#asoiaf articles

[horizon-verizon]

I'm still on my self-imposed Tumblr writing break but I had to share this comedy gold mine where Condal tells us all about "impostor syndrome" before I'm overtaken by the urge to write an essay on it instead. I have no time to cook. Fortunately, we've been served a meal on a silver platter.

https://bigthink.com/high-culture/house-of-the-dragon-ryan-condal/

House of the Dragon, which premiered in 2022, might have continued that [Game of Thrones] trend. Instead, the show proved a return to form, offering the same Shakespearean dialogue and political intrigue that made people fall in love with Martin’s fictional universe back in 2011. The second season is just as good, if not better.

I can see that this is going to be a very fair assessment of Condal and his work.

“Every day,” Condal confesses when asked if he suffers from imposter syndrome. “For me, though, it was less the scale and scope of House of the Dragon and more its visibility that intimidated me."

😭😭😭 It's okay! He wasn't worried about whether he'd do a good job! He was just worried about how visible his ingenious work would be.

Appointed for his encyclopedic knowledge of Martin’s oeuvre, Condal has — in his own words — “played with fire” without getting burned. In the following interview, he demonstrates his mastery of Westerosi lore and explains why all history – real or imagined – ultimately amounts to propaganda.

The business major is about to tell us about historiography. The question is, does he understand historiography? Or does he think he's inventing a new concept?

Condal is a relative newcomer to television. In his previous life, he graduated from Villanova University with an accounting degree and spent eight years working in pharmaceutical advertising — quite different from working as a Hollywood showrunner, but not entirely unrelated.

Yes, we know. It's actually very related. Especially the way Condal does it. I'll also point out here that his university was a private Catholic institution. I don't feel the need to connect those dots right now.

"I also learned to compromise, adapting your writing to clients who aren’t always going to love your brilliant, avant-garde choices. That’s the talent-studio relationship, right there."

I... this tells us two things about the writing process and attitude behind it. Two things we already knew. But... it's sure telling.

"I was able to navigate challenges that some of my colleagues with filmmaking and art history degrees maybe weren’t prepped for."

In theory, nothing wrong with this^ statement. But in context...

While some criticism is valuable, too much can lead to creative paralysis. “I tend more towards the negative than the positive, so I made a conscious decision to stay away from social media when I got this job,” Condal says. If anything, he believes the healthy distance he maintains between himself and his audience has improved the show: “Audiences think they know what they want, but sometimes, they have to be given what they need instead."

I repeat my prior sentiment.

Ultimately, Condal’s own passion for Martin’s writing outweighed any doubt he had about his own. “I’m trying to make the type of show I would enjoy as a fan, which I am. And while I realize my ideal fan show will be different from someone else’s, I still think that it’s a good true north heading on my compass. Actually, I think that’s why HBO hired me in the first place.”

Oh, we know.

“It was hugely intimidating, moving to a new country [the U.K.] and working with a new but also hugely talented crew that I had to — not tell them what to do, exactly, but lead them; collaborate with them. I definitely had to earn my place, but think that — because I came in with a clear vision of what I wanted for the show — those relationships were easy to establish.”

Make it stop.

The most important part of making a successful fantasy show isn’t the sets, costumes, or special effects, but lore. Fictional places like Westeros have their own unique cultures, customs, and social institutions, all of which help create the illusion that this fantasy world is as real and complex as our own. To transfer that illusion from page to screen, the writers must know Martin’s work as thoroughly as Martin himself. “It’s not just me,” Condal says. “We are all deeply entrenched fans of George. One of our writers has worked with him for many years. If I’m a graduate in Westeros studies, she’s an archmaester,” referring to the order of academics sworn to advise and educate Westeros’ nobility.

Well that explains why they're worse than Gyldayn.

Condal: “Textual references are best done in light touches to remind people that this is a fully realized society with hundreds of years of mapped-out history to it. And you don’t need an entire scene to do that. Instead of writing, you can communicate details environmentally through props like heraldry. For the fans, these little touches tell them they are in good hands. Better yet, they know the details are there just for them, the hardcore fans. For everyone else, the casual viewers, this stuff is flying by 100 miles an hour, and they probably won’t notice it. But it’s there.”

