were alluding to about the door’s grains swirling and twisting with a strange interwoven pattern.
  • Part of me thinks that GRRM is going meta here with Dany as the reader avatar.
  • It’s uncomfortable for readers to examine a work of fiction in which the characters and moral stakes are not as clear-cut as we might like.
  • And while George himself has spoken frequently and often about his great love for Tolkien, he’s a bit of a literary critic of “Aragorn ruled wisely and well” as the end-point for Aragorn’s arc.
  • What did Aragorn do to all the orcs and orc babies? What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Fans roll their eyes at George here, but he’s calling Tolkien to the mat to add the gray back into stories.
  • And so here, GRRM is calling us to look away from the glittering images of the Undying as they wish to appear and instead go through the strange and twisting door to see the world as it actually is: gray.
• Meeting the Undying
  • All through these episodes, we’ve been talking about HOTU as the ultimate shadow on a wall, the projected image from Plato’s cave
  • It’s a fantasy so immersive it comes to resemble reality, with a little help from psychedelic drugs. It’s a dreamworld, a fiction you can live inside
  • Dany has managed to dodge every trap and resist every temptation. And so she is permitted to step behind the curtain and discover the dreamers
  • Here at last is the reality of HOTU, or as close to reality as we can get. Here is the center of power, the true face of Qarth, the eye of the beholder
  • It is an image of absolute indulgence, humanity so in thrall to its own satisfaction that it becomes hollowed out of all purpose and meaning
  • The Undying are gathered around a table, over which hovers a heart. It is blue with corruption. It should be dead. But it’s not. It lives on, hideously
  • It beats, generating not only sound but light, “a wash of indigo light” that seems to bathe the room and its inhabitants, staining them like the shade of the evening stains the lips of those who drink too much of it
  • This heart has literal and figurative implications, like the rest of the imagery in its House. I say “its House” because the heart, not the Undying, seems to be the primary resident, the source of all the power and visions. It is the center of the maze; the Undying built their House around it
  • On a literal level, the heart is what allows for the creation and manipulation of the divine imagery seen throughout HOTU. The imagery gets wilder the closer you get to the heart and the more time you spend around it
  • The heart also physically changes those close to it. Dany’s heartbeat and breathing get slower just from a little time in this chamber; the Undying are the way they are because they’ve been this close to the heart for years
  • The heart also starts to mirror Dany’s own heartbeat in just a little bit. (Or is Dany’s heart mirroring the Undying’s heart?)
  • I like the former interpretation, because it helps explain why Dany has been invited here in the first place.
  • She’s food (as we’ll find out soon enough), and her heartbeat, her flesh are consumables for the Undying.
  • The heartbeat of the bloated, corrupt human heart is a vampire, metaphorically-speaking of course. (The real vamps are the Undying), drawing its rhythmic beat from Dany’s living heart.
  • And, of course, in a book where we have the fiery heart of R’hllor found in Stannis’ sigil representing Stannis setting his own heart on fire in the form of Shireen, we should think about the Undying heart in similar lens.
  • Is this a reflection of Dany’s heart present or future? It may be! It may also be another of GRRM’s warnings to Dany of what her heart will become if she allows the monster to come to the fore.
  • Swollen and bloated with corruption, two hearts beating as one: this is the warning to Daenerys that continues from the monster in the hallway before.
  • This is the other side of the coin from the previous image, George showing us the nature of magic in his world. The Undying can’t really tell the difference between reality and fantasy any more; who cares if their “real” bodies are decrepit mummies? They can imagine ones they like better
  • One of the projected Undying was a woman with a bared breast in the Qartheen style; one of the real Undying also has a breast exposed
  • One was “as perfect as a breast can be.” The other is withered. One is the idealized self-image projected into art; the other is aging and mortality
  • The only thing as universal as death is the desire to escape death, and that desire is so powerful that it has animated all-consuming delusion
  • The Undying have become so inhuman, empty vessels for the power coursing through them, that Dany wonders whether they are dead at first
  • This is who Dany could become if she descended into dragon dreams, so in thrall to the vanished past and infinite future that she forgets the present
  • On the more figurative side of things, this is the human heart in conflict with itself, the concept that George says drives the whole series
  • It’s dead but alive. Its beat is sound, but also image. It creates visions of truth, kind of. Reconciling its contradictions in search of wisdom is what Dany has come to do. Wisdom is what she asks for from the Undying
  • In the process, she hopes to reconcile her own contradictions, her own human heart in conflict with itself. Yet the Undying can’t help her do that
  • It’s another meta statement about the nature of narrative itself. This heart is a story engine, spitting out manufactured audiovisual tableaux like it’s the spirit of cinema brought to life. Bearing witness to it is so arresting that it has led the Undying to give up on everything else life has to offer
  • They live on, and they know, art conquering death, waxwings slain in the window pane. But they’re stuck on that side of the glass from everyone else, paused in time and therefore alone; one is even still a child!
