Welcome back to A Read of Ice and Fire! Please join me as I read and react, for the very first time, to George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.
Today’s entry is Part 37 of A Dance With Dragons, in which we cover Chapter 63 (“Victarion”) and Chapter 64 (“The Ugly Little Girl”).
Previous entries are located in the Index. The only spoilers in the post itself will be for the actual chapters covered and for the chapters previous to them. As for the comments, please note that the Powers That Be have provided you a lovely spoiler thread here on Tor.com. Any spoileriffic discussion should go there, where I won’t see it. Non-spoiler comments go below, in the comments to the post itself.
And now, the post!
Chapter 63: Victarion
What Happens
Victarion’s ships capture a Ghiscari trading galley, whose captain gives them the news that the dragon queen of Meereen was dead and a man named Hizdak rules there now. Moqorro assures Victarion that Daenerys is alive, so Victarion has the captain’s tongue torn out for lying and then sacrifices him to the Drowned God. Victarion has clothed Moqorro in Greyjoy colors in hopes that it will help reconcile him to his crew, but in vain; the other ironborn shun him. Still, Victarion renames the captured ship Red God’s Wroth in his honor.
They lose three ships after that, but Moqorro assures Victarion that they will be found again. They capture a Myrish cog, and Moqorro accurately predicts where the fleet may find more prey. Their crews also claim that Daenerys is dead, and Victarion has them executed save for the slaves, telling them “the dragon queen frees slaves and so do I.” Victarion feels his conquests are bringing him closer to the Drowned God, but he feels the presence of Moqorro’s red god as well, especially when he contemplates his burned yet strong arm; he tells the dusky woman that “no foe can stand before two gods.”
The three missing ships are found as Moqorro predicted, and Victarion rewards him. After some debate, he decides to risk the straits rather than sail around the island of Yaros to get to Meereen. They capture more ships, from which Victarion hears of how the dragon queen flew away “beyond the Dothraki sea.” One of the sailors makes fun of him for not understanding that that is not an actual sea, and Victarion chokes him to death. Moqorro opines that his Drowned God is “a demon,” a thrall of R’hllor’s enemy “Other,” and Victarion warns him to be careful with such talk, but promises that his red god will get his due. Victarion fantasizes about returning the ironborn to the glory of the old days by wedding the dragon queen and having her bear him “many mighty sons.”
Once out of the straits, Victarion goes to deeper sea to avoid the heavy traffic between Yunkai and Meereen, but still captures a slaver galley full of pleasure slaves. He divides the female slaves between his captains, but drowns the males, deeming them “unnatural.” He takes seven of the prettiest slave girls for himself, but does not sleep with them; instead he puts them on a fishing ketch and burns them alive, declaring it a sacrifice to both gods. Soon after, a great wind comes and propels them toward Meereen.
That night he brings out “Euron’s hellhorn,” the dragon horn he’d had blown at the kingsmoot. Moqorro tells him the glyphs carved on it are Valyrian, and say “I am Dragonbinder.” Victarion tells him how the sound of the horn made him feel like he was burning, and how the man who sounded it died, burned up inside, and Moqorro shows him another gylph on it which declares that “no mortal man shall sound me and live.” Victarion reflects that his brother’s gifts are always poisoned.
“The Crow’s Eye swore this horn would bind dragons to my will. But how will that serve me if the price is death?”
“Your brother did not sound the horn himself. Nor must you.” Moqorro pointed to the band of steel. “Here. ‘Blood for fire, fire for blood.’ Who blows the hellhorn matters not. The dragons will come to the horn’s master. You must claim the horn. With blood.”
Commentary
My first thought on opening this chapter: dammit, Victarion gets his own name now in the chapter title instead of an epithet? BOO.
And my thought on completing the chapter is still, essentially: BOO.
Seriously, you guys, Victarion is a giant bowl of rotting dicks and I don’t like him even a little bit. Yeah, yeah, differing cultural mores blah blah whatever, he set seven innocent girls on fire and drowned twenty innocent boys at sea and not to mention all the other shit he did and no, I don’t care if he thought his victims would get rewarded in the afterlife or whatever and no, I don’t even care if his sacrifices worked, I still need him to die in some horribly justified and preferably slow and painful way for it because I hate him a really lot.
Ugh, he sucks. He sucks so hard I don’t even want to talk about him, but I suppose I have to so, FINE.
Um. Stuff.
Right, here’s one: I still am skeptical of this scheme of his to just storm Meereen by sea, but given how completely and pathetically unprepared anyone’s been so far to stop Victarion from doing, basically, whatever the fuck he wants, it’s possible it’s not quite as cockamamie an idea as I originally decided it was.
Which is SAD, you guys, really. I’m hardly rooting for the clusterfuck of fartknockers currently semi-besieging Meereen, but really, y’all don’t even have scouts out? No security for your shipping lanes whatsoever? What, are the ironborn the only ones to have actually come up with the concept of piracy so you’ve never encountered it before? I hardly think so! Sheesh. Lame!
Maybe they’ll all just kill each other off the shore of Meereen and I’ll not have to deal with them evermore! Right, right?
Shut up it could totally happen, la la la I can’t hear you…
Blurg. What else.
Well, we can talk about Moqorro, I guess, and my wonderings over whether he is just desperately talking a mad game to keep his new batshit boss from murdering him, or if he really is as Zen and cool with this whole scene as he seems to be. I’m actually not sure which possibility would impress me more.
I would like to give him shit for supporting Captain Manpain in his campaign to asshole his way across the ocean blue, but that’s rather hampered by the fact that Moqorro no doubt knows as well as I do how very much drowned he would be by now if he hadn’t made himself so useful to Commodore Douchecanoe and then stayed that way, so. I’m just a bit leery of judging people’s actions when they are in a survival situation, and “being on an ironborn ship” sure as bloody hell counts as a survival situation if you ask me, given how very few people actually, you know, survive it.
So, fine, whatever. Though I would be very pleased to accept revelations of subtle sabotage on Moqorro’s part to undermine Señor Psychopath over here. Admittedly, this hope seems overly optimistic in light of the fact that Moqorro has gone so far as to give him a bionic volcano arm to be more scary with. Bad form, Moqorro! Stop giving assholes bionic volcano arms! I swear.
