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 43 of A Dance With Dragons, in which we cover Chapter 71 (“Daenerys”) and the Epilogue.
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 71: Daenerys
What Happens
Deep in the Dothraki Sea, Dany climbs down from the den Drogon has made for himself, which she calls Dragonstone after the place of her birth, and sets out across the plain. She would rather have returned to Meereen on dragonback, but Drogon had shown no interest in going back to the city, and while Dany could partially control him she could not make him do anything he really didn’t want to. So despite her love of riding the dragon, she was walking away from him, much as it pained her, back toward her obligations in Slaver’s Bay, and Hizdahr and his “tepid kisses.”
She thinks back on her time with Khal Drogo and the happiness she had almost found there, until it was destroyed by Mirri Maz Duur’s vengeance. As when her dragons had hatched, Drogon’s fire had only burned her hair, but she remembers how many other people had burned in the fighting pit in Meereen that day. She hopes that Barristan or even Daario will come after her; she knows Daario is a hostage of the Yunkai’i, but assures herself that they are surely heading home by now. She catches glimpses of Drogon flying as she walks that day, but only from a distance.
She shelters for the night in the ruins of a village, and wonders if Hizdahr had truly poisoned the locusts she’d seen Strong Belwas getting sick from. She doesn’t understand why he would want to kill her, and wonders if perhaps Reznak or the Yunkai’i or the Sons of the Harpy could have done it instead. She dreams of the prophecy Quaithe made her (“To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward, you must go back. To touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow”), and hears a whisper admonishing her to remember who she is, as the dragons do. She continues on the next, but soon becomes sick by drinking contaminated water and eating unknown berries; it gets bad enough that she fears she is dying.
She dreams of her brother Viserys, who blames her for all his misfortunes despite her protests, and wakes to find she is having her moon blood, though it is not yet time for it. She argues with the grass, which tells her her dragon blood is meaningless when she locked her dragons up and turned against her children. She worsens as she travels on, growing fevered and bleeding heavily. She thinks that Meereen will never be her home, and argues with an imaginary Jorah Mormont, who chastises her for not listening when he told her to abandon Meereen and go home to Westeros.
She sees the grass swaying, and hears soft bells, and knows someone is coming. She hides, and sees a Dothraki scout come through the grass. She thinks that if he sees her, he will either rape her, kill her, or send her to live with the crones of the dosh khaleen. Then the shadow of the dragon appears, and the scout runs off. Dany calls for Drogon until he comes to her, and mounts the dragon to follow the scout. They pass him and come upon a herd of horses, and Drogon brings one down and eats it. Dany eats alongside him. She thinks Hizdahr would be horrified to see her now, but Daario would laugh and eat alongside her.
As the western sky turned the color of a blood bruise, she heard the sound of approaching horses. Dany rose, wiped her hands on her ragged undertunic, and went to stand beside her dragon.
That was how Khal Jhaqo found her, when half a hundred mounted warriors emerged from the drifting smoke.
Commentary
First, before I start reading: OMG SHE’S ALIVE. I totally knew it.
Okay, I didn’t know it. But I REALLY FIERCELY hoped it.
And now that I have read it: Huh.
Well, as cliffhangers go, this isn’t the most cliffhanger-y, although it’s true that God only knows how now-Khal Jhaqo is going to react to see his former Khaleesi reduced (elevated?) to such a state. I’m not sure on the verb there, because on the one hand she’s all filthy and raggedy and starving and probably looking pretty damn rough by this point. But on the other hand, she’s standing next to a fucking dragon, sharing his meal like it ain’t no thang. Which, you know, might just trump any personal hygiene considerations re: mad respect. You never know.
And wow, Dany actually sort of did have the option to go live on a deserted island with her dragon and do nothing, in a manner of speaking! Except of course this is ASOIAF, so it was a supremely shitty “island” that she probably would have died of scurvy on if she hadn’t left. Typical.
Well, but at least Quaithe’s prophecy makes a tiny bit more sense to me now. Apparently to “go north”, i.e. to Westeros, she really needed to go “south”—e.g., well, pretty much everything she’s been doing since AGOT—first. I’m not sure this entirely reconciles me to the extremely violent lollygagging Dany’s been doing in Places-That-Are-Not-The-Seven-Kingdoms, Goddammit this entire series, but it’s at least a little mollifying to know there’s possibly a little predestination thrown in there that dictated it.
That said, if Dany doesn’t end up in Westeros before the end of this thing I will methodically throw every book in the series against the wall. Or possibly out of the window.
Not sure what all the unusual menstrual bleeding is about, unless it’s to indicate that she’s having a miscarriage. Or possibly that she is just super stressed-out, because periods, like digestive systems, can get seriously messed up in response to stress factors. But, whichever the case, it seems a little backwards in conjunction with the supposedly impossible prophecy that she’ll never see Drogo again until she gets pregnant. Not that I can see how that would work in any case. I guess I’ll have to see.
“I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl.”
No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words.
“Fire and Blood,” Daenerys told the swaying grass.
Cheery! But, so far, pretty accurate, too. Damn.
And, randomly:
“They will have heard the talk,” [Ser Barristan] had replied. “Naharis may even have boasted of Your Grace’s… of your great… regard… for him. If you will forgive my saying so, modesty is not one of the captain’s virtues. He takes great pride in his… his swordsmanship.”
OMG, I can picture how awkward Barristan would have been, trying to say this in a diplomatic way, and ending up blurting a dick joke. Haha, awesome.
So, bye, Dany! Hope you don’t die! See you in, uh, some indeterminate period of time between now and whenever the next book is published!
