Old Volantis, or the First Daughter, is one of the oldest and richest cities in Essos. The city extends through the Rhoyne, connecting its two halves, the old district and the new district, by a long bridge. Black stone protects the bridge and the walls of the city.
They are heavily involved in slave trade and tattoo the faces of enslaved people according to their status. Three Triarchs are elected annually to rule the city. They are chosen from two political parties: the Elephants, or the merchants and rich advocates for trade, and the Tigers, the old money and warriors advocating for conquest.
Thoughts on the widow of the waterfront, Benerro, etc?
Melisandre, Benerro, Moqorro and all the red priests and priestesses are probably all wrong about who is Azor Ahai reborn and his role in the story. They worship fire after all.......
The Widow of the Waterfront is an ex slave of Volantis and now she's a woman with power, but guess who were the founders of Old Volantis? Guess who were the slavers? So when she said this:
"I am no lady," the widow replied, "just Vogarro's whore. You want to be gone from here before the tigers come. Should you reach your queen, give her a message from the slaves of Old Volantis." She touched the faded scar upon her wrinkled cheek, where her tears had been cut away. "Tell her we are waiting. Tell her to come soon."
Maybe she wasn't telling that in a welcoming way.......
Hey PQ, love your analysis. I agree with you that Victarion is likely to blow Dragonbinder and die a fiery death from within. I think he's seduced by the horn and is power hungry after battle, and believes that somehow Morroqo can save him again. My question, if/when Vic blows the horn and dies, what happens to the Ironborn? They are leaderless, far from home. They lost more than half their fleet on this journey as well, so going back doesn't look like a great option. Do they stay and Reave?
Good question! In the show, the Iron Fleet was Team Dany’s ticket to Westeros. In that case, however, the Fleet was led by the at least semi-sympathetic younger Greyjoys; in the books, Nuncle Vic is at the helm, and not only is the Iron Captain much less likely to play nice with others, he’s (as you note) probably not gonna last much longer.
Moreover, there’s a considerably larger fleet creeping behind Victarion’s…
And I must needs reach the dragon queen before the Volantenes.
In Volantis he had seen the galleys taking on provisions. The whole city had seemed drunk. Sailors and soldiers and tinkers had been observed dancing in the streets with nobles and fat merchants, and in every inn and winesink cups were being raised to the new triarchs. All the talk had been of the gold and gems and slaves that would flood into Volantis once the dragon queen was dead. One day of such reports was all that Victarion Greyjoy could stomach; he paid the gold price for food and water, though it shamed him, and took his ships back out to sea.
The storms would have scattered and delayed the Volantenes, even as they had his own ships. If fortune smiled, many of their warships might have sunk or run aground. But not all. No god was that good, and those green galleys that survived by now could well have sailed around Valyria. They will be sweeping north toward Meereen and Yunkai, great dromonds of war teeming with slave soldiers. If the Storm God spared them, by now they could be in the Gulf of Grief. Three hundred ships, perhaps as many as five hundred.
…and the heart of Tyrion VII ADWD’s deep dive into Volantis was his seismic reading of the fire underneath the city’s triumphant surface, exposed by those kindling it: the one with the flame tattoos…
The river road was thick with traffic, almost all of it flowing south. The knight went with it, a log caught in a current. Tyrion eyed the passing throngs. Nine men of every ten bore slave marks on their cheeks. “So many slaves … where are they all going?”
“The red priests light their nightfires at sunset. The High Priest will be speaking. I would avoid it if I could, but to reach the Long Bridge we must pass the red temple.”
Three blocks later the street opened up before them onto a huge torchlit plaza, and there it stood. Seven save me, that’s got to be three times the size of the Great Sept of Baelor. An enormity of pillars, steps, buttresses, bridges, domes, and towers flowing into one another as if they had all been chiseled from one colossal rock, the Temple of the Lord of Light loomed like Aegon’s High Hill. A hundred hues of red, yellow, gold, and orange met and melded in the temple walls, dissolving one into the other like clouds at sunset. Its slender towers twisted ever upward, frozen flames dancing as they reached for the sky. Fire turned to stone. Huge nightfires burned beside the temple steps, and between them the High Priest had begun to speak.
Benerro. The priest stood atop a red stone pillar, joined by a slender stone bridge to a lofty terrace where the lesser priests and acolytes stood. The acolytes were clad in robes of pale yellow and bright orange, priests and priestesses in red.
The great plaza before them was packed almost solid. Many and more of the worshipers were wearing some scrap of red cloth pinned to their sleeves or tied around their brows. Every eye was on the high priest, save theirs. “Make way,” the knight growled as his horse pushed through the throng. “Clear a path.” The Volantenes gave way resentfully, with mutters and angry looks.
Benerro’s high voice carried well. Tall and thin, he had a drawn face and skin white as milk. Flames had been tattooed across his cheeks and chin and shaven head to make a bright red mask that crackled about his eyes and coiled down and around his lipless mouth. “Is that a slave tattoo?” asked Tyrion.
The knight nodded. “The red temple buys them as children and makes them priests or temple prostitutes or warriors. Look there.” He pointed at the steps, where a line of men in ornate armor and orange cloaks stood before the temple’s doors, clasping spears with points like writhing flames. “The Fiery Hand. The Lord of Light’s sacred soldiers, defenders of the temple.”
Fire knights. “And how many fingers does this hand have, pray?”
“One thousand. Never more, and never less. A new flame is kindled for every one that gutters out.”
Benerro jabbed a finger at the moon, made a fist, spread his hands wide. When his voice rose in a crescendo, flames leapt from his fingers with a sudden whoosh and made the crowd gasp. The priest could trace fiery letters in the air as well. Valyrian glyphs. Tyrion recognized perhaps two in ten; one was Doom, the other Darkness.
Shouts erupted from the crowd. Women were weeping and men were shaking their fists. I have a bad feeling about this. The dwarf was reminded of the day Myrcella sailed for Dorne and the riot that boiled up as they made their way back to the Red Keep.
…and the one who cut her tattoos away.
The widow sipped daintily at her wine. “Some of the first elephants were women,” she said, “the ones who brought the tigers down and ended the old wars. Trianna was returned four times. That was three hundred years ago, alas. Volantis has had no female triarch since, though some women have the vote. Women of good birth who dwell in ancient palaces behind the Black Walls, not creatures such as me. The Old Blood will have their dogs and children voting before any freedman. No, it will be Belicho, or perhaps Alios, but either way it will be war. Or so they think.”