  • The Undying aren’t just a high-fantasy opium den. They’re a reflection on reader, author, and the evanescent meeting point of both within text
  • Dany wants truth. She wants them to unravel the images she saw. But all they can offer her is more images, shadows, the cup of ice, the cup of fire
  • This is what it looks like when you fall down the rabbit hole of story so far that you can never make your way back to the surface again. The framework is so powerful that it replaces you, mind and body. It’s a warning, a cautionary tale, and it’s coming from a man who has dedicated himself to storytelling. The doors of perception can slam shut behind you
  • Oh, a cautioner’s tale, you say? Ahem. 
  • Not only do the doors of perception slam shut behind you, they laugh at you, they make fun of you.
    • . . . help her . . . the whispers mocked. . . . show her . . .
  • George gets asked many, many times about major plot points that haven’t occurred in the novels yet. E.G. At Balticon, some probably very nice person whose family loves them very much asked a dumbass question about how Jon’s mother was. In 2016!
  • Now, look, you have a question you desperately want George to answer, shoot your shot if you see him at a convention. But don’t be surprised if the dreamer tells you to “keep reading” or have another cheese doodle.
    • (Yes, the cheese doodle thing is something GRRM has told people before)
  • The point being that the Undying as the avatar of GRRM and characters in their own right (I guess?) are calling readers and Dany to keep reading, live her story.
  • But as always, as often as GRRM tells fans to keep reading, he will also provide fans with little treats, little things that let us know that something is coming. 
  • The Undying are also here to bring little treats for Dany, visions of truth and wisdom: the shapes of the past and future. 
  • Sadly though, these are not the Abramowski family who always had a handful of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups they’d give each kid.
  • More like the witch from Hansel and Gretel from Grimm’s Fairytale who lures the children into her house with treats in order to eat the kids.
  • Hey wait, a second ...
• Prophecies of Three
  • Of course, the Undying represent authors as well as readers. They’ve been immersed in imagery so long they’ve learned to manipulate it
  • That’s why they were able to present themselves as shining smiling fantasy archetypes to Dany, seeing if she would fall for the image
  • They understand story well enough to break it down to its component chunks and move it around to play with their audience--like George does!
  • They call her a “child of three.” She is born of the structure, of story and prophecy. Dany’s true father isn’t Aerys Targaryen, it’s George RR Martin
  • After all, three heads has the dragon, like Rhaegar said. It’s the three act structure, it’s the threefold revelation, it’s the central number of narrative
  • Dany is made of threes. She gets three threes in a row: three fires, three treasons, three mounts. The whispers are a swirling song, access to ASOIAF itself. It’s the buried structure readers aren’t allowed to glimpse
  • She’s a child of storm and a mother of dragons. Birth amidst tumult, creation from destruction, an arc from childhood to maturity
  • It’s all about interwoven patterns, change through repetition of key elements rearranged. She will return to the holy trinity at every step
  • Three fires: the spark of the soul. Three mounts: the means by which the soul works its will on its world. Three treasons: the means by which the world works its will on the soul. The movements of Dany’s story
  • Each is ambiguous, multifaceted. She will light a fire for life, but also one for death. She will know an intimate treason for blood, but also a detached one for gold. She will have a mount to bed, but also one to dread
  • The common element, the thread weaving all of these narrative strands into a single web, is love. Love is what lasts, love is what defines us
  • But because the human heart is divided against itself, our doors of perception forever clouded, love is paired with horror as well as joy. Love comes with bedding and dreading, life and death, heaven and hell
  • All that stuff aside...who do these prophecies refer to??
    • Fire for life: the dragons, ofc
    • Fire for death: King’s Landing, probably
      • Agreed! In addition, it could be the fire for death for MMD that brought about the fire for life for the dragons. Only death may pay for life.
    • Fire for love: metaphor for Jonerys? Or saving him a la the show? 
    • Mount to bed: the silver who took her to Drogo..or Drogo himself?
      • Hizdahr could fulfill this role as the mount to bed as Dany doesn’t love him or dread him, but she beds him after the wedding ceremony. 
      • Did GRRM have any conception of a Hizdahr at this point? Probably not. Just throwing it out that he fulfills something of this 
    • Mount to dread: DROGON
      • Yes, and it’s also evoking Balerion the Black Dread and firmly places Daenerys as Aerys’ daughter, Rhaegar’s brother and Aegon the Conqueror’s however many greats of a granddaughter.
      • Okay, this is way out of left-field here, but could GRRM be alluding to Euron as well?