Epilogue
What Happens
Before the small council in King’s Landing, Ronnet Connington asks for support to fight against his uncle, and promises to bring them his head, along with that of “the false dragon.” Mace Tyrell tells Ronnet they will consider his request, and now-Lord Regent Ser Kevan sends him away. Lord Randyll Tarly notes that Ronnet’s men are mostly Gregor Clegane’s old cronies (i.e. rapists and murderers), foisted off on Ronnet by Jaime, and opines that the whole lot should go to the Wall. Kevan notes in conciliatory tones that the Mountain’s men are good fighters, and points out they might need them if Jon Connington’s forces are truly the Golden Company. Pycelle points out their steady encroachments along the coast, all the way to Storm’s End.
Tyrell doesn’t care about this, and wants to know why Margaery can’t be declared innocent already without bothering with a trial. Kevan reminds him that they are beset by enemies, and adding the High Septon to them will not help. Tyrell is not impressed by this, nor by Jon Connington, whom he remembers as a fool. Kevan thinks to himself that Connington had indeed been too bold and eager as a young man, but thinks age and experience has likely tempered him. Tarly and Tyrell also don’t think Connington’s claim of having a Targaryen is real either, but Kevan remembers that Aegon’s tiny corpse had been too mangled to identify for sure. Kevan also wants them to be wary of Daenerys Stormborn, who is said to have three dragons, and urges them to destroy Connington and his Targaryen pretender before she has a chance to ally with them.
They argue about money, or rather the lack of it, and also where the “silent giant” Ser Robert Strong had come from, who is to champion Queen Cersei in her trial. Kevan is not even sure if the knight is truly alive, judging by reports, and has a “strong suspicion” of who he really is; he thinks Tarly and Tyrell suspect the same thing he does, but it must be left alone until after the trial. He reminds Tyrell that if Cersei is found guilty of the various charges leveled against her, then Tommen will no longer be legitimately King, and ergo, his daughter Margaery will no longer be queen. He promises that Cersei, once pardoned, will have no further say in court affairs and will be sent back to Casterly Rock. He also thinks that Tyrell is awfully insistent about having his army present for his daughter’s trial for someone so apparently convinced of her innocence. After Tarly and Tyrell leave, both Pycelle and Ser Harys Swyft ask Kevan for armed guards, and Kevan reflects that he cannot allow any more Highgarden allies to be on the council, even with the Dornish Lady Nym coming to take her place on it. He wishes for Littlefinger, who had a gift for “conjuring dragons from thin air.”
He has dinner with Cersei and Tommen that evening, which he is not looking forward to, even though Cersei has been “subdued and submissive” since her walk of atonement. He tells himself he has nothing to feel guilty about, but misses her former spirit. He remembers how Tywin had brought down their father’s mistress in almost the same way, and thinks he would never have dreamed the same fate would befall his daughter. He’s surprised at his warm reception from Cersei, and thinks her request to have Taena Merryweather come back to court a modest and easily granted one. They talk of Jaime, and Cersei dismisses Kevan concerns, saying that she would know if Jaime died. She is surprised and then embarrassed to learn Kevan has had the Kettleblacks arrested for fornicating with the queen. They are interrupted by a message from Pycelle requesting Kevan’s presence at once.
Kevan enters Pycelle’s chambers to find the window open and a huge white raven on the sill. Kevan knows that those are only sent from the Citadel to herald the official change of seasons: it is winter. Then something slams into his chest, and he realizes it is a crossbow quarrel. Then he sees that Pycelle is dead, his skull bashed in. Varys emerges from the shadows and assures him that this wasn’t personal. He thinks Kevan is a “good man in service to a bad cause,” and was threatening to undo Cersei’s “good work” by reconciling Highgarden and Casterly Rock, and uniting the Seven Kingdoms under Tommen’s rule. He imagines Cersei will assume that the Tyrells murdered Kevan, or possibly Tyrion, while the Tyrells will suspect Cersei, and Tommen’s support will be undermined while “Aegon raises his banner above Storm’s End and the lords of the realm gather round him.” Kevan protests that Aegon is dead, but Varys tells him he is not, and far better prepared and suited to rule than Tommen would ever be.
“I am sorry.” Varys wrung his hands. “You are suffering, I know, yet here I stand going on like some silly old woman. Time to make an end to it.” The eunuch pursed his lips and gave a little whistle.
Ser Kevan was cold as ice, and every labored breath sent a fresh stab of pain through him. He glimpsed movement, heard the soft scuffling sound of slippered feet on stone. A child emerged from a pool of darkness, a pale boy in a ragged robe, no more than nine or ten. Another rose up behind the Grand Maester’s chair. The girl who had opened the door for him was there as well. They were all around him, half a dozen of them, white-faced children with dark eyes, boys and girls together.
And in their hands, the daggers.
Commentary
Aw, man.
Really? You gotta kill off the only halfway decent Lannister we’ve met in the whole series? Really?
(I mean, because. I like Tyrion, usually, and root for him even when I don’t like him, and unfortunately the same goes (to a lesser degree) for Jaime as well. But “decent” is not a word that describes either of them. Or Cersei, for sure. And certainly fucking not Tywin.)
Oh yeah, fine, let’s kill off ALL the people actually trying that whole crazy “responsible governing” thing, SURE. Good call!
Ugh.
All right, so, Pycelle and Kevan are dead, and Varys is… leading an army of children to put Aegon back on the throne? Apparently? Okay then.
Are these some of Arya’s Death Ninja Temple crew, or just random child murderers? I dunno. Probably the latter, because everything is horrifiying.
What happened to supporting Daenerys, I wonder? Wasn’t that Varys’s original thing? Maybe he’s heard that she’s supposedly dead by dragon. Or maybe it’s just a matter of “a Targaryen on the actual continent is worth one in Slaver’s Bay,” which… is pretty legit, honestly, from Varys’s point of view.
So does that mean Big Griff aka Jon Connington is working with Varys, or is it all a happy coincidence? I swear this thing is so convoluted by now I hardly know which end is up.
I guess it does put paid to my earlier question about whether I have to give a shit about Connington and his doings, though, because obviously I do. Good to know.