Completely randomly, I cracked myself up because I noticed (fortunately before I posted!) that I had typed “dusky woman” as “ducky woman.” This is funnier if you know that this is not, in fact, the first time I’ve made that typo. In related news, for some reason I am incapable of typing “Victarion” right the first time. Because he plagues me IN EVERY WAY. Bah. Bah, I say!
Bored now, moving on!
Chapter 64: The Ugly Little Girl
What Happens
The girl serves a dinner where the attendees discuss who will or will not give someone “the gift,” and after, a priest with a face riddled with plague interrogates her. He accuses her of wanting to kill for her own purposes; she begins to deny it, and he slaps her and calls her a liar. He says she has “a taste for blood.” The girl thinks of her list, but keeps silent. He tells her that death has no sweetness in this house, and they never kill to please themselves, but only to serve the God of Many Faces. He asks if she can pay the price: to be no one, to have not even her face be her own. She says she can pay it, and asks for a face. He tells her faces must be earned, by giving a stranger “a gift.”
Disguised as Cat of the Canals, the girl observes the man. That night she declares that he must be an evil man, but the kindly priest says he is no more evil than any other man, and the Many-Faced God does not judge men’s souls. She watches him again and decides he is full of fear and that killing him will give him peace, but is told that she will have failed if he sees her kill him. She does not understand his business, and the kindly man explains that he is selling insurance to ship owners and captains. She wonders whether it was a customer of his who wants him dead, but the kindly man says that is none of her business.
She considers how to kill him, as he is accompanied at all times by two bodyguards, one of whom tastes all his food before he eats it. She says she will wait till one guard leaves to piss and then kill the man and the other guard, but the kindly man tells her that servants of the Many-Faced God only give gifts to those who have been chosen for it. Finally she determines a way, and announces she will kill the man the next day. The kindly man says she will need a new face, an ugly one.
The kindly man and the waif take her down, down into a part of the sanctum below that she has not been to before, and take her to a chamber filled with thousands of faces. She tries to tell herself they are masks, but knows they are actually skins. The kindly man asks if she wants to continue; the girl steels herself and tells them to do it. They cut her face so it bleeds and give her a potion to drink, and then affix one of the faces to her own. For a moment she feels the pain of the girl whose face she now wears, but then it goes, and the girl can no longer tell that her face is different. The kindly man warns her that she may have dreams of how the other girl’s father brutally beat her for a time, but that night she dreams instead of all the people she’s killed and the ones she’s lost, all their faces hanging on the wall.
The next day she goes to where the man has set up shop, and waits until she sees a prosperous shipowner she’d seen doing business with the man before. She slits his purse and sticks her hand inside, and he catches her at it. She knocks him down and runs and hides, and then goes back to the temple and shows the kindly man a coin she’d taken from him. He says they are no thieves, but she says this was in exchange for “one of ours,” and the kindly man understands that the target was paid with it, and his heart gave out after. He says she has much to learn, but perhaps is not hopeless. They give her Arya’s face back, and the robes of an acolyte, and the kindly man tells her she will begin her first apprenticeship with Izembaro the next day.
“The city watch is looking for a certain ugly girl, known to frequent the Purple Harbor, so best you have a new face as well.” He cupped her chin, turned her head this way and that, nodded. “A pretty one this time, I think. As pretty as your own. Who are you, child?”
“No one,” she replied.
Commentary
Aw, Baby’s First Assassination!
Not exactly the kind of thing you put in a photo album, is it.
Well, that was… both disturbing and confusing. Disturbing for reasons which should hopefully be obvious, but also confusing because I’m still not sure what actually happened. I think what Arya did was slip the rich dude a coin which killed the insurer guy somehow, once rich dude paid him with it, but I’m really not clear on how that worked.
I mean, the obvious answer is that the coin was coated with poison, but if so, how could Arya be sure that rich dude wouldn’t also touch it and die? Given how much emphasis was placed on the need for Arya to kill the target and only the target, giving him poison by proxy like that seems unacceptably risky to me.
But, sure, okay. She killed the guy with a coin, in some fashion.
…yay?
Ambivalence: it’s what’s for breakfast!
But that’s always been my response to this entire League of Creepy Assassins storyline, I think, so it’s not like that’s anything new.
What is new, though, is this whole Face/Off thing with the, er, faces. Because that was not freaky at all, no sir.
…Cool, true. But also freaky. And, of course, deeply creepy and macabre, because these guys are nothing if not loyal to a theme, and that theme is DEATH.
Deaaaaaaaaaaaath. Death death death death death (lunch) death death death death. Death everywhere. All death, all the time. They are so into death that even Goths be like, dudes, ease up on the death thing, damn.
It seems like a very depressing way of life. Also very Vitamin D deficient.
That said, other than the specific trappings where you magically glue dead people’s faces to you and have to experience their trauma (YEEEEEEEK), the training Arya’s getting in the (Bau)haus der Schwarzweiss is not functionally all that different from what I’m sure you get in just about any assassin training program – which is to disassociate yourself from what it is you’re actually doing, namely, killing people for no other reason than that you were told by your superiors to do it. It’s about learning how to be cold-blooded – possibly, in this case, literally so.
And they are totally right that this is not what Arya has ever been. Arya may not have always had the firmest grasp on the morality of murder (or lack thereof) before coming to Braavos, but the one thing you could definitely say about her is that she never killed anyone without having a (usually highly personal) reason to do so. Whether they were good reasons is, obviously, a matter of debate, but the point is that before this (as far as I remember, anyhow) Arya never killed at random, or without what she considered a compelling personal rationale for why that person had to die.
Until now, of course.
So I guess this a (depressing) watershed moment for Arya. The League of Creepy Assassins still don’t fully trust her, naturally, but it seems that she’s passed a major test here and is now getting further into their Creepy Death Sanctum, both literally and figuratively. Another ambivalent yayyyyy.
Basically what I’m hoping (and I’m sure I’ve said this before, but what can I say, it hasn’t changed) is that Arya learns all their creepy assassin ninjaing skills (and also, apparently, their creepy face-swapping magicking skills, YEEEK), and then is promptly like “fuck this amoral disassociation shit, I gots me some grudges to fulfill” and goes back to her at-least-killing-people-for-personal-reasons ways.
