sorry i keep talking about my man yandel, i think it's interesting what stories he decides to dismiss and which ones he takes as truth. i like that, for example, he does frequently cite the works of maesters he doesn't agree with. he usually does this just to dismiss them, but i imagine him as being very aemon & sam & luwin like, which is to say, he seems to just like knowing things. for example, when he talks about the ironborn-
The lavish, detailed, and somewhat disturbing illustrations included in Strange Stone make this rare volume fascinating to peruse, but the text is impenetrable in parts; Maester Theron had a gift for drawing but little skill with words. In any case, his thesis has no factual basis and may safely be dismissed. And thus we find ourselves back whence we began, forced to concede that the beginnings of Oldtown, Battle Isle, and its fortress must forever remain a mystery to us.
He did try to read what Maester Theron wrote, and he dedicates several paragraphs to explaining Theron's hypothesis. He dismisses it but he does that because he doesn't believe there's factual basis. And he's the same way about the Faith of the Seven-
Some septons, less wise, claim that the Valyrians brought the disaster on themselves for their promiscuous belief in a hundred gods and more, and in their godlessness they delved too deep and unleashed the fires of the Seven hells on the Freehold
I love TWOIAF it's so fun, if you're a F&B hater you should read TWOIAF it's just infinitely better, I think it lends itself to the "hiding information from the reader while leaving puzzle pieces" aspect of the supplementals so well.
We meet our hero, the brave author of the book, maester Yandel!
Let’s begin with some nice The Builder metaphors on the subject of learning!
IT IS SAID with truth that every building is constructed stone by stone, and the same may be said of knowledge, extracted and compiled by many learned men, each of whom builds upon the works of those who preceded him. What one of them does not know is known to another, and little remains truly unknown if one seeks far enough. Now I, Maester Yandel, take my turn as mason, carving what I know to place one more stone in the great bastion of knowledge that has been built over the centuries both within and without the confines of the Citadel—a bastion raised by countless hands that came before, and which will, no doubt, continue to rise with the aid of countless hands yet to come.
I like him. I mean, he may just be good with words, but I like the community aspect he is leaning into here.
Pro: The accumulation of knowledge is most definitely teamwork through the passage of time, and you can live many lives and travel vast distances in your mind through the power of the written word.
Con: If you’re going to be writing a book about the entire world, you may want to have seen at least a little of it, maybe? Yandel trying to make sure he is as unbiased as possible by making sure he knows equally little about Westeros through his own experience as he knows about Essos and the rest of the known world.
Because he has literally never left Oldtown and spent his entire life in the Citadel from birth.
I was a foundling from my birth in the tenth year of the reign of the last Targaryen king, left on a morning in an empty stall in the Scribe’s Hearth, where acolytes practiced the art of letters for those who had need.
That would have been around 272, ten years after Jaehaerys II died, thirteen years after Summerhall and the birth of one Rhaegar Targaryen. Yandel isn’t even thirty yet. He’s a baby!
The Scribe’s Hearth:
The gates of the Citadel were flanked by a pair of towering green sphinxes with the bodies of lions, the wings of eagles, and the tails of serpents. One had a man's face, one a woman's. Just beyond stood Scribe's Hearth, where Oldtowners came in search of acolytes to write their wills and read their letters. Half a dozen bored scribes sat in open stalls, waiting for some custom. At other stalls books were being bought and sold.
(AFFC, Samwell V)
I wonder who placed him there. A spot frequented by acolytes, the same demographic known to prance about Oldtown, getting drunk on fearsomely strong cider and visiting brothels if they have the money. Could a woman have just walked in there with a baby in her arms and left without it during early business hours, hidden among the people perusing the wares? Or was it a man? An acolyte familiar with the place? The father?
Actually that was about the year Obara was born, too. Wild times in Oldtown, but a nicer fate for Yandel.
The course of my life was set that day, when I was found by an acolyte who took me to the Seneschal of that year, Archmaester Edgerran. Edgerran, whose ring and rod and mask were silver, looked upon my squalling face and announced that I might prove of use. When first told this as a boy, I took it to mean he foresaw my destiny as a maester; only much later did I come to learn from Archmaester Ebrose that Edgerran was writing a treatise on the swaddling of infants and wished to test certain theories.
