Episode 171: A STORM OF SWORDS, ARYA IV: "The Merry Men" 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 seventy-first episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “The Merry Men: An Analysis of ASOS, Arya IV” in which Arya tours the Riverlands with her new pals, captors, both in search of Beric Dondarrion.

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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

Lady Sheila S, a Sworn Sword patron, asks:

Why TF is Benjen on the wall in the first place?? I know he is a third son, but seriously, his Father and eldest brother are killed in war, the heir rides off, and he fucks off to make a vow he won’t reproduce? Did he and Ned fall out about Lyanna or the sudden appearance of his honorable brother’s “bastard”?

I’ve skimmed a few theories, but would love to hear your takes.

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Yes indeed, and if we hit our goal of achieving 950 total patrons, we will start our the first of five parts of Theon’s TWOW sample chapter! If you heard our episode on Theon in ADWD, it’s going to be like that but much more granular, in-depth with a lot of theorizing on what Theon Greyjoy’s, Stannis Baratheon’s and others’ stories are going to be in TWOW. As of the recording of this episode, there are 919 total patrons, meaning we are 31 patrons shy of achieving our goals. So! If you like what you hear on our regular episodes, want more of that sweet Stannis content you heard Emmett talk about last week, consider becoming a patron today at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF.

But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Arya, she had “joined” the BWB and was in search of Beric Dondarrion. Let’s see where that journey leads us in this synopsis of ASOS, Arya IV!

Synopsis

The small square keep was half a ruin, and so too the great grey knight who lived there. He was so old he did not understand their questions. No matter what was said to him, he would only smile and mutter, "I held the bridge against Ser Maynard. Red hair and a black temper, he had, but he could not move me. Six wounds I took before I killed him. Six!"

Almost feels like this chapter opens with a Monty Python reference. Regardless, the maester is younger and tells the BWB that Beric was hanged six months ago by the Lannisters. Lem Lemoncloak, him of the broken nose, says that’s true, but Thoros cut him down before he died. Sure.

Anyways, the maester says the BWB should check in with the Lady of the Leaves to find Beric. So, the party heads on, passing by the bridge where Lord Lychester probably held out against Ser Maynard. Tom Sevenstrings mutters that Lord Lychester would probably be as famous as Aemon the Dragonknight if he had a singer to write songs about his deeds. But Lem says that Lychester’s sons died on either side of Robert’s Rebellion. Arya asks who the Lady of the Leaves is, and Anguy tells her to wait and see.

Three days later, as they rode through a yellow wood, Jack-Be-Lucky unslung his horn and blew a signal, a different one than before. The sounds had scarcely died away when rope ladders unrolled from the limbs of trees. "Hobble the horses and up we go," said Tom, half singing the words. They climbed to a hidden village in the upper branches, a maze of rope walkways and little moss-covered houses concealed behind walls of red and gold, and were taken to the Lady of the Leaves, a stick-thin white-haired woman dressed in roughspun. "We cannot stay here much longer, with autumn on us," she told them. "A dozen wolves went down the Hayford road nine days past, hunting. If they'd chanced to look up they might have seen us."

So, now that the party is in the wookie world of Kashyyk, Tom asks if the Lady of the Leaves has seen Beric. She wasn't. He was killed by Gregor Clegane who drove a dagger through his eye. Oh, that’s not true, Lem says. People can survive without an eye. Jack-Be-Lucky doesn’t have an eye, and he’s alive.

"You swear he's not dead?" The woman clutched Lem's arm. "Bless you, Lem, that's the best tidings we've had in half a year. May the Warrior defend him, and the red priest too."

They move on to a burned out sept to find an elderly septon who warns them about marauders who came by and sacked this sept. They even pried the pearls out of the Mother’s statue. I know what you’re thinking and so does George. Lem asks if it was the Bloody Mummers, but it isn’t. It was northmen. They were in search of Jaime Lannister.

Arya heard him, and chewed her lip. She could feel Gendry looking at her. It made her angry and ashamed.

The smallfolk live in the vault under the sept, but they don’t know where Beric is – even the guy with the armor who has a crude lightning painted on his cloak. Greenbeard tells Arya that Beric is everywhere and nowhere. Arya says she’ll be a woman soon as she’s eleven now, and Greenbeard threatens to marry her.

Later, Lem and Gendry play a game, Tom sings a song and Arya tries to pull Anguy’s longbow, but she doesn’t have the strength to pull the bowstring. Anguy says he’ll try to find some seasoned wood at Riverrun to make her a lighter bow. Tom O’Sevens says that they won’t have time to get wood. They’re going to get a ransom for Arya. Besides, Hoster hangs outlaws and his son hates music. No, Edmure doesn’t hate music. He hates Tom for the song he wrote: The Floppy Fish: a song very much not about Edmure’s whiskey dick.

Arya didn't care what Tom's stupid songs were about. She turned to Harwin. "What did he mean about ransom?"

"We have sore need of horses, milady. Armor as well. Swords, shields, spears. All the things coin can buy. Aye, and seed for planting. Winter is coming, remember?" He touched her under the chin. "You will not be the first highborn captive we've ransomed. Nor the last, I'd hope."

That much was true, Arya knew. Knights were captured and ransomed all the time, and sometimes women were too. But what if Robb won't pay their price? She wasn't a famous knight, and kings were supposed to put the realm before their sisters. And her lady mother, what would she say? Would she still want her back, after all the things she'd done? Arya chewed her lip and wondered.

The party moves out for High Heart: a high hill with a clump of thirty-one weirwood stumps in the middle of it. Tom O’Sevens says the High Heart was a magical place and sacred to the Children of the Forest. They’re going to bed down for the night and won’t come to harm. But Arya is scared of this place. Her fear is there despite the fact that she played monsters and maidens in the crypts of Winterfell.

That night Arya wakes when the wind blows her blanket off. She chases after the blanket into the bushes and then hears voices.

Beside the embers of their campfire, she saw Tom, Lem, and Greenbeard talking to a tiny little woman, a foot shorter than Arya and older than Old Nan, all stooped and wrinkled and leaning on a gnarled black cane. Her white hair was so long it came almost to the ground. When the wind gusted it blew about her head in a fine cloud. Her flesh was whiter, the color of milk, and it seemed to Arya that her eyes were red, though it was hard to tell from the bushes. "The old gods stir and will not let me sleep," she heard the woman say. "I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. 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. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more. Do you have gifts for me, to pay me for my dreams?"

"Dreams," grumbled Lem Lemoncloak, "what good are dreams? Fish women and drowned crows. I had a dream myself last night. I was kissing this tavern wench I used to know. Are you going to pay me for that, old woman?"

The woman reports that Lem’s woman is dead. And now she wants her song from Tom O’Sevens. So, Tom plays a sad song that Arya sort-of remembers. She thinks Sansa would know it.

The next day the woman is gone, and Arya asks Tom about her. Was she a child of the forest? Nope. Just an old dwarf woman. But she has power. She knows things and has evil eyes. If she likes the look of the person, she’ll tell them their future. Does the woman like the look of Tom? Not his look, his voice. But she always makes Tom sing the same damn song. But now they’re getting nearer to Thoror and Beric.

"If you're their men, why do they hide from you?"

Tom Sevenstrings rolled his eyes at that, but Harwin gave her an answer. "I wouldn't call it hiding, milady, but it's true, Lord Beric moves about a lot, and seldom lets on what his plans are. That way no one can betray him. By now there must be hundreds of us sworn to him, maybe thousands, but it wouldn't do for us all to trail along behind him. We'd eat the country bare, or get butchered in a battle by some bigger host. The way we're scattered in little bands, we can strike in a dozen places at once, and be off somewhere else before they know. And when one of us is caught and put to the question, well, we can't tell them where to find Lord Beric no matter what they do to us." He hesitated. "You know what it means, to be put to the question?"

Arya knows about this. “Tickling.” And they asked the questions of every villager, the same questions. The only thing that changed was the method of tickling.