…Yeah, that doesn’t sound right at all when you put it that way. But you know what I mean. Plague-face dude said she had “a wolf’s eyes” like it was a bad thing, but I would far rather Arya be a vengeful wolf than a cold-blooded assassin, all things considered.
(Also, writing this chapter’s summary while listening to “Bela’s Lugosi’s Dead”, like you do, amped up the creepy factor by at least an order of magnitude. I need to stop freaking myself out right before I go to bed…)
And that’s the UNDEAD UNDEAD UNDEAD story, y’all. See you next Thursday for more!
Except, this guy probably was evil. I mean, how many people come in and pay the steep price to the Faceless Men to kill some innocent person. To me, he wouldn’t betray a captain that could have his men come and beat him up, so it was likely insurance to be paid to some family that didn’t have the means to get at him some other way, meaning a poor single mother and orphans, now penniless because of this insurance douche.
I didn’t have a problem with this guy dying other than the effect it may have on Arya of course.
The Victorian chapter was just horrible and Leigh, he has a lot of fans on Westeros.org…a lot.
The thing you missed about Arya’s chapter is that she noticed that the man tested the coins by biting them. So it was an ingestible poison she put on the coin.
To quote the relevant passage:
“He never looked at the coins. Instead he bit them, always on the left side of his mouth, where he still had all his teeth.”
I was wondering how badly you would react to this “lovely” Victarion chapter.
Thank you for not disappointing.
Arya continues to impress me with her versatility. She can be whatever she needs to be, both to survive and to gather the skills she needs to keep surviving. In this series especially, survival is an advanced skill. Apparently her father and brother did not have the necessary flexibility, and Sansa’s display of the same characteristics comes in a political arena, no less bloody but the daggers flash in the dark.
In other news, the entire Mereen plot line and anything associated with it annoys me deeply.
@@@@@Victarion:
Have to split this into 2 parts. First off, I think this guy has broken our reviewer. Originally it was all “I hate titles”. Now its “Boo, how dare he have his real name!”. Reviewer wants Arya to kill for her own reasons, when presented with Victarion, who does nothing but kill for his own reasons, reviewer is dismayed.
Having finished wagging finger at reviewer though, share reviewer’s opinion. Victarion is a wound in the world, needs to be gone. Worrisome that he seems like exactly the kind of thug Dany is partial to. Hope she doesn’t try and bring him on board if/when they meet.
@@@@@ Arya
No giant shock that Arya is willing to kill the innocent in order to kill her targets, but still a deeply saddening moment. I wanted to root for Arya to defeat evil. Her becoming evil in order to do so is deeply in keeping with AOIAF’s principles, but kicks me right in the heart. Arya doesn’t understand that what she hates Illyn Payne for exactly what she just did, killing someone on someone else’s orders. Is there a chibi Arya who saw the insurance salesman die and seeks revenge? Will chibi Arya join the same assassin’s group to get the skills necessary? Is the group entirely composed of people seeking revenge on their sempai? Sheesh.
I think the means behind the insurance guy’s death is that Arya put one of the special “Valar Morghulis” coins into the rich man’s purse. When he paid the insurance guy with it the insurer had a heart attack from fear, and died.
One of my favorite lines in the series is when Arya says “I can be more humble than anyone”. The irony of that statement gets me laughing every time.
And Leigh, the key element to Arya’s plan was that her target always bit every coin that he was paid with. It wasn’t enough just to touch the poisoned coin, but if he put it in his mouth then the poison would enter his system and he would shortly die. Thus, by replacing one of the coins with which another man would pay him, she effectively killed her target without ever having to get close to him.
Thanks for your awesome post. We missed you last week. I look forward to this every week.
Would it be considered a spoiler to clear up how Arya knew the coin would kill the target specifically?
The bats have left the belltower…UNDEAD!
At this point, I was starting to enjoy Victarion’s chapters because I was laughing out loud at his stupidity. It’s a dark humor, of course, what with innocent people horribly dying, but Victarion with his skewed world view, self-pity, inflated sense of self and cluelessness is funny as a POV character in a similar way that Cerseiis (and Chett to an extent). The only terrible person with a POV whose POV chapter was not funny, but was chilling and fascinating, is Varamyr, because he was fully aware how terrible he was, and did not care.
In the Arya chapter, though it’s been a while since I read it, what I remember the most is the conversation about the “ugly little girl” between Arya and the Kindly Man. The faces in the House of Black and White all belong to dead people who came to the House; Arya assumed that the girl came to ask them to kill her abusive father, but the Kindly Man reveals that she actually came to ask them for her own death, incapable of bearing the abusive life she was living anymore. It’s a sad, chilling story, and Arya’s reaction shows that she is still the same girl who believes in justice and wants to punish bad people who abuse others – she says they should have killed the father, not the girl. But the Kindly Man insists that it is not on them to decide who deserves to die; basically, they just act upon the wishes of those who contact them.
All of this, plus I hope she somehow burns the joint down on the way out with all the Faceless Persons inside. Their whole “oh, we don’t judge people we just kill them” routine gets on my last damned nerve.
In other news, the Ironborn are still the worst.
If the Drowned God and the Seven are really out there, they better step their game up. R’hllor is drinking their milkshake.
Kraken and Dark Flame. Two great tastes that, well, whatever.
we’ve already seen this method of assassination in the prologue of A Feast for Crows.
“Near the end, before the smoking ketch was swallowed by the sea, the cries of the seven sweetlings changed to joyous song, it seemed to Victarion Greyjoy. A great wind came up then, a wind that filled their sails and swept them north and east and north again, toward Meereen and its pyramids of many-colored bricks. On wings of song I fly to you, Daenerys, the iron captain thought.”
Aw, how romantic, Victarion!
Leigh, way back when you were reviewing ASOS, you memorably described Walder Frey as a “giant infectious bowl of rotting pig anuses”. Now you’re describing Victarion as a “giant bowl of rotting dicks”. What is it with you and bowls of decaying flesh?
All this hate for the Faceless Men!