Again, there's nothing wrong with this^ in theory. In. Theory.

“I’m definitely an architect,” says Condal, “and I think I have to be as a screenwriter, because our life is so deadline-driven. The literal definition of a playwright, W-R-I-G-H-T, is ‘one who builds plays.’ A dramatic writer is almost by necessity a structuralist, and I very much fall into that camp.”

Now wait for it... wait for it... Keep in mind these are Brinkhof's (article author) words. But wait for it.

Martin, by contrast, identifies as a gardener. While this writing style — with its many unexpected twists, turns, and deaths — helps explain what made Game of Thrones so successful, it may also have been responsible for the show’s eventual downfall. Sticking to Martin’s analogy, “gardening stories” grow like trees, their narratives branching out in an exponential number of paths, making them difficult to finish. As of today, Martin has spent more than 14 years on the next installment in the Song of Ice and Fire series, his prolonged bout of writer’s block forcing Weiss and Benioff to come up with their own ending.

No words. Now back to Condal.

“The advantage we have over them is that we’re dealing with a finished text, where they were working with an unfinished, living work,” Condal says. “Where the Game of Thrones team had to trim down 5,000 pages into a few dozen scripts, we’re challenged in the opposite direction, turning around 100 pages into a multi-season arc of television, and that requires a lot of invention.”

Oh? So... you do know where it's going. Which means your "inventions" should... probably lead there?

Condal treats Fire & Blood like a real-world historian might treat a manuscript from the Middle Ages. “These three writers all had personal agendas which, to me, seem to reflect one of the main themes of our show: powerful women living in an unbreakable patriarchy. The writers, particularly the priest, appear to blame the war on the squabbling between Rhaenyra and Alicent.”

No comment for now. No... comment...

House of the Dragon pretends to show the real history that Fire & Blood recorded and distorted. Some events happen the way the one of the three authors describe it, while others contain elements of all three conflicting accounts. Others still indicate that none of them got it right. As a rule, every character in the show is far more complex than the jester, maester, and priest made them out to be.

I... I... I... I... I...

“Alicent can be the stereotypical evil stepmother at times,” says Condal, “just as King Viserys, played by Paddy Considine in season 1, can come across at weak. However, the thing that in-universe historians don’t get about Viserys is that he was carrying the burden of a prophecy passed down through generations and couldn’t tell anybody about it. A lot of his supposedly weak decision-making was actually in service of this secret prophecy. We were trying to show that there was more to him, that multiple things about him could be true at the same time.”

Must... Resist... Urge... To... Write... Essay...

“We have to arrive at the same endpoint as the book,” he reminds himself. “Whoever George said becomes king must become king at the end of the war. Hopefully, though, we have a bit of latitude leading up to that, to show how history has been interpreted differently at different times by different historians. I realize I’m playing with fire, but it does excite and fascinate me — to be able to comment on how history is made, not just this fictional history, but all history. It’s all propaganda to some degree.”

😭 The clownery.

Historiographers weep.

@rhaenin-time, you must be stopped. Ryan should be , too, but you have decided to bring me in close proximity to this nonsense. I am sitting here, eating chewy ChipsAhoy, and you came in here like a wrecking ball with this news....I hate you. [read, this is a joke]

I don't think I'll be able to address every thing I want to address in this. I want to be done with this show, I have been tired since the 6th epi of the last season.

Condal is a relative newcomer to television. In his previous life, he graduated from Villanova University with an accounting degree and spent eight years working in pharmaceutical advertising — quite different from working as a Hollywood showrunner, but not entirely unrelated. [...]

I also learned to compromise, adapting your writing to clients who aren’t always going to love your brilliant, avant-garde choices. That’s the talent-studio relationship, right there. [...] Audiences think they know what they want, but sometimes, they have to be given what they need instead."

