#rtrc

[milliewow]

Always together..

💙x🧡

[jozor-johai]

Afterward the gods transformed the cook into a monstrous white rat who could only eat his own young. He had roamed the Nightfort ever since, devouring his children, but still his hunger was not sated. "It was not for murder that the gods cursed him," Old Nan said, "nor for serving the Andal king his son in a pie. A man has a right to vengeance. But he slew a guest beneath his roof, and that the gods cannot forgive."

The Rat Cook, by me. (Forgive the lack of colored background)

[isthisahearmeout]

Is Maxi from Roary the Racing Car a hear me out?

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Voting ended onMar 1, 2025

[Clarification; yes = yea, that's a choice & no = that's rather tame/vanilla pick]

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[jozor-johai]

Revisiting the Rat Cook, Part 1: The Best Pie, and Lord Lamprey

This is the first part of a series I've been sitting on for a while, where I'm going to examine the symbols and themes present in the "Rat Cook" story, as relayed by Bran in ASOS Bran IV, and search reappearances of those elements throughout the rest of ASOIAF.

This series is predicated on the understanding that these books are rich with intentional symbolism, metaphor, and allegory, and that the repetition of these symbols and themes adds to their meaning.

In general, the symbols that are present in ASOIAF are limited by their ability to be inserted into the plot of the story (i.e. if the symbol of a stag killing a direwolf is important, there must be a way in which the characters are able to encounter such a scene within the plot's context). However, the metadiegetic legends that exist in-world for the characters of ASOIAF are not beholden to the same restrictions, and because GRRM is able to invent these myths in their entirety without restrictions on any of the individual symbolic elements, we can trust that each separate element of these in-world myths was placed intentionally.

With that in mind, I believe we can use stories like that of the Rat Cook as a sort of "road map" when looking at the reappearance of these same symbols and themes elsewhere in the story; I believe the "Rat Cook" story is the most distilled example of these elements. I don't mean to say that every instance of "rats" references the Rat Cook directly, but that the Rat Cook story provides a place where Martin is able to use these symbols in their most abstract form and describe their relationship to each other, so that when we see them appear again elsewhere in ASOIAF we might better understand what we are being shown.

So, among other things, the Rat Cook story is about a rat which eats rats, or a cook who serves kings; The Rat Cook story is about fathers and sons, about cannibalism, about trust, about vengeance, and about damning one's legacy.

This is likely going to be a 9-part series, but ideally almost all of these parts will be able to stand on their own. Each post will inform the next as I build my analysis, but hopefully each individual post is also interesting in its own right.

RtRC Part 1: "The Best Pie You Have Ever Tasted" and "Lord Lamprey"

This opening part, for better or worse, is going to retread some well-discussed ground: the clear parallels between the "Rat Cook" story and the incident in which Lord Manderly serves certain overlarge pies in ADWD The Prince of Winterfell, a scene lovingly dubbed "Frey Pie". However, as well-established as this comparison is, I want to begin here so I can begin to introduce how a closer analysis of the Rat Cook themes are present in this uncontroversially parallel scene, and how they might add more depth to interpreting that moment.

Not only does the scene evoke the same imagery, serving pie to the Lords amidst conspicuously missing sons, but the connection becomes even more direct when Wyman Manderly looks directly to the camera and says, “Hey reader, if you’re wondering where those Freys are, think back to any scary stories you know about pie”.

Okay, he doesn’t actually say that, but it’s close enough, and as much of a nudge we’re like to get from Martin (and which still went over my head on my first read through). Instead he does the next best thing, cueing Abel to sing while staggering past our POV:

"We should have a song about the Rat Cook," he was muttering, as he staggered past Theon, leaning on his knights. "Singer, give us a song about the Rat Cook."

Manderly seems to acknowledge the similarities himself, and most have noticed as well.

However, making the comparison between the story of the Rat Cook and Manderly’s actions is particularly interesting in their differences.

There are many ways in which Manderly’s pies, as a mirror, are appropriately an inversion of certain elements in the Rat Cook myth.

Returning to the scene as we see it in ADWD The Prince of Winterfell:

“Ramsay hacked off slices with his falchion and Wyman Manderly himself served, presenting the first steaming portions to Roose Bolton and his fat Frey wife, the next to Ser Hosteen and Ser Aenys, the sons of Walder Frey. "The best pie you have ever tasted, my lords," the fat lord declared. "Wash it down with Arbor gold and savor every bite. I know I shall." “True to his word, Manderly devoured six portions, two from each of the three pies, smacking his lips and slapping his belly and stuffing himself until the front of his tunic was half-brown with gravy stains and his beard was flecked with crumbs of crust.”