“And what do you think?” Ser Jorah asked.
Good, thought Tyrion. The right question.
“Oh, I think it will be war as well, but not the war they want.” The old woman leaned forward, her black eyes gleaming. “I think that red R’hllor has more worshipers in this city than all the other gods together. Have you heard Benerro preach?”
“Last night.”
“Benerro can see the morrow in his flames,” the widow said. “Triarch Malaquo tried to hire the Golden Company, did you know? He meant to clean out the red temple and put Benerro to the sword. He dare not use tiger cloaks. Half of them worship the Lord of Light as well. Oh, these are dire days in Old Volantis, even for wrinkled old widows.”
Tyrion grinned. “If I were Volantene, and free, and had the blood, you’d have my vote for triarch, my lady.”
“I am no lady,” the widow replied, “just Vogarro’s whore. You want to be gone from here before the tigers come. Should you reach your queen, give her a message from the slaves of Old Volantis.”
She touched the faded scar upon her wrinkled cheek, where her tears had been cut away. “Tell her we are waiting. Tell her to come soon.”
So the slave soldiers and sailors on the Volantene fleet seem likely to revolt sooner rather than later, especially after it becomes clear that the slaver coalition their masters came to support has been wiped out by Barry and Vic, hammer-and-anvil style. As such, Team Dany might not need the Iron Fleet, and the latter’s narrative function was more to do with Dragonbinder and Moqorro…which if so, means the reavers will likely face the same fate as their leader.
Hi, PQ. Why is Benerro trying to end slavery in Essos? Political reasons? Religious? A bit of both? From what I remember, there's nothing in the text that suggests R'hlloric belief to be anti-slavery, except maybe the speculation that the Doom of Valyria was a result of "priests of R’hllor calling down the fire of their god in queer rituals".
I think the text actually offers a consistent connection between R’hllorism and anti-slavery/general lift-up-the-downtrodden causes, beyond Benerro to Beric’s campaign, the Alys/Sigorn wedding, and Melisandre’s own personal rise from slavery. (It’s also possible that R’hllor played some kind of role in the Doom, yes; the Faceless Men claim responsibility, but WOIAF indicates they might’ve killed the mages holding back the power of the Fourteen Flames.) Now, of course, that can all go horribly wrong: Beric gives way to Stoneheart, people like Clayton Suggs latch onto the faith, and Mel ultimately chose the wrong champion. But that’s also true of the Faith of the Seven, with multifaceted takes ranging from the High Sparrow to the elites he replaces to Meribald and the Elder Brother. I think R’hllorism has taken hold in this particular fashion because in the Riverlands, it offered a stark contrast to the aforementioned corrupt elites of the Faith, and in Essos, it offered a messianic figure to intervene and topple the masters.
The latter plotline does have some uncomfortable overtones to it, but I think the Volantene slaves are presented as having their own agenda and agency, and are seizing on Dany’s crusade as a chance to put a long-brewing plan into action. Which is to say: I think Benerro genuinely believes Dany to be Azor Ahai, but is also folding the rebellion into that narrative so that Dany’s victories are seen as also R’hllor’s victories. Moreover, his co-conspirator makes it clear that Dany isn’t the sole actor in the revolution so much as the spark the two of them have needed:
“I am no lady,” the widow replied, “just Vogarro’s whore. You want to be gone from here beforethe tigers come. Should you reach your queen, give her a message from the slaves of Old Volantis.” She touched the faded scar upon her wrinkled cheek, where her tears had been cut away. “Tell her we are waiting. Tell her to come soon.”
Hi PoorQuentyn! I really like your previous [Euron : not!-the-Big-Bad :: Aegon : not!-the-Hero] analysis. At the risk of overextending, would this make Benerro and/or Marwyn the Mage hijackers of the magical-adviser/Gandalf archetype even if they're the ones getting it right by focusing on Dany? How does this interact with Bloodraven and Melisandre's arcs considering they've been much more proactive in the War of the Dawn even if they've been hit-and-miss and completely mistaken, respectively?
Thanks! I think the notable dynamic here is between institutionally driven mentors and rogue ones–which is to say, the difference between Benerro and Melisandre, or between Maester Luwin and the Mage. What’s interesting is that GRRM varies how he introduces and frames these factions. In R’hllorism, the System picked the Mother of Dragons and the rogue picked the quite-clearly-not-the-messiah Stannis; Mel is introduced before the red priests of Volantis, so the latter have the effect of filling in the background behind her and putting her quest in context. In the Citadel, the rogue picked the Mother of Dragons, whereas the grey sheep are sticking their heads in the sand and pretending none of this is happening; we meet multiple approved-for-public-consumption maesters before Marwyn, so he does have the hijacking effect you’re talking about. Luwin was a mentor for the first act, the kindly well-intentioned father figure who turns out to be wrong about the hero’s powers and destiny, departing the stage so said hero can move onto the next step of the journey (hence the symbolism of the skeptical rationalist maester being sacrificed before the heart tree). Marwyn is a mentor for the third act, the one who knows that Old Nan was right.
That leads into the not-unrelated question you raise about Bloodraven and Melisandre: when and whether the mentors are actually right about what’s going on, and how that in turn interacts with our perspective on whether they’re going too far. Both the red woman and the three-eyed crow have, well, red on their ledger, and they’re committed to that as part of their endgame. Does how we feel about this change given that, from all we know, Bloodraven’s right about Bran and Mel’s wrong about Stannis? What about the strong possibility that Bloodraven opened Euron’s third eye–can anything Bloodraven did on the way to Bran be retroactively justified because he found the Rebuilder? And that specific question extends to the Mage: he’s cutting through a lot of BS that needs cutting through, and he seems like he could be an essential voice in Dany’s camp, but what about the fact that he mentored Qyburn?
For the record, I don’t think the answer is “they’re villains” for Mel nor Marwyn nor Bloodraven. The interesting tension at work in all these cases is worthy ends juxtaposed with unworthy means and/or hubris leading to myopia and risk.
Hey! I think when Moqorro and Benerro tell her she’s Azor Ahai, she’s going to believe them, and convert to the faith as its prophet. Less about her faith in R’hllor itself than the prophecy and her role in it. Indeed, I also think she’ll have been anointed the Stallion Who Mounts the World (judging from the abasement of the dosh khaleen before Drogon-ridin’ Dany in her HOTU visions) by the time she gets to Volantis. As such, the AA revelation will be less about R’hllorism as a dogma or institution than as another aspect of Dany’s burgeoning self-conception as a religious figure rather than a political one, which I think is the subtext of her vision quest at the end of ADWD. And I think Dany’s a cross-denominational figure, moving among many faiths, small-c catholic.