        • Euron sends Victarion after Daenerys after “The Reaver” from AFFC. 
    • Mount to love: a ship to take her to Jon? Idk about this one
      • Maybe just Jon.
    • Treason for blood: MMD? Barristan? Illyrio?
      • Yes, yes, yes. Also, the contract writ in blood that the Golden Company signs that 
      • In a larger sense, let’s talk about the word “treason”. Has anyone considered that “treason” is a word that can mean “One person committing an act of betrayal” or also the overall act of betrayal as committed by people? The treason of Isengard for instance?
      • So, it could be one traitor or a bunch. GRRM just fucking with the reader for fun. 
    • Treason for gold: Illyrio? Brown Ben? Daario?
      • Golden Company? The original treason 
    • Treason for love: Jon? Barristan? Daario?
      • Barristan is the first treason for love - his love for Rhaegar. And then Jon will be the second after Dany thinks that the treason has already been solved.
  • If we step back from the foreshadowing, however, we see how that structure is being turned against us. George interweaves the prophecy with descriptions of Dany’s heartbeat slowing, the voices growing louder
  • Prophecy itself is a weapon. Story structure, the repetition of threes with which we’re all familiar, is being used by a pack of predators to hunt prey
  • They’re drawing her into their wavelength, making her more like them and their diseased immortal heart. It’s the ultimate temptation: truth
  • But because these visions are never explained, Dany keeps projecting people into these roles. The treasons are the most ambiguous on purpose
  • Prophecy hasn’t helped her any more than it did her big brother Rhaegar. It traps her, hemming her in. It’s a sword without a hilt
  • The ambiguity in what we’re about to discuss stokes a lot of fan debate about the identity of what each thing represents, and that’s intentional.
  • More intentional is the impact on Daenerys Targaryen. Throughout her journey, she’ll question each of the elements, consistently recasting the identities through both the lens of the present and the memory of the past.
  • And this is not the last time that prophecy will work this way for Dany specifically.
  • When Quaithe visits Dany again in ADWD, she’ll warn Dany of different people coming to her, and to beware the perfumed seneschal, and Dany will wonder, somewhat hilariously, if Reznak mo Reznak is the one to beware of.
  • Broadly-speaking, this is how prophecy works in ASOIAF: it muddles perception, complicates narrative and makes the hearer more suspicious, if not completely paranoid.
• Vision chaos
  • Dany’s having trouble making any sense of this, a reader in need of some helpful analysis. She asks the Undying to point her in the right direction
  • But they mock her efforts, not only because their intentions are malign, but because HOTU is built on visions, not truth, which might as well not exist
  • So the Undying shift from word to image, their collective hive-mind heart sending phantoms in indigo streaking toward her through the gloom
  • It’s a 3D phantasmagoria, a fully immersive holodeck. It’s truth in that Dany has gone beyond the stories told her by Viserys, the rumors of another world that she’s never known. This is almost the real thing
  • The Undying stick with the threefold structure at first. It’s a transitional period in between words and images: images structured by the word
  • She’s the mother of dragons, but also all these other things, all these other masks to wear like the Seven Gods Whomst Are One in Westeros
  • She is the daughter of death. Viserys dies once more before her; so too does Rhaegar, rubies flying like drops of blood, beauty and mortality
  • Name of woman
  • Her brothers’ deaths left her abandoned, forsaken, but she’d never have become Mother of Dragons and a leader in her own right if they had lived
  • She’s a woman in a world run by men, and that applies not only to the lives her brothers lived, but to the life her son could’ve lived
  • This image of Rhaego is what Pyat and the Undying were talking about when they said some of these images refer to things that never happen
  • This is a morrow that never was: Rhaego, khal and king alike with his copper skin and his silver-gold hair, like the two gods Dany prays to
  • It’s something she wanted so badly, the future she saw die back in book one...but what’s behind Rhaego? A burning city. You can guess which one
  • Her story also would’ve been truncated if Rhaego had lived, set aside in favor of his, just as would’ve happened if either of her brothers had lived
  • These dreams are dead, the bitter and the sweet alike; Dany is the one left to fulfill them now in her own way, reborn in their ashes
  • That applies not only to her as a person in-universe, but as a character. These are the narrative paths not taken, sacrificed in favor of hers
  • Of interest to those who are into sigils (GRRM seems really into sigils) is that he ends up reusing Rhaego’s future that never was sigil for another character’s sigil: Aegor Rivers, AKA Bittersteel.
