asoiaf meme: (3/5) locations ➝ PENTOS
Pentos is the nearest of the Free Cities to King’s Landing, and trading ships pass back and forth between the two cities on an almost daily basis. Founded by Valyrians as a trading outpost, Pentos soon absorbed the hinterlands surrounding it, from the Velvet Hills and the Little Rhoyne to the sea, including almost the whole of the ancient realm of Andalos, the original homeland of the Andals. The first Pentoshi were merchants, traders, seafarers, and farmers, with few of high birth amongst them; perhaps for this reason, they were less protective of their Valyrian blood and more willing to breed with the original inhabitants of the lands they ruled. As a consequence there is considerable Andal blood amongst the men of Pentos, making them perhaps our closest cousins.
asoiaf meme: [1/5] locations || Dorne
Vast deserts of red and white sand, forbidding mountains where treacherous passes are guarded by treacherous peoples, sweltering heat, sandstorms, scorpions, fiery food, poison, castles made of mud, dates and figs and blood oranges— these things comprise most of what the smallfolk of the Seven Kingdoms know of Dorne.
There are no cities in Dorne, though the so-called shadow city that clings to the walls of Sunspear is large enough to be counted as a town (a town built of mud and straw, it must be admitted). Larger and more populous, the Planky Town at the mouth of the river Greenblood is mayhaps the nearest thing the Dornish have to a true city though a city with planks instead of streets, where the houses and halls and shops are made from poleboats, barges, and merchant ships, lashed together with hempen rope and floating on the tide.
Is Summerhall a summer palace because the Targaryens enjoy the heat? And if Dragonstone is given to the first son and heir, and Summerhall is given to the 4th son, what do the ones in between get?
I’m afraid I wrote that post before TWOIAF clarified matters on Summerhall’s origin and purpose, and I was wrong on those two points. But the book did explain things:
In the following year [after Maron and Daenerys’s marriage and Dorne joining united Westeros], Daeron raised a great seat in the Dornish Marches, near to where the boundaries of the Reach, the stormlands, and Dorne met. Calling it Summerhall to mark the peace he had created, it was more palace than castle and lightly fortified at best; in the years to come, many sons of House Targaryen would hold the seat as Prince of Summerhall. —TWOIAF
So the palace was built c. 188, and it’s in the south because it marked the peace with Dorne, thus the name “summer”. So it’s not really a “summer palace” so much as a vacation palace, a peaceful hideaway. Where it’s located wouldn’t have been all that hot — yes, generally warm and not affected by winter much, but not that close to the deserts of Dorne.
TWOIAF says many Targaryens were princes of Summerhall, but the first one we know of is Maekar, called that in 209 AC. Maekar would have been about 10-14 years old when Summerhall was built, so it’s possible that his brothers Aerys (12-16) or Rhaegel (11-15) held it before he did. But Aerys was bookish (and would have preferred the libraries of the Red Keep) and Rhaegel was mad, and neither were warriors, so odds are neither would have been left in charge of the palace. And Baelor Breakspear was Prince of Dragonstone and so was very unlikely to have ever held the seat. So it’s probable that Maekar was Prince of Summerhall from the time his father Daeron II granted him the seat until Aerys’s death. (It might be that Aelor was in residence at some point, but as he seems to have shared his father Rhaegel’s instability, I doubt he was ever in charge.)
Now, once Maekar became king, his eldest son Daeron should have been called Prince of Dragonstone, but per TWOIAF “he preferred to be styled Prince of Summerhall because he found Dragonstone such a gloomy abode”. So we can figure he was Prince of Summerhall #2. After he died (date unknown), it’s possible his brother Aerion became Prince of Summerhall, but I can imagine Aerion would definitely prefer residence in Dragonstone or King’s Landing. And Aemon was a maester, of course, so I figure Aegon was Prince of Summerhall #3.
And after Aegon became king in 233, his son Duncan would have been Prince of Dragonstone… at least until he abdicated in 239. So when Jaehaerys became crown prince, did Duncan take up residence at Summerhall? Or did he stay out of the area, it being a bit too close to the Stormlands and his angry might’ve-been-father-in-law? TWOIAF says Duncan and Jenny and her woodswitch companion were “accepted at court”, so it’s probable they spent most of their time in King’s Landing. So I’d say Aegon’s son Daeron was Prince of Summerhall #4 (maybe #5 if Jaehaerys ever had it), at least until his death in 251. It could be that Duncan held the seat after him (Aerys would have been way too young) if anyone did, as it would have been more than a decade since he offended Lyonel Baratheon (and who might not have even been alive anymore).