Who tf does this man think he is?!!! Yes, I needed mother-son coochie eating. I needed to have a brown girl erased for a rapist to become a family man with a sick child. I needed Cole fucking Alicent at least 3 times instead of a brown haired Targ make instrumental alliances with more people to add to his stepfather's armies in the Riverlands. I needed to see nonexistent and sterile parallels. I needed to see a black woman be burned alive when she actually died at least surrounded by family, her ignored by her husband so his later marriage to a white girl be that much more special. I needed to see a disabled man jerk it over a queen's bare feet like she's in OnlyFans and doesn't know where her next meal is. I needed to see a pretten prince jerk it over a window and barely even tell what his brother was doing later with Vhagar instead of another preteen girl bond with the most powerful dragon of the then living ones. I needed to see a woman so much more hypocritical than her book counterpart be framed as one of the wisest women to exist while she praises Jaehaerys I of all people for having a peaceful reign as if his decision to have that council have no bearing on the burgeouning war coming up right now.

He can't even properly write character ACRTION as opposed to REACTION (Seth Abramson's article on substack):

Appointed for his encyclopedic knowledge of Martin’s oeuvre, Condal has — in his own words — “played with fire” without getting burned. In the following interview, he demonstrates his mastery of Westerosi lore and explains why all history – real or imagined – ultimately amounts to propaganda.

And yet Daemon dislikes his daughter or grow impatient with her bec she doesn't have a dragon....while he only claimed one at 16 or a bit younger with Caraxes AND Targs don't actually bond with dragons in the cradle that often, actually usually doing it in preteens to teens AND Aegon I definitely had to bond later in life as well. And said that Aegon I lived/was alive when Old Valyria still existed. Allowed Criston Cole to be called Dornish both by Alicent and the fans without giving us any explanation or exploration of that identity esp when canonically he came from the Stormlander part of the Dornish Marches. "Encyclopedic" my nonexistent ballsack! He has no authority to claim that F&B is so unreliable that he can't tell truth form agenda-motivated fiction and then claim himself intelligent or "brilliant" at the same time!

"avant-garde"...yes bc it's so revoluntionary and creative to have a man lick his former home from his own mother in a "vision". As if making a woman her son's character tool wasn't something HBO already did with its female characters and perform male gaze....okay...As if he's special and different from other male writers and it not just keeping with ASoIaF adaptation tradition. It added so much to the story other than the sick eroticism of something already cleared up last season.

I definitely had to earn my place, but think that — because I came in with a clear vision of what I wanted for the show

No you didn't. If you did, you wouldn't have had a such a problem with the pacing, the numerous inconsistencies, plotholes, the [if true] possible merge of Rhaena and Nettles and many episodes would't contradict each other as if one writer disagreed and vetoed another. And you'd see why/how show!Rhaena's purpose must be kept more or less the exact same as her in the bk for the post-Dance environment. We'd have Maelor. We'd have Daeron mentioned and described much earlier, not as some sort of random ass surprise that is bound to thrown so many locals off when he does appear.

If I’m a graduate in Westeros studies, she’s an archmaester,” referring to the order of academics sworn to advise and educate Westeros’ nobility.

....what the fuck does this even mean?! There are no fucking graduates of anything in Westeros and there are no archmaesters of real life bc the set ups in education of EU medieval history vs Westeros are so different it's not even funny. there are no universities for one to even imagine there are Westerosi "graduates", and there is no way you can tell if a graduate would be more or less educated than a grandmaester, bc we don't have rules of "graduation" or gradations of maestership. the modern school system can never be properly equalized in structure or depth or habits to Westerosi maestership, the instituton.

Therefore trying to create some sort of analogy as if grads exist in Westeros by immediately using "grandmaester" for another you're aligning yourself with is just so stupid. worst part is, I know exactly what he's trying to say, but his use of this device is so wrong, that I'm mad and ure people will just take this at face value instead of see how inept this man is with literature analysis and thus creative writing. Reminds me, ironically, of his saying he's inspired by PARADISE LOST in writing S2...if you don't sit yourself down to hell, sir!

Martin, by contrast, identifies as a gardener. While this writing style — with its many unexpected twists, turns, and deaths — helps explain what made Game of Thrones so successful, it may also have been responsible for the show’s eventual downfall.

And there it is, Ryan is prepping to use the ole fan excuse of "not much story left" excuse people had for D&D, and it makes sense how he would considering how F&B is considered to unreliable to adapt even the clearest events and characterizations as they are given....