Then again, I also think the Volantene priests, the R’hllorite “establishment” if you will as contrasted with the rogue Melisandre, are more interested (understandably enough) in their liberation theology than fighting the Others. After all, Benerro (proving himself an excellent politician) links Dany’s anti-slavery crusade to her Azor Ahai status, telling his followers that their masters are thus enemies of R’hllor and must be swept aside, despite no mention of slavery or even righting wrongs generally in the AA myth. So Benerro is just one of the most well-intentioned of the truly staggering number of people in the Feastdance trying to hijack Daenerys Targaryen’s story for their own ends, from Euron to Doran to Varys & Illyrio.
As such, I don’t think the red priests will play a big role in the dragonrider endgame, and that it’s Marwyn the Mage who will eventually nudge Dany and her companions northward, given the urgent message he’s carrying from her however-many-great-uncle.
A Defense of Tyrion’s ADWD Storyline, Part 5: Where Chains Are Cheaper Than Day-Old Bread
Image by Jordi Gonzalez Escamilla
Series so far here
Volantis. Heir to the Empire. The grisly heart of Essos. And among my favorite handful-or-so settings in ASOIAF.
This is so in large part because of the beyond-impressive manner by which GRRM paces our understanding of the city, its history, and its present-day significance. Our introduction to Old Volantis actually comes through Quentyn’s eyes in his first chapter (“The Merchant’s Man,” still utterly devastating, both reeling from trauma and full of foreshadowing and unconscious knowledge of the terrors to come), and it comes all at once, far too much for him, a dizzying array of sounds, smells, and schemes. GRRM expertly uses the environment to emphasize how alienated and heartsick Quentyn is (“Adventure stank”) in the wake of losing half of his companions (including his best friend), more than he does get into it on its own terms.
Nonetheless, we still get a strong sense of why Volantis matters as much as it does in A Dance with Dragons (and will again in The Winds of Winter), why GRRM is suddenly devoting so much time and attention to it, whether you’re talking culturally...
Quentyn would have preferred to walk, but they were miles from their inn. Besides, the innkeep at the Merchant’s House had warned him that traveling afoot would taint them in the eyes of foreign captains and the native-born Volantenes alike. Persons of quality traveled by palanquin, or in the back of a hathay…and as it happened the innkeep had a cousin who owned several such contrivances and would be pleased to serve them in this matter.
...or politically...
“Westerosi?” the man answered, in the Common Tongue.
“Dornishmen. My master is a wineseller.”
“Master? Fuck that. Are you a slave? Come with us and be your own master. Do you want to die abed? We’ll teach you sword and spear. You’ll ride to battle with the Tattered Prince and come home richer than a lord. Boys, girls, gold, whatever you want, if you’re man enough to take it. We’re the Windblown, and we fuck the goddess slaughter up her arse.”
Two of the sellswords began to sing, bellowing out the words to some marching song. Quentyn understood enough to get the gist. We are the Windblown, they sang. Blow us east to Slaver’s Bay, we’ll kill the butcher king and fuck the dragon queen.
...or thematically:
“A sweet man,” Gerris said afterward, as he and Quentyn made their way down to the foot of the pier where their hired hathay waited. The air hung hot and heavy, and the sun was so bright that both of them were squinting.
“This is a sweet city,” Quentyn agreed. Sweet enough to rot your teeth. Sweet beets were grown in profusion hereabouts, and were served with almost every meal. The Volantenes made a cold soup of them, as thick and rich as purple honey. Their wines were sweet as well. “I fear our happy voyage will be short, however. That sweet man does not mean to take us to Meereen. He was too quick to accept your offer. He’ll take thrice the usual fee, no doubt, and once he has us aboard and out of sight of land, he’ll slit our throats and take the rest of our gold as well.”
I would argue that in all three of those realms, what’s going on in Volantis exemplifies what’s going on across the entirety of the Essosi half of Dance. (Same goes for White Harbor in the North, but that’ll have to wait for a later series currently germinatin’, the Davos equivalent to this one.) With “The Merchant’s Man” providing that foundation, we are primed to appreciate Volantis’ place in the wider plot. So appropriately enough, Volantis’ place in Tyrion’s storyline takes the form of an orbit that he gradually enters, gathering more information about the city as he gets closer to its heart.
Indeed, A Dance with Dragons is beautifully attuned to how information moves along with people. Think of how Davos, similarly to Tyrion’s travels, picks up clues about what Wyman Manderly is up to as he moves ever closer to the man himself. Or of how Castle Black acts as a hub of arrivals, departures, layovers, messages, all advancing the plot, all leading inexorably to the Pink Letter. Or of how losing Maester Kedry immediately destabilizes Quentyn’s quest, and how significant it is that Victarion first refuses to make use of Maester Kerwin and then has him killed (I’m betting almost everyone at home thinks the Iron Captain is dead; we’ll find out come Winds). Here, GRRM uses the distinct sense of a sphere of influence to make Volantis’ place in its geographic and cultural context feel real. This of course makes for a fascinating read in its own right, but it also allows the author to more clearly and piercingly examine Tyrion’s relationship to his surroundings.
Volantis first crops up in Tyrion’s storyline as Illyrio’s planned rendezvous point with Dany.
Tyrion pondered all he knew of Volantis, oldest and proudest of the Nine Free Cities. Something was awry here. Even with half a nose, he could smell it. “It’s said there are five slaves for every free man in Volantis. Why would the triarchs assist a queen who smashed the slave trade?”
Right away, we (and Tyrion, demonstrating he hasn’t lost his insight) understand Volantis’ stake in the fight. The city and its delta is a slave society, and to borrow from @racefortheironthrone’s must-read essay on Volantis: “Historians and other scholars describe the difference between a society with slaves and a slave society thusly: in the former, while some people own slaves, slavery is but one interest among many and can be eliminated without great effort; in the latter, slavery becomes such a vital interest that everything else - the economy, the law, politics, culture, society, religion - becomes reshaped to support it.”
The master class of Volantis conceives of itself as the heir to Valyria’s slave society, so like the Ghiscari (and the Ironborn, for that matter), they’re pulling double duty: maintaining their own violent ideology-economy while also engaged in a hopeless revanchist attempt to recreate their Glorious Past as slavers and tormenters of a continent. And Daenerys Targaryen, a silver-haired violet-eyed dragonrider determined to free the world’s slaves, is a living contradiction designed to uproot the Old Blood’s way of life.