As for Roboknight: oh, sure, have a “strong suspicion” about who he is without saying who you think he is, thanks a bunch, Kevan.
I don’t think Roboknight is really Robert Baratheon, by the way. For what it’s worth, after some consideration, I think that if I had to make a guess, I would say that he’s probably Gregor Clegane if he’s anybody.
Partially because of the size thing (“Mountain,” yeah, we get it), and partially because of the timing thing (if I remember correctly, which I may not, Gregor died, or maybe “died”—conveniently off-screen, mind you—sometime near when Qyburn’s extremely skeevy “projects” started getting mentioned), but mostly because it makes way too much sense that OF FUCKING COURSE we couldn’t be rid of that stanktastic penis casserole so easily.
I really hope my guess is not right, by the way, because if I am I foresee a lot more table-flipping in my future, but, yeah. Sigh.
Cersei was soiled goods now, her power at an end. Every baker’s boy and beggar in the city had seen her in her shame and every tart and tanner from Flea Bottom to Pisswater Bend had gazed upon her nakedness, their eager eyes crawling over her breasts and belly and woman’s parts. No queen could expect to rule again after that. In gold and silk and emeralds Cersei had been a queen, the next thing to a goddess; naked, she was only human, an aging woman with stretch marks on her belly and teats that had begun to sag…
I suppose it’s hardly necessary at this point for me to observe, with tired, dull fury, how much I think this is such a pile of steaming misogynist bullshit, that a woman’s worth as a ruler, or a person, must be so irrevocably tied to her physical appearance above all other considerations. And yet, there is no way I could let it pass without comment, either. So here I am, noting once again how much people suck. Whatever.
All that said, while I’m positive a lot of Cersei’s trauma re: her walk of shame is absolutely real, I do have to wonder if she’s maybe laying low for now and regrouping for later. Even though I still think she was an utter disaster as a ruler, like Kevan I still sort of hope on principle that she hasn’t actually been broken by her ritual humiliation. That’s probably contrary to things I’ve said about her before, but I don’t really care.
In other news, apparently the Sand Snake Lady Nym is coming to King’s Landing, which means things are probably going to get a lot more spicy-and-murderous for everyone involved. Not that more spice—or murder—is actually needed at this point, but hey.
Also, Jaime is apparently AWOL now? Did I know that before? I probably did. Oh, right, he was lured off with Brienne, who is hopefully not actually going to kill him just because Catelyn “Bitter, Party of (Undead) One” Stark tortured her into it. I’m sure that’ll all end terribly, terribly well. Fo sho.
Well, in any case, bye, Kevan! See what you get for being an even remotely nice person in ASOIAF, huh? You shoulda oughta known bettah. Oh well.
And! So! That was the end of A Dance With Dragons! The last currently published book in the series!
I’m… not quite sure how I feel about that. I’ll get back to you.
Meanwhile, a lot of people have been asking what’s going to happen next with the Read, so here are my thoughts on that for now.
For one, we are not quite done with the written portion yet. First because, assuming TPTB are cool with it, I’m contemplating a sort of sum-up of my thoughts on ADWD, and possibly of the whole series thus far, in a separate post next week—or the week after that, depending on how crazy I decide to get, so watch this space for updates.
And secondly because unless I’m mistaken, there is at least one more ASOIAF novella out there for me to review, something about a Princess, I think. That and the holidays will probably do us through the end of the year, I trow, but we’ll see how it goes.
Beyond that… well. We shall have to see. But I have Thoughts, my pretties, no fear!
So enjoy your fall weather if you have it, because I sure don’t, and I’ll see you Real Soon Now! Cheers!
1. Dany is alive – so the “Green Grace” is either a lying sack of crap, has no ESP or whatever, or both. I say both.
2. Dany has one hell of a grudge with Jhaqo who raped and killed her pal – and she sworn vengeance on him. It’ll be interesting to see if she carries out that vengeance with some help from Drogon.
Bravo! Congrats!
How about your thoughts on The World of Ice and Fire? Love to read what you’d have to say about that, Leigh.
Seriously, Leigh? You review Daenerys’s final chapter and you offer virtually no disgust on the intense description of Dany shitting herself senseless? Not that I enjoy dwelling on it, but everyone else who comments on this chapter usually brings up that whole thing with vitriol.
Yes! Congratulations for making it through to the (current) end! It was a ride!
Also, yes! One of my first reactions after the last Daenerys chapter was “that bleeding episode surely does look and awful lot like symptoms accompanying an early-term miscarriage.” Nothing in the intervening years has caused me to revise that reaction, so.
Thanks and congrats on finishing!
There are two more novellas (one novella and one short story may be more accurate), but they read much more like histories than like the Dunk and Egg stories. They are “The Princess and the Queen” and “The Rogue Prince.”
Any thoughts on whether you’re going to start watching the show at some point (regardless of whether you blog on it)?
Varys’ Birds have been mentioned since the first book, and now you’ve finally met them.
Which is FUCKED UP. I had some consideration for Varys, figuring recruiting kids to spy for him, teaching them to read and write, was probably the BEST THING that could happen to this collection of orphans, at least they’d get an education, and their chances of getting caught are small, since urchins are everywhere.
But using them to kill people? That’s just horrifying. Especially the fact that they are apparently so devoted to him, that they’ll just do it. Which makes me wonder…. I’ve been a firm believer that Arya was right when she suspected Varys of being a sorceror(not knowing he was Varys) because it just seems like the kind of thing Martin would do. So what if the Birds aren’t children at all, but DEAD ONES?
Congratulations on finishing the reread! Impressive dedication, and it has been fun to reread along side you.
Re Dany – feels to me like a miscarriage, so maybe Mirri Maz Dur’s curse wasn’t as iron clad as we might have thought.