Harwin says that Arya should not have had to suffer that. But Beric will set things right. The war began with the quest to bring down Gregor Clegane. It will end when he receives the king’s justice. But now they need to mount up and ride for Acorn Hall. They might even get a hot meal and roof if they’re quick about it.

They ride a long day across the land but then cross a brook and arrive at Acorn Hall. Lord Smallwood is out with Lord Karyl Vance fighting alongside Edmure Tully which would normally mean the castle walls would be closed to them. But Tom is a friend of Lady Smallwood, was even her lover when they were younger.

Anguy rides near Arya, telling her stories of the Dornish Marches, but Arya isn’t fooled. She knows he’s here to keep watch on her to make sure she doesn't run.

Lady Smallwood welcomed the outlaws kindly enough, though she gave them a tongue lashing for dragging a young girl through the war. She became even more wroth when Lem let slip that Arya was highborn. "Who dressed the poor child in those Bolton rags?" she demanded of them. "That badge . . . there's many a man who would hang her in half a heartbeat for wearing a flayed man on her breast." Arya promptly found herself marched upstairs, forced into a tub, and doused with scalding hot water. Lady Smallwood's maidservants scrubbed her so hard it felt like they were flaying her themselves. They even dumped in some stinky-sweet stuff that smelled like flowers.

Worse-still, they dress Arya in girl’s clothes. Lady Smallwood’s daughter was down in Oldtown with her great aunt. But she’s grown up since she’s left; so the clothes won’t fit her the way they’d fit Arya. Smallwood’s daughter loves to dance and sing. What’s Arya’s hobby? Needlework. But not the restful kind. Does Arya practice at needlework? Used to. But her new needle isn’t as good as her old one.

"In times like these, we all must make do as best we can." Lady Smallwood fussed at the bodice of the gown. "Now you look a proper young lady."

I'm not a lady, Arya wanted to tell her, I'm a wolf.

"I do not know who you are, child," the woman said, "and it may be that's for the best. Someone important, I fear." She smoothed down Arya's collar. "In times like these, it is better to be insignificant. Would that I could keep you here with me. That would not be safe, though. I have walls, but too few men to hold them." She sighed.

Arya joins the BWB to a simple but good supper, and Greenbeard asks after Beric. Lady Smallwood doesn’t have just news of Beric. She saw him two weeks ago. Thoros and him were herding sheep. In fact, dinner derives from one of those sheep. Tom thinks there could be a song about that, but Lady Smallwood says that Tom’s rhymes could use some work. Also, he uses the same song “Oh, Lay My Sweet Lass Down in the Grass” to seduce milk-maids. No, it was “Let Me Drink Your Beauty”, according to Tom, and the milk-maids loved that song. So did a highborn lady.

[Lady Smallwood’s] nostrils flared. "The riverlands are full of maids you've pleased, all drinking tansy tea. You'd think a man as old as you would know to spill his seed on their bellies. Men will be calling you Tom Sevensons before much longer."

"As it happens," said Tom, "I passed seven many years ago. And fine boys they are too, with voices sweet as nightingales." Plainly he did not care for the subject.

Harwin, his mind on business, asks where Beric is headed. Smallwood has no idea. But there were others who visited Acorn Hall. Northmen hunting Jaime Lannister. They’d demanded Acorn Hall open its gates to them so they could search for Jaime, but she refused them. Arya asks who the northmen were, and Lady Smallwood reports they didn’t give up their names, but they had a white sunburst sigil. Arya knows those are Karstarks, and she wonders whether she could escape the outlaws and link up with the Karstarks to get back to Riverrun.

Catching back up in the conversation, Lem asks how Jaime escaped. According to the Karstarks, it was Catelyn who did it.

That startled Tom so badly he snapped a string. "Go on with you," he said. "That's madness."

It's not true, thought Arya. It couldn't be true.

"I thought the same," said Lady Smallwood.

That was when Harwin remembered Arya. "Such talk is not for your ears, milady."

"No, I want to hear."

But the outlaws insist she leave. So, Arya heads out to the yard angry at the lies being told. Gendry follows her. He asks if Arya wants to see the smithy with him. Sure. While walking, Gendry asks if Thoros was the same Thoros from King’s Landing. Arya thinks so, but she doesn’t know for certain. Thoros was a friend of Jalabar Xho and Robert’s. Gendry says he knows Thoros, because the man had come to their forge to swords for their melees. He never used good steel. Just the cheap stuff to light on fire with wildfire.

Arya says that Thoros isn’t very priestly, and Gendry agrees. Thoros’ reputation rested on the fact that he could outdrink Robert. Arya thinks that Gendry is being unfair about Robert drinking so much, but Gendry defends himself by saying he was talking about Thoros. All Thoros ever liked was feasts and tourneys. But he did fight through the breach at Pyke with a flaming sword.

Arya wishes she had a flaming sword to light people on fire which, um, not super healthy. But Gendry says it’s only a trick. It ruins the steel. But Gendry was just about to make his first sword until Yoren showed up to take Gendry away.

"You can still make swords if you want," said Arya. "You can make them for my brother Robb when we get to Riverrun."

"Riverrun." Gendry put the hammer down and looked at her. "You look different now. Like a proper little girl."

"I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns."

"Nice, though. A nice oak tree." He stepped closer, and sniffed at her. "You even smell nice for a change."

Arya says that Gendry stinks, and she shoves him before trying to run. Gendry grabs her arm, and they trip over each other’s feet before tumbling around the floor of the smithy. In the process, Arya rips her dress and tells Gendry that she doesn’t look so nice now, does she?

Arya and Gendry return to the hall to find Tom O’Sevens singing.

My featherbed is deep and soft,

and there I'll lay you down,

I'll dress you all in yellow silk,

and on your head a crown.

For you shall be my lady love,

and I shall be your lord.

I'll always keep you warm and safe,

and guard you with my sword.

Harwin and Anguy think it’s funny that Arya is covered in straw and has her dress ripped. But Lem gives Gendry a clout for fighting a girl, but Arya says that she started it. Gendry was just talking.

Tom winked at her as he sang:

And how she smiled and how she laughed,

the maiden of the tree.

She spun away and said to him, no featherbed for me.

I'll wear a gown of golden leaves,

and bind my hair with grass,

But you can be my forest love,

and me your forest lass.

"I have no gowns of leaves," said Lady Smallwood with a small fond smile, "but Carellen left some other dresses that might serve. Come, child, let us go upstairs and see what we can find."

Arya gets another bath and another comb of hair, and she gets a dress with little baby pearls on it. She also gets breeches, belt, tunic and a jerkin with iron studs.

"They were my son's things," she said. "He died when he was seven."

"I'm sorry, my lady." Arya suddenly felt bad for her, and ashamed. "I'm sorry I tore the acorn dress too. It was pretty."

"Yes, child. And so are you. Be brave."

And that is the synopsis of ASOS, Arya IV. Is it wrong to say that I’m happy to be into the real action of Arya’s ASOS chapters? Because I am. Good chapter. What did you think, ser?

Depth

So there wasn’t too much happening in Arya’s first three chapters in ASOS, which is why we did them all in one episode. This is the inverse: one episode on a chapter that feels like a bunch of smaller ones put together. Arya IV is the best of Arya’s early chapters in this book, before Beric Dondarrion turns up in the flesh. It’s so immersive; every place Arya visits feels real, like it existed before she showed up and will be there after she’s gone. The dialogue feels very grounded too, as people just trying to survive the war eke out what happiness they can find in each other’s company. This is really where we start to understand the Brotherhood without Banners, as individuals and as a group developing a presence in the Riverlands, and that’s relevant to Arya’s character arc, because she too is trying to remake her identity on the fly. Whose banner is she gong to fly? Maybe none; after all, she’s on her way to spending time as “no one.”

