Crowned with Fire – True and False Lights in A Song of Ice and Fire (part 2)
In the previous installment in this series, I wrote about the tower crowned with fire – the lighthouse – as a positive image of truth and guidance. Thus, the Lighthouse is an example of a true light in GRRM’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. In this post, I’ll examine the imagery of the crown of fire in relation to the notion of false light and the destructive side of fire.
WRECKERS AND DECEPTIVE LIGHTS
The lighthouse is, as noted, a positive image in ASoIaF. It guides ships into safe harbor during the darkness of the night. However, as so many things, the lighthouse and its function can be abused for nefarious purposes - such as deliberately wrecking ships on treacherous shores, a detail @lostlittlesatellites and @shinynewrevulsions made me aware of in Davos’ story.
These days the Sistermen left open piracy to Salladhor Saan and his ilk and confined themselves to wrecking. The beacons that burned along the shores of the Three Sisters were supposed to warn of shoals and reefs and rocks and lead the way to safety, but on stormy nights and foggy ones, some Sistermen would use false lights to draw unwary captains to their doom. (ADwD, Davos I)
Wreckers form a subset of smugglers and pirates. They use beacons to deliberately lure ships into dangerous waters on nights with poor visibility.
(Image from the miniseries Jamaica Inn)
In this context, the practice of wrecking subverts the positive imagery of the lighthouse and recasts the beacon as a false light that lures the unwary traveler astray.
A BURNING CROWN
I want to return to the imagery of something/someone being crowned by fire because it is an image that recurs in the text, sometimes in different variations. One particular striking image is the one of a crown of fire, which is related to Stannis Baratheon and Daenerys Targaryen.
Stannis has a terrifying vision in the flames of a king that is consumed by a burning crown:
“Last night, gazing into that hearth, I saw things in the flames as well. I saw a king, a crown of fire on his brows, burning . . . burning, Davos. His own crown consumed his flesh and turned him into ash. – Stannis Baratheon to Davos Seaworth, (ASoS, Davos V)
This vision is very interesting to me because it can be read both as a foreshadowing as well as an expression of Stannis’ own fears regarding the role that Melisandre cast him as: Azor Ahai come again. Stannis fears that he’ll be consumed by the path that Melisandre has set him upon – and he isn’t wrong. Melisandre is mistaken in her identification of Stannis as the saviour her religion has promised. She tries to manipulate the events circumstances to fit the prophecy, which only results in a “magical” sword that is subtly wrong (x) and (x). She desperately wants to believe that she has found the promised saviour but instead Melisandre has created a “false light” with the glowing sword that she gifts Stannis through an elaborate, fiery ceremony at Dragonstone.
The imagery of a burning crown also appears in one of Daenerys’ chapters in a very literal manner when she has Drogon set one of the slavers of Astapor on fire:
And Dany swept the lash down as hard as she could across the slaver's face. Kraznys screamed and staggered back, the blood running red down his cheeks into his perfumed beard. The harpy's fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash, but she did not pause to contemplate the ruin. "Drogon," she sang out loudly, sweetly, all her fear forgotten. "Dracarys."
The black dragon spread his wings and roared. A lance of swirling dark flame took Kraznys full in the face. His eyes melted and ran down his cheeks, and the oil in his hair and beard burst so fiercely into fire that for an instant the slaver wore a burning crown twice as tall as his head. The sudden stench of charred meat overwhelmed even his perfume, and his wail seemed to drown all other sound. Then the Plaza of Punishment blew apart into blood and chaos.(ASoS, Daenerys III)
This scene takes place when Daenerys buys a slave army in Astapor, only to turn them on the slavers. This is the moment where her anti-slavery crusade is born – on the Plaza of Punishment in Astapor, the slavers are punished with fire and blood. However, it is also the first real and premeditated action Dany takes towards her ambition of reclaiming her father’s throne in Westeros. She is in Astapor to acquire an army to conquer Westeros and she begins her quest for the Iron Throne by giving a man a burning crown of fire. As with Stannis, the imagery of the burning crown is a destructive one.
THE FIERY PIT
In my previous post, I mentioned that it was a particular quote from the novella The Princess and the Queen that inspired the subject of this series of metas: “Atop the Hill of Rhaenys, the Dragonpit wore a crown of yellow fire, burning so bright it seemed as if the sun was rising.” In this context, the image of the crown of fire is associated with a false light, a fire so bright that it could be mistaken for the dawn. If the tower crowned with fire – the lighthouse – is an image of a true light, then the burning Dragonpit is its opposite: the fiery pit is a false light – and this false light is closely associated with dragonfire.