Here’s the thing, in this world of might makes right, the Faceless Men are the ONLY equalizer between the powerful and the powerless. It’s no mistake that the Faceless Men are based out of the one democratic city, with the least amount of economic exploitation and oppression, founded by former slaves.
A feudal serf stuck under a raping torturing overlord? Faceless Men will help you. Don’t have the cash to pay? The Faceless Men don’t take money.
It’s not an ideal solution, but this is not an ideal world.
What are the faceless men paid with, exactly? I don’t remember.
I keep trying to write a fanfic where the Discworld’s Death fills in for a while on Westeros, and has a conversation with the Faceless Men, but I just can’t get the language right.
Because that conversation would be awesome.
Four updates left. Sad. But, are we then set for a GOT series watch? Or a re-read?
@18, I’m not sure if it’s been said yet, but the price is a life
Sorry, I can’t really get behind the Faceless Men either, seeing as how they take being ‘unjudgmental’ to such an extreme. I also have been rather confused about what they are paid in as well. How did the penniless mother/orphans come up with the fee? Or do they pay with their own life? Is there something I’m completely forgetting?
@Aeryl –
But the Faceless Men don’t judge. If you can pay, they’ll kill. So sure, they’ll kill Roose Bolton for you. But if he had been willing to pay their price, Littlefinger could’ve had Ned killed for another shot at Cat. Or Lyn Corbray could pay to remove the parent of some kid he’s trying to groom. Justice is a non-factor for them.
Also, I don’t think it’s correct that they don’t take money. LF says something to the effect that they could hire a sellsword company for what it would cost to hire a FM. There’s a theory that they were once paid with a dragon egg. They set their “price” on a case by case basis.
Yup, they work with your profit margin to determine their fee, like American Express.
Man, and no one has mentioned the amazingly awesomest part of the Victarion chapters.
1. As Ironborn, he worships the Drowned God in a monotheistic culture. According to his bro, the priest, there can only be the Drowned God and all others are fake.
2. After getting saved by Moqorro, he now worships Rhi’ilor, who also has a monotheistic following. According to Meli, there is the Lord of Light and an evil god represented by the others and all other gods are fake.
3. Victarion, not understanding these concepts (or able to spell or likely even pronounce “monotheism”) simply worships both of them equally, coming up with great ideas like “if we send them out on a burning raft, they’ll be charred AND drown, so BOTH GODS GET THE OFFERING AND I WIN!!!!”. He’s essentially a devout adherent to two gods who’d both look at the other as a false idol, sees nothing wrong with this and just single-mindedly goes towards his goal under the belief that both gods are going to work for him and he’s now unstoppable. Despite the fact that if both gods are real gods, both are going be getting more and more peeved with him to the point where he’s destined to, well, be simultaneously charred and drowned.
This is like the greatest thing ever. A pinnacle in the field of “Achievements of the Ignorant and Stupid”. Personally, I look forward to any Victarion updates just to see what happens next. In a moment of doubt, will he add the Seven to his worship (“Now 9 gods follow me; the world belongs to ME!!!!”)? Worship both Rhi’ilor and his Adversary at the same time? Burn his priest brother for daring to tell him that the Drowned God isn’t cool with adherents taking on new gods to follow? Drown Meli for looking at him all funny-like when he explains how he is blessed by her god and one she doesn’t remotely recognize? Turn in to the next book (at a date to be determined in the next decade or so) to find out!
“Do you have any idea how costly they are? You could hire an army of common sellswords for half the price, and that’s for a merchant. I don’t dare think what they might ask for a princess.” – GOT, Eddard VIII
Also, have some So Spake Martin.
@22, That’s because ignorant Westerosi think their price of a life is a euphemism.
@23, She paid it herself, with her life
That’s why the objections aren’t really relevant. People seeking the Faceless Men to kill to enrich their own power don’t live to have that power.
@Aeryl – Do you have a source for any of that? I don’t recall reading it, and if the dragon egg theory is correct (and I believe that it is) it’s definitely wrong.
@6, Dany has a thing for big tough warriors, true, but Victarion has a thing for raping and murdering women, so I don’t think she’d find him all that charming, on balance.
@28, What do you think is inside a dragon egg? Life takes many forms.
And the source is a spoiler. Rollover The TV show has confirmed that’s the price.
Yes Victarion is a total dick. But he is a dick who gets shit done. After the endless boredom of the Meereen chapters in the last 2 books, he is a relief. Sure, I hope he gets himself killed. But he’ll do it in an awesome bloody way.
But if you can pay that way, it defeats your objection to hiring a FM to gain power. I mean sure, it may come back to bite you at some point, but valar morghulis. Until then you can enjoy your ill-gotten gain.
What’s more important though is that the discussion amongst the FM themselves explicitly denies any moral calculus to their decision to grant the “gift.”
@32, I agree the dragon egg is a loophole. But eventually, somebody will be willing to pay the price for that character.
I’ve already said the Faceless Men aren’t a perfect solution here. They are an attempt to redress the imbalance of power in this world. Where is the moral calculus among those who style themselves this world’s rulers? A construct such as the Faceless Men is a pretty natural consequence of the systems of power in this world. And again, Braavos is the most eglitarian city in this world. You don’t think that’s because everyone who runs the place knows they are just one really pissed off constituent away from being dead?
@1 Oh, just the fact that he sells insurance should tell you that he’s evil.
@29: Sure, but so does her merc boytoy. Viccy is almost exactly Daario all growd up.
I think Braavos is the way it is because it was founded by people escaping from jerks who thought having dragons meant they were above the laws of gods and men. In support of my point, I would note Dorne, which is also pretty egalitarian, was heavily influenced by refugees from Valyrian conquest.
Not to beat a dead horse, but the “pissed off constituent” could be the guy cheated by a tax farmer, but it could also be a crime boss looking to snuff a witness. The FM don’t care. I’ll say this and let it go: if you object to powerful people being able to kill for their own reasons without having to answer to anyone, the FM are part of the problem, not the solution.
but it could also be a crime boss looking to snuff a witness.
How would the crime boss pay?
Again, it’s NOT a perfect solution.
was founded by people escaping from jerks who thought having dragons meant they were above the laws of gods and men
And the equalizer between those people and their jerks? Death. Which is what the Faceless Men deliver
Annara Snow, I’m right there with you. I love Victarion and I’m not even ashamed of it.