Re Quaithe’s mysterious prophecy – Westeros is West, Leigh. I’m thinking North-South is something else entirely, such as to get above the Wall to fight the Others in the Last Battle need to land first in Dorne. I’ll hold off on the others to avoid being too speculative.
Re Dothraki – query whether she can now convince them to get on boats and head across the poisoned water to Westeros. Maybe she can.
Re Daario – didn’t we hear at end of last chapter hostage were being sent back by catapult. May well be a dead dick by this point in the story.
@9: Re Dany – Who says she needs to go to the Wall to fight the Others? With the onset of the next long winter, the arctic ocean of Planetos could freeze sufficiently enough to allow the Others to move towards the north coast of Essos, making Ib a prime strategic location. Also, from a storytelling point of view, having her go to the Wall seems kind of redundant; we’ve already seen plenty of action there. The most interesting thing would be to have her go somewhere that the narrative hasn’t visited yet.
But hey, GRRM’s the author, so he knows best. Maybe you’re right, and the Wall will be where he’ll send Dany after a while.
Poor Kevan. He could have stayed at Casterly Rock and watched it all go down from a distance. But no, he had to be the responsible one. And now he’s dead. Cersei will come back to power and be even more screwed up than she was.
@10: Forgot to add – maybe she could end up at the Wall after flying over the North Pole? She might end up being the first non-wildling to see the Wall from its northern side.
Hello Leigh,
I’ve been re-reading ADWD in sync with your posts. I have one of the two novellas (The Princess and the Queen) but not the other (The Rogue Prince), so I’d appreciate it if you could confirm the schedule as soon as you know more …
The Boy Jon Snow is Dead, The Man Jon Stark Arises. Speculation is that HBO is delaying the Show til may to give GRRM time to finish WOW and get it to the publisher before it premieres. Valar Scribere All men Must write.
Mirri’s curse referred to her delivering a live child. She can have any number of miscarriages without violating it/fulfilling it.
“I suppose it’s hardly necessary at this point for me to observe, with tired, dull fury, how much I think this is such a pile of steaming misogynist bullshit, that a woman’s worth as a ruler, or a person, must be so irrevocably tied to her physical appearance above all other considerations. “
It’s not misogynist bullshit. Kevan’s point makes absolute sense for both male and female rulers. The idea of a monarchy is based on the commoner’s belief in the inherent superiority of noble blood, and of royal blood above all and they make a considerable effort to maintain that illusion. They surround themselves in the trappings of wealth, never show weakness and do everything they can to make themselves appear as Gods. The Walk of Shame shatters that lie by stripping them of all their dignity and putting them on a level below the commoners, revealing them to be nothing more than ordinary people.
How could any ruler hope to retain their sway over the commoners after that? Anyone who looks at Cersei is going to remember her being dragged nude through the streets like a mule and see right through her expensive clothes and haughty attitude. It has nothing to do with her being a woman, it has everything to do with her placing herself above everyone else. She’s been knocked off her pedestal and she can never act better than anybody again.
@12: Dammit, that should have been “the first non-wildling to first see the Wall from its northern side”.
Congratulations, now that you’re finished with the series, you’ll probably get bombarded with tons and tons of fan theories and speculations. Let me start off with one of my favorites, Untangling the Meereenese Knot by Adam Feldman. This is an essay about how Dany is actually a really good ruler, how peace is always reached through compromise and how achieving that peace made Dany lose her identity, that of a Targaryen.
Very eye opening read and even GRRM said that Adam got most of it right.
Yay. And also “aww maan.” These readthrough chapters have been what tells me it’s almost Friday for ages now. It’s been fascinating! What am I going to without my weekly fix? I guess the original plan (way back in the day) must have assumed The Winds of Winter would be with us by this point?
*drums fingers on desk*
The novellas are totally worth a read, mind.
– Was I the only one who felt sorry for Pycelle?
– Since Varys tried to sell Dany to a Dothraki khal, I’m sure she wasn’t “Varys’s original thing”.
– It’s been so long after Connington’s chapters that Leigh has forgotten it was Varys who told Jon to raise Aegon.
– Pycelle says: “This matter of the moon tea … I would never have spoken of such, but the Queen Dowager commanded me!” It doesn’t look like the moo tea was a lie to please Cersei, since Pycelle was alone with two Lannister bannermen when he said that. So, why would Margaery be so naïve as to ask Pycelle for such a thing?
When will Leigh be allowed to read fan theories and be spoiled? She has basically read almost all of the books published so far, she has read more than 90% of the fandom (lots of them don’t have the Dunk and Egg novellas). I think there should be a point when she’s allowed to read a lot of fan theories, like the equations and who the Knight of Lauguing Tree was, etc. The discussion gets better at that.
16 – Yeah, no I gotta go with Leigh on this one. It’s still misogynist bs, sorry. I’ll grant you that parading a king around naked would also be a death knell to his authority, but it isn’t nearly as tied to physical attributes as it is to a woman. Unless the dude is poorly endowed. Then it would forever be “King Stumpy the Small” regardless of all other factors. But I’m pretty sure they didn’t make dudes take the walk of shame back in the day, so it’s still bs.
“I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl.”
No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words.
“Fire and Blood,” Daenerys told the swaying grass.
— this kind of depresses me, honestly. I would hate to feel destined to just be a force of destruction.
@22 “But I’m pretty sure they didn’t make dudes take the walk of shame back in the day, so it’s still bs. ” – Well, it was not hard to skim through the first page of Google results to learn that “historical shaming of this sort included men and women alike.” http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/jebs_medieval_politics_of_shame_upholding_a_long_tradition_of_keeping_women_and_girls_in_line/
“it isn’t nearly as tied to physical attributes as it is to a woman. Unless the dude is poorly endowed. Then it would forever be “King Stumpy the Small” regardless of all other factors.” means “it isn’t sexists unless it is sexist”. Sexism towards women is usually focused on their physical attributes, sexism towards men is usually focused on one more specific physical attribute. Unless judging the person’s worth by the size of their penis is not a sexism.