  • Originally, Bittersteel’s personal sigil was: 
    • a grey longsword displayed bendy sinister with a black dragon's head above and a red horse's head below, both facing out, on a white field
  • But in 2005, GRRM sent along an email to Amok: the Russian artist who does character portraits you’ve probably seen if you’ve browsed the ASOIAF wiki (not me, ofc. #NotANerd) saying that he’s decided to change Bittersteel’s sigil to:
    • a winged red stallion on a golden field. Only the horse has big black dragon wings instead of the usual Pegasus-style feathered angel wings, and he's snorting fire.
  • Dialing back for a moment: when GRRM was writing this scene from ACOK, he hadn’t yet imagined the Blackfyres or Bittersteel. That came in between ACOK and ASOS.
  • And then there were a few years between the vision of Rhaego here in the HoTU and GRRM retconning the sigil.
  • So, does it mean anything? Does this speak to Bittersteel’s potential fate or future Dunk and Egg?
  • Eh, probably not as GRRM told Amok that the reason why he was changing the sigil was that he “came up with a much cooler image.”
  • That much cooler image was, of course, the same one he invented back in the 90s: Rhaego’s sigil as imagined by Daenerys in her sideways future.
  • Now that she is born of death, what is Dany to do? She is to be the slayer of lies--stripping away the illusions as she has done in HOTU
  • These are narrative paths that challenge her own, knowingly or not; in order to come into her own (for better or worse), she must supplant them
  • They reflect different aspects of her story, standing in for different struggles she must face as she goes back ‘round the wheel to Westeros
  • The first one is obvious, even to a first-time reader: it’s Stannis. He’s a king with those Baratheon blue eyes, he’s got the Red Sword of Heroes, and he’s given up his own shadow to Melisandre twice in this book
  • Does this mean Dany will come into direct conflict with Stannis? I doubt it; Dany’s link to the North will most likely be Jon, who will only come into power in the North after Stannis has had his complete arc
  • Rather, this image points to how Stannis acts as a cautionary tale for the reader in regards to where Dany’s story is ultimately headed
  • He starts on Dragonstone, her birthplace, right after she resurrects the dragons. He’s got his claim but also an increasingly sinister reputation. He liberates people, but only in the context of his own dominion
  • Viserys and Robert die in AGOT, leaving Dany and Stannis as claimants for their respective houses. Both go through magically influenced trials in ACOK and sudden reversals of military fortune in ASOS
  • In Feast/Dance, they’re both trying to establish themselves in foreign territory where more people hate them than love them. It won’t end well
  • Stannis will wind up rejected despite taking several dramatic and even heroic steps, and he will choose the fire. The same fate will befall Dany
  • But in the process, she will embody the Azor Ahai archetype more than he ever did, which is what this vision is referring to more than anything else
  • In ADWD, the red priests of Volantis declare to their followers that Dany is the true messiah figure; she’ll take over where Stannis leaves off
  • Stannis’ red sword glows like sunset, even though Azor Ahai is supposed to bring the light. Instead, it’s nightfall--hence the blue eyes of the Others. Dany has to navigate the quandary of opposites coming together
  • Yeah, I like that a lot. Stannis is the forebear to Daenerys and the warning, and she’ll slay the lie that Stannis Baratheon is Azor Ahai Reborn.
  • It’s a metaphorical slaying of that lie - which Aemon points out to Samwell in ASOS when he asks if there was heat from the sword Stannis drew:
    • "Heat? From the sword?" He thought back. "The air around it was shimmering, the way it does above a hot brazier."
      
      "Yet you felt no heat, did you? And the scabbard that held this sword, it is wood and leather, yes? I heard the sound when His Grace drew out the blade. Was the leather scorched, Sam? Did the wood seem burnt or blackened?"
      
      "No," Sam admitted. "Not that I could see." (ASOS, Samwell V)
  • And then later in AFFC on his deathbed, Aemon comes out and just tweets it:
    • We all deceive ourselves, when we want to believe. Melisandre most of all, I think. The sword is wrong, she has to know that . . . light without heat . . . an empty glamor . . . the sword is wrong, and the false light can only lead us deeper into darkness, Sam. Daenerys is our hope. (AFFC, Samwell IV)
  • While doing the prep for this episode, I had the thought that if Stannis was the lie that Daenerys had to slay, that clearly Melisandre was lying at some level.
  • And yes, she is lying about the sword as she is glamouring it, and it’s a fake Lightbringer as Davos notes back in his first chapter.
  • But that quote from Sam shows that Melisandre is self-deceiving herself about Stannis as Azor Ahai. She’s not so cynical as to not believe that Stannis is the Azor Ahai figure.
  • But Dany, with her dragons serving as Lightbringer (my preferred theory), clearly slay-queens the lie that Stannis is Azor Ahai Reborn. 