He’s just a brute. A stupid, simple, brute. And in a series packed to the gills with triple-crossing Machiavelians and uncomfortable realpolitik, a dude who has exactly one gear — “Durr, me Victarion, me do piracy and kill things until get what me want” — is refreshing. He’s like a sorbet.
@35, not really, no. Daario is a charming rake (or at any rate he was clearly intended to be, how successful that was is questionable). Victarion is a slack-jawed murder machine. Dany made No Rape Whatsoever a deal-breaker policy when she was in charge of a khalassar, and frees slaves wherever she finds them. The entire Iron Islands culture is anathema to her. And Victarion is Iron Islands culture distilled into its purest form.
@ 7. MDNY
I agree, but what was even more funny was the way the man reacted to her. That he knew how diligent she was means the FM have spoken about her. She is such a huge treasure for them, a Westerosi noble, who is not stuck in her nobility, will scrub stairs without complaint, work hard to master almost any skill, and can kill. Someone who can act as a servant or noble with ease, big treasure.
On another note, I don’t understand why anyone does anything wrong in Braavos.
The ducky woman is mute, so she can only communicate via selfies.
On his way to his wife, Odysseus had no problem having sex with about every woman he encountered, but Victarion is not like that. Our noble hero defeats the evil slavers, frees the slaves, and he won’t even have sex with them like lesser heroes would, no, he goes directly for the sacrifice! He’s also ready to stand up for his friend against the racist comments… By slaughtering everyone. He’s solving religious crises by sacrificing people to all gods equally! It’s clear to me why Victarion has so many fans: he’s a true hero.
Arya is at a point where becoming an assassin is the moral thing to do for her. Here, she’s willing to kill someone she knows nothing about because she’s told to do so, but she would also kill his bodyguards just because it seems more convenient to her. The rules of the House of Black and White actually limit her killing.
So many systems of redress in Westeros favor the powerful, virtuality none exist for commoners (for lack of a better word). Theon killing a couple of kids? Barely gets a mention. Tywin ordering the gang rape of an 11 year old? Tyrion is the only one angsty about it and only because he was in love with her. Stannis probably would punish these dudes appropriately but nobody likes him. The commoners cannot thwart the whims of the mighty short of a region-wide revolt that’ll get way too many of them killed and may not even be effective against some of the more brutal Lords. If you aren’t some kind of magic user then you are screwed.
What the Faceless do is undoubtedly shitty, no denying that. But if the poor and powerless can walk in with a stale loaf of bread and put a hit out on a person with power to address a grievance then so be it. In the world they live in, what else could they possibly do? Are they not allowed justice, even vengeance just because they weren’t born Lannister, Stark, or Targaren? Maybe these top guys would behave better if the Faceless set up a church at Kings Landing.
I actually posted my first comment (22) before I saw your comment at 21. :)
Anyway, I can see what you mean about it being a check on the powerful, but for that price….meh. (I acknowledge that you are saying this isn’t an ideal solution). And I think there are some horrible people that would be spiteful enough to take somebody down with them…
*big grin* I’ve waited so long for you to endure that awful chapter. To celebrate, I shall saute calamari for dinner and pretend it’s “Commodore Douchecanoe.”
Note that he drowned the male prostitutes for being “unnatural” but allowed his crew to rape Maester Kerwin. Mind you, he always exemplified rape-victim-blaming.
Someone on towerofthehand said “Hurricane Victarion is churning in Slaver’s Bay.” That’s the nicest way to put it.
@39: Woah, do you seriously think Daario isn’t a rapist? It literally had never occurred to me that he might not be. I guess anything is possible.
It would be a huge surprise though. We first meet this guy when he murders his friends and brings their heads to his new boss as tribute. His suggestion of “how do I handle street murders and insurrection” is basically “fear will keep them in line. Have a big wedding, slaughter all the blacks Meereenese dumb enough to trust us and everything will be fine”.
Dany once tells him that he loved a hundred women before he met her. He corrects that to a thousand. I guess you are saying he wooed them all? (presumably they are both exaggerating the # here. Dozens feels right) I have to grant that its a possibility, but it feels out of character to me. Bonus question, in your mind, how many of them died at his hands?
Further, I don’t agree that the Iron Islands is anathema to our girl. Remember, she crucifies folks after they surrender. She reopens the fighting pits. Her family has a recurring theme of burning people alive (hi Mirri Maz Duur!). The Island credo is more or less that might makes right, everything is the victim’s fault. (you’ll note that she burned Mirri alive for killing her kid, yet when she killed the goat herder’s kid she didn’t seem to feel that she should suffer for it. Any islander would understand the difference, Dany strong Mirri weak).
I think Dany visiting the Isles goes about like this.
Vikings: Patriarchy!
Dany: Bow!
Vikings: Never!
Dragons : Rarrgh!
Vikings: Double Never!
Dragons : Omnomnomnom!
Dany: Double Bow!
Survivors: OK!
Dany: Crucifications!
Survivors: Darn!
Dany: Enlist!
Double Survivors: OK!
and the beat goes on…
@44: I know, right? Its a fascinating knot of bigotry.
His response to Kerwin’s rape is vintage Islander. Here’s a knife, if it happens again its your fault (since everything is the victim’s fault). The most important thing to note here is that he’s ok with both his men and the Maester thereafter. Neither dudes who stick their members in other dudes nor victims it happens to are a problem for Viccy.
Yet when he encounters the male prostitutes he has them burned for being “unnatural”. The implications are fantastically gross. Guys raping other dudes, ok. Guys who get raped, ok. Guys trained to be good at screwing other dudes, monsters who must be drowned! Its one of the most perverse and noxious belief systems I’ve ever read about.
Re: Faceless Men and House of B&W:
I’d like to dedicate a new song to them. It doubtlessly captures their philosophy perfectly well
Here it is:
The memories of a man in his old age
Are the deeds of a man in his prime
You shuffle in the gloom of the sickroom
And talk to yourself as you die
Life is a short warm moment
And death is a long cold rest
You get your chance to try, in the twinkling of an eye
Eighty years, with luck, or even less
So all aboard for the Braavosi tour
And maybe you’ll make it to the top
But mind how you go, and I can teel you ‘cos I know
You may find it hard to get off
But you are the angel of death
And I am the dead man’s son
He was buried like a mole in a fox-hole
And everyone’s still on the run
And who is the master of foxhounds?