[15-lizards]

So I had this idea that in Dothraki culture when a person dies their hair is cut off and braided into jewellery for their relatives, similar to Victorian mourning jewellery, and I wanted to know what you thought.

YESSSSSSSSS god u are so big brained anon

There is already such a strong cultural attachment to a persons hair for Dothraki’s, so much so that it’s the greatest shame to cut it off. But when they die it’s seen as keeping a piece of them in remembrance as their soul goes off to the Night Lands, perhaps an anchor to the material world if their spirit ever wishes to return. Grandmothers with the hair of their young grandsons who died in battle weaving it into talismans. Children who lost their mother cutting off a lock of her hair so they can braid it into theirs. Men taking a braid of their deceased wife’s hair and tying it into their belts. Just the cultural implications of a person hair>>>

[sinful-ghost]

Sansa is a character who undergoes a transformation from an idealistic, naive child to facing the harsh realities of adulthood. Her story particularly emphasizes her feminine values such as love and family, and the compromises she must make as she navigates her journey.

However, in the show adaptation, Sansa's feminine traits were largely omitted, replaced instead with a focus on power and ambition, diverging from the original portrayal. In the books, Sansa expresses, 'I never asked to be part of the game,' yet finds herself thrust into it nonetheless. While she learns to navigate the game from adept players, her primary goal remains self-preservation rather than seeking power.

It seems George R.R. Martin intended Sansa to tell a different story amidst a cast of already power-hungry female characters in Westeros. Characters like Cersei, Daenerys, Asha, and Arianne all pursue power in various ways due to their circumstances and desires. Sansa's arc emphasizes her journey towards self-preservation and protecting her loved ones, rather than seeking dominion.

While TV adaptations are expected to diverge from their source material, the show's departure from the original narrative feels particularly egregious. Sansa's character, along with several others, suffers from inconsistent adaptation choices, making it difficult to pinpoint specific critiques.

The portrayal of Sansa and Arya as feminist icons due to their roles as leaders and warriors in the show is also contentious. While their empowerment is celebrated, it's important to recognize that femininity shouldn't necessitate forsaking their original character arcs. Arya's storyline, for instance, becomes a tale of revenge in the show, whereas in the books, her wounds run deeper and revenge isn't a sufficient resolution. Additionally, the show's portrayal of Sansa's revenge against Ramsay lacks the nuance and complexity of her book counterpart, who prioritizes familial loyalty over personal vengeance.

It's crucial to welcome female characters who navigate traditionally masculine territories, but it's equally important to allow feminine characters to retain their own stories and growth without conforming to masculine norms. This aspect of adaptation warrants criticism and reflection.

[moxley]

i haven't read the locked tomb so i would never say it's bad, but every time someone makes a recommendation that you read it instead of xyz other thing or read it if you like "queer pining" i get a weird twitch in my eye.

[hewantshisbrideback]

Nobody can definitively say the means which lead to the tragic ends of two such beloved public figures. Nobody can name what it was that brought the last Targaryen heir to the throne and the only daughter of House Stark together in the first place. No one knows exactly what happened, not in truth, but people can speculate. And speculate, they do.

A SONG OF INTERVIEWS AND FAKE NEWS: Retrospectives on Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark

[hylialeia]

hotd s2 reviews got me

[mummer]

Are you fucking kidding me anbsmsvcmc cmdbdnd

[kellyvela]

Did George at any point said that he wants to write a story where the main characters are dead before the beginning of the actual story ?

No. That "quote" is from this article:

[horizon-verizon]

"‘House of the Dragon’: Emma D’Arcy and Sonoya Mizuno Break Down Rhaenyra and Mysaria’s [SPOILER] in Episode 6"

🔗LINK -- Variety Article

Excerpts:

How do you see the evolution of Rhaenyra and Mysaria’s relationship from the start of the season until now? It’s quite a new type of relationship for Rhaenyra. She is such a volatile person that she often allows herself to be led by her emotions — especially in the case of relationships. I think this marks something of a change. Their trust is one that grows creepingly. Initially, they don’t like each other at all. And I think there’s something interesting about seeing two women within such a patriarchal system who have both developed mechanisms for navigating, manipulating the systems of power. Those skill sets were not built to be used on other women so much. So certainly for Rhaenyra, she feels a great deal of threat, actually, from Mysaria — including, obviously, her history with Daemon. But as the as the series progresses, Mysaria really affects Rhaenyra’s politics. She has a powerful impact on Rhaenyra’s ability to see how a kingdom and its citizens are affected in the case of civil war. That was slightly abstract to Rhaenyra — until Mysaria somehow makes that more concrete. And I think speaks to different forms of power that, again, maybe Rhaenyra, in her eagerness for a masculine conflict-based power, sometimes overlooks. Gaining the will, and the belief of the people — I don’t know how much that was part of her political consciousness prior to Mysaria.

AND

How do you see this kiss affecting Rhaenyra’s tumultuous relationship with Daemon? I don’t expect that she will have any intention of telling him. But I imagine that she feels quite proud, and feels quite emboldened. I imagine she quite likes the idea of him finding out. There’s such a power struggle in their relationship, that hooking up with his ex, I can only think, would feel like a useful point on the board.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

sorry, i've been looking everywhere and i can't find if there's a list of plants sorted by region?

Never seen one myself, sorry. I recommend checking the wiki's list of plants, and either following the links (if they're in-wiki links to articles and not out to wikipedia) or using asearchoficeandfire to see where those plants appear.

[lemonhemlock]

I did not get into Game of thrones when it first started airing. In fact, I waited until it was long past it's heyday (around s6 or 7) to check it out because the marketing and the conversation surrounding it misled me into thinking it was nothing more than "grimdark" bullshit. As one famous YouTuber sarcastically called it "hot fantasy that fucks." So, I avoided Martin's work for literal years due to the impression that I got from online reactors and show-only casuals who did as you and a few others have described as his work being fundamentally misinterpreted.

Fortunately, I overcame my hang-ups, purchased the books (even the supplementary material) and fell down an entire rabbit hole of ASOIAF which led me to recognizing that this world he spent decades creating is far more complex than what had been portrayed onscreen. Regardless of the possibility of the books remaining unfinished (which I am fine with, personally), what George has created is a genuine work of art that I imagine took a tremendous amount of time and energy. So, for so many people online to behave like children and throw tantrums because they feel entitled to him (ew) instead of ushering forth more reasonable conversations and legitimate debates about the nature of his situation frankly makes me look at this fandom with a heavy dose of skepticism.

It is truly baffling to hear even professional critics and see articles describing George as being "ungrateful" or "unprofessional" when it has been well-documented just how often authors get locked out of the adaptation process and left to the wayside as consultants. Look at what happened to Rick Riordan and Christopher Paolini! George R.R. Martin is not the only author to have qualms with how a multimillion dollar studio has mishandled his creative work, and to act like he should remain silent just because he's amassed a certain degree of wealth is quite frankly, ridiculous. He shouldn't have to settle down, be grateful, and stay quiet because the greedy corporate executives and their media drones will get offended by actual criticism that could alter the perception of the adaption being revealed as mediocre for having departed from the source material.

TLDR: authors should be allowed to speak up about their art being sacrificed for commercialization.

Thank you so much for this message, anon! This needs to be talked about more, because I don't think a lot of commentators truly understand the vulgar, late-capitalistic sheen that seems to set in and slowly poison any ASOIAF adaptation. It honestly baffles me how quick some members of this fandom are to rush to the defense of, what is essentially (let's not be kidding ourselves here), a cashgrab by a giant corporation to the detriment of the actual artist and the actual creative foundation behind it.

Why else would "MAX" (if that is even their name) make another (or several other) ASOIAF adaptations? Not to stay true to any philosophical aesthetic vision, as it has become more than apparent with Season 2, but to increase shareholder profits by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Even the basic premise has been shifted in order to address popular trends and satisfy the mindless consumer that doesn't want to engage with anything deeper than their favourite tropes, prettily packaged:

from a story about a doomed ouroborous family superimposed on the pitfalls of feudalism, with villainy and heroism to be found on both sides, it has been simplified and reduced to a narrative that exalts white feminism and disqualifies anyone who opposes its girlboss protagonist. This is Sheryl Sandberg's version of Fire and Blood.