The great thing about Arya’s ASOS story is how it really gets deep into what it means to resist. No, not the dumbass #resist shit of hyper-online adjuncts of the Democratic Party of the Trump years: how to choose the “people” as a side and thus resist all powers. I’ve been rewatching The Expanse, and I love the Holden line from Season One when he’s confronted over his allegiance: Earth or Mars. I stopped playing is his response. We see what that means here in Arya IV with the BWB refusing to fight for the north or the west. And it’s interesting: there’s not any actual fighting. We’ll see the actual fighting a few Arya chapters from now, but the resistance seen here is different. The people Arya encounters are resisting the directive to become cogs in the war or just die. The resistance seen in Arya IV is that of survival.

• Lord Lychester
  • Like Jaime III last week, Arya IV moves quickly. It has a different tone, though. Jaime III was all about dread, as one twist after another made everything worse. Arya IV has a mixture of moods, not because of plot twists but changing locations. The tone is funny or melancholy or spooky, depending on where Arya and the BwB are and who they’re talking to
  • Each little scene stands on its own, but taken together, they form a kind of sociological thesis, a broad cross-section of society brought to the light
  • The war is a constant, but it’s a structuring absence; we see what it leaves behind, the mark it makes on people of different ages, religions, and class backgrounds. The other constant is the Brotherhood itself
  • They’re the glue just barely holding the Riverlands together, giving people a sense of cohesion, a lingering feeling of being more than the sum of parts. The Brotherhood is like a civic religion giving meaning to Westeros
  • That’s a difficult job; we see throughout this chapter that the Brotherhood and the people they protect are in constant danger, hiding out or keeping a day or two ahead of their enemies–and they have so many enemies!
  • They’re spinning dishes in the air; they’re making a mosaic out of countless pieces of broken glass. It’s exhausting and it’s messy
  • Notably missing from the Brotherhood is an endgame for their campaign. There’s no Bastille to break into, no de Gaulle to link up with. The Brotherhood never marches on the seat of power like the sparrows
  • Beric says that the war will end when he completes his original mission by killing Gregor, but that’s a poetic, symbolic statement–it’s not literally true
  • The Brotherhood’s king, as Beric declares, is Robert…who is dead. That’s ideologically advantageous, because it means that Robert can’t disappoint them; their authenticity is rooted in being willing to resist any living king
  • But that’s politically fatal, because there’s no peace to be made; there’s no bar to reach. Either Tywin wins or Robb wins. Either way, that means someone who’s paying the Bloody Mummers wins. What would the Brotherhood winning look like? This is it: day to day survival
  • And there’s an inherent dignity to that, a weather-beaten heroism worthy of song, even if in the end it’s a losing battle (a “long defeat,” per LOTR)
  • That’s a smart point: the BWB are really good at accumulating support during the war itself because of how both sides are conducting themselves with the civilian population.
  • Both-side-ism gets a bad rap, because it often serves in modern political context to legitimize violence and authoritarianism.
  • But in the case of the smallfolk faced with the combatants in the War of the Five Kings, it applies.
  • Robb Stark isn’t personally killing smallfolk or savaging the land, but the guys who work for him - Roose, the BWB and the people who used to work for him - the Karstarks - are acting similarly to Tywin’s ravagers.
  • And Robb, as personally honorable and noble as he is, is not fighting in the War of the Five Kings to feed the smallfolk, protect them from the depredations of war or to promote liberties for the smallfolk or uplifting them from serfdom.
  • He’s fighting to avenge the injustice done to his father and keep the North and Riverlands free from the Iron Throne.
  • I personally find at least those motivations sympathetic and even supportable, but I understand why the smallfolk don’t give a damn about that.
  • When you’re in the crosshairs and targets for both sides, it’s sympathetic not to pick a side or to choose a side that isn’t invested in the geopolitics of the realm.
  • Many of the smallfolk turn to the BWB as their cause in the Wot5K. These folks are actually defending the smallfolk, actually caring about them, actually feeding them.
  • Jorah Mormont talked about how the smallfolk just want to be alone when the high lords play the game of thrones, but never are.
  • Throughout this chapter, we don’t encounter any warriors beyond the ones Arya is traveling with.
  • Instead, we see people who want to be left alone in the war, who want to survive the war, and the BWB present the best option for that.
  • It’s interesting that the cause is simply survival. Though there will be a religious component which will spring out of this come AFFC in the form of the sparrows, Thoros isn’t spreading the word of R’hllor here. Just survive.
  • Like you said, there’s a romance to that: simply defend the people, Robin Hood and his merry men style from the nobility.
  • Still, there’s a limitation in the War of the Five Kings in both-sides-ism.
  • You’re absolutely right that someone is going to win this war, and at some point, the depredations that war imposes on the land and people will cease.
  • And while Lord Goodbrooke’s village or Tarbeck Hall will never be rebuilt, the land and people will recover.
  • So, the BWB don’t have an agenda for after the war, they don’t have a set of principles to advocate towards after the fighting is done.
  • And even if Beric Dondarrion can kill Gregor Clegane and end his brutality, there will be a thousand Steelshank Waltons who will go home to raise the next generation for the next war.
  • You can see George playing with that sense of decay in the opening scene of this chapter. Lychester’s keep is a ruin, and so is its lord
  • George is linking the land and the lords together Fisher-King style, showing us the fall of Westeros as both physical and psychological
  • Crucially, neither fall at Lychester is due to the War of Five Kings. The castle has just fallen into disrepair, and the lord has been robbed of his faculties by age. Time gets away from us no matter what we do
  • According to Lem, Lord Lychester’s ailing mental state is also a result of grief. He lost his sons in the war…not this one, but Robert’s Rebellion
  • You were talking so well last week about how Jaime is still psychologically stuck in the Robert’s Rebellion era; so many people are. Lord Lychester shows us that stagnation in its simplest and plainest form
  • You die young, or you live to face the horror of aging. Lord Lychester has retreated from both into the glorious past: all he talks about is holding the bridge against Ser Maynard. What bridge? Might be the one outside, Jack-Be-Lucky says; it’s the only bridge in sight. But maybe there were other bridges back in Lord Lychester’s day. They can’t be sure
  • Who was Ser Maynard? Why was he trying to take the castle? When did this even happen? We don’t know, and we never will. I doubt Lord Lychester himself remembers the context; only the event itself
  • The context is too painful, because the context is death, entropy, the end of hope. Winter has come for Lord Lychester; spring will never come again
  • What Beric Dondarrion offers is an antidote to despair: a reason to keep going, one step after another, like Sam after the zombie attack
  • Beric is less of a man and more a symbol of resistance, a hope that keeps the smallfolk alive.
  • It’s similar to how Renly embodied chivalry to the men and women of the Reach and Stormlands as we saw back in ACOK, Catelyn II.
  • It’s how Robb as the Young Wolf works as a symbol of resistance to the Lannisters among the northmen.
  • The reality of these men is different from what they represent, but we can’t deny the power of symbols and the power of stories.
  • The Lychester maester has heard that Beric is dead; the Brotherhood reassures him that Beric lives. On reread, we know that both are true–Beric lives, Beric dies, Beric is born again. He embodies the resurrection of the land, the possibility of fertility, a dream of spring
  • Even before we know that Beric can literally come back from the dead, though, we see how he works as a story, no different from the story Lord Lychester tells himself over and over. Stories are the true immortality
  • That’s what Tom o’ Sevenstreams thinks. Of course he does! He’s a singer! He’s got a romantic attachment to the power of storytelling
  • He says that Lord Lychester should’ve commissioned a song (maybe from Tom himself?) about the fight at the bridge with Ser Maynard. Then everyone would know who he had been and why he had come. Then the past would carry weight, emotional resonance; it would mean more than the last trickle of cognition in the mind of a sad man approaching the end
  • Lem Lemoncloak occupies the opposite end of the spectrum, arguing that singing about the past doesn’t change the material facts of what happened
  • I think both have a point, reflecting the conflict in the author’s own heart. Lem is like Sandor talking to Sansa about story as a ribbon tied around a sword, or Jaime mocking the song of Florian and Jonquil at Maidenpool
  • They all argue that the songs are propaganda. They’re not wrong! When Tom says a song about Lychester v. Maynard would preserve the truth about what happened, he’s overlooking the distortion inherent to narrative. The songs about the Battle of Blackwater are all about “Renly’s ghost”
  • Stories tell us “the bard’s truth,” and it’s dangerous to conflate that with the real thing. But that’s not to say the bard’s truth is meaningless
  • It gives us a reason to keep going in the face of things falling apart. That’s what Beric gives people: inspiration to try and make the songs real
  • Beric himself doesn’t show up in this chapter–he’s a structuring absence like the war. Instead, we meet people like Lychester’s maester, who runs the castle as his lord fails, and has allied himself with the Brotherhood
  • That network of mutual aid is a real thing that can materially help people, and yet it is sustained in part by fiction, a contradiction we all live with
  • Lord Lychester’s memory of holding the bridge against Ser Maynard is how old age airbrushes the rough, hard edges of life and smooths memory down to something worth remembering.