Dany’s arc in A Storm of Swords is a whirlwind rise to power; it’s amazing how much GRRM packs into six chapters. She starts off with her dragons, her khalasar, and her bear and winds up with an army, a people, a city, and a mission: “Stay. Rule. And be a queen.” What Dance does is zoom right the fuck out on that decision, tracing the ripple effects across half a continent, as the tide of change and reaction cascades outward and then comes crashing back down on Meereen. It’s both sophisticated and exhilarating to watch this process through so many different characters, especially as (being a good writer and all) GRRM keeps the focus on their own trials and tribulations, giving us the big picture out of the corner of their eyes.
Nowhere is that more true than Volantis. As the Shy Maid approaches its destination, Aegon’s lessons give GRRM an excuse to fill us in on what Volantene elites consider important, on how they see their history and present (although as we’ll learn, the slaves have a rather different view of what’s going on):
“We were discussing the history of Volantis,” Haldon said to him. “Can you tell Yollo the difference between a tiger and an elephant?”
“Volantis is the oldest of the Nine Free Cities, first daughter of Valyria,” the lad replied, in a bored tone. “After the Doom it pleased the Volantenes to consider themselves the heirs of the Freehold and rightful rulers of the world, but they were divided as to how dominion might best be achieved. The Old Blood favored the sword, while the merchants and moneylenders advocated trade. As they contended for rule of the city, the factions became known as the tigers and elephants, respectively.
“The tigers held sway for almost a century after the Doom of Valyria. For a time they were successful. A Volantene fleet took Lys and a Volantene army captured Myr, and for two generations all three cities were ruled from within the Black Walls. That ended when the tigers tried to swallow Tyrosh. Pentos came into the war on the Tyroshi side, along with the Westerosi Storm King. Braavos provided a Lyseni exile with a hundred warships, Aegon Targaryen flew forth from Dragonstone on the Black Dread, and Myr and Lys rose up in rebellion. The war left the Disputed Lands a waste, and freed Lys and Myr from the yoke. The tigers suffered other defeats as well. The fleet they sent to reclaim Valyria vanished in the Smoking Sea. Qohor and Norvos broke their power on the Rhoyne when the fire galleys fought on Dagger Lake. Out of the east came the Dothraki, driving smallfolk from their hovels and nobles from their estates, until only grass and ruins remained from the forest of Qohor to the headwaters of the Selhoru. After a century of war, Volantis found herself broken, bankrupt, and depopulated. It was then that the elephants rose up. They have held sway ever since. Some years the tigers elect a triarch, and some years they do not, but never more than one, so the elephants have ruled the city for three hundred years.”
“Just so,” said Haldon. “And the present triarchs?”
“Malaquo is a tiger, Nyessos and Doniphos are elephants.”
“And what lesson can we draw from Volantene history?”
“If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.”
Image by Dennis Chan
You can see what a threat Dany poses. Her dragons are the living symbol of the old Empire, yet she has turned them against the slaver class which claims a mantle it is unable to fully live up to without dragons. And this threat is so existential that it leads to a political realignment in Volantis, which we learn about as the Shy Maid creeps through the Sorrows:
“Boat,” a voice called across the water, faintly.
“Who are you?”
“Shy Maid,” Yandry shouted back.
“Kingfisher. Up or down?”
“Down. Hides and honey, ale and tallow.”
“Up. Knives and needles, lace and linen, spice wine.”
“What word from old Volantis?” Yandry called.
“War,” the word came back.
“Where?” Griff shouted. “When?”
“When the year turns,” came the answer. “Nyessos and Malaquo go hand in hand, and the elephants show stripes.”
And again, we see Tyrion putting his sharp mind to work:
“Elephants with stripes?” Griff muttered. “What is that about? Nyessos and Malaquo? Illyrio has paid Triarch Nyessos enough to own him eight times over.”
“In gold or cheese?” quipped Tyrion.
Griff rounded on him. “Unless you can cut this fog with your next witticism, keep it to yourself.”
Yes, Father, the dwarf almost said. I’ll be quiet. Thank you. He did not know these Volantenes, yet it seemed to him that elephants and tigers might have good reason to make common cause when faced with dragons. Might be the cheesemonger has misjudged the situation.
So by the time Tyrion arrives at the Volantene delta, we’ve already got the sense of a great agitation, a forced existential re-examination to be quickly and frantically covered up with elephants and naked ladies...and doesn’t that just sound like the perfect setting for Tyrion!
A great square opened up before them. Even at this hour, it was crowded and noisy and ablaze with light. Lanterns swung from iron chains above the doors of inns and pleasure houses, but within the gates, they were made of colored glass, not parchment. To their right a nightfire burned outside a temple of red stone. A priest in scarlet robes stood on the temple balcony, haranguing the small crowd that had gathered around the flames. Elsewhere, travelers sat playing cyvasse in front of an inn, drunken soldiers wandered in and out of what was obviously a brothel, a woman beat a mule outside a stable. A two-wheeled cart went rumbling past them, pulled by a white dwarf elephant. This is another world, thought Tyrion, but not so different from the world I know.
Here we see how Tyrion’s relationship to the city is different from his relationship to Team Aegon; where the latter challenged his cynicism, the former encourages it. Volantis, as its for-now masters have made it, is a living tribute to the ideas currently animating Tyrion: that all is shit and all beauty and happiness and hope just serve to paper over said shit. Then again, it’s not exactly smooth sailing. Tyrion’s story so far in Dance has provided him with a series of sanctuaries--Illyrio’s manse, the litter they take from Pentos, the Shy Maid itself--allowing him to keep the wide world at a distance. Which is a kindness, because Tyrion can barely make it through one-on-one interactions at this point, unless of course he gets a monologue or two. With his arrival in the orbit of the city, however, that wall breaks down, and Tyrion is forced to confront and be confronted by humanity en masse. That confrontation takes a technically new yet sadly familiar form:
One of the tigers spied the dwarf and said something that made the others laugh. As they reached the gate, he pulled off his clawed gauntlet and the sweaty glove beneath, locked one arm around the dwarf’s neck, and roughly rubbed his head. Tyrion was too startled to resist. It was all over in a heartbeat.
“Was there some reason for that?” he demanded of the Halfmaester.