The Dragonpit is a significant architectural landmark in King’s Landing. It sits atop The Hill of Rhaenys and is just as visually prominent as the Red Keep on Aegon’s High Hill and The Sept of Baelor on Visenya’s Hill.
(King’s Landing. Art by Tomasz Jedruszek)
When it comes to the history of King’s Landing, Rhaenys’ Hill has felt the devastating effects of both dragon- and wildfire several times over. The Dragonpit was not the first large building that was raised upon The Hill of Rhaenys. Originally, the hill was crowned by the Sept of Remembrance, built in memory of Queen Rhaenys Targaryen after she was killed in the First Dornish War. Maegor I Targaryen (called the Cruel) unleased the fire of Balerion the Black Dread on the Sept of Remembrance during his conflict with the Faith Militant.
(Maegor I Targaryen and Balerion burn the Sept of Remembrance. Art by Jordi Gonzalez Escamilla)
After the burning of The Sept of Remembrance, Maegor I had the Dragonpit built as a residence for the Targaryen dragons. Approximately 90 years later the Dragonpit burns down during the Dance of the Dragons when a mob of people stormed the building in order to kill the dragons.
A thousand shrieks and shouts echoed across the city, mingling with the dragon’s roar. Atop the Hill of Rhaenys, the Dragonpit wore a crown of yellow fire, burning so bright it seemed as if the sun was rising. Even the queen trembled as she watched, the tears glistening on her cheeks. Many of the queen’s companions on the rooftop fled, fearing that the fires would soon engulf the entire city, even the Red Keep atop Aegon’s High Hill. (The Princess and the Queen)
What is left is a burnt out shell of the mighty dome.
(The Dragonpit. Art by Franz Miklis)
About 70 years later, the Dragonpit is used to store the bodies of the multitudes that succumbed to the Great Spring Sickness. There, the bodies were cremated by wildfire.
" A dreadful time, ser, dreadful. Strong men would wake healthy at the break of day and be dead by evenfall. So many died so quickly there was no time to bury them. They piled them in the Dragonpit instead, and when the corpses were ten feet deep, Lord Rivers commanded the pyromancers to burn them. The light of the fires shone through the windows, as it did of yore when living dragons still nested beneath the dome. By night you could see the glow all through the city, the dark green glow of wildfire.” (The Sworn Sword)
Corpses were piled in the ruins of the Dragonpit until they stood ten feet high and, in the end, Bloodraven had the pyromancers burn the corpses where they lay. A quarter of the city went up in flames along with them, but there was nothing else to be done. (tWoIaF)
During Robert’s Rebellion, King Aerys II Targaryen had 300 jars of wildfire hidden beneath the Dragonpit. Those jars where found by the Guild of the Pyromancers in the periode leading up to the Battle of the Blackwater. It is unclear whether there still is wildfire hidden beneath the Dragonpit.
I want to return to the burning of the Dragonpit in the novella The Princess and the Queen because the description of how dragons and men attacked each other shares some strong similarities with a scene that takes place in another pit: the scene in Daznak’s Pit in Meereen that ends with Daenerys Targaryen riding Drogon for the first time in A Dance with Dragons.
Let’s have a look at how the Storming of the Dragonpit is described in The Princess and the Queen:
No two chronicles agree on how many men and women died that night beneath the Dragonpit’s great dome: two hundred or two thousand, be that as it may. For every man who perished, ten suffered burns and yet survived. Trapped within the pit, hemmed in by walls and dome and bound by heavy chains, the dragons could not fly away, or use their wings to evade attacks and swoop down on their foes. Instead they fought with horns and claws and teeth, turning this way and that like bulls in a Flea Bottom rat pit … but these bulls could breathe fire. The Dragonpit was transformed into a fiery hell where burning men staggered screaming through the smoke, the flesh sloughing from their blackened bones, but for every man who died, ten more appeared, shouting that the dragons must need die. One by one, they did.
Shrykos was the first dragon to succumb, slain by a woodsman known as Hobb the Hewer, who leapt onto her neck, driving his axe down into the beast’s skull as Shrykos roared and twisted, trying to throw him off. Seven blows did Hobb deliver with his legs locked round the dragon’s neck, and each time his axe came down he roared out the name of one of the Seven. It was the seventh blow, the Stranger’s blow, that slew the dragon, crashing through scale and bones into the beast’s brain.