  • The second vision is only clear on reread: the mummer’s dragon waved before the cheering crowd refers to Young Grift, aka “Aegon VI Targaryen”
  • The mummer in question is Varys, who was a mummer as a child and retains the skills of performance and diversion from those days
  • Young Grift is his tool. He’s a manipulated image that Varys is deploying to win over the people, the idea of the perfect king like Renly before him
  • As with Stannis, it’s presentation v. reality, a central dynamic of the House of the Undying. Dany has to “slay the lie” of Young Grift’s parentage
  • And unlike with Stannis, this will probably take the form of a direct confrontation--the second dance of the dragons that George warns us about in Arianne’s released chapter from TWOW, red dragon v. black
  • George follows up on this idea of Young Grift as a puppet in a stage show, existing as a projected target for Dany’s wrath, in her next chapter
  • This image draws us back to what many consider the original novel in the Western canon: Don Quixote. George draws from it as so many writers have--you can see that with Brienne and Podrick in AFFC especially
  • The eponymous protagonist projects himself into situations, assuming that his self-appointed status as knight-errant is exactly what’s needed
  • In truth, he has no effect at best, and often just makes things worse. He invents metanarratives for himself by misinterpreting what he sees. The most famous example are the windmills he imagines as giants
  • You can see the connection to the Young Grift prophecy and the prophecies of HOTU as a whole. They are incomplete, and so the reader and Dany can’t help but project into them--as the author knows all too well
  • But as we’ve been talking about with Pale Fire and The Shining and House of Leaves, these metafictional works don’t just depict the limits of perception. They act as examples of the limits of perception
  • The second book of Don Quixote, published years later but now generally presented as one volume, brings the protagonist up against his own reputation as a character in stories, struggling with hearsay and impostors
  • It’s again all about the manipulated image. Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick fighting over The Shining from the outside, John Shade and Charles Kinbote fighting over Pale Fire from the inside
  • Don Quixote really began the metafictional tradition in a lot of ways, cementing our addiction to the mirage. George applies it to Dany
  • In that meta context, we have to remember that Young Grift is in concept form here. The Blackfyre backstory will come after ACOK is published.
  • But in this, we see the gardening process at work.
  • Like I talked about in part 1 of our analysis of ACOK, Daenerys IV, I have this essay that I’m dabbling called “The Bastard Narrative” which will unpack this at greater length.
  • Here, I’ll point out that in between AGOT and ACOK, GRRM published The Hedge Knight which featured one Aerion Brightflame who his father Maekar sent into exile to Lys at the end of the novella.
  • Perhaps GRRM was planning for a descendant of Aerion Brightflame to appear as the mummer’s dragon. That’s only a theory, and I’m confident George won’t answer this question before story’s end.
  • The gardening comes in by way of Varys descending from Lys and how baby Aegon’s head was a red ruin as Ned recalls in AGOT.
  • Pycelle tells Ned that Varys was a slave born in Lys, and between AGOT and THK, GRRM may have decided Aerion was going to Lys, and thus Varys descended from Aerion.
  • So, too, the mummer’s dragon lie that Dany has to slay was likely written after THK and may have been tied to Aerion and Varys.
  • All the same, the pitch letter doesn’t record a second (or any) dance of the dragons, mummer’s dragon, Young Griff or anything of this matter.
  • This is story expansion, and like I was saying in part 1 of this analysis, the mummer’s dragon is a clear moment where we can see George expanding the story.
  • As to why George expanded the story: I think the mummer’s dragon is supposed to be an obstacle for Dany to complicate her narrative. 
  • She’ll have to fight not the hated Lannisters when she shows up to Westeros.
  • Instead, she’ll be slaying the lie of Young Grift’s identity, his shadow on a wall of being the son of Rhaegar Targaryen.
  • And we have to remember that the vision is crowds cheering the mummer’s dragon. Aegon is going to be super popular when he hits Westeros with the shining optics of Rhaegar behind him, the chivalry of the Reach, a beautiful queen in the form of Arianne, the support of the popular Faith Militant. See more in my 35-part “Blood of the Conqueror” series.
  • So when Dany slays the lie of Young Grift’s identity and slays the Grifter himself, it’ll be a hard-fought campaign, and I’m sure it’ll be an act of immense tragedy as Aegon isn’t really a monstrous Joffrey. 
  • The third lie is the only mysterious one left. What tower, what stone beast, what does “shadow fire” really mean? There are several interpretations
  • One is that this image refers to Jon Connington. He’s a stone beast because he’s a griffin with greyscale; he’s breathing shadow fire because he’s propping up Young Grift, who is probably a Blackfyre in truth
  • Solid evidence, but I think it’s strange that we’d see two visions of the same lie: that of Young Grift’s parentage. Why be redundant?