“He says that it is good luck to rub the head of a dwarf,” Haldon said after an exchange with the guard in his own tongue.
Something’s a little different now, though. Tyrion has certainly faced ableist prejudice in the past, but it was always strongly mitigated by the fact that he was a Lannister (“and worth more”). So as he thinks to himself in A Game of Thrones, the prostitutes hired for him would flinch on the sight of him...for a second, before their performance would snap back into place. Tyrion’s wealth (Tywin’s, really) was a shield, the outermost layer of his identity-performance. Now it’s gone, and that’s very important in terms of how he relates to Penny, how he thinks about his enslavement, and how he wins a place among the Second Sons.
But before any of that, we get another cyvasse game! Haldon brings Tyrion along to Selhorys, a sort of suburb of Volantis that is nonetheless itself more populous than King’s Landing. That our POV is a stranger here shouldn’t blind us to the fact that Essos is more urbanized, wealthier, and more “advanced” in the industrial sense than Westeros. But given Tyrion’s current cynicism, it’s no accident that what both he and the story itself focus on is how much the Volantene elites therefore have to lose, on how the whole rigged system has been shaken to its core. That’s the subject of this second cyvasse match:
As each of them was setting up his pieces behind the cyvasse screen, Haldon said, “What news from downriver? Will it be war?”
Qavo shrugged. “The Yunkai’i would have it so. They style themselves the Wise Masters. Of their wisdom I cannot speak, but they do not lack for cunning. Their envoy came to us with chests of gold and gems and two hundred slaves, nubile girls and smooth-skinned boys trained in the way of the seven sighs. I am told his feasts are memorable and his bribes lavish.”
“The Yunkishmen have bought your triarchs?”
“Only Nyessos.” Qavo removed the screen and studied the placement of Tyrion’s army. “Malaquo may be old and toothless, but he is a tiger still, and Doniphos will not be returned as triarch. The city thirsts for war.”
“Why?” wondered Tyrion. “Meereen is long leagues across the sea. How has this sweet child queen offended Old Volantis?”
“Sweet?” Qavo laughed. “If even half the stories coming back from Slaver’s Bay are true, this child is a monster. They say that she is bloodthirsty, that those who speak against her are impaled on spikes to die lingering deaths. They say she is a sorceress who feeds her dragons on the flesh of newborn babes, an oathbreaker who mocks the gods, breaks truces, threatens envoys, and turns on those who have served her loyally. They say her lust cannot be sated, that she mates with men, women, eunuchs, even dogs and children, and woe betide the lover who fails to satisfy her. She gives her body to men to take their souls in thrall.”
Oh, good, thought Tyrion. If she gives her body to me, she is welcome to my soul, small and stunted though it is.
“They say,” said Haldon. “By they, you mean the slavers, the exiles she drove from Astapor and Meereen. Mere calumnies.”
“The best calumnies are spiced with truth,” suggested Qavo, “but the girl’s true sin cannot be denied. This arrogant child has taken it upon herself to smash the slave trade, but that traffic was never confined to Slaver’s Bay. It was part of the sea of trade that spanned the world, and the dragon queen has clouded the water. Behind the Black Wall, lords of ancient blood sleep poorly, listening as their kitchen slaves sharpen their long knives. Slaves grow our food, clean our streets, teach our young. They guard our walls, row our galleys, fight our battles. And now when they look east, they see this young queen shining from afar, this breaker of chains. The Old Blood cannot suffer that. Poor men hate her too. Even the vilest beggar stands higher than a slave. This dragon queen would rob him of that consolation.”
This context matters a great deal for the rest of his storyline, in which Tyrion goes from rarified high-fantasy settings to observing the continental clusterfuck from the bottom rung. Part of being on the top of a slave society, as we see in the “peculiar institution” the CSA was birthed to defend, is trumpeting the strength and security of your ideology at every single fucking turn, because your enemy isn’t your slaves, not really, they’re your useful property. Your enemy, as GRRM so powerfully expresses throughout Tyrion’s Volantis walking tour and the Essosi half of Dance at large, is an idea. A consciousness, a hope, any spark that could lead to a slave rebellion, the ultimate nightmare of a slave society, upending as it does every single privilege and taboo at once. The enemy, every bit as much as Dany herself, is “dracarys,” the notion that the Valyrian word for dragonfire has become a slogan for slave rebellions. As much as this is a class struggle, it’s also a culture war, a crucible in which the identity of Essos will be determined. Will the continent ever rid itself of The Empire, the the horrorshow helix running from the Ghiscari to the Valyrians to the Volantenes? This, ultimately, is what’s at the heart of it all:
At the bridge’s center span, the severed hands of thieves and cutpurses hung like strings of onions from iron stanchions along the roadway. Three heads were on display as well—two men and a woman, their crimes scrawled on tablets underneath them. A pair of spearmen attended them, clad in polished helms and shirts of silver mail. Across their cheeks were tiger stripes as green as jade. From time to time the guards waved their spears to chase away the kestrels, gulls, and carrion crows paying court to the deceased. The birds returned to the heads within moments.
“What did they do?” Tyrion inquired innocently.
The knight glanced at the inscriptions. “The woman was a slave who raised her hand to her mistress. The older man was accused of fomenting rebellion and spying for the dragon queen.”
Tyrion helps us understand this epoch from a most unlikely position: as a rich kid rendered penniless, as a smooth operator who doesn’t speak the language. Through his alternately bewildered and penetratingly aloof gaze, Volantis swims to life as a feverish nest of too much money, too much misery, and too much history. The city is both imposing its will on a continent and ready to collapse at any moment, depending on what street you go down, on how you tilt your head.
Old Volantis, first daughter of Valyria, the dwarf mused. Proud Volantis, queen of the Rhoyne and mistress of the Summer Sea, home to noble lords and lovely ladies of the most ancient blood. Never mind the packs of naked children that roamed the alleys screaming in shrill voices, or the bravos standing in the doors of wineshops fingering their sword hilts, or the slaves with their bent backs and tattooed faces who scurried everywhere like cockroaches. Mighty Volantis, grandest and most populous of the Nine Free Cities. Ancient wars had depopulated much of the city, however, and large areas of Volantis had begun to sink back into the mud on which it stood. Beautiful Volantis, city of fountains and flowers. But half the fountains were dry, half the pools cracked and stagnant. Flowering vines sent up creepers from every crack in the wall or pavement, and young trees had taken root in the walls of abandoned shops and roofless temples.