And who says the hunt has begun?
And who calls the tune in the courtroom?
And who beats the funeral drum?
The memories of a man in his old age
Are the deeds of a man in his prime!
You shuffle in the gloom of the sickroom
And talk to yourself as you die.
There. What do you think?
@45, the conversation isn’t about who these guys actually are, remember, it’s about Dany’s reaction to them. It’s about seeing them through her eyes. Daario is a violent and effective killer, yes, but in this world that is considered a virtue. He’s a guy who can get stuff done. And Dany has never seen him rape anyone, regardless of how sure we the readers might be that it most probably happened. And she also finds him personally charming, and so makes allowances for him on that basis. Victarion on the other hand has zero charm, and makes no attempt to hide his sick victim-blaming philosophy, or penchant for purposeless slaughter, which you may argue is no different from Daario’s, but I simply disagree with that. And I don’t see Victarion being able to charm her at all.
We are in perfect agreement that Daario is pretty much irredeemable human garbage, though. I don’t deny that for a moment.
The price for hiring a Faceless Man depends on the customer; it’s always something they can pay, but always very dear. Remember the price they charged the waif’s father was 2/3 of his wealth and his only daughter. In purely monetary terms, this is probably much, much smaller than they would have charged the king of Westeros to kill Daenerys.
What if somebody really rich tried to hire somebody poor to contract with the Faceless Men to kill his enemy? I suspect they have (magical) ways of figuring this out, and that it isn’t allowed.
@46: Good point. Vic had nothing but contempt for Kerwin (or most humans, really) but didn’t actually kill him for getting raped. Though when he got in a sacrificey mood…
Vic thinking the Dothraki Sea is an actual sea…hah. Ironborn in general might not know much about the Dothraki, given Aeron’s belief that horses “made men weak.”
It kind of pleases me that Arya briefly became Molly Malone Cat of the Canals again to investigate her victim. Have I mentioned that I could read a whole book of her adventures in this guise? It would be a lot more interesting to me than ///Targaryens killing each other///, Martin.
@45:
” Remember, she crucifies folks after they surrender.”
No, I don’t remember. Please tell us when that happened. It certainly did not happen in A Song of Ice and Fire. The only folks Dany crucified were slavers who not only did not surrender, but crucified 163 slave children just to spite her. Then she took their city and captured them.
“She reopens the fighting pits.”
Yes, as a compromise with the Meereenese who kept asking for them to be reopened, including her hubby (who she married just to make peace in the city) and the ex-slave fighters who wanted to fight. After having refused and refused and refused, since she finds it disgusting.
So wait, are you in favor of Dany making compromises with the ex-slavers and against violence, or are you for violence against ex-slavers and against compromise? Make up your mind!
“Her family has a recurring theme of burning people alive (hi Mirri Maz Duur!). The Island credo is more or less that might makes right, everything is the victim’s fault. (you’ll note that she burned Mirri alive for killing her kid, yet when she killed the goat herder’s kid she didn’t seem to feel that she should suffer for it. Any islander would understand the difference, Dany strong Mirri weak).”
When SHE killed the goat herder’s kid? When did that happen? In some Dany-hater fanfic?
Or are you saying that Dany and Drogon are one person? And that Dany should have burned herself alive for something Drogon did?
Look, it’s OK to be a Dany-hater, but at least try to make sense and not make up things that never happened, OK?
I find it makes reading Victarion chapters easier if you picture Moroqo making faces behind Victarion’s back making fun of Vic’s stupidity. Being able to keep a straight face when Victarion is talking is some kind of super power. And as Leigh says it helps to remember that this murder dullard is going to be unleashed on slavers.
As we are still a few decades from the next book will Leigh be going over the spoiler chapters?
“Every night in my fires, I glimpse the glory that awaits you.” — Moqorro to Victarion
I very much hope that this means his “glory” will actually be fire, i.e. getting roasted. And preferably eaten by a dragon, so his presence will never sully the Drowned God’s realm.
@51: Exactly. And while we’re on the subject:
* She later refers to the act as a “horror” on the same level as the Plaza of Punishment back in Astapor, even though she tries to justify it by claiming it was “for the children”.
* On the opening day, she grows more disgusted by the whole thing as the day wears on, and is about to leave when Drogon shows up. (Not to mention that she saves Tyrion and Penny from being eaten by lions, even though they are just two random little people to her at this point.)
* Dany was horrified by Hazzea’s death, enough so to have Viserion and Rhaegal locked up, and holds herself responsible for what happened. (“If they are monsters, then so am I.”) She also paid Hazzea’s father a weregild for her death, and promised to give him money every year on her nameday, when the Shavepate was telling her to have him killed (or have his tongue torn out at the very least.)
Leigh, as usual you are as hilarious and insightful as ever. But the real reason I’m commenting is this:
I was one of your harshest critics in the last few chapters for what I perceived as you mentioning female suffering and ignoring the male suffering. I was bitching and moaning and being a drama king about this issue, because it truly upset me. When I read this chapter and saw that they killed some girls and drowned some guys, I was kind of expecting the same thing, but didn’t plan on commenting on it as I did 2-3 weeks ago. I know it’s a minor thing for most people, but I am so happy that you mentioned both the male deaths and the female deaths (that sounds messed up out of context), but I’ve absolutely loved following your analysis of the books and I’ve learned so much about the way I think about women and how much more fucked up women have it than men. Throughout this read of ASOIAF, I’ve learned more about feminism and gender equality than I’ve ever learned in my life and I’m 26 years old. So you might understand when, after all that, I see what I think might be you favoring a woman’s perspective by ignoring a rape of a man for example. It’s like if Thomas Jefferson was my mentor and he was always telling me ‘All Men Are Created Equal’ and then introduces me to his slaves. But this week, you did mention the innocent people killed regardless of gender and I honestly, truly thank you for it. In fact, thank you for all of it. This awesome blog, opening my eyes on certain issues, and more specifically to this post thank you for mentioning the human suffering instead of just the female suffering. Thank you.