Manderly takes on only some of the roles of the Rat Cook here. Despite his status as lord, he plays the role of the humble cook, personally serving Roose Bolton, Walda Bolton (née Frey), Hosteen Frey, and Aenys Frey, all standing in for the “Andal King”. In this way, the role of “Andal King” as someone who has official power and the role of “Rat Cook” as effectively powerless dissident are played out straightforwardly. Bolton and his allies are backed by their army and the authority of the crown while Manderly has no official backing of his own.

Wyman even physically resembles the Rat Cook; Wyman’s blue eyes indicate he is presumably pale, and Wyman is prodigiously large, to mimic the descriptor of “white, and almost as huge as a sow”.

However, like the “Andal King” himself, who had a “second slice” of his own son, it is Wyman Manderly, and not Bolton nor the Freys, who devours two portions from each of the pies. In this way, the roles have elements which are interchangeable.

Wyman is acting out both roles, which is especially interesting because in this comparison is a single most definitive contrast: The Rat Cook, most notably, is not punished for serving the pie, as "a man has a right to vengeance". Instead, he is punished for violating guest right.

Now, Wyman—who lost his son to the Freys at the Red Wedding—certainly has a “right to vengeance”, but betraying guest right is something which Wyman Manderly takes great pains not to do. Manderly conspicuously notes that he gave the three dead Freys guest gifts upon their parting, marking them as no longer guests under his roof, and subsequently, theoretically, freeing him to kill them. Manderly introduces the idea while Davos marks the distinction for the reader’s sake in ADWD Davos IV:

“The Freys came here by sea. They have no horses with them, so I shall present each of them with a palfrey as a guest gift. Do hosts still give guest gifts in the south?" "Some do, my lord. On the day their guest departs.”

The Freys, on the other hand, as executors of the Red Wedding, are the most notable violators of guest right, while the Boltons contributed their part as well; both are being punished for that sin by Manderly-the-Rat-Cook here, marking the inversion of the story. In this iteration, the party serving the pie seems to warrant no judgment; instead, the pie itself is the judgment, served as retribution. With that connection in mind, it's worth remembering the other importance of the Rat Cook story, based on its placement in ASOS and which I think has often been overshadowed by Manderly’s “Frey Pies” incident.

In the Rat Cook story, after the Rat Cook's punishment, he spends an immortal future forever eating his own descendants, a scenario in which Bran describes the rats of the Nightfort as “children running from their father”. That eternal, kin- and legacy- devouring doom does not just come secondary to the punishment, it is a part of the punishment following the violation of guest right, and introduces the notion of an entire family being cursed for that violation... and, for good measure, is brought up in ASOS Bran IV, chapter that occurs only a few chapters after the Red Wedding itself.

In one respect, this is just another reinforcement for the reader of the sanctity of guest right and of the laws of the old gods. Coming so soon after the Red Wedding, the Rat Cook story hints at the fall of House Frey. Walder Frey, most culpable violator of guest right, has apparently doomed the rest of his dynasty to death, punished for his actions, the way that the Rat Cook, too, is a patriarch who creates not only his own ruin but also the ruin of his progeny. Although Walder himself is not literally tying the nooses, it is Walder who has metaphorically become the father "devouring his children" indirectly through his ruthlessness. Wyman Manderly, then, is merely an agent of that doom.

On the subject of the Freys being cursed by violating guest right, only one of the named consumers of the pie, Aenys Frey, is truly mirroring the Rat Cook legend by literally eating his own son, Rhaegar Frey. Both Aenys and Hosteen Frey, on the other hand, are specifically called out in the scene as being the “sons of Walder Frey”. It’s appropriate within the mirrored Rat Cook motif to invoke Walder’s name as patriarch as well as the promise of other “sons” that might succumb to their father’s insatiable appetite for status; this sentence invokes the dynasty of the Frey household. Indeed, Walder Frey himself also has shared motifs with the Rat Cook: like the immortal Rat Cook, Walder Frey has nearly innumerable children and grandchildren, and he too seems to refuse to die.

If a named heir in Westeros is like the ASOIAF version of Chekov’s gun, then the Late Walder Frey is sitting on Chekov’s arsenal; once he becomes the late Late Lord Frey, it’s going to explode. If that happens in an upcoming book, then the Rat Cook story might be setting up the idea of how an eventual succession crisis of House Frey might further this metaphorical connection, with this doomed family turning on itself, each running from the shadow of their father’s legacy like the Rat Cook's children run from him in the Nightfort.

Lord Lamprey

Now, to push through a little more symbolic linking between the Frey Pie scene and Lord Manderly:

If we consider the “pie” element as a key part of the Rat Cook story, then seeing a “pie” specifically in the hands of Wyman Manderly prompts a connection with a noted favorite of Manderly’s: lamprey pie. As early as ACOK Bran II, we learn that:

“His own people mock him as Lord Lamprey”,

Interestingly, we see in that same chapter a telling metaphor considering Manderly and lampreys not in a pie:

“Lord Wyman attacked a steaming plate of lampreys as if they were an enemy host”.