  • Another interpretation is that this image refers to Melisandre trying to birth a stone dragon. Again: isn’t that part of the “Stannis is Azor Ahai” lie?
  • The show featured a resurrected dragon breathing shadow fire at the broken tower of Eastwatch. Will Dany have to fight such a tragic threat?
  • I’ve said before that I think the show’s Night King got a couple of major beats that belong to Euron in the books, primarily bringing down the Wall
  • Euron’s trying to seize a dragon, and he wants a tall tower to leap from. Could that smoking tower be the Hightower? Euron’s invading Oldtown…
  • I like this one because it makes all three “slayer of lies” prophecies about people who claim to rule Westeros like Dany: Stannis, Euron, Young Grift
  • She has to remove them all to take power. Will she take on Euron? I’ll say more in the final part of our five-part look at “The Forsaken” for patrons
  • But maybe! Whether it’s Euron or not, the Undying are establishing Dany as the ultimate seeker of truth, even as truth becomes harder to find
  • Wow, and do I ever agree!
  • To add onto your point about Euron, we have to recall that Euron is first introduced in Theon’s first chapter in ACOK.
  • In Theon’s second chapter, we learn that he’s away reaving somewhere, and it’s mentioned how terrible and awful but powerful he is.
  • Then in Dany’s final chapter, Xaro brings up this person: Urrathon Nightwalker and his use of a glass candle.
  • Urrathon, as we’ve talked about in part 1 of our series of “The Forsaken” and elsewhere is very likely Euron Greyjoy, hiding out in Qarth who then rolls out, captures warlocks, steals Dragonbinder and very peacefully takes power in the Iron Islands before starting apocalyptic madness in greater Westeros.
  • So, Euron gets established off-page here in ACOK, and then there’s this prophecy that Dany gets.
  • I love it. Yep. Euron atop the Hightower breathing shadow fire as a dragonrider. Whoops, did I spoil one of our parts for Part 5 of “The Second Coming” which we’ll be recording in just a few days and releasing soon thereafter?
  • That theme continues into the “bride of fire” section. Dany was born of death and must slay lies. What’s the mechanism, the link? Marrying fire
  • Dany referred to the birth of the dragons as a wedding of sorts, like her wedding to Drogo. She married the fire; the dragons are their children
  • Just as her relationship to her family is built on death, just as her relationship to Westeros is built on lies, her relationship to marriage, partnership, intimacy, sex, etc. is built on fire. Passion and destruction
  • Her silver led her beneath a sea of stars to Drogo. The end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood; she birthed the fire from his remains
  • At the other end of that road awaits the blue flower in the wall of ice: Jon Snow, Rhaegar and Lyanna’s legacy literally on ice in the far north
  • Ned recalls Lyanna twice with her blue winter roses - once in her crypt tomb and once as the laurel of flowers that Lyanna received when Rhaegar won at the Tourney of Harrenhal.
  • Metaphorically-speaking, the blue flower growing from a chink of ice is the strongest metaphorical evidence we see of RLJ in the series as it connects Jon to Lyanna.
  • But as you’re pointing out, GRRM is only partly seeding the narrative with clues for this reveal.
  • The other part is the effect that Jon will have on Daenerys.
  • I think a lot of people look at the relationship between Jon and Dany from seasons 7 and 8 of the show and come away feeling a little cold by it.
  • I count myself in that camp, and this is one of those areas where I hope that George will do a better job of establishing the build-up for the relationship before the relationship.
  • As GRRM told director Alan Taylor in 2010 when he visited the Morroco set of GoT:
    • “Jon and Dany were the point, kind of. That, at the time, there was a huge, vast array of characters, and Jon was a lowly, you know, bastard son. So it wasn’t clear to us at the time, but he did sort of say things that made it clear that the meeting and the convergence of Jon and Dany were sort of the point of the series.”
  • So, conceptually, I think GRRM has always been on the right track. We’ll see how it pays off in execution come the future of the story.
  • They will find a sweet smell. Mutual passion, mutual fire like their mutual Targaryen blood...but the wall of ice persists. The Stark half
  • If Season 8 is any indication, Jon’s turn against Dany will be motivated in large part by his fears of what will become of Winterfell under her rule
  • She’s the bride of fire, the fire that burned up Drogo, but it’s the Snow that will snuff that fire out, even though she becomes his literal bride
  • Both these images are lovely on the surface, but decay lurks underneath; remember, decay smells sweet. Drogo has joined that sea of stars
  • One of these romances already ended in fire and blood. So too will the one with Jon. In between the two is a vision of the truth: a corpse bound to the brow of a ship, hurtling forward, unable to change their destiny
  • This is the ambiguous one of the three, as with the stone beast on the smoking tower in the previous set. Is it Aeron, based on “The Forsaken?” Does that indicate Dany will wed Euron? Or is it Victarion, given that he might be a resurrected corpse? Or Jon Connington, with his greyscale?