And then there was the smell. It hung in the hot, humid air, rich, rank, pervasive. There’s fish in it, and flowers, and some elephant dung as well. Something sweet and something earthy and something dead and rotten.
Such good stuff...and then GRRM again goes wrong by deciding we still don’t quite get how dark a place Tyrion is in right now, and that we need to watch another nameless woman get put through the wringer so that we do, dense and begging to be goosed as we are.
I’d rather not block quote the scene in the Selhorys brothel. I’m sure it’ll be argued that it gets across the inhumanity at the core of the supposed peak of civilization and ties it to Tyrion’s own fall...but it buries that analysis so deep in wretchedness that it’s near impossible to get at it emotionally. The big problem with scenes like this is that by making it so difficult to relate to Tyrion’s actions, it numbs us to his perspective, and so the point GRRM is trying to make doesn’t have the same impact because the only way we can get at it is through Tyrion’s perspective! Now, you can sledgehammer us in the face like this and still have the story hold together if we’re not supposed to sympathize with our POV, as in (a comparison I’ve reached for before in this series) A Clockwork Orange. Alex is presented to us as a monster in whose mind we are trapped, watching as he delights in naught but assault and rape; by then putting him through a horrifying gauntlet of conditioning in the second act, the story tests our sympathies, forcing us to recognize that what’s being done to Alex is wrong even though he himself is an unabashed practitioner of “ultraviolence.” It’s a powerful moral revelation, when structured right and when you’re willing to accept a certain permanent distance from the character in question. But Tyrion’s one of the heroes, for fuck’s sake, and if you subvert our relationship to him this bluntly and awfully and intimately, you don’t end up with a brilliant deconstruction, as GRRM does in other parts of this storyline. You end up with a bad taste in your mouth and a desire to do anything else but read.
Thankfully, GRRM promptly distracts us.
“Imp,” a deep voice said, behind him.
In the corner of the room, a man sat in a pool of shadow, with a whore squirming on his lap. I never saw that girl. If I had, I would have taken her upstairs instead of freckles. She was younger than the others, slim and pretty, with long silvery hair. Lyseni, at a guess…but the man whose lap she filled was from the Seven Kingdoms. Burly and broad-shouldered, forty if he was a day, and maybe older. Half his head was bald, but coarse stubble covered his cheeks and chin, and hair grew thickly down his arms, sprouting even from his knuckles.
Tyrion did not like the look of him. He liked the big black bear on his surcoat even less. Wool. He’s wearing wool, in this heat. Who else but a knight would be so fucking mad? “How pleasant to hear the Common Tongue so far from home,” he made himself say, “but I fear you have mistaken me. My name is Hugor Hill. May I buy you a cup of wine, my friend?”
“I’ve drunk enough.” The knight shoved his whore aside and got to his feet. His sword belt hung on a peg beside him. He took it down and drew his blade. Steel whispered against leather. The whores were watching avidly, candlelight shining in their eyes. The proprietor had vanished. “You’re mine, Hugor.”
Tyrion could no more outrun him than outfight him. Drunk as he was, he could not even hope to outwit him. He spread his hands. “And what do you mean to do with me?”
“Deliver you,” the knight said, “to the queen.”
That Jorah seeks the company of a prostitute resembling Dany of course makes him a perfect fit for Tyrion, who’d been looking for Tysha in brothels long before “wherever whores go.” I thought, my first time through Tyrion VI, that this would lead to a bond between the two. I was very wrong, because I hadn’t yet fully come to grips with the thematic core of this storyline: neither Tyrion nor Jorah is here to make friends, and if that’s inconvenient for arcs, well, arcs can fuck off. Moreover, this fits Volantis, a vertically integrated misery-factory. From Tyrion and Jorah to Quentyn and Victarion, no one is here to make friends.
The manacles were black iron, thick and heavy, each weighing a good two pounds, if the dwarf was any judge. The chains added even more weight. “I must be more fearsome than I knew,” Tyrion confessed as the last links were hammered closed. Each blow sent a shock up his arm almost to the shoulder. “Or were you afraid that I would dash away on these stunted little legs of mine?”
The ironsmith did not so much as look up from his work, but the knight chuckled darkly. “It’s your mouth that concerns me, not your legs. In fetters, you’re a slave. No one will listen to a word you say, not even those who speak the tongue of Westeros.”
At least this room has walls. It had windows too; those were its chief amenity, along with the iron ring set in the wall, so useful for chaining up one’s slaves. His captor paused only long enough to light a tallow candle before securing Tyrion’s chains to the ring.
That the rooms in the Merchant’s House comes equipped with slave-rings is another example of how economic and cultural narratives are coming together in Volantis. On the one hand, it’s eminently, chillingly practical; enough people travel with slaves in Volantis, especially in the House, to make it worthwhile. On the other, it’s a statement to every slave that is chained to such a ring: everything in our city is set up for you to be a slave. It’s who you are, not a condition you’ve been put in and can think to one day rise against. And let’s give Tyrion credit where credit’s due: for all he’s intensely depressed and self-hating to the point of suicide, he’s nigh-impossible to break in that regard. He may live only for booze and the dream of raping Cersei, but he won’t abandon hope because you tell him to, dammit! There is a core of obstinate, perverse resilience to Tyrion Lannister, although as we’ll be reminded when he’s officially bought and sold himself, it’s not always admirable. But here, again, it empowers him to see the ideology stamped in every corner of Volantis as a facade, a performance. It’s all falling and failing and fading...so what’s filling the vacuum? What else, in the self-proclaimed heir to Valyria, but fire?
“Come, we’d best hear what that priest is going on about. I swear I heard the name Daenerys.”
Across the square they joined the growing throng outside the red temple. With the locals towering above him on every hand, the little man found it hard to see much beyond their arses. He could hear most every word the priest was saying, but that was not to say he understood them. “Do you understand what he is saying?” he asked Haldon in the Common Tongue.
“I would if I did not have a dwarf piping in my ear.”
“I do not pipe.” Tyrion crossed his arms and looked behind him, studying the faces of the men and women who had stopped to listen. Everywhere he turned, he saw tattoos. Slaves. Four of every five of them are slaves.
“The priest is calling on the Volantenes to go to war,” the Halfmaester told him, “but on the side of right, as soldiers of the Lord of Light, R’hllor who made the sun and stars and fights eternally against the darkness. Nyessos and Malaquo have turned away from the light, he says, their hearts darkened by the yellow harpies from the east. He says …”
“Dragons. I understood that word. He said dragons.”