[…]
The last of the four pit dragons did not die so easily. Legend has it that Dreamfyre had broken free of two of her chains at Queen Helaena’s death. The remaining bonds she burst now, tearing the stanchions from the walls as the mob rushed her, then plunging into them with tooth and claw, ripping men apart and tearing off their limbs even as she loosed her terrible fires. (The Princess and the Queen)
Now, let us take a look at another dragon-on-human bloodbath in another pit.
In A Dance with Dragons, Daenerys Targaryen attends the gladiatorial combats in Daznak’s Pit in Meereen in celebration of the political marriage she made with a local nobleman, Hizdar zo Loraq. The blood and violence of the brutal games attract Drogon, the largest of Daenerys’ dragons and when he descends upon the pit to feast on the corpse of on of the fighters, all hell breaks loose.
One man took it on himself to be a hero. He was one of the spearmen sent out to drive the boar back to his pen. Perhaps he was drunk, or mad. Perhaps he had loved Barsena Blackhair from afar or had heard some whisper of the girl Hazzea. Perhaps he was just some common man who wanted bards to sing of him. He darted forward, his boar spear in his hands. Red sand kicked up beneath his heels, and shouts rang out from the seats. Drogon raised his head, blood dripping from his teeth. The hero leapt onto his back and drove the iron spearpoint down at the base of the dragon's long scaled neck. Dany and Drogon screamed as one. (ADwD, Daenerys IX)
The hero leaned into his spear, using his weight to twist the point in deeper. Drogon arched upward with a hiss of pain. His tail lashed sideways. She watched his head crane around at the end of that long serpentine neck, saw his black wings unfold. The dragonslayer lost his footing and went tumbling to the sand. He was trying to struggle back to his feet when the dragon's teeth closed hard around his forearm. "No" was all the man had time to shout. Drogon wrenched his arm from his shoulder and tossed it aside as a dog might toss a rodent in a rat pit. (ADwD, Daenerys IX)
The spearmen were running too. Some were rushing toward the dragon, spears in hand. Others were rushing away, throwing down their weapons as they fled. The hero was jerking on the sand, the bright blood pouring from the ragged stump of his shoulder. His spear remained in Drogon's back, wobbling as the dragon beat his wings. Smoke rose from the wound. As the other spears closed in, the dragon spat fire, bathing two men in black flame. His tail lashed sideways and caught the pitmaster creeping up behind him, breaking him in two. Another attacker stabbed at his eyes until the dragon caught him in his jaws and tore his belly out. (ADwD, Daenerys IX)
There are several points of comparison between the scenes from The Princess and the Queen and A Dance with Dragons:
Dragons burning people and tearing them limb from limb.
A man leaps onto the neck of a dragon and injures it with an axe and a spear respectively.
The phrase RAT PIT is used in both scenes, which binds them together through associative logic.
Furthermore, both scenes makes an associative connection between dragons – fire – hell. The Dragonpit is described as a “fiery hell” in The Princess and the Queen whereas Daenerys places hell in Drogon’s molten eyes:
Drogon roared. The sound filled the pit. A furnace wind engulfed her. The dragon's long scaled neck stretched toward her. When his mouth opened, she could see bits of broken bone and charred flesh between his black teeth. His eyes were molten. I am looking into hell, but I dare not look away. She had never been so certain of anything. If I run from him, he will burn me and devour me. (ADwD, Daenerys IX)
FALSE LIGHTS: PROPHECIES AND DRAGONFIRE
I find it noteworthy that both Stannis and Daenerys have the burning crown as a negative image in their chapters, especially since they are both associated with the prophecies of Azor Ahai come again and The Prince that was Promised. I have written about that here and here. Maester Aemon correctly identifies Stannis’ glowing sword, which looks like the sun made steel, as a false light – an empty glamour that will only lead into darkness. Thus, the misinterpretation of a prophecy is a dangerous thing and prophecy itself can function as a false light, which I’d argue that it does in the case of AA come again.
In the same manner, I’d argue that dragonfire constitutes another false light. If the tower crowned with fire (the Lighthouse) represents a true light, then its inversion, the fiery pit as exemplified in the Dragonpit wearing a crown of fire represents another false light. I’ve demonstrated that the Storming of the Dragonpit and Drogon’s attack on Daznak’s Pit in Meereen are connected through an associative logic based on similarities in the way these events are described – so I’d argue that you could make a case for dragonfire as another representation of a false light.