Helloooooo. Why doesn’t anybody say anything about my songs? This one is spot-on on one of the themes we’re talking about today! Please say something!
Ayra killed the man in the same manner Pate from the A Feast For Crows prologue was killed.
You continue calling Victarion “Captain Manpain,” but I found no evidence of manpain in this chapter, only cold, emotionless, confident brutality. Not an improvement, IMO.
@47: Who is “buried like a mole in a foxhole”? I initially thought of Arya — she seems a vulnerable little creature in a nest of predators, but is actually in an environment where she thrives — but it says “He.” Oh…her victim, perhaps?
Something else I’ve remembered from one of your previous posts, Leigh… in Victarion’s first chapter from AFFC, in regards to racism on Commodore Douchecanoe’s part, you said, “All we need is some ableism and homophobia thrown in and I think we get Asshole Bingo! YAY.” Well, Victarion just had a bunch of gay kids sacrificed in this chapter, so he’s one square away from winning Asshole Bingo.
Did anyone notice how much better Moqorro is at predicting stuff than vague Melisandre? Compensation for not being able to create Shadowbabies?
«Resembling Fantasy: Studying the Game of Awareness with George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones» (Helice Magazine of Speculative Fiction):
http://www.revistahelice.com/revista/Helice_1_vol_II.pdf
@60
Maybe it’s because he is closer to the source.
@48:
I think my disagreement is that where you think that Dany is attracted to Daario’s charm, I think she is drawn to his strength, or, call it his directness. It is super revealing that she’s basically presiding over Reconstruction, and she finds the guy who is like “let’s have a massacre, see if that helps” to be totes fetch.
Viccy isn’t far from Khal Drogo come round again. He’s a mountain of muscle who makes the confusing talky folks die. I think that Dany will find that deeply appealing.
@51:
Woah, I don’t hate Dany. She’s awesome, definitely my favorite part of this novel.
re: killing prisoners. Um, they did surrender, or they’d still be fighting her soldiers. Being captured entails surrendering, barring exceptional circumstances. Its not a super important part of the equation though, we can pretend that her hundred plus victims had all been knocked unconscious in the battle if you like. The point is that Dany is ok with violence visited upon the helpless. I will leave how many atrocity points rapes are worth vs. crucifications up to you, but Dany is easily in Viccy’s league.
re: Drogon not responsible for Dany: “Intentions aren’t magic”. If I bring a pit bull to a day care and go talk to the adult by my car, then come inside and find that the inevitable has happened, am I a murderer? I guess you could say that technically I/she’s not, but for serious here. She hatched those eggs, she brought them here, Drogon killed that kid. Reviewers mockery of Viccy’s manpain over murdering his wife is exactly appropriate to Dany’s womanpain over that kid’s death.
re: for or against violence:
I’m making the case that Dany and Viccy are compatible. He is the sort of guy who would like a woman who owns fighting pits. I’m not saying that she’s good or bad for this, I’m saying he’ll think its hawt.
Overall, I feel like you took me making the case that Dany and Viccy might be attracted to one another as an attack on Dany, which isn’t how I meant it at all. Attacking fictional characters is dumb. I’m speculating as to where the story might go, using only the info delivered thus far.
@60, 62
Moqo is higher level.
@@@@@ 64.- Yes, definitely better prediction skills. The real question is, which of them is in the right place to find Azor Ahai and help fight the Great Other?
Dany’s hands certainly aren’t clean but it’s an untenable stretch to say she’s in Victarion’s league. Intentions aren’t magic, but they aren’t completely irrelevant either. For example, the penalties for different classes of homicide are largely based on the criminal intent involved (purposely, knowingly, recklessly, negligently). Negligent homicide isn’t punished as seriously as murder (purposeful). Your pit bull example would reckless homicide. Vic killing his wife is either murder or voluntary manslaughter, both or which are punished more seriously than reckless homicide.
Also, Dany wouldn’t be attracted to Vic’s brutality because he killed innocents. We know she has a soft spot for slaves, and from her point of view, neither Mirri nor the Great Masters she crucified were “innocent.” Mirri betrayed her trust, zombified Drogo, and killed Rhaego. The Great Masters were evil slavers who crucified kids. She only opened the pits because the fighters asked for it and appealed to her love of freedom in doing so (if we’re free, shouldn’t we be free to fight?). None of those folks Vic drowned or burned asked to give themselves to his gods. Finally, I doubt she would see any nuance between thralls and slaves.
You might consider these to be distinctions without difference, but they would matter to Dany, and would almost certainly preclude any attraction to Vic.
Just to amend my last sentence, she might find Victarion physically attractive, but I don’t think she would want anything to do with him. The same way I imagine I’d feel if I met Cersei or Melisandre.
@Owlay
I liked the song. Pretty cool. Fit the tone of the chapter /book well.
Wow lots of posts yesterday, just want to add a couple things. As someone else pointed out, the price of the Faceless Men isn’t always a life, it can be income, or a child, but whatever it is it’s always something the person hiring them can afford, and is always a very dear price. You can’t really use the show as a guide to book canon in a lot of cases.
Also, the Masters Dany crucified had surrendered, I believe the price of 163 Masters to crucify was part of the price of letting them surrender actually. And there was no attempt to determine whether the Masters she crucified were actually the ones responsible for the crucifixion of the children. We have no reason to believe they were all responsible or even knew anything about it in advance, so it’s extremely likely that Dany did crucify some people who were innocent of that particular crime, and may even have missed the guilty parties completely. That being said they were all slavers who did horrible things, so meh I don’t really care that she killed them, but the fact remains they were being punished in retribution for a crime they may not have been involved in personally, without trials, in a very eye for an eye fashion. Again not saying I agree or disagree, when it happened in the books I’m pretty sure I was like “Yeah! Take that evil slavers!”, so let’s not try to whitewash Dany completely.
@63: Congratulations, with that “Dany feeling terrible when she realized Drogon had killed a child is just like Victarion’s self-pity over beating his wife to death”, you win the award for most absurd comparison that’s probably ever been posted on this website by a person who meant it seriously. (Unless your posts are just satire.)