“Aye. The dragons have come to carry her to glory.”
“Her. Daenerys?”
Haldon nodded. “Benerro has sent forth the word from Volantis. Her coming is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. From smoke and salt was she born to make the world anew. She is Azor Ahai returned…and her triumph over darkness will bring a summer that will never end…death itself will bend its knee, and all those who die fighting in her cause shall be reborn…”
The river road was thick with traffic, almost all of it flowing south. The knight went with it, a log caught in a current. Tyrion eyed the passing throngs. Nine men of every ten bore slave marks on their cheeks. “So many slaves … where are they all going?”
“The red priests light their nightfires at sunset. The High Priest will be speaking. I would avoid it if I could, but to reach the Long Bridge we must pass the red temple.”
Three blocks later the street opened up before them onto a huge torchlit plaza, and there it stood. Seven save me, that’s got to be three times the size of the Great Sept of Baelor. An enormity of pillars, steps, buttresses, bridges, domes, and towers flowing into one another as if they had all been chiseled from one collossal rock, the Temple of the Lord of Light loomed like Aegon’s High Hill. A hundred hues of red, yellow, gold, and orange met and melded in the temple walls, dissolving one into the other like clouds at sunset. Its slender towers twisted ever upward, frozen flames dancing as they reached for the sky. Fire turned to stone. Huge nightfires burned beside the temple steps, and between them the High Priest had begun to speak.
Benerro. The priest stood atop a red stone pillar, joined by a slender stone bridge to a lofty terrace where the lesser priests and acolytes stood. The acolytes were clad in robes of pale yellow and bright orange, priests and priestesses in red.
The great plaza before them was packed almost solid. Many and more of the worshipers were wearing some scrap of red cloth pinned to their sleeves or tied around their brows. Every eye was on the high priest, save theirs. “Make way,” the knight growled as his horse pushed through the throng. “Clear a path.” The Volantenes gave way resentfully, with mutters and angry looks.
Benerro’s high voice carried well. Tall and thin, he had a drawn face and skin white as milk. Flames had been tattooed across his cheeks and chin and shaven head to make a bright red mask that crackled about his eyes and coiled down and around his lipless mouth. “Is that a slave tattoo?” asked Tyrion.
The knight nodded. “The red temple buys them as children and makes them priests or temple prostitutes or warriors. Look there.” He pointed at the steps, where a line of men in ornate armor and orange cloaks stood before the temple’s doors, clasping spears with points like writhing flames. “The Fiery Hand. The Lord of Light’s sacred soldiers, defenders of the temple.”
Fire knights. “And how many fingers does this hand have, pray?”
“One thousand. Never more, and never less. A new flame is kindled for every one that gutters out.”
Benerro jabbed a finger at the moon, made a fist, spread his hands wide. When his voice rose in a crescendo, flames leapt from his fingers with a sudden whoosh and made the crowd gasp. The priest could trace fiery letters in the air as well. Valyrian glyphs. Tyrion recognized perhaps two in ten; one was Doom, the other Darkness.
Shouts erupted from the crowd. Women were weeping and men were shaking their fists. I have a bad feeling about this. The dwarf was reminded of the day Myrcella sailed for Dorne and the riot that boiled up as they made their way back to the Red Keep.
I’m gonna get more into this next time when Tyrion has a heart-to-heart with Moqorro (and even more in the conclusion to this series), but Benerro’s liberation theology and kickass temple tie the political and magical plots together, in a way that I think is meant to ease politically-minded Tyrion’s passage into the magical plot as one of the three heads o’ the dragon. More relevant in the moment--and to the wider Essosi story--is that Dany’s fulfillment of the Azor Ahai prophecy is here being made ideologically inextricable from her anti-slavery crusade. Now, there’s no such connection in the AA myth, as far as I can tell; no mention of slavery or even righting the world’s wrongs in a larger sense. Just restoring the dawn. So this is a politically savvy and expedient move on Benerro’s part. It also gives Tyrion, in his current mindset, a way he can understand and appreciate Dany’s weighty symbolic position: as a clever reframing of narratives, an agenda-hijacking, a con. Much the same way, as we shall see in later entries, the sellswords in the Yunkish employ ultimately colonize the anti-Dany coalition for their own ends (whether they be blood, profit, or Pentos), so do the red priests of Volantis see in Dany a potential rallying point for their pre-existing cause. This isn’t to condemn their reframing; they’re fighting the good fight, after all! But I think this is an indication that Benerro isn’t going to be the most genuine or helpful ally when it comes to actually fulfilling the prophecy by fighting the Others, and so Marwyn the Mage might have to be Dany’s (and Tyrion’s) guiding star on that count.
Of course, this worldview is far from alone beneath the flagstones of the Volantene polity, which as @racefortheironthrone notes, is possibly the oldest continuous polity on Terros. At the heart of the city’s history is a very different fire: that of the Fourteen Flames, into which countless slaves were fed to bring the dreams of the dragonlords to life. If the Kindly Man is to be believed, it was the quiet vengeful prayers of these slaves that ultimately brought the beast down. As such, the true face of the future of Volantis may not be the one tattooed with flames, but the one with the tattoos cut away.
Image by Marc Fishman
The Widow of the Waterfront is waiting for us at the end of Tyrion’s seventh Dance chapter, like Marwyn at the end of Sam’s final chapter in A Feast for Crows, and with a similar impact. The same way the Mage represents the parts and pasts of Oldtown the other archmaesters don’t want you to know about, the Widow represents the Volantis the Old Blood is working so hard to cover up: the one emerging behind the rotting gild, the one overflowing in front of Benerro’s temple, the one that’s been there forever but given a spark and a chance in the form of that mythical-in-her-own-time silver queen. Indeed, the Widow herself always felt like a parallel-universe Dany to me: the beloved concubine of an elite slaver. This is Dany as a Volantene dosh khaleen, wielding power through and within patriarchy. So for the Widow, Dany must feel like a younger self she’s dreamed up, one with the power (and name) to lead an outright assault on said patriarchy. (The Essosi half of Dance thus fits together on a subconscious, Lynchian level as well as logistically, with Moqorro and Quaithe serving as the all-knowing creepy-awesome dream-spooks of the type that populate and possibly rule Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr.)
But the Widow is no wide-eyed believer like those populating the Shy Maid. The rebirth Team Aegon seeks in their “perfect prince” is pointedly a little too easy, a little too evangelical, in a way that’s meant to resonate politically as well as personally. The Widow, by contrast...