And then in 259 Summerhall burnt down, and there were no more Princes of Summerhall anymore.
(fire and blood); Old Valyria
At its apex Valyria was the greatest city in the known world, the center of civilization. Within its shining walls, twoscore rival houses vied for power and glory in court and council, rising and falling in an endless, subtle, oft-savage struggle for dominance.
THIS IS A SUPER COOL BLOG, I CAN'T BELIEVE I HADN'T FOUND IT SOONER, HAPPY FLAPPING. If you're still running it (there hasn't been an update in a while, so?)... I'm very curious as to Winterfell's message. Not really expecting an answer (unless it was obvious and I just missed it, which is always a possibility, especially when I haven't read asoiaf in a while), but maybe a vague hint would be nice? ;D
Why thank you.
As I've said before, the Principalities are quite protective of their children, especially the Major Houses. In the lands of winter, where survival is an annual struggle and loyalty is the highest honor, the other holdings and castles and cities care far more for the ruling clan, though the Starks are not their children, than the lands of the summer sun.
There the Cities are rife with power struggles, case in point Casterly Rock and Castamere, and Sunspear and Yronwood. That's not to say Winterfell is without rebellious siblings altogether (The Dreadfort and Karhold can be particularly unscrupulous); she simply has subtler methods.
So when Winterfell tells Castle Black of the events that have occurred, the fall, the fire, the attempted assassination, she's not just informing him, but she has also informed all of the North. And even if the rest of the Northern cities cared next-to-nothing for the Starks, Winterfell does, and they swear fealty to her.
See, for a Principality, the ruling House holds a special place in what would be their hearts, if they had a figurative one (their physical anatomy is similar enough, at least). To see them hurt or killed is nearly as painful as being burned. For one House to strike at another like that, within her walls no less, for Winterfell, the North has received a declaration of war. And to rub it in, the would-be assassin set a fire as distraction. He had to have known what he was doing to the City, the burns that would appear on her skin, staying fresh and raw and red until the people healed and scabbing over dark charcoal black like the scorched surface of her stones and the timber burnt to ashes, and even as the crusted skin falls off in bits and pieces the patchy scar will remain, silver-white on skin pale as moonlight.
There is nothing and no one that can stop the North's fury when it is roused.
He’s in the dining hall with his men when the message comes because he’s even more a child than Winterfell, not even a castle but a collection of buildings (and yet despite all this when they had been fading both Shadowtower and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea chose that he should survive so he honors them by holding on as the last defense and he uses every scrap of energy to will the fade away).
So when a tree as black as weirwoods were white sprouted out of the table it was little wonder that all shot up exclaiming and shouting.
But then again, there were times when he could appreciate the beauty of such an immediate information system. Especially when it was only utilized for extreme cases.
The branches of the sapling unfurled, letting their delivery drop into expectant hands. There was a commotion about, white faces of fear, shock, awe, confusion, someone running for the Lord Commander. Castle Black ignored them all as he read Winterfell’s precise script.
Unlike their children, Cities lived ages and ages. They could see the bigger picture, and they played a game as well with actions and consequences spanning centuries of deceit and manipulation. And Casterly Rock had just made his move.
The thing about Cities, you see, is that they are not necessarily representative of their children. Most of the time, their interests coincide, if not for exactly the same purpose, because Cities are often benefited by having their children gain.
But every once in a while, their interests collided. In this case, it was not, and had never been, in Castle Black’s, or any of the Wall, for that matter, to isolate themselves from the kingdom’s machinations. They were already small enough. True, they never forgot the danger posed by the Others, but there weren’t any Cities Beyond. It really was… just a wasteland unlike…
It was their move now. The stone had been thrown; the ripples were already spreading.
Well, he thought, Casterly Rock must be in quite the fortified position, to make such a move. I wonder how much strength would we need, a dozen, hundred, thousand ripples even he could not stand against. And for all their boasts, the Free Cities are chafing. I'll just give them a little... heads up.
The festival city, the city of broken dreams. Trailing mist hangs low over crumbled stone arches. Glass that once sent streams of colored light on laughing dancing people now lies in shards amidst the rubble.
Chroyane is married now to the greyscale and the greyplague, the third wheel in a disaster of a deadly relationship. She steps across lonely streets and empty buildings haunted by a perpetual mist no longer driven off with flashing torches and feasts to remember, tournaments and endless festivals.
She had been a something to remember once. She remembers the faces of traders bringing in spices and silks and jewels for her to glitter and shine, open and smiling with awe and delight. She remembers the feel of Volantis' hands on her waist as they spun and dipped and whirled to the music. They were the center of every party, every interaction, every event.