“penis casserole” OMG… can’t breathe!
Hi, all–let’s remember to keep disagreements civil and constructive, and not be overly dismissive or overly personal in the comments. Thanks!
CONGRATULATIONS, Leigh! Welcome to the community of those who have read the whole series!
I guess we still have a spoiler policy in place, but there’s still lots I can talk about without getting too spoilery.
First off, the Dany chapter: your thoughts on her bleeding and possible heavy menstruation vs miscarriage pretty much match my thoughts. Mirri Mas Durr had said she wouldn’t get pregnant again until a whole bunch of impossibilities occurred, but maybe she did (from Daario, most likely) and miscarried because of the curse. Who knows?
The Khal who finds her was one of the riders from Khal Drogo’s khaleesar, and his bloodrider was the one that raped and killed the woman Dany had saved. So I don’t think her reunion with them will be happy fun times…. except maybe for her dragon…
The Kevan chapter now. Oh, the Kevan chapter. I love this ending, it so clearly illustrates Varys and Illyrio’s plans. I took from it that they had 3 Targaryans: Viserys, Dany, and “Aegon”. If Aegon is real, then technically he outranks the other 2 in the order of succession (his father is their older brother, so the succession goes to him first, then to Viserys, and last to Dany). Varys and Illyrio were always plotting to put the boy they had raised by Jon Connington on the throne, not Viserys or Dany. Now that Viserys is dead, they were going to have Dany and Aegon conquer together but Aegon attacked Westeros instead while Dany stayed in Slavers Bay (and the Dothraki Sea).
We finally meet Varys’ “little birds” and it is not fun for Kevan. Poor Kevan. The most honest Lannister proves to be TOO honest and capable. It also actually illustrates things that Arya heard all the way back in AGOT, when she overheard 2 people (who you deduced were Varys and Illyrio) discussing multiple things, including people who were “so young”, which apparently refers to the little birds seen here.
Can’t wait for your recap, Leigh! Bravo, and congratulations again!
Leigh,I think I can now get away with saying that I agree with your latest guess regarding the identity of Ser Robert Strong. I think that Qyburn went down into the basement and made himself a Frankengregor.
@16 It was perfectly possible for a medieval king to do public penance, and stay king. Personally,I think her real problem would be that the nature of the crimes she is widely (and rightly) belived to have committed suggest that her children have no right to rule, and that she can therefore not be ruler in their stead.
But of course, that is not something that Kevan Lannister or Mace Tyrell can admit, without declaring Stannis the lawful ruler.
Red Harren @20: Regarding moon tea–I always assumed that moon tea had more than one use (like birth control pills!). Maybe it helps control severe menstrual cramping or bleeding. Or maybe one of her ladies needed it and was afraid to ask for it herself, while Margaery would think that as former and future queen she had enough clout not to worry about it.
Name the first one Bran Stark!
Guys, if you thought Kevan was a good person, read this
@31 Marie the Bookwyrm: But why ask Pycelle, a well known Lannister (Tywin and Kevan, mostly) loyalist? Doesn’t she have her own maester? Couldn’t she ask any other maester in King’s Landing? Or any apothecary? Moon tea isn’t that hard to make.
@30, 20 I don’t think there is any truth to the moon tea story. Yes, Pycelle tells this in the presence of people only from the Lannister side, but I’ve always read it as him providing Cersei a convenient lie without forcing her to explicitly ask him to do so. Surely it was obvious for him Cersei was going to try and get rid of Margaery, but her asking Pycelle for help in it would require her having full trust in him. If Cersei is not 100% sure if he won’t betray her, she can’t ask him to lie about Margaery in fear he will use it against her. So Pycelle decided to take the first step: he wanted to prove himself loyal and useful for Cersei, so he gave the false testimony she could’ve clinged to if she wanted – and he provided it in a way that didn’t force her to admit in any way that it is a lie, hence minimizing the possibilities in which he would be able to use it against her.
Well…now you will really know what it is like to be ASOIAF fan…”INPATIENT!!!!” i swear, the waiting between books is really the toughest part of this journey.
Congratulations!
My question about Robert Strong is: Does he have Gregor’s body and somebody else’s head (in which case the skull Qyburn sent to Dorne is real), or is he just an undead Gregor (in which case Qyburn came up with a substitute giant skull)?
I’m leaning towards the first theory, because it seems like something GRRM would enjoy doing.
@22: “But I’m pretty sure they didn’t make dudes take the walk of shame back in the day”
Actually, they did. In the real Middle Ages, penance walk was something the Church sometimes imposed on “sinners” (often but not necessarily for sexual sins, it could be for heresy or “witchcraft”, for instance), male or female – but none of them were naked. Nor did they usually shave their hair. GRRM likes to make things much more exaggerated, awful and seedy.
@37: I always think of Bran’s vision back in the first book, in which he saw a giant made of stone, but inside his helmet was just darkness. To me, that’s most likely Frankengregor, as he’s known among fandom, and for all we know he really doesn’t have a head. (I refrained from discussing this too much earlier in the series, as Leigh hadn’t made the connection, but she’s made it now so I can discuss it. Yay!)
Am I the only one who thought the latest novellas were horrible? There is no real story, just a telling of a history. Which yes there were dragons, but the story itself was very dry I thought. But I guess the targaryen family tree has a huge following. Don’t get me wrong, she is now caught up, so nowhere else to go. But are people really clamoring for her take on those novellas? A recap of the whole series and maybe some sort of q and a about theories and predictions sounds better as others have suggested.
A girl and her dragon, living in the wilderness. In another book, this might have been much more fun.