I love this.
Yandel: Did he sense my destiny??
Edgerran: Free infant test subject, and I didn’t even have to be unethical about it! Score!
(Silver represents medicine.)
Ebrose is still around, giving lectures on urine to the Oldtown gang and giving Pate a failing grade!
But inauspicious as that may seem, the result was that I was given to the care of servants and received the occasional attention of maesters. I was raised as a servant myself amongst the halls and chambers and libraries, but I was given the gift of letters by Archmaester Walgrave.
Awww. Hi, Walgrave! Good to know he was nice to kids back when his mind was still 100%. I wonder what prompted him to teach the kid to read. Was Yandel a bit of a beloved mascot, having been raised at the Citadel?
Thus did I come to know and love the Citadel and the knights of the mind** who guarded its precious wisdom. I desired nothing more than to become one of them—to read of far places and long-dead men, to gaze at the stars and measure the passing of the seasons.
Rarely do characters in this series fulfill their dreams so easily.
Also interesting that the kid raised among “knights guarding wisdom” (from whom?) in a complex named for defensive fortifications, who probably rarely spent time outside it, is writing a book primarily aimed at the “humble”. Trying to smuggle that wisdom out, in a way.
** Luwin shout-out:
"There are some who call my order the knights of the mind," Luwin replied. "You are a surpassing clever boy when you work at it, Bran. Have you ever thought that you might wear a maester's chain? There is no limit to what you might learn." (AGOT, Bran IV)
Bran was not interested, but he ends up assembling vital historical knowledge nevertheless.
And so I did. I forged the first link in my chain at three-and-ten, and other links followed. I completed my chain and took my oaths in the ninth year of the reign of King Robert, the First of His Name, and found myself blessed to continue at the Citadel, to serve the archmaesters and aid them in all that they did.
What a nerd! At thirteen! That would have been in 285, two years into Robert’s reign, and it took him seven years until 292 to finish his degree forge his chain. He was 20 then.
They did not send this little low-born prodigy out to serve at any castle, they kept him at the Citadel. Interesting.
So basically, watching Robert Baratheon’s reign has been Yandel’s thing for the duration of his academic career and he dedicated his Big Book to him his son Tommen:
I wonder what his purpose with this book is.
It was a great honor, but my greatest desire was to create a work of mine own, a work that humble but lettered men might read—and read to their wives and children—so that they would learn of things both good and wicked, just and unjust, great and small, and grow wiser as I had grown wiser amidst the learning of the Citadel.
He’s writing a book for humble but lettered men - and their families. Going on the assumption he is not trying to insult highborn men without a Citadel education by implying they are intellectually humble, he may truly intend for this book to be read by a wider audience than merely those who have access to maester’s libraries, an audience who conduct their own education by reading amid their family? Lower nobility or even the wealthy merchant class? Not sure how feasible this is in a world without a movable type printing press, but I like his approach.
And so I set myself to work once more at my forge, to make new and notable matter around the masterworks of the long-dead maesters who came before me. What follows herein sprang from that desire: a history of deeds gallant and wicked, peoples familiar and strange, and lands near and far.
Likening himself to the Smith, the face of the Seven most associated with the smallfolk.
hey! i wanna ask something based on this ask you got from anonymous.
i literally don’t believe a single thing said by mushroom about the greens but what about those people who say septon eustace trashed aegon ii too, despite him being a rhaenyra anti himself? tbf i don’t remember exactly when he trashed aegon ii so bad that he became completely cancellable but some of the team black stans heavily emphasise on it. as an aegon ii stan i obviously don’t justify abuse & it’s reasonable to brush off mushroom’s tales about him (one of the main reasons is he didn’t even spend enough time with him as he did with rhaenyra, to claim the things he did about him). but it’s also very much likely that a lot of things that has been said about his personality & actions are blown out of proportion. mind you they don’t give a fuck when mushroom or any other narrator talks shit about any of the team black characters, at best they admit those claims with grudges but most of the times they pass it on as “bad writing” or “biased writing”.
so, when we read f&b, which narration in your opinion seems more reliable to you because i’ve seen both teams being described weirdly enough from both their supporters & non-supporters.
Hello there!