The first daughter of Valyria had truly been something to behold, majestic and royal and wise. Chroyane had always felt so young, filled anew with innocent wonder when Volantis graced her with a smile, gold eyes sparking with the dragonfire of her birth. Back then she had been the baby of the family, the pretty bauble raised by the Nine. Volantis claimed her, sent trade upriver between them, attended her festivities. And there had been much to celebrate indeed.
There had even been talk of a formal alliance between the two Cities, a pact of reduced taxes, to war for the other and more, and all the world from Asshai of the Rising Sun to her other eight brothers and sisters to newly built King's Landing in the strange and savage Seven Kingdoms to Valyria herself would see them wed in glittering splendor beneath her crystal halls.
Until what the humans called the Doom fell upon them and the stone that had once been her grace and beauty became her greatest weakness. Finely adorned nobles and ragged peasants alike could not stand against the stone sickness. It seeped through her walls and into her soil tainting Lhorulu as it emptied into the Rhoyne until it seemed that very veins flowed with molten stone.
(But that wasn't right, stone melted hot and burned long; Volantis had shown her once with the dragons that she no longer visited her with, and she had felt what it was like to have fire for blood when Volantis breathed into her mouth, marked less permanent tattoos with sharp teeth and soft, warm lips alongside the colors that bloomed beneath Chroyane's skin, and this stone was cold, unforgiving and disastrous.)
Her children flee in droves, those that are sane enough to. She begs them not to, shouts, "I will keep you safe, I swear I will!" They don't listen, if they don't ignore her outright they look at her sadly and shake their heads at what had once been. She swallows their rejection quietly because they are right, the plague is sunk too deep in the foundations of her being, it runs in her blood, slow and lethal and to remove it would be to raze her to the ground and burn the ruins and salt the ashes but even then that would not be enough for Mother Rhoyne flowed wide and strong though perhaps not fast, and there was no fire that would dry a river--not the summer sun and not dragonfire and not alchemical demonfire.
Chroyane begs her sisters, her brothers, even Volantis, but even if they could they have their own troubles to contend with. ("There was a time you would have gone to war for me," she whispers. But Volantis says, "I cannot fight death, nor time, nor change.")
And if you looked into her eyes now you'd be lost in the swirling eddies of the Rhoyne eating out her ancient edges. It is strange to think that she is ancient, impossible, wasn't her greatness a mere decade past? She wanders the Bridge of Dreams untouched by the cries and moans and pleas of the children-who-are-not-her-children left here abandoned to be consumed by stone. As long as they are here, she is not yet dead.
(Her skin remembers, the vibrancy she once possessed squirms in red and green and violet vines with blue and yellow flowers across her back and under her arms and twisting down her legs.)
The un-children are dying and unwanted where they've forced themselves into her heart but they keep her from lying down and fading away. For now at least, and she thinks of the numbness crawling up her toes and the steady thrum of rock flowing through her, petrifying her from the inside out.
Chroyane, once the gem of Old Valyria, looks out into the mist and wonders whether she should accept Tyria's offer.
Qarth is like this gorgeous, slightly effeminate but mostly agenderal peacock. Luxurious, flowing silks, rugs, jewels, spun gold hairnets pinning up hair black as night and bringing out tawny eyes of sand, ze does things to the fullest. And yeah, sometimes ze leaves zir left breast bare, sometimes ze doesn't and zir children swear to the Undying that ze has the finest breast all in the world while others claim that ze only has the muscles of any other man. Ze just smiles enigmatically.
And ze weeps. How ze weeps. (for cities things lost and gone to the Doom, even though Asshai is alive and well unlike zir brothers and sisters he did not return the same)
The Cities have Silent Wars (as in the paris burning verse) where they fight and kill and silently assassinate each other but the humans have no idea. They war for many things, Principality (Capital-hood), jealousy, loyalty, resources. Cities are a fickle lot. The humans didn't really know about this, except the spies and the whisperers, like Varys and his ilk heard strange things about the Reynes of Castamere. But even then that was traded about in hushed whispers of tavern shadows. It wasn't until the coronation of Robert Baratheon, First of His Name, where King's Landing was assaulted in broad daylight - Moat Cailin shut up.
But they still do it, only they can't kill (permanently) anymore. It's all a question of how to do it without getting caught.
Casterly Rock actually has chocolate brown hair slightly darker than his eyes, but since Lann charmed him over (he should've known better than to fall in love with a human, in the end all men must die) he's been dying it yellow, with real gold of course.