Considering Wyman’s lampreys-as-enemy association makes for curious contrast later, in ADWD Davos IV, as Manderly is feigning allegiance with the hated Freys. Here, Manderly has just stepped away from the feast in order to secretly treat with Davos, and the food served may contain more meaning than at first appears:

“In the Merman's Court they are eating lamprey pie and venison with roasted chestnuts. Wynafryd is dancing with the Frey she is to marry. The other Freys are raising cups of wine to toast our friendship.”

The reappearance of this noted lamprey pie might take on more significance knowing that some of those eating it become a pie later on. The reminder of the association between Manderly and his lamprey pies seems even more intentional when the “Lord Lamprey” nickname conspicuously returns as Bolton’s men search for the missing Freys in ADWD Reek III:

"You did not find our missing Freys." The way Roose Bolton said it, it was more a statement than a question. "We rode back to where Lord Lamprey claims they parted ways, but the girls could not find a trail."

Invoking his nickname in this scene draws a connecting line between Manderly’s favorite pie, the “enemy host” of lampreys, the missing Freys, and “lamprey pie” being served as a symbol of the fake “friendship” between the Freys and Manderlys.

If that Frey-Manderly friendship is marked by mentions of lamprey pie, and Manderly loves to eat lamprey like he would eat an enemy, and we see in The Prince of Winterfell that Manderly apparently loves to eat his enemies, having two portions of each Frey pie, we might think that the Freys are being paralleled with Manderly’s favorite pie filling: lampreys. If that is the case, then comparing the punished Freys to lampreys is a scathingly fitting image, and I mean that literally.

Considering that carnivorous lampreys latch onto fishes to slowly eat the fish’s blood and flesh while the fish still swims, then looking at an image like this makes for some serious symbolic resonance if you consider the Tullys as fish (as they often are described) and the pie-filling Freys as pie-filling lampreys. It certainly provides a strong visual metaphor for the Frey’s “late” and half-hearted vassalage to Hoster Tully, how they dealt with Catelyn, and how they are now parasitically using Edmure—he sits in Riverrun at the end of ADWD, but with Freys latched onto him, bleeding him like they did his family.

This series is otherwise about pies and rats, not lampreys, but I will mention a few other interesting associations with lampreys that are worth looking into. The Stokeworths, when they are desperately trying to secure a match for Lollys, serve each of their prospective suitors lamprey pie, perhaps a signaling of the Stokeworth’s parasitic place at court, or the attitude towards their search for their daughter’s match. Note that in that context, Littlefinger remarks that he loves lamprey pie, perhaps fittingly for someone who has risen high by making use of his parasitic attachments to those more powerful. By contrast, when our intrepid advocate for truth and justice—Davos—is jailed after his return from the Battle of the Blackwater, he is served lamprey pie in the dungeons, but finds it “too rich” to eat. We have already seen that Davos has no stomach for the blind flattery that some of Stannis’ other lords have, and this scene describes that same character trait. I believe there are even further associations that are worth investigating, but for the sake of this essay, we must move on and end here for now.

In the next part, I'll focus on how it's relevant that the Rat Cook's pie and Manderly's pie were both allegedly "pork" pies, and where that reappears as well.

[jozor-johai]

Revisiting the Rat Cook, part 3: "Just Eat"

The third part of my ongoing series in which I examine how the themes and symbols present in the "Rat Cook" story, as relayed in ASOS Bran IV, and how those elements reappear throughout ASOAIF.

Part one is here and part two is here, but hopefully these also stand alone as well.

To anyone who is reading this part first, "Revisiting the Rat Cook" is a series that is built on the understanding that GRRM's use of metadiegetic legends provide a "road map" of symbols and meaning, used in their abstract form, which we, as readers, can use to better understand the relationships between symbols, motifs, and themes as they reoccur throughout ASOAIF as a whole. The Rat Cook story is about a rat which eats rats, or a cook who serves kings; The Rat Cook story is about fathers and sons, about cannibalism, about trust, about vengeance, and about damning one's legacy.

"Just Eat"

Last post, I talked about various moments where the flesh of men and the flesh of pigs were compared: times where dead pigs evoked dead sons, where dead sons evoked dead pigs, and where human victims would "become" pork in death. Finally, at the end, I talked about what some part of that transformation said about guest right in particular, a key part of the "Rat Cook" story. I pointed out how guest right is a social construct, necessary to maintain peace in a community, where those feeding and those being fed can both trust that they will come to no harm.

In this part of the series, I'm going to reach a similar conclusion about guest right, approached from a different angle. This part is about the relationship between "hosts" and "guests", and what it means when a character is being forced into the role of the "Andal King" from the Rat Cook story, who was unwittingly fed his own son. What does it mean, in ASOIAF, when a character cannot trust the provenance of their food, especially in the most extreme case: being fed human flesh.