Some readers think Dany finally got the bloody flux. I don’t. She ate a lot of berries which the Dothraki might thave used for seasoning, and soon had vomiting, then some hours of diarrhea, then copious bleeding from her nether regions and the realization that she wasn’t sure when she’d last menstruated, and then rapidly regained enough appetite and digestive stability to feast on roasted horse. Am I wrong in thinking that this is not a typical prognosis for dysentery? I think the berries were somewhat toxic when eaten raw and/or in large amounts, and either their toxin or the trauma of her already-weakened body expelling them induced a miscarriage. Of course, it could just be a late period serving as a (literally) red herring.
Congratulations!!! You finish the series!! And you are still sane.
Double checked: you announced this read was starting March 10, 2011.
Oh we were all sweet summer children hoping WoW would be out by the time you were ready for it. Looking forward to your overall impression of the book and series as a whole.
With the most important question being, do you regret starting the whole mess?
So you’ve been reading this series for my son’s entire life – almost. He’s older by a month. Wow.
And yeah! We won’t have to worry about spoilers at JordanCon!
I’ve really enjoyed the read along. Thanks for the entertainment and insight.
How about you watch the TV series and let us know what you think? They’ve done a pretty great job overall with far more successes than missteps.
For what its worth, the whole passage quoted at the end about Cersei being damaged goods because everyone had seen her naked…. I’m not so sure how mysognistic that really is. That attitude, that the awe and aura of the ruler contributes to his or her authority, is one with long historical precedent, so while yeah its kinda gender biased here…. the idea that she couldn’t rule effectively after having been exposed as just a mortal woman isn’t just about the woman part.
Well, it was quite a journey. Now it ends. No, now it begins. Hm…
My suggestion remains the same: watch the TV show. Coincidentally, it also began in 2011 and this last season (5th) ended pretty much where the book left off (stabby stabby). So the next season is set to contain major spoilers for everyone. Yay!
But even then, it’d be nice to see if you can spot the differences between show/books and if you liked or disliked the changes. And why. I like reading your view on things.
On the chapters, Dany’s craptastic voyage of the mind was rather enlightening. She used Viserys, the grass(?) and Jorah to convince herself of a new path. Viserys was tired of waiting and hoped he had dragons. The grass(?) didn’t care about the child’s death as an excuse to chain her dragons (she can’t even remember the name of the kid). And Jorah wanted to leave Meereen. She also thinks of Daario in a very flattering light here, which leads me to think he’s probably going to die soon.
The Epilogue shows us a glimpse of future conflict. Winter has finally come, and the time for subtlety is gone. Varys takes matters into his own hands and info-dumps about Aegon being groomed for rule. Do we believe him? Why would he lie? Does it matter?
@21: If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding! (/pink floyd)
Sorry, I just thought your “when will Leigh be allowed…” question really funny. Is that really a thing? I sure hope not. I hope Leigh’s doing this of her own free will.
@40: The biggest follower of the Targaryen family tree is GRRM himself, since he loves writing about them. But yeah, I’m not that interested in these novellas. Love the past, but I care more about the future. This is basically why I don’t care for prequels. And why was The Hobbit turned into three movies anyway? Grumble, grumble…
Genna Lannister is pretty cool. Just as well that she isn’t in King’s Landing.
Kevan’s death mostly upset me for the sake of his gentle wife and young children. Varys was amusing, though — “I’m sorry the room I’m killing you in is so cold. Pycelle befouled himself when I bashed his head in and the stink was so abominable I nearly fainted, so I had to open a window.” (Only slightly paraphrased)
White ravens proclaim winter’s arrival. Yeah, I think the people here already noticed it.
From Varys’s speech, it sounds like they’re trying to turn Aegon into another Egg — a well-traveled, broadly educated prince who knows firsthand the ups and downs of life for commoners and thus might not be an entitled jerkass of a king. We’ll see how that goes…
People on the spoiler thread were saying a while ago that it was hard to believe that people in a medieval city of poverty, dirt, and violence would see a clean, healthy woman not far out of her prime, with no pockmarks, missing pieces etc., and go “Oh her breasts are SAGGY!” I’m not sure I buy that.
@9: We learned that “corpses” were being catapulted into Meereen, but not their identities.
Well, in AGoT, Daenerys swore that if she ever met Jhaqo again, she’d kill and, presumably, torture him and Mago for their gang-raping of Eroah, so that’s a big no on the Dothraki recruiting. As for the other novella, there are two; The Princess and the Queen, and it’s prequel, the Rouge Prince. They’re more history books then actual stories, but I think it could be interesting to hear your thoughts on them both, and maybe after that, if TWoW isn’t out by them (I think it’s supposed to come out in the first half of 2016, but I’m not sure, you could then do the main history book, the World of Ice and Fire. There’s also, of course, the sample chapters he’s released (I think there’s like 6 so far) but they’ll be in the main book, so you might wanna wait. Also, I think a reread series could be cool as well, but maybe that should wait until A Dream of Spring (The most epicly named of all seven books), the seventh and, as of now, last planned book (At least of the main novel series, there’s gonna be anywhere from 6 to 12 total Dunk & Egg books, with the fourth planned to release after TWoW, not to mention the future history/lore books, so there’ll probably still be ASoIaF content coming out after ADoS (I imagine, given that there’s been an average release gap between books of about 5 years, that it’ll come out in late 2020/early 2021, and each D&E book has a gap of about 3 years. Do the math). Anyways, yeah, this has been an awesome read, despite me getting annoyed occasionally about how you sometimes focus primarily on sexism in favor of actual plot details, which comes back to bite you and, by extension, us readers, in the ass when those plot details are brought back up and you’re clueless, and I hope to see it continued, either with the Rouge Prince, the Winds of Winter, or even A World of Ice and Fire, within the near future. :)
BTW, Kevan was kind of right. The main reason Cersei was in power was because people respected, or at the very least, feared her but after she was shamed *ring* (Only show watchers will get that), people stopped fearing her, because they saw her brought low. I’m not saying that it’s right, but it makes sense in the context.