Winterfell is still a child, for her storms rage strong across the cold land, and her children build well but close and small. Her land expands not much further than the castle walls which were never the same grandiose towers as King's Landing in the south. She may be underestimated in size and strength but she has as sharp a mind as any of her brothers and sisters.
She is a child, but she is a City, and they do not age the same. She has grown since the children of the forest found her beneath the weirwood, hardly more than a babe. She has learned since the First Men came and took her from home beneath the pines (they took her, but they cannot tame her, oh no, not the daughter of winter. They dare not cut her godswoods down even as krakens learn to walk the earth), and the Andals after them with crystals and new gods (not in my north!) and steel, and even after the Targaryens and their words of Fire and Blood.
Winterfell serves the Starks as they served her, and each in their own time are entombed in the hollows of her bones. They take pride in their child-City, they know not to underestimate her, as she has learned the same for them. For all their age, they are her children, and she protects them.
But even she is not omnipotent. Her children have fallen to harm before. Brandon the Shipwright who left her walls and sailed into Sunset Sea, nevermore seen. The deaths of the leaders mark the crypts, etched into her ribs. The deaths of unknown leave their own shadows. Their blood paints her skin, rashed with fires, tattooed with winding pale almost-shadows (she rubs her near translucent skin in the dark of night and tries not to remember the Others; but not remembering is not the same as forgetting, and she doesn't, no, Winterfell is daughter of winter and grandchild of the old gods, she does not forget the Long Night, even as magic drains out of the world and danger fades from view.).
It is not until the children of Casterly Rock enter her that her children are harmed within her walls. The southron king calls for her presence and she ought by all rights deny this drunk oaf, he is nothing to her.
"Please, for me, he is like a brother," begs Eddard Stark, so she relents (but only for godswoods and the plains and the lands outside her walls).
She feels the invasion immediately, splashed blatantly across her skin the way Jaime Lannister's seed spurts on her walls (do they think she cannot feel it, do they take her a child, how dare). And she presses her lips together, thin and nauseous.There's a tickling along her spine just then, and she knows what is going to happen, she can feel it as surely as Brandon Stark's feet climbing her ruins. She shakes her head, but that doesn't stop it, can't prevent it - she is too far away, no, oh no, and she screams (the things I do for love) and scares off their prey so everyone's looking at her. She can't see that though, her eyes are his: big and wide and terrified as the ledge hurtles away; her ears are his: he can't hear his own screams, only the whistling of air passing him by; her body is his as she feels bones meet ground with horrific smack, as she feels shards of bone grind against each other, twisting and digging further into the flesh.
Winterfell returns sharply, jerks her horse around, and rides, hard, for home. She can feel each and every person within her holdings, the other deaths that she numbs herself from but a Stark always has cut across every boundary. Ned knows this, and she can feel his fear chasing her back as he follows on his own steed.
But she's a City after all and by the time she is actually there through the Hunter's Gate and off her panting foaming courser she knows Bran will survive, and she knows needs to be alone or she will redecorate Casterly Rock, he and his gold-flecked curses come to ruin her, in blood and snow and ice.
Because a City is not responsible for it's humans actions.
Winterfell says this to herself as the stones rearrange themselves around her pattering feet, leading down in a tunnel that shifts back after she passes until she is in the crypts of her children long gone, curled up and shivering.
When she comes out again the birds will have flown and the caravan will have ridden. When she comes out again it will not be to tell the Starks who hurt Bran, because they will have known. When Winterfell walks out of the crypts letters will be exchanged and correspondence between the Cities will fly on dark wings.
City!verse in A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones
Clearly I am making a sane decision by deciding to tackle insomnia by combining two of my current obsessions.
“They had no name.
Perhaps that was because nothing could be found to accurately describe them. Religion had tried, through worship and condemnation equally. Science had tried too, through labels and diagrams that a frustrated Combeferre had poured over night after night before his exams. Both failed.
It was the people that had come closest. They merely called them ‘the Cities’." (x)
In the more medieval setting of asoiaf, I think the castles themselves are the Cities because they wouldn’t have the populations to really have Cities except maybe King’s Landing and the Nine Free Cities of Valyria, and Vaes Dothrak (when the khalasars come home to roost) and highly likely Qarth and Assha’i (sp? google isn’t helping and i dare not wiki for fear of spoilers).
Principal holdings (Winterfell, Casterly Rock, the Eyrie, Highgarden, etc.) have the invulnerability to weaponry as King’s Landing and the other Capitals. Both are vulnerable to fire, but Capitals heal faster, with the exception of wildfire.
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