Certainly, analysing the veracity of the different sources Archmaester Gyldayn uses to compile Fire and Blood is actually a very interesting exercise, but, unfortunately, I don't have the energy to engage with it at the moment as throroughly as I would like. So I'm putting this out there in the event that someone else has more drive towards the subject than I do. 💌🕊
One thing I will add, though, is that the in-universe author, Archmaester Gyldayn, interposes his own biases on top of the other sources he uses, but that's more subtle and less analysed in the fandom, I feel. Gyldayn, however, is writing during the reign of Robert Baratheon, so there's no particular political need for him to have Targaryen bias. It is very interesting to note that initially GRRM intended for Gyldayn to be the last maester serving at Summerhall before it burned down, but, because he decided that the book Fire and Blood should cover the entirety of the Targaryen rule, this was retconned and he got to live until after the Rebellion. One place where I do feel Gyldayn's biases coming through, though, is when he's interpreting succession laws.
Septon Eustace is the one who anointed Aegon because the High Septon was too old to travel from Oldtown to King's Landing. I admit I haven't interrogated that very closely, as within the lore it is mentioned that the seat of the High Septon was moved from Oldtown to KL after Aegon's conquest. So what was the High Septon doing in Oldtown in the first place - I don't remember if there is a reason provided. Eustace is more friendly towards Aegon in his writings, but he has the advantage of actually being in King's Landing, as opposed to Mushroom.
Honestly, off the top of my head, I don't remember when/if Eustace cancelled Aegon to any considerable extent (lmao). Perhaps someone else could chime in? Eustace does rise later to the ranks of the Most Devout, who are some very highly regarded priest people, perhaps similar to Catholic Cardinals. So, I would imagine that if Eggon truly was as depraved as Mushroom says, Eustace would have said something about it? For example, Mushroom tells us this very spicy tale that Aegon liked to watch other people having sex after he got injured, but that it supposedly filled him afterwards with so much shame he'd start crying and call for Eustace to grant him absolution. ☠ This however begs the question - if it's true, why wouldn't Most Devout Eustace say anything about this extreme behaviour that supposedly happened repeatedly? Gyldayn considers Eustace's writings to be pretty balanced, on the whole, "sober" and "ponderous", but also not shying away from relating the "most shocking and salacious rumors and accusations".
Anyway, Eustace IS a priest, after all, and should be busy with priestly business. He doesn't have a seat on the Council, so realistically-speaking, how much gossip does he have access to? Here we turn to Grand Maester Orwyle, so was more in the thick of it, you'd expect. However, Orwyle's fate takes a pretty dramatic turn since he is accused of poisoning our Egg :( and is sentenced to the Night's Watch, then has a crazy story of trying to escape, is caught and spends his last days writing up his account of the war in the hopes of receiving a pardon. Since Aegon III is the new King now, one would expect that he would try to lean more towards the blacks in his writings, so anything he says has to be filtered through that lens, as well.
So, I think what we should mainly keep in mind when reading Fire and Blood is whether a) the person in question actually witnessed the event, was at least in its geographical proximity or realistically had access to information channels and b) whether they had any reason to be biased. Here is where the sources have various levels of believability and we get messy stories like Lord Beesbury's death. Pro-Aegon Eustace, who was NOT in the room, tells us the wildest version, which is that Ser Criston slit his throat then and there. Whereas Orwyle, who WAS in the room, but is writing in a situation in which he is trying to get pardoned by pro-black people, relays the mild version: Lord Lyman was sent to the dungeons, where he died of a chill. As you can see, it's not so simple as source X favours Aegon, while source Y favours Rhaenyra. Mushroom also loves Rhaenyra, for example, but his tales do not paint her or the blacks in a good light. I'd say that perhaps the best strategy is to take each event on a case-by-case basis and judge its standalone veracity.
The problems with Mushroom's testimony is not just that he paints everyone in a bad picture and is always salacious, but he frequently talks about events he couldn't have possibly witnessed AND always includes himself in ridiculous ways. If we give credence to Mushroom, then we have to believe that somehow everyone had a huge boner for this very lewd dwarf and repeatedly included him in their most intimate moments. Let's imagine that what Mushroom says about Rhaenyra is true, that Daemon taught her how to please a man, would she really "practice" on court fool Mushroom? How would Mushroom know exactly what acts Daemon taught Rhaenyra? Is it really believable that they would fool (lol) around in his presence?