Recognizing the dynamics between the Rat Cook and the Andal King, the inherent trust between those who feed and those who are fed, the host and the guest, and the power dynamics between a liege and a lowly cook, we see that the fear of the unwilling cannibal in the Rat Cook story is also a fear of the betrayal of those dynamics.

The fear of being turned cannibal unwillingly is referenced in AFFC Arya II, when Arya is being hosted—and fed—-by the House of Black and White, and when, after preparing dead bodies, she suddenly considers the similarity between eating human flesh and eating pork:

Once, as she was eating her supper, a terrible suspicion seized hold of her, and she put down her knife and stared suspiciously at a slice of pale white meat. The kindly man saw the horror on her face. "It is pork, child," he told her, "only pork”

This interaction is mirrored with another reassurance that meat is only pork, when Coldhands offers Bran and his party a “sow” in ADWD Bran I. Bran does not make the connection with cannibalism explicit, nor does anyone else present, but the reality of the meat’s provenance is far more clearly suspect:

Meera Reed was turning a chunk of raw red flesh above the flames, letting it char and spit. "Just in time," she said. Bran rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and wriggled backwards against the wall to sit. "You almost slept through supper. The ranger found a sow."

This scene is particularly haunting, perhaps because this is a rare instance of actual cannibalism, rather than imagined cannibalism. Martin creates this moment's unsettling atmosphere by highlighting each of party in turn, using gruesome language to describe them eating:

Behind her, Hodor was tearing eagerly at a chunk of hot charred flesh as blood and grease ran down into his beard. Wisps of smoke rose from between his fingers. "Hodor," he muttered between bites, "hodor, hodor." His sword lay on the earthen floor beside him. Jojen Reed nipped at his own joint with small bites, chewing each chunk of meat a dozen times before swallowing. The ranger killed a pig.

In this instance, the meat is notably never directly called pork—it is “chunks of meat”, it is “hot charred flesh” still running with “blood”, which evokes Victarion’s hot pork-crackling arm as well.

Bran’s internal affirmation that “the ranger killed a pig” is given its own sentence and its own paragraph—it’s a connected idea, but it’s not what’s happening. Still, a man—once butchered—may become a “sow” in the same way that the Rat Cook, too, became as “big as a sow”, just as we saw with the butchered butcher’s boy, Micah.

Bran, for his part, nearly puts the ideas together. Without eating, he drills Coldhands as to what happened to the men chasing them, whose disappearance comes simultaneous to the appearance of the “sow”.

"What happened to the men? The foes behind us?" "They will not trouble you." "Who were they? Wildlings?" Meera turned the meat to cook the other side. Hodor was chewing and swallowing, muttering happily under his breath. Only Jojen seemed aware of what was happening as Coldhands turned his head to stare at Bran. "They were foes." Men of the Night's Watch. "You killed them. You and the ravens. Their faces were all torn, and their eyes were gone." Coldhands did not deny it. "They were your brothers. I saw. The wolves had ripped their clothes up, but I could still tell. Their cloaks were black. Like your hands."

In the midst of the questions about the men, our attention is again drawn each of the party eating in turn, further strengthening the connection between a slain man and a slain sow. These were men of the Night’s Watch, as was Coldhands, we presume, so they are Coldhands’ “brothers”, and so again this is the slaying and serving of family. And again, for the rest of the party, already eating when Bran wakes, it is unwilling, unknowing cannibalism. Coldhands, like the Rat Cook, has offered a meal and called it pork; mimicking the Andal king, the recipients don’t question its origin—for, at this point, they trust the "host" they are with—and instead, they find it delicious, just as Sam feared he would while Bannen burned. After all, turning cannibal is one thing, but as shown in the passage from the last post with Sam and Bannen, it is a sickening thought to come up with on one’s own. To be an unknowing cannibal, though, is always possible, but only so long as there is a stark betrayal of trust.

This scene with Coldhands, especially if we suspect that Coldhands is feeding Bran's friends the flesh of men, is a harsh reminder of that same essential idea from the Rat Cook story: that the sharing of food is always an exchange of trust in its very nature. As I've said before, the notion of “guest right” reflects that—you must trust the person feeding you to eat the food they serve you, and you’ll only feed those whom you trust and want to welcome. The Rat Cook story, of course, is the pinnacle of betraying that trust, and the cook himself is punished for exactly that; the Andal King, for his part, believed he could accept what he was served, which is how the Rat Cook was able to enact his vengeance.

We are also reminded of this relationship between shared food and trust when Quentyn is in Meereen, talking to the Tattered Prince. This exchange notably uses pie as a metaphor, too, doubly prompting the reader to recall the Rat Cook story here.

In ADWD The Dragontamer, Quentyn is faced with a life-or-death moment of trust over the Brazen Beasts’ code word. Quentyn doubts the veratity of this information, wondering whether the Tattered Prince really knows the code words... and he receives this in response:

“But a prince should know better than to pose such questions, Dornish. In Pentos, we have a saying. Never ask the baker what went into the pie. Just eat.”