  • I hesitate to say these all refer to literal marriages, because there’s no Hizdahr here. But on the other hand, George might not have had Hizdahr in mind at this point in the writing process. Dany might well wed a Greyjoy
  • A Greyjoy would make some sense, but maybe it’s also returning to Jon as a resurrected corpse.
  • Perhaps this is the aftermath of Jon killing Daenerys, sailing into exile, the bittersweet ending that GRRM has talked about.
  • In the end, fire is Dany’s true husband. She falls in love with the fire she sees in others, but they’re all mortal; their fires all fade, disappointing her
  • We started with words--three fires, three mounts, three treasons. Then we shifted to sets of images accompanied by words. Now we drop words
  • Language can no longer express what the Undying are showing Dany. No description will suffice. Pure imagery takes over, a movie montage made up of pointillist dots in time and space, a smeared impression of existence
  • This is the psychedelic peak of her trip, and George’s purest expression of the wonder and terror unlocked by opening your third eye to art
  • The very air is coming alive with images, the borders between the inner labyrinth of the mind and the outer labyrinth of the world coming down
  • George cuts from the shadows in Mirri’s tent to the dragon bursting from Mirri’s brow, but with young Dany at the house with the red door in between, as if shadows were converted to dragons through Dany’s longing and need. The shadows of the past give way to the onslaught of the future, bursting from your brow, the third eye wide open
  • The white lion runs through the grass; in the same grass, the poisoner from Vaes Dothrak is dragged to his death. Life and death along parallel tracks, tracing each other’s steps as they do throughout Dany’s story
  • The Dothraki crones are reborn in water, kneeling before Dany, hinting that she will return to the Dothraki Sea and take over every khalasar
  • I love our friend Aziz from History of Westeros’ theory that the crones shivering have jumped into the lake to escape Drogon’s dragon fire and are coming out of the lake to kneel before the Mother of Dragons and Khaleesi of Khals.
  • George cuts from them kneeling to slaves rising, baptized in blood as the crones were in water, calling her Mother like the mountain; here we see Slaver’s Bay taking over Dany’s story, contrasted with the Dothraki plot
  • But as tempting as it is to impose structure here, the point is that we’re beyond structure. No links exist beyond our beholding of all of them. It’s like a stained glass window displaying Dany’s life shattered on top of us
  • After leading us by the hand through this exquisite mirrorball structure he’s created, George is now smashing the mirror and abandoning structure. The effect is both nauseating and exhilarating, as it is for Dany
  • There’s a feeling that we’re through the looking glass here, climbing through mirrors to see the world where time is running forwards and backwards.
  • The final vision has Dany’s triumph that we see in ASOS where she wipes the floor with the slavers and becomes the mhysa to freed slaves, to her children.
    • "Mhysa!" they called. "Mhysa! MHYSA!" They were all smiling at her, reaching for her, kneeling before her. "Maela," some called her, while others cried "Aelalla" or "Qathei" or "Tato," but whatever the tongue it all meant the same thing. Mother. They are calling me Mother.
  • It’s a powerful moment in the series, akin to Robb being acclaimed King in the North!
  • Unfortunately, that’s not at all what’s occurring in reality here. These are not the hands of her children reaching for her here in the HoTU.
• Eating, burning, and running
  • All the people who need Dany, or rather all the people she imagines need her, crowd around her. She gives herself to them, her life, her inner fire
  • But, just in case you forgot: this is Qarth, this is the House of the Undying, and nothing here is ever as it appears. These are not supplicants
  • These are the Undying themselves gathered around Dany, their hands slipping along her arms, down her legs, tweaking her nipples
  • All of a sudden, they can move and she cannot. It’s the gut-churning logic of nightmares, in which you can’t run and your killer doesn’t stay dead
  • All those connections were illusions. All that structure was being manipulated. Dany followed truth like a mirage over the edge
  • The Undying used the lure of prophecy, of narrative, to turn her into their chattel; she feels vampire teeth on her throat, as if they’ll suck her dry
  • The most hideous detail in a chapter full of them is when one of the Undying starts trying to feed on Dany’s eye. Ugghhh, imagine that
  • All of HOTU has been about the doors of perception, the eye of the beholder. What more blunt breakdown of the fourth wall can you imagine than a sorcerer of storytelling devouring the POV character’s eyes?
  • Not only is Dany in mortal peril, but she’s symbolically losing her perception, her way of looking at the world. The Undying are all about the image, locked away with their fantasies behind the doors of perception, so of course they would desire to feed like vampires on the font of vision
  • This is what’s waiting over the rainbow, through the projected arch of story and myth. You’ll be eaten alive by it. Your fire feeds its immortality
  • The Undying here become the vampires of Fevre Dream drawing life and survival from Daenerys.