I’ve come to believe that Daenerys’ dragons won’t be the solution to the threat of the Others (see my metas here, here and here). Stannis, his false Lightbringer and the burning crown that devours the wearer from his vision represents the false light that leads Melisandre astray. Daenerys and her dragons represent another false light that lead the readers astray because the text itself introduces the possibility of the dragons as an easy solution to the problem through one of Daenerys’ dreams:
That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper's rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another part exulted. This is how it was meant to be. The other was a nightmare, and I have only now awakened. (ASoS, Daenerys III)
Now it is established that Daenerys may have prophetic dreams like her ancestor Daenys the Dreamer. However, I cannot help but be suspicious of the ease with which the warriors armed in ice are defeated by the dragons in Dany’s dream. They simply melt away like dew after she bathes them in dragonfire. Then there’s the part of her that knows she’s dreaming but wishes that the dream is the reality. If we look at this passage in a Doylist context, the same conclusions can be applied to audience expectation. We want the dragons to be the solution to the problem of the Others because it seems straightforward and easy – but GRRM has said something that indicates that the dragons may be more of a threat than a salvation to Westeros:
Well, of course, the two outlying ones — the things going on north of the Wall, and then there is Targaryen on the other continent with her dragons — are of course the ice and fire of the title, “A Song of Ice and Fire.” The central stuff — the stuff that’s happening in the middle, in King’s Landing, the capital of the seven kingdoms […]You know, one of the dynamics I started with, there was the sense of people being so consumed by their petty struggles for power within the seven kingdoms, within King’s Landing — who’s going to be king? Who’s going to be on the Small Council? Who’s going to determine the policies? — that they’re blind to the much greater and more dangerous threats that are happening far away on the periphery of their kingdoms. (GRRM)
In this quote, GRRM explicitly states that the Fire of Dany and her dragons is one of two great, dangerous threats against Westeros that people are blind to – that blindness can be applied to bot a Watsonian and a Doylist perspective. The political players in Westeros as well as the audience are blind to the threat that Dany’s dragons present. It is very likely that she isn’t the promised saviour but rather a Destroyer on a scale that is almost equal to the others, which is something that I’ve written about previously.
Interestingly enough, Dany has this dream the night before she has Drogon give the slaver Kraznys a burning crown that kills him. It is also noteworthy that Drogon’s flame is dark. Dragons have different coloured flames and Drogon’s flame is black fire shot with red. (Viserion’s flame is a pale golden fire shot with red and orange and Rhaegal’s flame is orange-yellow fire shot through with green). Drogon is Dany’s mount, the dragon she bonds with and his fire is black – hardly a flame that illuminates the darkness.
“THE LIGHT THAT BRINGS THE DAWN” – THE NIGHT’S WATCH
I have written several metas that touches upon the threat of the Others in relation to the symbolism employed as well as the prophecies about a chosen saviour: the series Azor Ahai, The Prince that was Promised and the Red Sword of Heroes 1-6, The Ice and the Fire of the Song 1-3 and others. They can be found here.
When pondering these issues, I keep coming back to the Night’s Watch in a way that has continued to surprise me. The legend of Lightbringer is quite possibly inspired by the obsidian blades that kills White Walkers with ease and the Night’s Watch is connected to the strongest defense against the Others: the Wall – an edifice built of ice and infused with a magic rooted in the living land.
As the story stands, the Night’s Watch is in no condition to counter this magical threat against the kingdom. The institution has dwindled in numbers as well as in reputation – and it is crippled by neglect. It has become the repository of criminals, traitors and minor nobles with nowhere else to go. They are in no way equipped to handle the threat of the Others.
Yet the symbolism of the Lighthouse is connected to the NW. The Last Hero is quite possibly Brandon the Builder who also is the likely founder of the NW as well as the builder of the Wall (and the Hightower = Lighthouse). These elements point to the NW as part of the solution and therefore I think it can be illuminating to take a closer look at the institution and its ideology.
An important aspect of the NW is their role as apolitical protectors of the entire realm. They are The Shield that Guards the Realms of Men! They quite literally represent the ideal of people banding together against a common enemy regardless of politics, etc. This is a common trope in fantasy fiction – and GRRM uses the NW to examine this trope, subvert it and very likely reconstruct it. In my opinion, this is why the Lighthouse/Beacon as a representation of a true light that guides people through the darkness/night is connected to the Night’s Watch on a symbolic level as well as through an associative logic within the text itself.
city witches walking at night, holding their breath, disappearing in flickering lights, hiding behind computers and tv screens, injecting magic in concrete...
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Million Masks rises from the shadows, towering over the new arrivals. The countless masks circling around their head cast a moon-light colored glow, sending the shadows swinging. "Greetings young ones..."