As Quentyn points out himself:

“There was wisdom in that.”

In this moment, we may be given an insight into the mind of the “Andal king” (even if Quentyn is only a Rhoynar Prince). If this is the Pentoshi version of “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”, then its phrasing is curiously resonant with the Rat Cook story, with pies of unknown provenance. Quentyn is reminded here of the importance of the unspoken rules of trust between allies; the trust is mutual, and he must trust the Tattered Prince if he is to be trusted himself. Similarly, just as the Rat Cook should have been bound by the laws of hospitality, the Andal King was bound by those same laws of trust, and didn’t question what was happening. Did the Andal King ever learn the fate of his son? We don’t hear that side in the version that Old Nan tells Bran.

As for Quentyn, it’s worth noting that this trust turned out to be ill-fated.

Seemingly, the code word did not help, and perhaps Quentyn’s skepticism was worthwhile. Of course, even that isn't the full story—it’s possible that the Tattered Prince was being true, and the plan was only ruined by the machinations of the Shavepate and some rat-masked Brazen Beasts. (I may return to this idea in a later part, but only if I feel confident enough to tackle Dany and Meereen, which really is quite a knot.)

If this scene with the Tattered Prince provides an in-world reminder of how the exchange of food provides a metaphor for the dynamics of a given scene, then when the stakes are possible cannibalism, then the stakes of that metaphorical comparison are heightened as well. Unwilling cannibalism is, in a way, the pinnacle example of betraying that host-guest trust.

It makes us reconsider our scene with Arya:

Once, as she was eating her supper, a terrible suspicion seized hold of her, and she put down her knife and stared suspiciously at a slice of pale white meat. The kindly man saw the horror on her face. "It is pork, child," he told her, "only pork”

Arya questioning the origin of the meat in the House of Black and White is just as equally a valid question to ask about her entire wellbeing in that setting—she has no true reason to trust that the House of Black and White wants the best for her, nor that she is safe in their care. This concern is a concept allegorically played out in the serving of the food. Metaphorically, she has doubts as to whether she can trust what the Faceless Men are “feeding” her—are they feeding her lies, or the truth? Are they feeding her pork, or dead men?

The Kindly Man is reassuring, as he always is, but all he can offer is reassurance—like Arya questioning the food she is being served, this moment suggests that she ought to be questioning the hospitality she is receiving in the House of Black and White in its entirety.

Returning to the scene with Bran and Coldhands, we can apply the same thinking, and that context illuminates the direction the conversation takes. First, it is about the meat that Coldhands has served them. Then, it is about the men who Coldhands has killed, whether they were allies or foes, and whether they were brothers. This pairing of ideas links serving the suspicious meat of the alleged “sow” with the question of whether to trust Coldhands; Bran considers the Night’s Watch his allies, and is rightfully suspicious of those who would kill Night’s Watchmen, not knowing that these particular Night’s Watchmen were foes. Finally, though, the conversation turns to Coldhands himself, continuing where we left off in ADWD Bran I:

“Coldhands said nothing. ‘Who are you? Why are your hands black?’”

This, immediately after the prior discussions, continues to link these major ideas of the Rat Cook story—the slaying of family, the unwilling cannibalism, and the trust that is necessary to end up in such a terrible fate. Bran’s party is blindly trusting Coldhands to take them somewhere, as they trust him to feed them pork, not human flesh; as they continue to follow him north, Bran’s party metaphorically does not know what they are being “fed”, in a sense—is it the destination they believe, or is it something else? Further confirming this thought process, linking the unknown meat with the unknown journey, the questions continue to the logical conclusion:

"Show us your face." The ranger made no move to obey. "He's dead." Bran could taste the bile in his throat. “Meera, he's some dead thing. The monsters cannot pass so long as the Wall stands and the men of the Night's Watch stay true, that's what Old Nan used to say. He came to meet us at the Wall, but he could not pass. He sent Sam instead, with that wildling girl." Meera's gloved hand tightened around the shaft of her frog spear. "Who sent you? Who is this three-eyed crow?"

Bran is faced with the same fears that strike Arya in the House of Black and White:

If they cannot trust what they are being fed, can they trust where they are being led?

The notion of finding a sow in the tundra may be as likely as finding a benevolent wizard in the wastes of the far north, but that is what Bran still believes even at this moment.

Coldhands feeding them human meat under false pretenses, and his refusal to be honest or direct about the source of the meat, therefore marks a betrayal of that trust—and possibly portends a betrayal of the other trust as well. The question of their journey’s end, and whether they are being told the full story about their destination, naturally follows the question of whether they are being fed false “pork”.