  • George does amazing work focusing on the power of nostalgia and the dangers of it in ASOIAF.
  • Lychester’s age is so great that he only recalls the one event worth nostalgizing over.
  • It’s awfully sad about his sons dying in Robert’s Rebellion, but Lychester can’t remember that. It’s almost like he didn’t want to remember it, and in his old age, his mind can only dwell on the only thing that he feels is worth remembering.
  • I think with Lychester we’re seeing the ultimate poison of nostalgia where it’s not simply that the character has a hallowed view of the past.
  • It’s that all he can remember is one hallowed event at the expense of everything else -- to include his dead sons.
• Lady of the Leaves
  • That same mixture of fantasy and realism is at work with the Brotherhood’s next stop: visiting the Lady of the Leaves
  • On one hand, this is one of the most fairytale settings in the whole story. A village in the trees, with ladders descending from the branches
  • It’s equal parts Lothlorien from LOTR and the Ewok village from Star Wars. This trope is rooted in imagination, more meant to project the idea of indigineity than to accurately reflect anything in the real world
  • After all, how long have these villagers been up here? Was this whimsical tree-town something that existed before the war? How do they get food and water? How do they keep from being overheard? It’s hard to reconcile this enchanted free zone with the fate of our first POV Will, sent to the Wall for killing one of the Mallisters’ bucks in the Mallisters’ woods. Westerosi politics is a zero-sum land grab; someone owns this territory
  • Even the name “Lady of the Leaves” sounds like something you’d write in flowing script, rather than say out loud to an actual person
  • George puts this fantasy space into context by acknowledging that it’s temporary. The Lady of the Leaves admits that they’ll have to leave soon, because winter is coming. Doom is inevitable, even if none of the soldiers spy them out; it’s the same sad song we heard at the Lychester keep, where time and grief take their toll even without the War of Five Kings
  • So once again, the people here depend on the idea of Beric Dondarrion. They heard stories that he was dead, leading them to despair; now they hear from the Brotherhood that he lives, and it leads them back to hope, even with no material change to their desperate circumstances
  • That applies to the Brotherhood themselves, as well as the people they’re visiting. We’ll learn later in the book that Lem refuses to recognize that Beric is being returned from the dead by Thoros
  • What these people need isn’t the truth; they need something to believe in. That fills not only a political void, but a spiritual one. I love the moment when the Lady of the Leaves prays for both R’hllor and the Warrior to protect Beric. Strictly speaking, this doesn’t make sense. As Melisandre tells us, the faith of R’hllor preaches that there are only two gods: R’hllor who is good and the Great Other who is evil. The Seven are in truth the face of the enemy. Why would these enemies both support Beric?
  • But religion as it’s being practiced here is not about the finer points of theology and eschatology. It’s about shielding yourself from the fall
  • It’s the flipside of both sides employing the Bloody Mummers and preying on defenseless civilians. If the political distinctions can be blurred for the worse, why can’t spiritual distinctions be blurred for the better?
  • The Faith on its own hasn’t defended these people, so they believe in Beric instead–ironically, without knowing that he is literally magic
  • That line you referenced a moment ago about the Warrior and R’hllor protecting Beric struck me too! It’s almost Two gods are with me now. No foe can stand against two gods, ala Victarion Greyjoy in ADWD.
  • Or in a historical context, it’s Constantine the Great venerating the Christ and Sol Invictus at the same time.
  • Earlier, I talked about how spreading the message of R’hllor wasn’t Thoror or Beric’s point in the Riverlands, but you can see the appeal of it here with the smallfolk.
  • Like early Christianity, the Lord of Light appeals most to slaves, the poor and to women.
  • Like what the R’hllor-led BWB is doing, early Christians did work in feeding, clothing and financially supporting the poor.
  • The BWB are defending the disenfranchised of the Riverlands, refusing to let them die by sword or lack.
  • So, R’hllor seems fairly appealing here! But this is the first the Riverlands have ever experienced the Lord of Light.
  • They hold onto their traditional Faith of the Seven and intermix with R’hllor, but in a really smart stroke, the BWB don’t deny their good works to those who don’t share their faith.
  • In fact, they work with the clergy of the Faith of the Seven.
  • This war is uniting the smallfolk, some of the nobility, people from all religions under one banner … or no banner. One brotherhood, there we go.
• Sept at Sallydance
  • The liminal state of religion in Westeros is emphasized by the Brotherhood’s next destination: a sept in the village of Sallydance
  • Or rather, “the scorched shell of a sept” in what remains of Sallydance. The town’s name makes me think of dancing and romance; those dreams have been replaced with nightmares, as with Jaime at Maidenpool
  • Once, there were beautiful glass windows here; now only fragments remain. The statues of the Seven have been vandalized, partially for the value of their adornments, but as the septon says, the vandals also hacked off the Maiden’s breasts, which were only made of wood
  • The overall impression is one of wanton destruction, ruining a place of peace and love for no other reason than to prove that you can
  • Who did this? Must have been the Bloody Mummers, right? After all, we just saw Vargo Hoat sacking a sept; Zollo was even prying the eyes out of the statue, exactly as the septon describes in this chapter
  • But no. It was northmen looking for Jaime–so it must have been Rickard Karstark’s men. This immediately poses a challenge for Arya. She thinks of the northmen as her pack. But she keeps being alienated from them
  • She helped northmen take over Harrenhal, but then Roose turned out to be just as bad as the Lannisters. She reunited with Harwin from Winterfell, but he fights for the Brotherhood these days, not her family. And now she hears that northmen are raiding and reaving across the countryside
  • How does Arya reconcile her identity, the home and family she’s trying so hard to get back to, with her experiences among the people ground up in the gears of the war machine Robb brought south with him?
  • And now she’s not even alone in knowing her shame. Everyone knows who she is. Gendry stares her down, and she can’t meet his eyes
  • In the background of these chapters, Gendry gets radicalized by the Brotherhood. It’s perfect timing if you think about it. After Harrenhal, he’s angry about the Starks and Lannisters alike crushing his friends, he’s increasingly alienated from Arya’s identity. The BwB is the ideal vessel
  • Again, it’s all about the idea of who they are, which transcends any one individual. The first “Beric Dondarrion” Arya meets isn’t Beric at all
  • It’s just one guy among a dozen others, with nothing to mark him out but a crude lightning bolt on his cloak. As Greenbeard tells Arya:
    • “The lightning lord is everywhere and nowhere.”
  • This is how Beric operates. He inspires others to be like him. They want to do as he does, rally people to be more together than they could be apart, to resist what is happening to the Riverlands with everything in them
  • He gives people hope that they don’t have to just sit by and decay while the world ends around them. They can hit back, they can defend what’s left. There’s a momentum effect: others will see you doing it, and join in
  • So some of them literally dress up like him…which is also a really smart guerilla strategy, because it makes it seem like he’s everywhere at once
  • It’s a I am Spartacus of ASOIAF with many taking on the name and identity of Beric Donarrion to shield the true man from danger and harm.
  • Again, it re-emphasizes the point that Beric is a symbol to keep the people alive and to keep them fighting.
  • But I think there’s more to it than just what Beric represents in resisting.
  • There’s the willingness to share in his lordly name, title and sigil -- to include the smallfolk in power.
  • If anyone can be Beric Donarrion, if anyone can bear his sigil and claim his name, why can’t the smallfolk wield power the way the nobility does.
  • You can see why Gendry finds the BWB so appealing: he’s been exposed to the nobility of Westeros when he was an apprentice blacksmith.
  • The sigils and house words proved to be less than they appeared in Gendry’s interactions with them.
  • But here, there are no banners, no house words. Just actions that Gendry can look up to.
  • Gendry is a really interesting figure here, because he witnessed what both the West and the North can do when armed with power.
  • He came along this journey with Arya due to the friendship - probably more - he felt towards Arya, but he’s not in this for any ideological or familial loyalty to the Starks.
  • Gendry is intrigued by the BWB because it allows many to take a knighthood, a lordship -- regardless of birth.
  • This helps set up his decision to stay with the BWB later on, but for now there’s some practical reasons why everyone and no one is Beric Donarrion.
  • George’s game of delayed reveals reaches virtuosic heights here, because he’s offering an explanation for how it is that everyone keeps hearing that Beric is dead: it’s these other Berics who are dying
  • That makes sense! That’s internally consistent! That sounds like it might be a deliberate strategy on Beric’s part; coldhearted, but effective
  • He pulls the same trick with Thoros. Gendry reminds us in this chapter that Thoros is thought of as a charlatan back in King’s Landing; his fiery swords are dipped in wildfire, ruining them like the “Lightbringer” we saw on Dragonstone, and his main claim to fame was being Robert’s drinking buddy. We’re now primed to assume he’s still a fraud
  • On reread, though, we know this is a gigantic headfake, because Beric is literally getting killed, Thoros is literally bringing him back from the dead
  • Which raises an important question: why keep it a secret? Wouldn’t you want to brag that your leader can rise from the grave? Seems like not only a material advantage but one hell of a propaganda coup