“Some of the first elephants were women,” she said, “the ones who brought the tigers down and ended the old wars. Trianna was returned four times. That was three hundred years ago, alas. Volantis has had no female triarch since, though some women have the vote. Women of good birth who dwell in ancient palaces behind the Black Walls, not creatures such as me. The Old Blood will have their dogs and children voting before any freedman. No, it will be Belicho, or perhaps Alios, but either way it will be war. Or so they think.”
“And what do you think?” Ser Jorah asked.
Good, thought Tyrion. The right question.
“Oh, I think it will be war as well, but not the war they want.”
“Keep your silver. I have gold. And spare me your black looks, ser. I am too old to be frightened of a scowl. You are a hard man, I see, and no doubt skilled with that long sword at your side, but this is my realm. Let me crook a finger and you may find yourself traveling to Meereen chained to an oar in the belly of a galley.” She lifted her jade fan and opened it. There was a rustle of leaves, and a man slid from the overgrown archway to her left. His face was a mass of scars, and in one hand he held a sword, short and heavy as a cleaver. “Seek the widow of the waterfront, someone told you, but they should have also warned you, beware the widow’s sons. It is such a sweet morning, though, I shall ask again. Why would you seek Daenerys Targaryen, whom half the world wants dead?”
Jorah Mormont’s face was dark with anger, but he answered. “To serve her. Defend her. Die for her, if need be.”
That made the widow laugh. “You want to rescue her, is that the way of it? From more enemies than I can name, with swords beyond count…this is what you’d have the poor widow believe? That you are a true and chivalrous Westerosi knight crossing half the world to come to the aid of this…well, she is no maiden, though she may still be fair.” She laughed again. “Do you think your dwarf will please her? Will she bathe in his blood, do you think, or content herself with striking off his head?”
Ser Jorah hesitated. “The dwarf is—”
“—I know who the dwarf is, and what he is.”
As the invocation of her “sons” makes clear, the Widow is also the mirror of the Harpy, and as powerful in her city. As such, Tyrion respects the Widow of the Waterfront in a way he never quite could the Halfmaester, let alone Jon Connington. She helps usher him into the aforementioned bottom-rung world in a way he can understand and appreciate, so it’s not all alienation and numbness (which would make for a much lesser story). This is in large part because her life has burned her so free of bullshit. One of the many common themes in Tyrion and Cersei’s Feastdance storylines is that they are faced with unmistakable evidence, namely Shae’s presence in Tywin’s bed, that Tywin was a gigantic hypocrite. Cersei of course furiously rejects this revelation, as it not only conflicts with what she worshiped about her father, but exposes another version of the twisted patriarchal control that she hated about him. Tyrion, on the other hand, seems permanently haunted by his peek behind the curtain. That Tywin isn’t even a proper monster any more, not even the iron inhuman monolith he pretended to be, goes a long way toward explaining Tyrion’s mindset in A Dance with Dragons. Not even evil is worth getting all worked up about if it ultimately comes down to a john on the john.
Then again, as I’ve said, this crude cynicism allows Tyrion to smell the flopsweat underneath the grand spectacle of the election: the Old Blood is running scared. And the flipside of Tyrion’s worldview is that it primes him to respect those who have them on the run. The Widow is living proof that the bread and circuses outside are ash and dust in the making. Perversely enough, it’s this quality that earns her Tyrion’s vote. (Remember that he used to disdain democracy, in part because it granted equal voice to women.)
Plotwise, we get this delightful moment that seems to Tyrion to utterly confirm his outlook, while also giving us a glimpse into why GRRM structured the narrative the way he did:
“We need swift passage to Meereen.”
One word. Tyrion Lannister’s world turned upside down.
One word. Meereen. Or had he misheard?
One word. Meereen, he said Meereen, he’s taking me to Meereen. Meereen meant life. Or hope for life, at least.
“Why come to me?” the widow said. “I own no ships.”
“You have many captains in your debt.”
Deliver me to the queen, he says. Aye, but which queen? He isn’t selling me to Cersei. He’s giving me to Daenerys Targaryen. That’s why he hasn’t hacked my head off. We’re going east, and Griff and his prince are going west, the bloody fools.
Oh, it was all too much. Plots within plots, but all roads lead down the dragon’s gullet. [The definition of the Meereenese Knot right there.] A guffaw burst from his lips, and suddenly Tyrion could not stop laughing.
“Your dwarf is having a fit,” the widow observed.
“My dwarf will be quiet, or I’ll see him gagged.”
Tyrion covered his mouth with his hands. Meereen!
It’s that sensation, of falling into plots like they’re eating you alive, that GRRM is going for throughout the Feastdance, and Tyrion is perfectly positioned to be a cynical commentator on the sublime ridiculousness of it all. And on the one hand, at least he’s laughing instead of contemplating suicide; on the other, it’s that whole “life’s a jape” thing, where he not only can’t access an emotional reaction, he’s stopped trying. He’s not quite as haunted as he was in Pentos, but that’s mostly because he’s decided to just marinate in his depression like it was a jacuzzi, and as someone who has made that decision from time to time, there is a certain glory and catharsis to it. (It’s so exhausting trying to be happy.) Penny will challenge this, more consciously IMO than it might appear on first read...and he will very much not appreciate it. (And again I can attest: true to life.)
Then again, at some deep level of his psyche, Tyrion is still the little kid who wants a dragon, a side of him that remains important and I think will return to the forefront come endgame. Li’l Tyrion, like so many past and present kids in ASOIAF (including both of his siblings), just wants to be a badass, and the Widow is unmistakably that.
Tyrion grinned. “If I were Volantene, and free, and had the blood, you’d have my vote for triarch, my lady.”
“I am no lady,” the widow replied, “just Vogarro’s whore. You want to be gone from here before the tigers come. Should you reach your queen, give her a message from the slaves of Old Volantis.” She touched the faded scar upon her wrinkled cheek, where her tears had been cut away. “Tell her we are waiting. Tell her to come soon.”
And she’ll get her wish. Whether here or in “The Merchant’s Man,” we see that Old Volantis is crumbling from within and without. I couldn’t agree more with @racefortheironthrone that “in order for the story, and Essos, to progress, Volantis must be swept aside.” I believe, in large part because of his admiration for the Widow and the weight GRRM places on those final words, that Tyrion will step forward to play a vital role in that process...but that’ll have to wait for the conclusion to the series.