Did the Andal King have similar misgivings that he similarly ignored, believing instead in the social covenant of guest right that he had entered into? If the Andal king had denied the pork pie, would he have been in the right for his skepticism, or in the wrong, as the Tattered Prince says, for “asking the baker what went into the pie”? Is it, as Quentyn says, wiser to trust? The Rat Cook story that Bran recalls moves on from this question without answering it. We never learn if the Andal King ever learned the truth. "The Rat Cook" instead goes on to focus on the aftermath of the incident, and the fate of the cook, whose punishment, again, was not for forcing cannibalism but for betraying the trust of guest right.

In the next few parts, I'm going to stray away from eating men for a while and focus on eating rats—what I think rats symbolize in ASOIAF, espcially when paired with the action of eating. After all, it's in the story's title: the "Rat Cook", and "rats" are as key a symbol as cannibalism, pork, and pies. Later, though, I'll be returning to this issue of trusting in a social contract, like guest right, so it's good to keep this idea in mind, as well as the power dynamics inherent in eating and being fed, when considering what it means to eat rats, too.

[jozor-johai]

Revisiting the Rat Cook

pinning links here to my Revisiting the Rat Cook series, and I will be updating as I post them.

Part One: The Best Pie, and Lord Lamprey

Part Two: Prince-and-Bacon Pie, and Pork Crackling

Part Three: "Just Eat"

Part Four: "Fresh Rats"

Part Five: "Those were the only choices"

Part Six: "As a dog will kill a rat"

Part Seven: A dead Hound and a drowned rat

Part Eight: Rats in the walls of the Red Keep

Part Nine: The Sons of the Sons of the Sons

Epilogue: Looking ahead to TWOW aboard two rat-free ships

-

you can also find these on my wordpress

[jozor-johai]

Revisiting the Rat Cook, Part 2: Prince-and-Bacon Pie, and Pork Crackling

This is the second part of a series where I'm examining the symbols and themes present in the "Rat Cook" story, as relayed by Bran in ASOS Bran IV, and search reappearances of those elements throughout the rest of ASOIAF.

This is the first part, as well as the long version of my introduction.

"Revisiting the Rat Cook" is predicated on the understanding that GRRM's use of metadiegetic legends provide a "road map" of symbols and meaning, used in their abstract form, which we, as readers, can use to better understand the relationships between symbols, motifs, and themes as they reoccur throughout ASOAIF as a whole.

Among other things, the Rat Cook story is about a rat which eats rats, or a cook who serves kings; The Rat Cook story is about fathers and sons, about cannibalism, about trust, about vengeance, and about damning one's legacy.

This is likely going to be a 9-part series, but ideally almost all of these parts will be able to stand on their own. Each post will inform the next as I build my analysis, but hopefully each individual post is also interesting in its own right.

"Prince-and-Bacon Pie"

Last time, we talked about Wyman Manderly's wedding pies, and his favorite, lamprey pies.

In the original Rat Cook story, though, the Andal King is allegedly served a bacon pie. “Prince-and-bacon pie”, Bran calls it, and he repeats later that a “rasher of bacon” was cooked into the prince pie. The idea of pork served alongside human flesh is given repeat attention in regard to the pie, but it extends elsewhere into the story as well:

When the Rat Cook is punished, in turn, and becomes a cannibal rat eating his own kind, he is transformed into an insatiable rat “as huge as a sow”. Unusually large for a rat, but he is certainly no longer a man, although perhaps close enough, if you trust the moniker “long pork”.

This connection remains true for Lord Manderly’s Frey pies. When they are served in ADWD The Prince of Winterfell, they are introduced as being pork pies:

“…three great wedding pies, as wide across as wagon wheels, their flaky crusts stuffed to bursting with carrots, onions, turnips, parsnips, mushrooms, and chunks of seasoned pork swimming in a savory brown gravy.

Manderly’s pie is nearly identical to the one served by the Rat Cook, with carrots, onions, mushrooms, and, most importantly, down to pork as the main meat—which is to be expected, as Manderly has all but admitted to his influences.

In fact, though, the association of cannibalism, pork, and even pies comes as early as AGOT Jon IV, when the readers are introduced to the notion offhand while the Night’s Watch recruits mock Samwell Tarly:

“I saw him eat a pork pie," Toad said, smirking. "Do you think it was a brother?"

Three-Finger Hobb is certainly not serving Dickon to Samwell, but it contains all the same connections that the Rat Cook story relies on: between cannibalism and one’s own family, children baked into pork pies. The phrase “rasher of bacon” from the Rat Cook story appears in this same interaction about Sam, doubling down on the associations:

"You girls do as you please," Rast said, "but if Thorne sends me against Lady Piggy, I'm going to slice me off a rasher of bacon."

Again, this early instance of bullying, which might instead be framed as the brutal hierarchy of interpersonal domination—or we might say, brothers turning against brothers—is depicted using the same motifs as literal cannibalism. Is it Sam’s blood brother who is a pork pie, or is it Sam, called pork by the men who would become his black brothers? These are brothers turning against their own, and it is the imagined transformation of a man into a pig.