  • We never really get a direct answer to this question. Part of it I think is that the first time was an accident, and Thoros was understandably freaked out
  • Then they were in the midst of retreating, reforming, keeping their remaining men from deserting
  • By the time Thoros had space to think about it, maybe he came to a different conclusion: This is a curse as much as a gift, and it has the potential to terrify people as much as inspire them. Magic is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to wield it
  • It’s also terrifying that people are returning from the dead.
  • Having re-read the resurrection story from the Book of John recently, the first reaction that everyone has to Jesus appearing is one of terror and horror.
  • What I also wonder is whether it’s more inspirational if the smallfolk think Beric is getting deus ex machina’d rather than rezzed.
  • Given the all-too-common reality of people being stabbed or hanged during the war, Beric “surviving” the common means of killing makes him more of a legend.
  • So this doubling of Beric becomes incredibly poignant on reread, when you know that Beric’s existence has become endless doubling, losing a bit of himself every time. These men don’t even know what they’re imitating
  • This is a perfect backdrop for Arya’s story, because she’s been changing her identity over and over again as she tries to survive the war
  • She’s been Arry, Weasel, Squab, Nan. Jaqen H’ghar showed her the end result: self-annihilation, a faceless man existing only to bring death
  • The many Berics are kind of an inversion of that dynamic. Instead of becoming no one, Beric has become everyone. Yet that’s melancholy as well as inspiring. As Greenbeard says: if he’s everywhere, that means he’s also nowhere, a legend divorced from the reality of the man himself
  • Lem and Greenbeard play tiles with their hosts; Tom sings a silly song. This isn’t incidental; carving out isolated moments of peace might be the best the Brotherhood can do. We’re all in this together
  • Even here, though, the war divides them. Arya’s muscles are too tiny to bend Anguy’s bow; he offers to make a smaller one at Riverrun. They’re bonding! Anguy can pass on his skills; Arya can learn as she grows up
  • But it can never be, for the same reason that Harwin is no longer Arya’s friend in the way he used to be. They have different interests, and those different interests are rooted in class dynamics exacerbated by the war
  • As Tom says, they won’t be sticking around at Riverrun to do arts and crafts. If they do go there, it’ll be to ransom Arya, and that’s an inherently hostile situation; the Brotherhood will be lucky to escape alive
  • Hoster hangs outlaws, after all. I’m sure he considers that to be part of his duty as Lord Paramount of the Riverlands, keeping the king’s peace
  • But, as Harwin said in Arya’s last chapter, the world has been turned on its head. The outlaws are the ones trying to protect Hoster’s people
  • From the Brotherhood’s perspective, Hoster isn’t a kindly grandfather offering safety and security, which is what he means to Arya. He’s a threat; George emphasizes that later in the book when the BwB takes refuge in the remains of a village that Hoster wiped out in Robert’s Rebellion
  • George really shows off his tonal range in this scene. We go from a sweet moment with Anguy and Arya to Tom’s grim reality check. How ironic that the romantic singer is the one to remind us of practical concerns
  • Anguy and Harwin were also dudes who were a part of or adjacent to the noble class and are likely infused with the mores of the nobility.
  • Whereas Tom O’Sevens has never participated in a Hand’s Tourney or served in the retinue of a great house.
  • And he’s had run-ins with the Tullys before and knows what they’re like.
  • But then the tone shifts to comedy, as Tom admits the other reason he doesn’t want to hang out at Riverrun is that Edmure hates his guts
  • Why? Because Tom happened to be on the scene when Edmure tried to lose his virginity. I say “tried” because Edmure, being Edmure, drank too much and couldn’t get it up. Happens to us all, nothing to be ashamed of
  • But Tom, being Tom, decided to write a song about a “floppy fish,” aka Edmure’s whiskey dick. He immortalized this embarrassing moment for Edmure, making sure that neither he nor anyone else would forget it
  • Not only that, but Tom refuses to admit that that’s what he did! He acts like Edmure just irrationally hates music (which is bullshit) and the “floppy fish” song wasn’t about Edmure anyway (which is marbled grade-A bullshit)
  • Tom is like a stand-up comedian who, when a joke bombs, wants to hide behind the shield of “it’s all a joke, why are you taking it all so seriously?”
  • But wait a minute, Tom. Weren’t you just saying that Lord Lychester should’ve commissioned a song about his duel so the memory would live forever? So much for the romantic power of storytelling!
  • As soon as Tom might be the villain of his own story, as soon as there are real-world consequences for his fantasy make-believe, he disavows his own beliefs. It’s funny but revealing to watch him squirm
  • I think this is a fourth-wall-breaking moment in which George talks about the eternal struggle of the artist. What is the relationship between your song and the real world? So often, we either pretend there’s a one-to-one connection or that there’s no connection whatsoever
  • There clearly is such a relationship, but it’s so complicated and so dependent on individual circumstances that I think it’s impossible to define it coherently. Fiction has one foot in reality and one foot in the imagination
  • Before the Brotherhood leaves Sallydance, George switches tones once more, this time tugging on our heartstrings. Arya asks about ransoming her at Riverrun; this is the first she’s hearing about it
  • Harwin, as the Brotherhood’s resident Arya-whisperer, puts it as gently as he can. Like Thoros says in the show: we need weapons, armor, and horses to defend people, and to get those things, you need gold
  • The Brotherhood can only get so much via IOUs. Hard currency still counts if you have enough of it, as we saw at the Inn of the Kneeling Man
  • I hadn’t remembered Harwin justifying ransoming Arya with her own house words: “winter is coming, remember?” One hand, that’s a pretty cold-blooded manipulation given that Harwin has left Stark service
  • But he’s right that the Brotherhood are the ones acting on those words, planting crops for one last harvest while the kings tear it all up
  • Excellent point and catch on Harwin’ phrase -- never saw that before.
  • What’s interesting about this dynamic is that unlike the ransoms we see in Westeros which help to further bankroll the war effort or recharge exhausted coffers, the BWB’s strategy is to use the hostage exchange for good.
  • I think this is some of the gray filtering into the BWB story. They are going to save as many people as possible … by selling a noble girl back to her mom.
  • It’s an immoral act - kidnapping a child - for a moral end - feeding the people and continuing the resistance against oppressors.
  • I don’t think George wants to come up with an easy answer here. I think GRRM is doing what he does best: posing the question and then getting right back to what he does best: allowing the characters to react emotionally.
  • And Arya’s response is really interesting. You might think she’d blame the Brotherhood for treating her like a cash cow (or a “golden squirrel”). After all, she ran away from these guys in her last chapter; she doesn’t like being imprisoned, and she’s got a sore spot about disappointing mentors
  • But she seems convinced by Harwin’s argument, because she’s familiar with ransoms; that’s part of her class background, the idea that the noble families take each other hostage in war. She saw it happen at Harrenhal
  • So instead, Arya’s worried that she won’t be worth a ransom. Those are for important people, lords and knights. Robb might not pay for her
  • This is heartbreaking because we know that she’s right–Robb has struggled with the question of how much to give to get his sisters back
  • Even more heartbreaking is Arya’s fear that Catelyn might not want her back after all she’s done. You just want to reach into the book and hug her
  • We get Catelyn chapters, and so we know that Catelyn is desperate to get her daughters back; the thought of Arya dead causes her immense pain
  • Arya’s alienation in part reflects how she genuinely felt like an outsider in her family, not playing her role as effectively as Sansa did
  • But it’s also about her guilt over what she’s done to survive, who she’s become along the way. In her mind, she’s built walls between the girl she was at Winterfell and the person who whispers “valar morghulis”
  • When she gets home, she’s going to have to decide who she is; Arya doesn’t know if she can cross the gap. Is the pack gone forever? Maybe this is her pack now: Gendry, the Brotherhood, everyone they meet
  • This part really gets me emotionally as well, because it reminds me of my favorite parable: the Prodigal Son.
  • Most everyone knows the parable, but the part this reminds me of is when the prodigal son goes off and wonders if he will be accepted back as his father’s son, thinking he would take service as a servant of his father’s.
  • The father, though, welcomes the prodigal son back with open arms, and that’s what I imagine would have happened with Arya had she been able to return to her mother and brother.
  • When the older brother angrily tells off the father for welcoming the younger brother back, the father replies:
    • It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.
  • That’s the state Arya is in: presumed dead and definitely lost in the wild away from her family.
  • And there’s who Arya is. Is she lost morally? Has she lost her Stark identity? Can she return to her mom given everything she’s experienced, that she’s done.
  • That’s never going to happen though. Arya will get all the way to Riverrun and come within a hair of reuniting with her mom and bro.
  • So, it’s a natural transition then to have Arya move into explicit foreshadowing of the death of her mom and the rise of Lady Stoneheart.
• High Heart
  • Next up on our tour of the Riverlands is High Heart, which works differently from the rest: it’s concerned with magic as much as politics
  • As we’ll see, Beric and Thoros are spiritual figures as well as military ones. ACOK was all about the intertwining of political and magical worlds; that continues for Arya in ASOS, as she’s dealing with both guerilla movements and wolf dreams, resurrections and Red Weddings