Same with Aegon. (After Rhaenyra's death) Mushroom claims that Aegon was in pain and rarely smiled, but he somehow enjoyed Mushroom's jokes so much, he insisted that he always be by his side and help him dress. This is where Mushroom gets his account of the King's burns, supposedly. But did Aegon or the people around him really could not go about their days until Mushroom took a good hard look at the king's naked body? Mushroom is a dwarf, how is he even going to help Aegon, an invalid, dress properly? Logic would have it that he'd be more of a hindrance than a help.
However, in other instances, maybe Mushroom's tales do have some credibility, as he was at least in the right place - the Cargylle twins' duel, Visenya being scaly (though perhaps it's a bit much for Mushroom to have been the one to carry her to her funeral pyre), Alyn and Addam being Corlys' sons, not Laenor's etc
As for Munkun, he appears after Orwyle is sentenced to the Night's Watch, so Aegon is dead by then.
There is also Yandel to consider, who writes TWOIAF for Tommen. So he shouldn't theoretically feel pressured to write from a Targaryen bias, but he uses Gyldayn as a major source. Meta-textually, that's an explanation for why most of the information in TWOIAF is replicated in FB. Again, off the top of my head, I don't remember Yandel being an Aegon-hater specifically, but his account of the Dance is much more brief anyway.
If anyone has more developed thoughts on the matter, feel free to add them. :)
George RR Martin’s recent updates in the last few months have made me optimistic that The Winds of Winter will be released in late 2023 to mid-2024. Very possibly a foolish hope but hope springs eternal.
I first heard of A Song of Ice and Fire on an old Wheel of Time message board circa 1999. It was a discussion of favorite fantasy books/series. I first read the series shortly after A Feast For Crows was released in 2005. I was spoiled for most of the major events of the series – Ned’s execution, both the weddings, and Jaime’s loss of hand due to reading multiple threads on the internet but it didn’t lessen my love of the series. A Dance of Dragons was the only book I was completely unspoiled for on my first read and that is because I made myself stay off the internet until I finished the book.
A Song of Ice and Fire quickly became my favorite fantasy series. Rounding out the top five would be:
2) The Deryni novels by Katherine Kurtz
3) The Thieves’ World anthology series by various authors
4) The Power Mages books by Brian McClellan
5) The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan
My favorite type of fantasy leans toward low/moderate magical elements with personal/political conflicts that could be inspired by actual history.
A Song of Ice And Fire is the best, and definitely most complex, of that type of fantasy. A re-read from the beginning is needed to re-fresh all of the characters, plots, and foreshadowing that have happened over the course of the series. My work schedule is pretty hectic so it will take me to late 2023/early 2024 to finish the re-read. I’m going with a chronological order of events for the re-read as opposed to reading in the order of publication. And not it begins…
The World of Ice And Fire: The Untold History of Westeros And The Game of Thrones:
The book opens with a beautiful two-page spread of Dragonstone. Remove the bottom part of the art and this could easily be post-Doom of Valyria. Gloom, doom, the sky filled with ash and smoke.
The next page is rows of House sigils. There are a hundred sigils displayed, going on memory alone I can identify:
First Row – Arryn, Baratheon, Mallister, Florent
Second Row – Selmy, Tarth, Whent, Manderly, Fossoway
29 out of a 100? If that was a test, I would have failed. There were twenty more sigils I recognized reading descriptions of during the series but I couldn’t recall the House it belonged to.
The next page is a beautiful depiction of the Targaryen three-headed dragon sigil. The following page is a gorgeous drawing of Storm’s End during an actual storm. Less gloomy than Dragonstone but still not a place I’d want to live.
Next is a dedication: “To his most esteemed and gracious lord, Robert Joffrey Tommen the First of His Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, Yandel, humble Maester of the Citadel, wishes thousandfold prosperity, now and forever, and wisdom unmatched.”
The dedication gives us the following information: the in-universe author of the tome, when in the timeline it was finished, the rapid-fire timing of the events between Robert and Joffrey’s deaths, and the bias the author will have towards the Baratheon/Lannister regimes. Yandel isn’t going to risk Robert or Tywin’s wrath by being favorable toward Baratheon/Lannister enemies.