The recruits are joking here, but the comparison between slicing up a human and slicing up pork was brought up with a much darker tone only three chapters earlier, in AGOT Arya II:

Jeyne Poole had told Arya that he'd cut him up in so many pieces that they'd given him back to the butcher in a bag, and at first the poor man had thought it was a pig they'd slaughtered.

It’s dark irony for Micah, the butcher’s boy, to be returned to his father butchered like a pig. It also evokes our Rat Cook story again, with a dead son delivered to his father; like the Andal king, Micah’s father thinks—for a moment—that he’s being given pork. Also present again is the nature of transformation that this death creates: the prince becomes a pork pie, and the Rat Cook becomes as big as a “sow”, just as much as Micah becomes a slaughtered pig.

When the Night’s Watch arrives at Craster’s Keep in ACOK Jon III, Jon finds the similarity again, noting that a pig about to be slaughtered sounds eerily human:

Nearby, a small girl pulled carrots from a garden, naked in the rain, while two women tied a pig for slaughter. The animal's squeals were high and horrible, almost human in their distress.

Immediately later in the same chapter, Dolorous Edd makes a wry joke about cannibalism:

Best leave the wolf outside, he looks hungry enough to eat one of Craster's children. Well, truth be told, I'm hungry enough to eat one of Craster's children, so long as he was served hot.

Just like with the Night’s Watch recruits, this is a joke, but Edd’s line about eating one of Craster’s children transforms the earlier scene into a more chilling image: we were presented with the human-sounding tied pig appearing side-by-side in the same sentence with one of Craster’s small, naked children. With the addition of Edd’s words, both motifs appear alongside a story of eating children—just as in the Rat Cook story, where the Andal king eats his child-as-pork, and the Rat Cook-as-sow eats his own children as well.

Even more can be made of Edd’s jape, if we notice another minute detail: it’s also loaded that Edd uses “he” here to refer to Craster’s child… when Craster only keeps his daughters. Because Edd evokes sons here, Edd’s joke about eating a child calls special attention to the conspicuously missing sons from the scene. Might we expect, in the context of all this imagery, that these sons have been 'eaten' as well, even if not literally? We learn that these missing sons were sacrificed to the old gods later in the same chapter:

But the wildlings serve crueler gods than you or I. These boys are Craster's offerings. His prayers, if you will.

This is the clear meaning of the earlier association between the vulnerable child and the “almost human” pig, which is about to be slaughtered—or sacrificed—so that the keep could live, by way of eating it. It’s the same thing with Craster’s children, who are also, from his perspective, sacrificed so that his keep can live on, untroubled by the old gods.

Note here how all these motifs occur in tandem with each other: pigs as sacrifice to become food, eating children, sacrificed sons, deference (or lack thereof) to the old gods (and, importantly, their laws). The Rat Cook, in retribution, is forced to eat his children, for he forced the Andal King to do the same.

In both scenarios, the gods seemingly ‘demand’ that a father sacrifice his children; the fact that these are sons for Craster deepens the symbolic meaning, as it did with Walder Frey and the Freys in the last part: it is the death of one’s legacy by way of one’s lineage. Only sons bear the family name.

This is the paradox, the 'doom' that Craster, like the doomed characters in "The Rat Cook", is living out. From his perspective, he sacrifices his sons for the same reason he slaughters the pigs: to ensure his keep's survival. They need to eat, and they need to be untroubled by curses. But that sacrifice is Craster's curse, for even as he ensures his short-term survival, he damns his legacy. Craster may have children, but his keep has no future. Every one of his daughters, rather than become their own generation, perversely returns to reenact the role of their mother’s generation as Craster weds her; his keep, as its own patriarchal entity, is stagnant, and will die with him.

"Pork Crackling"

Regarding the equivalence of eating one’s family as an extension of eating one’s legacy, agency, or even one’s self, bear with me into an interesting digression about Victarion:

In ADWD The Iron Suitor, Victarion understands that his role as captain is both inextricably tied to his physical person, and yet is also an idea, separate from him as a mortal man. Referring to his rotting hand, he thinks to himself:

This was not something that his crew could see. They were half a world away from home, too far to let them see that their iron captain had begun to rust.

His mortality—the mortification of his injured hand—would ruin the effect of his role as captain, a higher status which the Ironborn consider to be a “king aboard his own ship”. Victarion may not be socially permitted to be so incapacitated while captain, but he also understands that if he keeps his captain identity separate from his mortal form—that is, if he can lie about the severity of his injury, keeping the state of his body hidden while playing the role of captain—he can maintain his identity as “the iron captain”.

The role of 'captain', and even more so, the arm that is required to be a warrior, is so intricately tied to Victarion’s warrior identity, and therefore to his sense of self, that Victarion refurses to allow the maester to cut off his arm to save the rest of his body. Again, his identity is greater than his mortality.