  • High Heart is where the two worlds come together, like Harrenhal before it. The hill was once home to a sacred weirwood grove, but no longer; as in “Last of the Giants,” men came with fire and axes to remake the world
  • According to Tom the romantic, the ghosts of the children still haunt this place; after all, the Andal who killed them was a kinslayer. Must be cursed!
  • But Arya’s no more afraid of ghosts here than she was at Harrenhal. As she thinks, she played in the Winterfell crypts as a kid. The dead don’t scare her as much as the living. If High Heart is a safe place, it’s not because the children protect it, but because it offers a good view of the surrounding area, ensuring that no one can sneak up on you
  • As usual, George neither confirms nor denies the stories of wonder and terror. The truth is somewhere in between; stories distort everything over time, but magic persists in forms people don’t expect, like Beric and Thoros, or in this case, the Ghost of High Heart
  • The tone becomes spooky and mysterious as she approaches; the wind blows, and the hairs on the back of Arya’s neck stand up straight
  • Now we’re in ghost story territory, something to be told around a campfire; the Ghost is less a ghost than a prophet, a witch in Old Nan’s tales
  • Like the Lorax, she speaks for the trees: the old gods made invisible by the destruction of the weirwoods, but still there, a splinter in her mind
  • In political terms, High Heart is where you can see over the land to spot your enemies. In magical terms, this place unlocks a different kind of sight: vision across time, into the abstract symbolic space of the gods
  • The height to easily see your enemies coming from below or high enough to obscure people from seeing what’s on top.
  • But the magic is where I love the details: the 31 weirwood stumps work as almost a graveyard of the magic that once inhabited the land.
  • But much like the powder within the Ark of the Covenant that once was the Ten Commandments, the stumps still hold magical power.
  • We know the weirwood trees allow the human eye to see beyond physical sight.
  • And we know the weirwood stumps here contain great power.
  • Like Bran in his own dreams, or Dany in HOTU, the Ghost sees visions whose meaning she doesn’t always understand. She and the Brotherhood must try to interpret them as we try to interpret what we read
  • George loves his threefold revelation structure, and puts it to good use here. Like some of the threes in HOTU, the first image is obvious even to the first-time reader: the shadow butchering the golden stag is Melisandre’s shadowbaby killing Renly back in ACOK
  • The second image is about to come true, but it won’t fully make sense until AFFC. Balon Greyjoy falls from a rope bridge in a storm and dies; here we see the Faceless Man who kills Balon, accompanied by a “drowned crow.” This represents Euron Greyjoy, Balon’s brother, who ordered the assassination in order to take Balon’s crown. He’s a crow because Bloodraven opened his third eye as a child, as with Bran; the “drowned” part could refer to Euron’s seafaring life, or maybe to him being metaphorically drowned in the power of the weirwood net
  • A quick meta note about Balon death: this was supposed to be a one-fold revelation in that the kingsmoot was not going to occur on-page given that GRRM was planning the 5YG at this time.
  • The revelation would then be the GoHH revealing Balon’s death and the confirmation from the captain of the Myraham telling the northmen that Balon was dead.
  • When GRRM later abandoned the 5YG, we got further unfoldings about Balon’s death and Euron’s confirmation in “The Forsaken” that he was responsible for Balon’s death but it wasn’t his hand who slayed Balon — hence the man with no face who did it.
  • So both of these first two visions are about fratricide and regicide, kings killed by their own brothers: keystone images of broken taboos, political power made possible through the use of magic from overseas. These are moments that haunt Westeros, and so they haunt her
  • The third image, fitting the structure, is the most important in terms of our POV Arya, and it’s also about the death of kings, but in a different way
  • It’s the aftermath of the Red Wedding, but where Dany saw Robb’s death in HOTU, Arya sees Catelyn’s death. A woman that was a fish: House Tully. The red tears: Catelyn gouges her own cheeks. And we learn the Freys dumped her body in the river, a mockery of Tully funeral rites
  • The third death, after Renly and Balon–but unlike them, Catelyn comes back. She opens her eyes, and the Ghost was so terrified it woke her up
  • As painful as Catelyn’s death will be for Arya, and as painful as Renly and Balon’s deaths will be for those who loved them, it’s worse to bring them back. This is a warning to her, one that is relevant to the Brotherhood because Beric is the one who brings Catelyn back to life
  • Lem wonders what good these dreams even do, just as he argued that songs don’t really make a difference in our lives
  • And indeed, the Ghost has come to trade her dreams for a song, one half-real thing for another, a currency of projections and phantoms
  • We don’t learn what song it is yet, but the point is that it’s meaningful to her, which is what gives it worth. The people she is grieving are gone, just like the woman Lem dreamed about: only worms kiss her now.
  • The song can’t bring them back, any more than the Ghost’s dreams allow her to change what will be, but the song casts its own spell, makes it seem like the dead are alive again. Lem may mock songs, but he’s a character in a song, the Song of Ice and Fire! This is how we confront death: we pass on stories, and visions, the marks we leave behind in each other
  • The chapter then shifts back to the political, as Arya finally asks the implicit question running underneath this chapter: why do they have to put so much work into finding their own boss? Why is Beric hiding?
  • Harwin lays out the guerilla logic of George’s own Robin Hood and the Merry Men. They’re not fighting like Robb, visibly out in front of his army, gathering them together at a specific location for the maximum impact
  • Instead, the Brotherhood is separated into dozens of bands like this one, all endlessly circling each other. They can’t win a pitched battle, and by spreading out, they can defend more people and prevent their enemies from wiping them out in one blow. They have speed on their side, and generally the element of surprise, and they know the land well
  • We’ll see this in deed come ASOS, Arya VII when they destroy a small Band of Bloody Mummers committing war crimes in a sept.
  • It’s killing the despoilers of the land with a thousand small bites rather than the force on force that Robb and Tywin are engaged in.
  • The BWB hit the supply lines of the Lannisters too, harrying their rear and taking out
  • It’s an effective tactic too! They know that if they massed, they’d get annihilated, but in small groups, they stay alive and unnoticed by large bands of armed men passing through.
  • Worth noting Harwin also says they’d eat the land bare if they all came together–again, they’re better stewards of the land than the literal lords
  • Finally, there’s military intelligence to consider. If no one knows where Beric is, none of them can give him away if put to the question
  • I love how Harwin tries, even now, to shield Arya with euphemisms. It’s too late; she knows all too well what it means. It means torture. She became all too familiar with it as a captive of Gregor Clegane
  • So this is a connection between Arya and the Brotherhood: a way for her to fit into the new pack, and an organizing principle for action
  • As I said, there’s no clear endgame for the Brotherhood, but there is a mission statement: “no child to be made to suffer that.” That’s something Beric and Ned would certainly agree on
  • Still, there’s a bittersweet tone to Harwin trying to reassure Arya by telling her the Tickler might be dead. We know he’s not, and that even when Arya kills him personally, it won’t fill the hole inside. There’s no erasing what she experienced, no evening the scales. As with the Brotherhood in this chapter, all Arya can do is try her best to both do good and survive
  • There’s a sense here that what Arya experienced has been the legacy of what the Riverlands knows.
  • This is a full brutalization of a region with many thousands bearing witness to the war crimes rolling across the land.
  • And the results of that brutalization are immense.
  • Arya, herself, has killed two people — not very many people and most of them were not very nice people to quote In Bruges
  • And she’s constantly questioning her own identity.
  • But the consequences and reactions don’t end with one girl in the Riverlands. This whole region is infected with blood.
  • When Arya and the gang reach Stoney Sept next chapter, they will see the response of the smallfolk.
  • Where a peacetime Riverlands governed by lords might hang rapists or murderers, the smallfolk return the favor with a brutality of their own.
  • They hang the Karstarks in crow cages and let them die of exposure and thirst until Arya and Anguy show up.
  • What I’m ultimately saying is that George does a realistic job of showing the individual and collective response to atrocity.
  • For Arya, she will meet up with the Tickler at the end of this book, and the result will be one of emotional release via stabbing the man over and over again while screaming his questions back at him.
• Acorn Hall
  • So far, we’ve encountered a variety of Brotherhood supporters, from many walks of life: a maester, a septon, some villagers, a spooky witch
  • But the chapter concludes with probably the most powerful Brotherhood ally: Lady Smallwood, one of the more upstanding members of the nobility
  • Lord Smallwood isn’t home, he’s fighting for Lord Vance, just emphasizing how many rungs there are on the social ladder under examination in this chapter; even the people who own castles are working for someone
  • Maybe it’s for the best he’s gone, though, because Lady Smallwood’s in charge now and she lets the Brotherhood in
  • Anguy, who turns out to be quite the gossip, tells Arya that it’s because she used to sleep with Tom, but it’s clearly more than that
  • Lady Smallwood also sheltered Beric and Thoros, and is familiar enough with their politics to know that they’ve gone where hunger is; they were driving a flock of sheep to help feed people, including here. She approves