The preface begins by Yandel hyping the superiority of the Citadel: “…the dame may be said of knowledge, extracted and compiled by many learned men, each of whom builds upon the works of those who preceded him. What one of them does not know is known to another, and little remains truly unknown if one seeks far enough” and “…the great bastion of knowledge that has been built over the centuries born within and without the confines of the Citadel”.
We are the Citadel, we are awesome and know everything, okay, cool.
Yandel give a recap of his own history:
· A foundling left on an empty stall in Scribe’s Hearth in the tenth year of Aerys II’s reign..
· He was taken by an acolyte to Archmaester Ebrose who needed an infant to test theories for a treatise he was writing on the swaddling of infants.
· Raised as a servant in the Citadel and was taught to write by Archmaester Walgrave
· Forged the first link of his chain at thirteen years old and took his oaths in the first year of Robert Baratheon’s reign.
· Began his work on “The World of Ice And Fire” shortly after taking his oaths.
The following page has art that depicts Aegon the Conqueror riding Balerion, the Black Dread.
Butterfly, before F&B came out, I believed that the letter Dorne sent to Aegon revealed that Rhaenys was still alive. It stood out to me that that theory, so prominent in WOIAF, was nowhere to be seen in F&B? What do you think the letter said?
That theory is not to be seen in Fire & Blood because it either post-dates Archmaester Gyldayn, or was a theory that Gyldayn didn’t care for and therefore didn’t include in his history of House Targaryen. Maester Yandel, in his book The World of Ice and Fire, heavily relied on Gyldayn’s writings, but he wasn’t fully dependent on them. He may have speculated about the Dornish letter on his own or drew the theory from another historian. Or, Doylistically:
George isn’t interested in having a historian who explains where every bit of information comes from, who expands on every detail that might make some reader scratch their head. Gyldayn is a figure who sometimes thinks some things need no explanation and other things do, based entirely on his own views and opinions. This is _deliberate_ by George. Gyldayn is a character, the filter through which we see things, as Yandel was a filter through which we saw some things in TWoIaF. Having to ponder and interpret is a feature, not a bug. Mistakes are mistakes, but this obviously is not a mistake.
–Elio Garcia (about a different F&B subject, but it still applies)
My opinion about the Dornish Letter has not changed. It’s a question that’s not supposed to be answered, a mystery like many mysteries in history. If GRRM wanted to be definite, he would have done the book as a POV-based narrative, or perhaps presented an excerpt from Aegon’s diary; he did not want to, therefore he didn’t. Maybe that’s unsatisfying to some, but obviously not to him. (Or me, tbh.) But if you or others want to keep theorizing, feel free.
One notable custom that the Northmen hold dearer than any other is guest right, the tradition of hospitality by which a man my offer no harm to a guest beneath his roof, nor a guest to his host. The Andals held to something like it as well, but it looms less large in southron minds. In his text Justice and Injustice in the North: Judgments of Three Stark Lords, Maester Egbert notes that crimes in the North in which guest right was violated were rare but were invariably treated as harshly as the direst of treasons. Only kinslaying is deemed as sinful as the violations of these laws of hospitality. (TWOIAF, p. 136)
There’s a lot of “othering” of the North in the book series, by both southerners and northerners alike. The North is comprised largely of a different ethnic group (the First Men vs. the Andals who conquered the rest of Westeros, although there are those like the clans of the Mountains of the Moon in the Vale who are also descended from the First Men) and are considered rather barbaric and uncivilized by southerners, while the Northerners take pride in being the harsher, sturdier people and believe, basically, that southerners are all dandies with their silks and harps.
As a result it can be hard to tell when this “othering” of the North in TWOIAF--”written” by Maester Yandel, obviously a southerner, as the vast majority of maesters are, the Citadel being a largely southern institution--is just more of the same, or if there’s a more intentionally political slant to it. Here, I think it is the latter.
“Maester Yandel” was originally writing his great history of Westeros for Robert Baratheon, who died before it was completed, and the rather amusing inscription shows his continual efforts at revision every time a king dies:
And if he gets all the way to Tommen, then we know he was still working on the manuscript when the Red Wedding occurred (under Joffrey’s reign).