@43: Uuuuh, I’m one of the many who completely disagree with that. I think that the show, up to season 4, was not doing justice to the book series, and had a lot of problems, but was mostly OK, but that now, after the disaster that was season 5, it’s become really terrible.
@46: The people of KL (though, really, only a handful of them were even saying things like that, many more were using the usual sexual slurs instead) are saying that because 1) they really hate Cersei, and 2) they enjoy the beautiful proud queen being “brought down to their level” and shown to be a mere mortal woman. The latter is the same kind of motivation exploited by the paparazzis who take photos of beautiful celebrities at a beach, focusing on their cellulite, or stalking them early in the morning when they get up and go to the grocery, and the sensationalist titles in magazines who use the worst possible photo out of the many to declare how ugly those women are without makeup.
@47: It’s The Rogue Prince, but The Rouge Prince would be quite a cool title, too.
I wouldn’t feel too bad about Kevan. Ever awful thing Tywin did he had lap dog Kevan doing dirty work. That includes murder/pillage in the Riverlands.
@50: I agree. I don’t know how anyone who wholeheartedly supported everything Tywin did and thinks that Tywin is wonderful and a great leader could ever be called “decent”.
A famous male example of a Walk of Shame is the Walk to Canossa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_to_Canossa; why is the link icon missing again?). The king wasn’t naked, but he would probably have frozen during the blizzard. The Walk didn’t make him unfit to rule.
@47 “despite me getting annoyed occasionally about how you sometimes focus primarily on sexism in favor of actual plot details, which comes back to bite you and, by extension, us readers, in the ass when those plot details are brought back up and you’re clueless”
Patronizing, much?
Leigh,
“Apparently to “go north”, i.e. to Westeros, she really needed to go “south”—e.g., well, pretty much everything she’s been doing since AGOT—first.”
Assuming you’re not speaking metaphorically, I’d like to point out that Westeros is quite appropriately named as it lies to the WEST of Essos.
King’s Landing in particular is almost exactly the same latitude as Meereen.
Leigh – re what to do next, let’s break it into pieces.
– Yes, you need to do your usual end of book wrap up post. Looking forward to it.
– Yes, you should do an end of series so far post.
– Then you have the forks in the road: A. Read and comment on prequel histories and World of Ice and Fire; B. Read WoW advance chapters that have been made available ; and C. Start watching the TV show ep by ep. My thought is it will make sense to do the TV show viewing next. If you do roughly an episode per week, you’d be covered for content all the way through June of 2017. (50 existing shows plus 10 2016 shows = 60 plus 6 season ending wrap up shows, and that will get you to April 2017, at which point you can add 10 more 2017 shows and get to June). Or you could do two per week (something over 30 weeks, with breaks and the occasional 1 ep weeks, plus the six wrap up shows) and it will get you to late Summer. By then WoW will be out (he says confidently) and you can get started on that. Worst, case, then you do options A or B as needed to fill in.
@42: So you’ve been reading this series for my son’s entire life – almost. He’s older by a month.
Hey, mine too! He was born on March 15, 2011.
@57 – You forgot to beware the Ides of March.
@42, 57 – I didn’t realize this has been going on so long! My first son was born April 3, 2011 and my second on December 31, 2012 :) So you’ve been reading for my sons’ lives too :)
I don’t think that Kevan’s thoughts about Cersei losing her power after the walk of shame necessarily has to do with any misogyny in the setting, but more of the fact that she has been completely and utterly publicly humiliated.
@45 wait, you didn’t know that Tor keeps Leigh in a big plastic bubble?
@61 – Indeed. We refer to it as the Bubble of Joy.
@49: I’d read about The Rouge Prince! The adventures of a Westerosi man in makeup would be interesting as hell.
It’s funny that in the recent upcoming episode summaries released for the new Netflix show Jessica Jones, there is a line that several characters were “going rouge” as well. Popular choice this Fall.
Oh Leigh, please don’t watch the show. I don’t think I could bear experiencing it again through your eyes.
Congratulations, Leigh! I wasn’t sure you’d survive it. My head hurts from all the head desking again myself.
All I can say is the next book better have more movement. I’m very frustrated with GRRM.
Harrumph.
(Oh…I say watch the show. It’s different in many ways, but well done, entertaining, and well acted.)
Hey Leigh, you should definitely watch the show now but I’m not really sure you should blog about it. Not only because I’m not sure if you would survive the experience but also because it has already been done here. If I was you I would just binge watch the whole thing and not go through it episode by episode taking notes and shit.
Also, I think the show was good, not great but good, for the first three and a half seasons but that it took a nose dive of epic proportions somewhere towards the end of season four.
I think Leigh should be doing the Rogue Prince and then The Princess and the Queen. A lot of Info On Dragons and How the Targs handle it. It should fit in nicely with the Last 2 books of the series. There be Dragons Ahead!!!
A famous male example of a Walk of Shame is the Walk to Canossa
A more complex event. The German princes were in revolt against Henry and part of the casus belli was that he was on the outs with the Pope. Basically, the Emperor wanted to name the bishops (this seeding the Church with his henchmen) and Gregory wanted to separate the Church from State domination.) Gregory, who supported the revolting princes, hied off to Canossa, which was the impregnable castle of Matilda of Tuscany, one of his staunchest supporters. Lo. Henry followed him and put on such a stunt — kneeling in the snow and begging for absolution — that Gregory was required to publicly forgive him. This pulled the rug from out the German revolt, which had been Henry’s intent, but he never had any intention of reconciling with the Pope, so although Matilda in full armor escorted him back to Rome and later blocked the passes over the Appenines against the Emperor, Gregory was chased from Rome by the imperialists.
I would love to read your impressions in the HBO series next.
Thanks for a very entertaining series.