  • She’s doing what Lord Mooton at Maidenpool failed to do, and there’s something powerful about the idea that only in his absence can she act
  • But that cross-class connection between Tom and Lady Smallwood still matters; it plays into the tension around songs I was mentioning earlier
  • The relationship clearly went sour, and Lady Smallwood heavily hints that the reason why is that Tom tries to fuck every single woman he meets
  • So Tom is that guy, the acoustic guitar under the tree kind of guy, who uses the power of his music to drop panties and then runs for it
  • In defense of Tom … Um, it’s a tried and true method?
  • It’s an amusing reframing of Tom’s romanticism: he’s allergic to responsibility and justifies it through his devotion to his art
  • In the process, he’s left a trail of sons behind. He admits to it, but doesn’t like the subject; it’s too real, the messy truth behind the songs
  • I love that Lady Smallwood also gets in a dig at Tom’s songwriting, calling him a hack who relies on forced rhymes. He’s not even good at this!
  • I feel like George has met a lot of guys like this at cons, or maybe even been that guy at one point; he’s looking at creative professionals without illusions, acknowledging that appeals to beauty can be skin deep
  • Could also be George’s Hollywood experiences coming to the fore here — creative souls who use their work primarily for seduction.
  • Or musicians who are in the industry to pick up girls.
  • I myself as a #teen, learned to play the guitar in order to pick up girls.
  • But boy was I a hack like Tom. Playing and singing brown-eyed girl to someone in the dorms is so cringe and shallow.
  • Tom has used his musicianship to pick up girls, but then he rolls out when there’s responsibility to be had.
  • There’s a cruelty I never saw in Tom before this read — something we’ll see in the Peach at Stoney Sept when he’ll reject the parentage of a boy who is very obviously his son because he doesn’t have a good voice.
  • But really, he’s rejected all of his sons, abandoned them to live with their mothers, while he goes on singing and fucking.
  • Yet, I have to keep emphasizing that it worked then. It might still work now …
  • All of that is relevant to a chapter in which everyone’s talking about Beric Dondarrion without us ever getting to see him; the rumor, the song, is all we get. The Brotherhood keeps itself intact via a projected self
  • The question of identity, as it’s created, practiced, and reinforced, also ties into Lady Smallwood’s main role in this chapter: a new mother for Arya
  • Arya is a highborn girl, but most of her mentor figures are men born outside the nobility. This is a deliberate move on George’s part, as probing class and gender borders is a big part of what he’s doing with Arya’s story
  • This is an exception to that rule, when Arya comes face to face with the kind of person she could’ve been if left to grow up in Winterfell
  • I can easily imagine Arya married to a nobleman who rides off to war, and she responds by teaming up with a peasant guerilla movement
  • The difference between the two is their relationship to gender. Lady Smallwood believes herself to be saving Arya from the unladylike mess of the Brotherhood, as well as observing hygiene and social norms
  • But for Arya, this is an indignity that cuts her off from her own body and reminds her of the powerlessness she experienced at Harrenhal
  • Look how George writes it: Arya “found herself” marched upstairs, a thing happening to her over which she had no control. The tub is scalding hot, they’re scrubbing her so hard it’s as if she’s being flayed. This isn’t a detached observation, this is Arya on the verge of a traumatic flashback
  • And then they insist on dressing her in girl’s clothes, the kind of clothes she never liked. She’s tried so hard to hold onto a bit of herself, and now they’re turning her into the person she never wanted to be
  • Exactly right. This emphasizes that highborn women  have better standards of living but they’re still enslaved to the gender roles forced upon them.
  • Remember when Ned told her that she would marry a lord and be a lady of a castle? She didn’t want that then, that was Sansa. That wasn’t what she wanted.
  • Yet here, she’s being forced back into the role that she’s rejected.
  • The point for me is not that bathing and wearing pretty clothes is bad. The bathing thing is quite good and healthy!
  • The point is that Arya doesn’t want this identity — at least not yet if ever, but she can’t escape it being forced into the role.
  • You can see Lady Smallwood operating with the best of intentions, naught but kindness in her heart. She’s 100% right that Arya should stop wearing clothes with the Bolton sigil, just for her own safety on the road
  • I love how she tries to engage Arya in conversation; it doesn’t go as you might expect. They don’t fully connect, but neither do they conflict
  • Lady Smallwood asks Arya what she likes to do–something no one’s really bothered to do since she parted from Jon Snow
  • She’s been on the run or forced into labor. What she wants out of life has been filtered through the demands of her situation: she wants freedom, and family, and revenge. Hobbies are kind of beside the point
  • Then again, as we saw at Sallydance, being at rest and doing things for the fun of it is what peace looks like, what these people are fighting for
  • So Arya tries to cross the gap, not only between her and Lady Smallwood, but between her and her younger self. She says she likes needlework
  • As when she named her sword Needle, she’s ironically contrasting her swordplay with the sewing favored by Sansa, Catelyn, etc.
  • I’m not a proper young lady, she thinks. I’m a wolf. I belong out in the wild, like in my dreams, in my element like at the beginning of the book. As she thinks: I can’t sing prettily like Sansa. I can only shout the words
  • Lady Smallwood does it to relax. “Not the way I do it,” Arya says–she does it to work out her rage
  • But Lady Smallwood doesn’t catch the double meaning, and she says there’s no wrong way to do it. We’re all gifted in our own way, and every act is a prayer if it’s done with sincerity and pride
  • Even as Lady Smallwood reinforces gender norms over Arya’s objections, she inadvertently gives her a way of thinking about herself that could help
  • Instead of thinking about the right way to be and the wrong way to be, think about what you can do, and how you can help
  • Any act can be a prayer, she says, which ties perfectly into Arya’s kill list as a sort of prayer and of course her service with the Faceless Men
  • Lady Smallwood is a mother surrogate for Arya, like how first Brienne and now Jeyne Westerling have been daughter surrogates for Catelyn
  • So it follows beautifully that while staying at Castle Smallwood, Arya has to reckon with what her real mother has been doing
  • Lady Smallwood mentions the Northmen hunting for Jaime; Arya deciphers the sigil and knows that they’re Karstarks. That’s Arya’s Northern self coming to the fore, and she thinks they could help her get back to her mother. But then she learns Catelyn freed Jaime
  • The Brotherhood don’t believe it any more than she does at first. Tom’s so shocked he even snaps a string–the song breaking, narratives changing
  • Then Harwin kicks Arya out of the room because she’s a Stark. So it’s the worst of both worlds: her name is only ever a burden, never a relief
  • So she’s left alone with Gendry, who has the opposite problem–his parentage is so secret that even he doesn’t know who he is
  • Gotta love the irony when Gendry badmouths Robert as a drunkard; Arya’s dealing with her disappointing parents, and so is he
  • The hidden prince as pauper, the princess disguised and on the run with a band of heroic rebels; like the tales of Robin Hood, it’s incurably romantic
  • And while Arya might hate her new clothes and new fragrance because it defines her in gender terms she doesn’t connect with, Gendry is interested for the same reason–he sees Arya as female in a way he didn’t before
  • Arya, of course, liked watching Gendry at work in the forge at Harrenhal…and now here they are in another forge
  • They’re too old to ignore these feelings, but not old enough to know what to do about them. So like a lot of people their age, they fight about it
  • I love this because it’s exactly what happened with Jaime and Brienne in the previous chapter. Even adults don’t always deal with this well!
  • What’s funny about this is that this is how Arya reclaims her gender identity–she ruins the clothes and gets herself all sweaty because that feels like her authentic self. Yet she only got there because Gendry got interested in her new look. Is there a way to integrate all of it?
  • Lady Smallwood forces Arya through another bathing and dressing regimen, but her new dress is too delicate to ride in
  • So she has to wear boys’ clothing over it: breeches, belt, tunic, and jerkin. Two genders, two selves, made into one
  • The dresses were from Lady Smallwood's daughter, sent to Oldtown for safety...and the boy's clothes belonged to her son, who died at age seven
  • The full weight settles on Arya. She's not only wearing these kids' clothes, she's taken their places, yet another identity
  • Now Lady Smallwood doesn't seem like yet another jailer, keeping Arya in her place. She's lost people, like Arya has lost people
  • We've come full circle; this chapter started with Lord Lychester broken by grief, and now it ends with Lady Smallwood’s grief. In both cases, the losses came outside the War of Five Kings; it’s part of nature that the war only makes worse. What do we owe each other in the face of that?
  • Arya apologizes to Lady Smallwood for ripping the dress–not because she feels obligated to wear those clothes, but because she understands that Lady Smallwood has her own history and her own pain; the dress will mean different things to each of them. It’s a rapport between two worlds that Arya thought permanently alienated, divided like her
  • Lady Smallwood forgives her and tells her she’s pretty like the dress, and not only that, but brave. You can be both; there’s no contradiction. It’s the conversation Arya never got to have with Catelyn, and that Lady Smallwood isn’t getting to have with her own daughter
  • The imagery of acorns and trees connects us back to the heart tree at Winterfell, and the one at Harrenhal that spoke to her with Ned’s voice
  • But it also speaks to roots and beginnings: Arya as someone with a lot still ahead of her in life. Lady Smallwood’s giving it all for people like her, as are Beric and Thoros, which we’ll see in Arya chapters to come