Truly, I think Sara Hess did (unintentionally) outline it the best: "civilians don't matter in Game of Thrones". They don't matter in Game of Thrones, but they matter in A Song of Ice and Fire. The entire heart of the series is contained in Septon Maribald's speech. The writers "kind of", must have forgotten, though.

[15-lizards]

Hi, feel free not to answer this but I was going through your asoiaf fashion posts (stalker behaviour ik) and was wondering if you have any ideas on what kind of embroidery style the north would do? The stark sisters do it as a pastime and it's not like people are gonna have much else to do with the 80ft snowdrifts boxing them inside for years at a time.

Once again feel free not to answer this, I'm sure school must be stressful <3

So I take a lot of inspo for the north from eastern Eurasia, so I decided to go with Slavic/Russian embroidery for this one, particularly Rushniks

So according to the Rushnyk Wikipedia article: “The rectangular shape of the fabric indicates a life's journey and the ornamentation captures the cultural ancestral memory of the region…The needle has its own energy, an idea similar to acupuncture, and the color of the thread has sacred meaning. Red represents life and is the main color used. A rushnyk is given to a baby at birth, it follows the person throughout life and is used in the funeral service after death.”

Love how this is pretty much in line with a lot of Northern beliefs, practices, and superstitions. Young children are given them at birth for their protection, and maybe they are added to as they grow to symbolize their life so far and what they’ve done. Girls are taught how to make them not only for weddings but for funerals and births and as general protective talismans to wear and to have around the home

[darklinaforever]

I saw your stupid take in the tags about Criston. I cried when I seen him and Rhaenyra together because it brought back my own trauma. The way he could not look her in the eye, how she took his clothes off and he was frozen mostly as she did, the way he kept stopping, standing there and trying to delay the inevitable. He told her to stop when she started undressing. She kept coming at him and he didn't want to. He killed a man over being triggered. He was gonna kill himself over it. Running away with Rhaenyra was trauma response his brain rewriting it to make it easier to cope with. You're a pure insult to people like me who have been abused and SA. How can you write stuff like that just because Rhaenyra was your uwu

If you are a victim of SA I am really sorry for you and hope you are well now.

But it's not because you had the impression that the scene was a rape and therefore that it triggered you that it was.

Your personal feelings are not necessarily the reality of what is shown on screen.

I said the same thing to the Cat King's detractors ; Just because you feel triggered doesn't mean the thing is written as such.

And like I said to the other anon, I guess you can say the same thing (about being a pure insult to victims of abuse and SA victims) about the writers producers and actors of HOTD in this case, since everyone has confirmed that this scene was not a rape, consistent with what is shown on the screen...

And once again :

This article from @horizon-verizon explains very well why Criston Cole was not raped and why swapping sexes between him and Rhaenyra does not work.

And my posts on Criston Cole are always marked anti Criston Cole.

[daenystheedreamer]

Ok this is a dumb question but do you understand the grand maester conspiracy? It’s popping up again and maybe I’m just an idiot but like all the things listed about killing dragon eggs and lying about shit, I just think like why would they be doing that tho? I know it’s like an intro to asoiaf theory and it’s also just regarded as not true. Idk am I just not getting it or is this why people say it’s bs

Grand Maester Conspiracy is one of those theories like Grand Northern Conspiracy where there's truth to it - the Northerners have their own agendas, and the Maesters have their own agendas (eg pycelle the tywin meatrider the lannister glazer the dj akademiks of asoiaf) - but it's not the blown out big dick illuminati conspiracy certain sections of the fandom act like it is.

The conspiracy literally sounds like something a coked-up Targaryen dickrider like Bloodraven would invent. "Maesters have spent 300 years possibly longer destroying the targ dynasty because they're r/atheist and hate magic" it honestly sounds like the asoiaf version of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. it's illogical and totally impractical and sounds nothing like what GRRM would write.

to be mean. it's for targ stans. and especially ones who've only watched hotd and read den of geek articles where the authors drag up some forum theory without context and since they haven't even read asoiaf they don't even have the actual context of the actual main fucking story. cringe!

r+l=j created a generation of the most insufferable forum redditors all desperate to create the next wide-ranging conspiracy theory and since its been 13 damn years without that damn book they had to get bigger and more wide reaching until literally 300 years worth of tens of thousands of maesters all with the same anti targ agenda have to all be working together for this to a) work and b) be so secret its even secret to the reader. also all the evidence is BS i hate when they use the barbrey grey rats quote cos that's pure barbrey crazy that's her own thing.