Long time lurker commenting just to plead with Leigh not to watch the HBO show, isn’t the read designed to be a pure first time reaction to the books? Given the fact that the show has deviated from the books in relevant ways, I think it can be an influence on how Leigh percieves the rest of the books after seeing for example big storylines and characters cut from the Tv show. As different as the books and the show have become, you can’t help but wonder about the end game of storylines and characters that were cut from the show. I’m one of those readers who enjoy the journey more than the destination, so the show “spoiling” things doesn’t really bother me(it bothers me that it has become a bad b movie) but Leigh has made it a point to not recieve nudges about things to come all through the read, and the show is full of those….I’d rather get a condensed re-read, maybe an entry for every 100 pages or something with no summaries and pure reaction so it’s a bit easier on Leigh and would ease her into the rest of the books because she has forgotten so much along the way.
The showrunners have mucked up the series so badly that it barely has any resemblance to the book series. Also, the next book will be published in 2019 by which time Leigh will have forgotten 90% of the backstory from the published novels so why not? Being a GRRM fan is like jail … we got nothing but time around here.
@72 “The showrunners have mucked up the series so badly that it barely has any resemblance to the book series.” True say, true say.
Also,my (hopeful) estimate is that TWoW will come out in early-mid 2016, but it won’t make much difference as far as Leigh remembering the backstory goes.
re: where do we go from here
We clearly need an ASoIaF re-read.
And then after the completion of the series ca. 2045 a re-read redux. Then 2050 a watchthrough of the brand spanking new Game of Thrones Holo-Telepath-O-Vision remaster.
P.S. I apologize for the ‘spanking’ (but not really, because we all love to trigger Leigh and you know it)…
@21 “the equations”
LOL well played.
@42 “Oh we were all sweet summer children hoping WoW would be out by the time you were ready for it.”
LOL!
@48 “I think that the show, up to season 4, was not doing justice to the book series, and had a lot of problems, but was mostly OK, but that now, after the disaster that was season 5, it’s become really terrible.”
That about sums it up.
I’d like to defend the HBO series. Season 1 (corresponding to AGOT) was IMO very strong, Season 2 (corresponding to ACOK) was mixed but Tyrion parts were great (especially Ep 9), Seasons 3 and 4 (corresponding to SoS) were very strong except for some minor imperfections, and Season 5 was mixed – some very good, some less well handled deviations from the books. Acting across the board is very strong and many adaptation changes have been well thought through. Of course, some were not so good, especially in Seasons 2 and 5, but they stood out so much in part because of the great work done on most other plot lines. So highly worthwhile, if not perfect, and I for one would love to see you work through them even if it disrupts the “purity” of future portions of this Read, when we get to them.
As I noted above, I’m not opposed to reading the Princess and Rogue Prince novellas and/or the World of Ice and Fire first, but they are not as juicy subjects for commentary as are the episodes of the TV show.
An epilogue. So who’s going to get the shaft this time? Kevan? Well, I hope he had enough time to achieve everything he was hoping for…
@10: If the ocean freezes, it will mean that Skagos will be accessible to the Wights (if they couldn’t swim. See: Dead things in the water). Since cannibals and unicorns certainly weren’t enough trouble for Davos, I think you’re right and the ocean will freeze, at least in the North.
@16: I’m sure the such a walk wouldn’t have had any influence on Robert’s rule, maybe not even on Renly’s. Stannis on the other hand… But it’s also a question of context: everybody in the khalasar saw Dany naked, walking out of the fire. She was covered in soot, her hair burnt, and yet their respect for her only grew.
@20: Varys’ and Illyrio’s plan was to put Viserys on the throne (or maybe he was just a patsy for Aegon). But Illyrio was proud of what Daenerys has accomplished for herself even though he knew she would probably raid Pentos on her way to Westeros. I doubt they were counting on her after Drogo’s death, but now they’re certainly betting on both her and Aegon, hoping they won’t have to fight it out in the end.
@46: I really wonder about the white ravens. The black ones can be trained to go to a particular place, but in the case of the white ones, the raven is the message, so how can it be trained to be sent to King’s Landing without people therewrongly believing the season has changed? Also, what does it mean that Winter has come from an astronomical point of view? Are the days getting longer, for ten years? Then how can Westeros be this cold for all this time? And if Winter is not about the length of the days, then how do the Maesters decide it has come on this particular day?
@67: There was a Star Trek rewatch that started in April 2009 and finished in December 2010. The current one started in February this year. The GoT watch on the other hand, started with the first episode in April 2011. If Leigh is to do her own watch, the original watch for the first episodes won’t be so fresh in our minds, but she will watch season 6 just after Theresa Delucci has talked about it… I think full season recaps would be appropriate. The Telltale game hasn’t been done by anyone , but I’m not sure how to do such a recap, as nobody experienced exactly the same story.
Hmm…if the ocean freezes, maybe we’ll get undead unicorns, haha :)
Well here we are at last!
I’m not really going to comment on the content, since that’s mostly covered. But I want to say thanks again Leigh for the fun read! I have really enjoyed it – I originally found the read halfway through, caught up somewhere in the 3rd book? And from there have been eagerly awaiting Thursdays.
I really hope you decide to do some summation posts, and possibly even delve into some fan theories afterwards. However as far as this community and the ASOIAF community go, I think every theory there is has been beaten to death and back (since the books are taking SO LONG to come out.) So I will be honest, I’m not sure how much I’d enjoy another dead-horse beating on the subject, but since it’s all new to you, some reaction shots might be fun.
Anyhoo, I now eagerly await your decisions in that regard. And once again a big thanks for doing the read, it’s been great.
@79, I spent the slog between the release of Wizards and Glass and the remainder of the Dark Tower series doing much the same way. Of course, with Stephen King deciding to tie his entire bibliography to the series so we had a lot more content to speculate from.
@72, pretty ridiculous to say that making a couple of changes means that the show has nothing the books anymore. Besides met of the stuff that is missing will be in season 6.
I still hope Leigh could do the sample chapters…
Dany is talking to grass, that can’t be good.