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

George brings back the story about Tom singing about Edmure’s failure to get it up when Jaime confronts Edmure at Riverrun in AFFC.

George stops this chapter dead to remind us of the Tickler’s entire mantra, so we’ll have it in our mind when Arya yells it at him while killing him near the end of the book.

Theory/Discussion

What’s the Ghost of High Heart’s backstory?

• Arya wonders if she might be one of the children of the forest…and Jenny of Oldstones wondered the same thing!
• See, she knew a woods witch in the Riverlands, one who came with Jenny to court after she married Prince Duncan, son of Aegon V, aka Egg
• She prophesied that the prince that was promised would come from the line of Aerys and Rhaella, the children of Egg’s brother King Jaeherys II
• He insisted they marry on that basis; the woods witch was at Summerhall and was assumed to have died there
• And now there’s this old woman, short and with unusual eyes, who can see visions, and talks about getting enough grief at Summerhall, and can’t get enough of Jenny’s song…
• It fits into the setting of High Heart and the melancholy of Beric Dondarrion; magic and mysticism doesn’t save you from death in the long run

Conclusion

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  • Red Rahloo Himself who has renounced his allegiance to the Squishers
  • Lady of a Thousand Words
  • 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
  • Ser Thomas the Raven Knight, Lord of Blackwood
  • Ser Way of Course
  • Matt, Warden of the Sanguine Shore
  • Lord Sam K
  • 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
  • Hodenis, a prostitute
  • 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
  • Lord Young of the Ghost Woods
  • Lady Meera Reed, Wielder of Dark Sister, slayer of tinfoil
  • Ser Will of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune
  • Lord Clay
  • Septon T-Bone, the Low Septon
  • Refined Wrangler of Icy Arachnids
  • Lady Veronica, who has abandoned the orphans at the Inn at the Crossroads to become the Queen of Memes
  • Lady Danielle of House Lannister
  • Titanium Pirate
  • Lady Joan, Lady-Ranger of the Frost Fangs
  • Cydnii of House Qo, Princess of the Friendly Black Hotties in the Summer Isles
  • Random: Fierce Protector of Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things
  • Sir Lady Jordan Defender of the God's Eye
  • Lord Peter (not Petyr), Drinker of Strongwine and Lord Commander of the Flat Planetos Society
  • Lady of Rainy Afternoons
  • Lady Ken of House Motown, Goddess of Sips and Wine
  • Ser Andrew of H-Town
  • Archmaester Hugh of the Tower, whose rod and ring are of tinfoil
  • And our newest high lord: A-A-ron, Damphair, Prophet of the Forsaken and High Priest of Euron Crowseye who returns from his long voyage of prophesying about the messiah Euron Greyjoy to join the league of high lords to continue spreading the gospel of Euron Greyjoy.
• Join us next week for ASOS Daenerys II (Part 1), in which