Yet, when Moqorro suddenly arrives, and Victarion is faced with an alternative, he is willing to sacrifice all else: to stray from the Drowned God towards R'hllor, to put his body into the hands of a “sorcerer” that he just met—all to pursue the ideal of his legacy as captain, divested from his person. And so Victarion, by beginning to sacrificing so much cultural baggage which he believed was part of himself, gets to keep his arm and his captainhood—and what does this arm look like?

Victarion offers this sickening description in ADWD Victarion I:

The arm the priest had healed was hideous to look upon, pork crackling from elbow to fingertips.

It’s a rare case where someone is able to look at their own body and make the gruesome comparison between their own flesh and pork as food, and this moment is Victarion’s reward. Like the Rat Cook who became a rat "huge as a sow", like Micah the butcher's boy who became a butchered pig, Victarion's arm—which was so much his legacy, his identity, that he would not let the maester remove it, so much a symbol of his personhood and his power that he would stray from the Drowned God to get it back—has become pork crackling.

- - -

Speaking of pork crackling, and returning to Craster's Keep...

When they burn the body of a fallen Night’s Watchman in ASOS Samwell II, Sam finds that it smells so much like pork that he is involuntarily hungry:

The worst thing was the smell, though. If it had been a foul unpleasant smell he might have stood it, but his burning brother smelled so much like roast pork that Sam's mouth began to water, and that was so horrible that as soon as the bird squawked "Ended" he ran behind the hall to throw up in the ditch.

Yet again, Dolorous Edd appears immediately afterward to bring the cannibalistic overtones to the forefront. Again, Edd makes the comparison between eating pork and eating human flesh, like in the Rat Cook story, and with eating one’s family, as with his own jape a book earlier, as with Rast mocking Sam in AGOT, as with the Freys eating their kin in ADWD. They may not be tied by blood, but Edd jokes about eating his brothers all the same:

"Never knew Bannen could smell so good." Edd's tone was as morose as ever. "I had half a mind to carve a slice off him. If we had some applesauce, I might have done it. Pork's always best with applesauce, I find." … "You best not die, Sam, or I fear I might succumb. There's bound to be more crackling on you than Bannen ever had, and I never could resist a bit of crackling.”

If Sam were to die, Edd suggests, he too would become pork crackling. I wonder if that says anything about Victarion's own fate... but I'm talking about Sam for now.

The even more important part of Sam’s experience here is Sam's knowledge that it is wrong, sickening, to eat human flesh—or, perhaps, to turn against his family, even his adopted family, as the two issues are conflated in these instances. Edd jokes about how delicious Bannen smells to make light of a dark, cruel truth: in these starving conditions, that might be true. Despite that suspicion, it is still firmly the wrong thing to do. Sam vomits even considering the thought.

When it comes to the Rat Cook story, though, that knowledge does not spare the Andal King any more than the Rat Cook; both, ultimately, are forced into the position of cannibalism, which makes it all the more tragic: to know the difference between right and wrong, but perhaps not to know which you are choosing. Did Victarion make the right choice turning his arm to pork to stay the "Iron Captain" he wanted to be? Did Craster make the right choice leaving his sons to die so that he could live untroubled? Do they even know?

As for the Andal King, he didn't even understand the choice in front of him; he was placed into that position by the Rat Cook—because of the violation of guest right, that significant law of the Old Gods.

Guest right is a social contract, the type that is necessary to maintain social stability. To keep interpersonal relationships, to build a community—or a kingdom—a person must be able to trust their neighbor. Practically, a guest must be able to trust that they will not be poisoned with food, in the same way that a host must be able to trust that their guest will not turn their cloak and slaughter them under their own roof. In other words, both parties must be able to trust that the social conditions of peace will be upheld.

The fact that this story of the Rat Cook concerns a power dynamic as well—between the lowly cook and the Andal King—expands the metaphor into one that describes feudalism as a whole… but I’ll expand that idea in the subsequent parts to come.

For now, consider this: that the Andal King, like Sam with Bannen’s delicious-smelling corpse, might have known the difference between right and wrong, but it may have made no difference as to what he actually did: he still ate his own son.

But what of the Andal King's own crime? Who started it? The Rat Cook broke the ancient social contract of trust called “guest right” to punish the King… but for the Rat Cook to be deserving of vengeance, the Andal King must have broken a social contract as well, perhaps a social contract regarding the position of power that a King has over a cook. The King must have broken that contract first, even before the story of "The Rat Cook" picks up.

But that will be further discussed in parts to come. Next part we’ll talk more about trust in particular, finally taking look at Coldhands attempting to feed Bran a “sow”, visiting Arya in the House of Black and White, and looking at Quentyn making a deal Meereen.

[jozor-johai]

First youtube video is up! This is the video version of Revisiting the Rat Cook, part 1, which is this post, for if you're more into videos than into reading long posts. Or in case you want to read it again.