  • Part of the motif that George might be playing with here is this idea that the Undying are kept alive by magical beings.
  • Perhaps there’s a connection here between what potentially see in ADWD with Bran consuming Jojen to absorb his greensight ability.
  • The difference being that a) Bran is completely unaware that’s what he’s eating in the “acorn paste” and b) the Undying are selfish motherfuckers who are eating Dany and absorbing her power to keep themselves alive with zero fucks given about the rest of the world)
  • (Please note that I am not condoning cannibalism for what Bloodraven and the CoTF likely do to Jojen to help Bran. I am only saying that it’s not done from a place of selfishness. But please, do not eat human beings).
  • Dany is a fictional character being torn to pieces by authors and readers. We use her as fuel, to fill up our dream-balloons with fresh narrative grist
  • She is finally trapped in the liquid atmospherics of Qarth, the goal of everyone she’s met here (except maybe Quaithe). The mirage worked. Dany is doomed and will be fully absorbed into the image factory
  • What saves her? Fire. Her id, her passion, her personal creative spark. Drogon is her child, as she thinks about it, but he’s also her on some level
  • She created him out of wild alchemy as an artist does, and now Drogon cuts the Gordian Knot, resolving the human heart in conflict with itself
  • He tears the damn thing to pieces. The source of visions is mortal meat like anything else. The Wizard of Oz is just a man behind the curtain, and it turns out that without their images, the Undying are mortal after all
  • Drogon is the MVP of Dany’s story, finally seeing through the bullshit of it all, and he gives them a piece of his mind. Or a piece of dragonfire. Both.
  • The destruction is complete. Xaro tells Dany in ADWD that the Undying are all dead now thanks to her, and Dany’s handmaid Jhiqui will confidently tell Dany that she sent these “maegi” to hell.
  • Good riddance.
  • In the end (for the Undying anyways), the Undying were lies. They could die. They did die. 
  • It’s a metaphor for Qarth, for stories, for us. 
  • As they die, Dany lives. She can blink again; her heartbeat races forward, replacing the dark heart Drogon is ripping apart. She is free of un-death
  • The blue shadows around her burn, indigo turned to orange as George describes it; his command of color is never better than here
  • The Undying have bones so light they’re like tallow; Dany brushes them aside as if they’re not really there. Were they really there, physically?
  • “Their flesh was crumbling parchment,” another of the major meta moments in the most meta of chapters. The Undying were made of paper like their house of leaves. They attained immortality through story
  • But then they invited Daenerys Targaryen, a fantasy protagonist on a circular hero’s journey, to a walking tour behind the fourth wall
  • This exposed her to them, but it also exposed them to her, and now she has literally set the parchment paper of their story-hive-mind on fire
  • Dany and Drogon run for it. The floor seems to move under her feet, guiding her along. In part it’s the drugs, of course, but it’s also that HOTU feels horribly alive. We’re on the edge of our seats at this point
  • The labyrinth spits Dany right back out the door like a mouth where she started, but everything has changed in the process of going full circle
  • The structure is complete, and so the House of the Undying falls like the House of Usher. The fantastical projection of narrative is resolved
  • But Dany now must return to the “real world” of the rest of her story, and in that world, she’s now made a committed enemy out of Pyat Pree
  • He gibbers in an unknown language--the last of HOTU’s countless references to text and translation. We don’t know what he’s saying any more than we can completely interpret the images inside HOTU
  • But despite the doors of perception remaining closed, we can guess. Pyat’s world is literally crumbling; he’s pushed beyond expression
  • Even as Dany sinks to the cool green grass, coming down from her trip in the benevolent arms of nature, her story will never be the same again
  • The turn for Dany here feels as strong as what happens at the end of AGOT.
  • Dany became mother of dragons there. Here, she becomes the figure of prophetic destiny.
  • The Mother of Dragons grows in power, destiny, dread, wonder and terrors.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Theory/Discussion

So, we’ve spent enough time unpacking all of the visions from this chapter, and given this is a meta chapter, let’s meta ourselves. So, why is the ASOIAF fandom so obsessed with theories and the future of the series? Does this come at the expense of enjoying and analyzing the published books?

Conclusion

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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
  • Ser Small Paul, Guardian of the Stone Haven, Defender of Dunnottar Castle
  • Septon T-Bone
  • Refined Wrangler of Icy Arachnids
• Join us next week for ACOK Tyrion XI, in which Tyrion prepares the defenses of King’s Landing for the imminent arrival of Stannis Baratheon!