And BTW, no, I don’t think that, when a bunch of people who can’t fight – and were relying on others fight for them – are captured when their city is taken in a battle, they can be said to have “surrendered” just because they did not fall bravely fighting people who may the best warriors in all the world. By your logic, if an army laid siege to the Twins and then took it in spite of Lord Walder Frey ordering his entire family to fight, throw boiling oil on the enemies and kill any hostages whose deaths would hurt the enemy army, if the then captured Walder Frey – he should be considered to have “surrendered” if he did not die in personal combat with the best knights of Westeros. Right.
@69, The only person who’s said the FM take money is the waif, when telling “her” story to Arya. But at that time, she has a vested interest in lying to Arya, in demonstrating the ability to take on a different identity. Arya believing her is an indicator that she’s not ready to become No One, if she were, she would detect the lie.
You also assume that payment of a life, means a death, when a living life is much more valuable. So, the person who gave over their child to the Faceless Men DID pay with a life.
And remember what Mirri told us? “Only Death Can Pay For Life”. And only life, can pay for death.
@70:
I don’t think that’s an absurd comparison at all. I’m open to you explaining why though. Maybe I’ve missed something.
My view: Both characters experienced serious angst. The author presents both of their angst sincerely, using the reader’s insight into the characters minds to let us know that they truly feel this sorrow and regret. In both cases that angst makes me sneer. You don’t get to beat your wife to death and then get sympathy from me about how it makes you feel. Forget that noise. I don’t give a fuck if your culture says you have to do it because she screwed your brother. Don’t kill your wife! Similarly, if you let your dragon hunt, then you are responsible for whatever it burns. (obviously!) Feel bad about it? Maybe feed it next time. Letting them range and hunt freely is psychotic behavior, the sort of thing I’d expect from her father or her brother.
I’m genuinely curious about the “surrender” thing. It seems like you are taking issue with a definition. Yes, I guess, in response to your hypothetical, if Waldur’s response to the Kingsguard’s “Surrender or die” is to drop his sword, then he has surrendered. If he fights them and they kill him, then he didn’t. In any case where Cersei (or whoever) gets to pronounce sentence on him he either surrendered at some point or was knocked unconscious while resisting.
Like I said though, I’m fine if we say that Dany’s victims were captured. Whether they officially said the words or not isn’t of interest to me. They were within her power, and she used that opportunity to have them tortured unto death. Ergo, Viccy’s brutality isn’t going to be a deal breaker for her.
Ok, only through the first chapter… loved the summary. It sums up this entire book to me! This, of any book I’ve ever read, is significantly better to THINK ABOUT and DISSECT than it is to READ. This book is like the movie SE7EN. I’ve no doubt it is incredibly well made, and thought provoking, and everyone involved knew exactly what they were doing. It is excellent. But if you can say you ENJOYED it, then there’s a 50% chance you are insane.
Whether Dany and Victarion become allies, lovers or enemies, it seems fairly certain that Dany’s army will use the Iron Fleet to reach Westeros. I mean, how else is she going to find dozens of ships ready and willing to do just that? It’s almost too convenient, if it weren’t for the complications.
I think the crux of the matter here is Dragonbinder. I don’t know how Victarion can convince her that this horn is harmless. He isn’t a very subtle character. Maybe Moqorro could try something, but if things got down to a contest between Victarion and Dany, the red priest’s loyalty would probably go to Dany. So bad news for Victarion.
Reading Arya chapters just makes me sad. I really hope GRRM has a plan to use all her assassination skills for something more interesting and rewarding than killing some random insurance salesman. And I also hope she gets “back to the story” eventually. Maybe as part of Dany’s entourage? Two of my favorite characters combined? Please?
@47 and @56: It’s kinda hard to sing a song if we don’t know the rhythm. If this is a parody of a famous song, I didn’t recognize it. I liked the lyrics, though.
@74:
If you want the melody, look up Pink Floyd’s “Free Four” on Youtube.
@@@@@71. Aeryl
(roll over for possible spoilers)
For what it’s worth I agree with you, they require sacrifice from their clients, which comes, sometimes from money, but only from those that truly value money, so for LF, they may have beggared him, but, that’s not always the case. I am also quite sure (don’t watch the show, if it’s relevant) that Euron paid them his most valued possession, a dragon egg, to kill Balon. To Euron, before Dany, a dragon egg was everything to him, because he dreamed of ruling like Aegon, but with a way darker tone. Dany is why he can be so light about the subject when lying to Victorian about what happened to his egg.
Also, way back
@@@@@34. Tabbyfl55
Insurance itself is not evil, it’s the for profit nature of modern insurance companies that is evil, like all things it was corrupted by greed.
(Moderator note: message edited to white out possible spoilers)
MORE interesting and rewarding than killing a random insurance salesman?
MORE?
How is that even possible?
(roll over for spoilers)
@76. that Euron paid them his most valued possession, a dragon egg, to kill Balon.
Which is also, a life.
(Moderator note: Message edited to white out possible spoilers.)
Mods: comment 76 contains a spoiler, in that it has speculation that most fans agree with, but was never mentioned by Leigh…
Oh, shit does mine?
@@@@@80 Aeryl- yes, your comment @@@@@78 repeats exactly what I was talking about ;)
@@@@@ Mods- Comment 78 quotes the spoiler I mentioned above.
Lol, not sure why we really need to worry about such minor spoilers at this point in the read. I mean, barring some unforeseen circumstances, Leigh should be done with the main series before Hallow’s Eve, no? I’m not saying that we should get all spoilery now or anything, but with the end so near, I don’t know. You know?
Also, Aeryl, you should click on the So Spake Martin quote above (if you haven’t already), GRRM answers the question of how the faceless men set their assassination price.
@82, I read it, and I don’t buy it.
On the Faceless Men, is there any evidence that they at least look into their employers claim to make sure they are accurate? If not, what would stop someone with a persecution complex and nothing to lose from offering up their lives, just so they can take an innocent who they wrongly perceive to have wronged them down with them?
@19 And the guy Arya assassinated was Twoflower, trying to sell inn-sewer-ants.
Funny thing – Victarion’s sscrifice was in a way a nod to the Seven, too, considering it was 7 slave girls that he sacrificed.
@84 Now that It think about it I don’t think the faceless men would care whether or not their employer’s claim is accurate.