The Red Wedding was a huge blow to the cultural institution of guest right, which was, contrary to what Yandel suggests, important to both the North and the south and the Free Cities of Essos, an international institution exceeded only by marriage in the scope of its practice. Not just because it happened--violations of guest right, even bloodier ones, had occurred before--but because of the reaction to it. The Freys went utterly unpunished for their crime; in fact, they were rewarded for it by the crown. It’s not a stretch to assume that guest right, as an honored cultural institution, will fade in power considerably over the next few centuries. Characters in the books have already begun expressing suspicion of the power of bread and salt post-Red Wedding.
How to justify this in the history textbooks? Just as Yandel does: by appealing to the ethnic prejudice of southerners. If, as if obvious, his audience is southern, it’s not a stretch to give a little push in the direction of “oh, it’s just those barbarians overreacting.” We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
And sprinkle on a judicious helping of what looks like confirmation from other sources:
Maester Egbert notes that crimes in the North in which guest right was violated were rare but were invariably treated as harshly as the direst of treasons.
That doesn’t actually say anything about the comparative severity of the crime in the North vs. the South, but in the context of the passage, it sure looks like it, doesn’t it?
sorry i love yandel i love that he will criticize other maester's and regularly says stuff like "the holy texts teach us this but FACTUALLY" what a nerd, what a man of science
You've recently mentioned the Ibbenese as Neanderthals, but could they also be GRRM's take on fantasy dwarves?
No, sorry, they’re clearly Neanderthals.
Through the centuries many different peoples have made their homes upon the shores and islands of the Shivering Sea and sent their mariners across its chilly grey-green waters. The most enduring and significant of these are the Ibbenese, an ancient and taciturn race of islanders who have fished the northern seas since the dawn of days from their homes upon the Ibbish isles.The Ibbenese stand apart from the other races of mankind. They are a heavy people, broad about the chest and shoulders, but seldom standing more than five and a half feet in height, with thick, short legs and long arms. Though short and squat, they are ferociously strong; at wrestling, their favorite sport, no man of the Seven Kingdoms can hope to equal them.Their faces, characterized by sloping brows with heavy ridges, small sunken eyes, great square teeth, and massive jaws, seem brutish and ugly to Westerosi eyes, an impression heightened by their guttural, grunting tongue; but in truth the men of Ib are a cunning folk—skilled craftsmen, able hunters and trackers, and doughty warriors. They are the most hirsute people in the known world. Though their flesh is pale, with dark blue veins beneath the skin, their hair is dark and wiry. Ibbenese men are heavily bearded; wiry body hair covers their arms, legs, chests, and backs. Coarse dark hair is common amongst their women, even on the upper lip. (The persistent myth that Ibbenese females have six breasts has no truth to it, however.)
–The World of Ice and Fire
See this article on Neanderthal anatomy, as well as this one, which notes that Neanderthals were most likely extremely hairy.
@crimson-not-scarlet asked:
Re: Ibbenese being Neanderthals… I see the point about physical characteristics, and I do believe that GRRM was def inspired by them, but what about them not being able to create fertile hybrids with regular humans? Neanderthals were certainly capable of it (as all modern humans outside Africa have some ½% Neanderthal DNA), and Denisovans too, it seems (see the Melanesians).
@tylandlannister also asked about the hybrid issue, so replying to him too–
Brown Ben Plumm claims that his grandmother was half-Ibbenese, and Casso Mogat (the captain of a ship Davos takes to White Harbor) is the son of an Ibbenese whaler and a Sisterwoman. (He is very short and hairy.) There are also maesters who believe (per TWOIAF) that the very hairy Skagosi have a large percentage of Ibbenese blood. So, why is it that Yandel says that all Ibbenese/human hybrids are “inevitably sterile”? (If such a hybrid even lives, since reportedly most are stillborn or terribly malformed.)
Well, when Elio Garcia was asked about this discrepancy, he replied that Yandel was overreaching a bit, that the phrasing should have been “almost inevitably sterile”. The majority of surviving half-Ibbenese hybrids are sterile – but a few are not, a few are fertile. So there have been a few hybrids who’ve passed on their genes to regular humans, just like Neanderthals. Hope that clears things up!