[westeroswisdom]

« I’ve been working…I’m 12 years late with Winds of Winter…I’m just going to put it right out there: you guys don’t have to pester me about it. »

— George R.R. Martin quoted in an article republished at MSN about his progress on The Winds of Winter.

Somebody could write a seven-volume chronicle about GRRM's epic struggle to complete the sixth volume of ASoIaF. Perhaps it could be made into a series.

[elinor-bolton]

So I wanted to write about the textual evidence regarding Aegon II and the child fighting pit, and why its extremely dubious that it happened at all based on the text of Fire&Blood

So just a little bit of background on fire & blood. Fire& blood, the book containing the information the house of the dragon is based on, was written in the asoiaf universe from the perspective of Maester Yandel, contains sections from the perspective of Archmaester Gyldayn. It containes six chapters detailing the Dance of the Dragons, taken from several people’s accounts that were there at the time. The perspectives that matter in this particular bit of the story are those of Septon Eustace, Grand Master Munkin, and Mushroom, the fool. One should note that all of these perpectives contain inaccuracies, and often conflicting stories, but Eustace was known for being a supporter of the Greens and Mushroom was said to have greatly loved Rhaenya and was known to add an air of scandal to any of his accounts (ex during the early days of the Dance, Jacaerys was sent to the Vale to request aid from Lady Jeyne Arryn, the ruling lady of house Arryn, known as the “Maid of the Vale” because she never married. According to Mushroom, she agreed to lend her support only if Jace could make her climax with his tongue. This is obviously ridiculus, as, besides the obvious, not only was Jace 15 and Jeyne 36 at the time (Not the pedophilia doesn’t happen a lot in asoiaf, it is generally doesn’t happen with an older woman and a younger man) and Jeyne was well accepted by the history books to be only interested in women. She had a lifelong “companion” in Jessamyn Redfort and was known to have died in her arms at the age of 40.) But back to my point. The perspectives were biased and Mushroom told scandalous stories. We do know that Septon Eustace was the only one who we can be certian was in Kings Landing for the events of Ep 9, as he preformed Viserys I’s last rights. We do know that Mushroom was not at KL directly after Viserys I death, as he was at Rhaenyra’s court at Dragonstone.

So, we get to the events of Ep9. All accounts agree that Aegon was not with Helaena and their children when called in by the council. Munkin’s account simply states the prince was found “at his revels” Eustace’s account says that Aegon was found “abed with a well-kept paramour, the daughter of a wealthy trader.” Mushroom, who was definately not present told a very different story. He states these “revels” “were at a Flea Bottom rat pit, where feral children fought each other for the amusement of watchers, while Aegon, drunk and naked, was pleasured by a young girl.”

Now we know these rat pits existed, and several members of the Dance may have visited them, including Aegon (once again, by the account of only Mushroom), Daemon and Baela (see the end of the linked above article on”rat pits” However, literally the only person who says the Aegon was there was Mushroom, who very much was not in Kings Landing. I’m not in any way trying to argue that he was “in bed with a well kept Paramour” (honestly he was probably drunk at a brothel) But I think it’s absolutely ridiculous and incredibly biased that the writers of the show decided to take the obviously unsubstantiated account of the story and use that to make Aegon seem worse. It’s just part of a larger pattern of the writers picking the absolute worst accounts for Aegon’s character building and completely ignoring the objective accounts for Rhaenyra (Such as the fact that in the text she definitely ordered the death of Vaemond, who did not call her a whore (Although he did accuse her of committing adultery which was high treason so) Instead the show has Viserys”ordering his death” and Daemon acting on his own to behead a noble without trial (aka literally the thing that Joffrey does to Ned Stark that starts the war with the North) which is a super big issue the narrative just glosses over, but once again i digress