All Dragons Must Fly

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

Could I try writing a fic based on your 'five people Jon' could meet in heaven post? It's a lovely idea.

It’s probably been a while since you sent this, but as a general thing: if something I say here gives you an idea, I don’t mind at all if you go with it.

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

I think euron is the valonqar given that the last time we got a prophecy referencing drowning it referenced the ironborn and I saw poorquentyns posts on euron and I believe euron has a connection to the others and will bring back cersei due to the vision ( and because of cersei and catelyns similarities as you pointed and the way they contrast while cat was brought back through the red god cersei was brought back through the great other

Anonymous said to zaldrizer-sovesi:

I think euron is the valonqar cersei was said to have been DROWNED in your tears and euron is ironborn the last time we got a prophecy involved drowning it involved the ironborn

I somehow never connected the “drowned” prediction in the prophecy with the Greyjoys, but you’re both right that that particular symbolism is pretty consistent and specific. In the way Cersei’s tragic arc works I think the valonqar has to be someone closer to home, but the ironborn might be more important to her getting there than I realized.

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

Your metas are amazing and some of my favorites of anyone examining ASOIAF in-depth, especially about Jon Snow. You wrote that there are maybe 3 points at which Jon's presence in Robb's campaign instead of being at the Wall would have wretched events off the course to the Red Wedding. I'd love to read more about what those are. Apologies if you've answered this type of question before. I must have missed the previous answer.

Thank you kindly! And yes, I think there are a few different points where Jon’s presence could have averted the Red Wedding.

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

It’s always been real.

As the final season begins, I’ve been thinking about why Game of Thrones caught on the way it did, when there has been such a wealth of fantastic content in the last few years.

Well, it’s fantastic. The story is dense and rich; the casting and directing is strong. And it’s just a beautiful show. The scenery, the score, the visual craftsmanship from the Red Keep down to the details of Sansa’s embroidery. Really, the worst it could be is okay.

But GOT isn’t just marketable, or even good, it’s a phenomenon. Why, around ten years ago, was that the moment when ASOIAF clicked for enough cultural decision-makers to become an HBO show? I suppose there’s an easy answer from a marketing perspective: if you grew up with Harry Potter, with a mental escape north to an ancient and magical castle, well, you’re old enough for a premium cable subscription now.

But a series can be successful, even excellent, but never quite break out and becoming a cultural thing. Part of that difference is about the context in which it’s consumed. The Sopranos was about a baby boomer’s mid-life crisis, airing when most baby boomers were feeling that crisp first chill of autumn. Battlestar Galactica and The Wire were intentionally in dialogue with the bleak politics of the early aughts – one about what happened when the systems we inherited were disrupted beyond repair and one where those systems worked exactly as intended. Not many early 2010s shows were able to retrofit themselves into the sociopolitical zeitgeist, with the notable exceptions of Homeland and Scandal – often criticized for being too gonzo (or perhaps, actually, for provoking discomfort by having complex female leads).

The Potter generation is also the Millennial generation. Millennials are the children of autumn; our generational mile markers have been one fall after another. The fall of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the Twin Towers, the 2008 financial crash. Off in the background, the melting of the glaciers, and the decline of democracy around the world.

That sense of confusion and urgency, of the gyre ever widening, defines Game of Thrones and ASOIAF from the first couple of scenes/chapters: three hapless guys find the nerve to face something that is totally outside their frame of reference, and the only one who lives to tell the tale gets killed by the apparent protagonist. The most terrifying thing about this world is that most people don’t know how frightening it is. The most dangerous thing about this world may well be the our own human reluctance to dig in and believe a strange and awful truth. Game of Thrones is about life in the shadow of something about to go incalculably wrong.

If you hadn’t read ADWD, then you were surprised in the season 5 finale in 2015. You were probably shocked at the sheer profane misogyny on display during Cersei’s walk of shame. You almost certainly weren’t expecting Jon Snow’s leadership of the Watch – where he, in good faith, practically pleaded with his compatriots to back-burner comfortable xenophobia to face up to an existential threat, some forgotten enemy sweeping down from a distant frozen tundra to rot their brains and turn them against each other – to end because of a criminal conspiracy against him. It feels naive now, to have blinked at all that.

More than many viewers, I have not, subjectively, responded to some of its hardest-to-watch moments as a moral failing on the part of the show or the creators. I think there is a dark streak of violence inherent to the type of hierarchy this setting depicts. It is legitimately difficult to either create or discuss stories which grapple with the reality that everywhere in the world, they hurt little girls. Few, if any, of us allowed ourselves to anticipate a coalition of women taking a desperate world by storm. Game of Thrones was somehow just ahead of this cultural reckoning that we will, with a little luck and a lot of work, be having for years to come.

The world has changed radically during our lives, and it shows no sign of stopping. Maybe one of the great shows of this moment would have to be a narrative where nobody fills the role you expect them to fill. Damn right this show’ll kill Tony Soprano, and Prince Charming, and Big Bad after Big Bad. So will real life. Valar morghulis – some too soon; others not soon enough.

The show’s signature phrase, which seems to have penetrated the culture at large, are the Stark words: winter is coming. This truth is amoral, inexorable, even perversely reassuring in its consistency. Winter must come because the world has not ended. Unless Macumber weeps, unless the heavens fall, winter is always coming.

Until it’s here.

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

While i am bombarding you with really dumb asks, I wanted to say earlier that I was rereading your excellent series on Stannis and it's still great. Overall, there's a lot about ASOIAF that i think has been ruined for me through arguing with fans, but you have an ability to like characters I get sick of seeing defended for everything they do and write great posts about them and then I like those characters again. Reading your blog makes me love the series again.

Thanks! I’m glad those posts held up, because I like Stannis a lot. I seem to be a bit more cynical about his motivations than most other fans of the character, but I do find him really engaging. (Also surprisingly relatable, as I, too, often stay up all night to loom at my desk and brood about usurpers.)

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

If Daenerys were in Rhaegar's position, would she have let Aerys die at Duskendale?

It’s difficult to say because Dany as we know her is so inseparable from her unique past. If she was in a position to make that kind of decision, that changes her personally. But if you could rip ADWD Daenerys out of her timeline and drop her into Timeline B, I think probably not. Like Tyrion says, she’s a rescuer at heart, so I doubt it would occur to her to abandon her family; even if it did, Barristan tends to bring out her nobler instincts, so I don’t think she’d keep him from the mission once he offered to go.

What I do think she would handle differently is when Tywin tips his hand and more or less openly hopes Aerys will die. Rhaegar’s inaction was a choice which says something about who he was. Dany is not so inclined to be lenient to someone who tacitly admits to treachery.

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

Do you think Jon and Dany will get together in ASoIaF?

Probably. It’s possible Martin has changed his mind - it really has been almost 20 years since he started planting those seeds - but that seems to be where things are going.

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

Hey, I love your meta, it is always well thought out! Can I ask, do you think it is possible that rhaegar married lyanna through the old practice of polygamy? To me, the idea that he was going to use lyanna to birth a baby and then cast her aside once she did, makes little political sense unless he had a way of appeasing Rickard Stark and Robert Baratheon, from the grave insult to lyanna's honor. How would he even get away with that without the rebellion being in his calculations to begin with?

Hi there, and thanks!

Yes on both counts: it can be both possible and a bad idea. The way I’ve been able to make sense of Rhaegar is that he was operating in kind of a doomsday mentality where he wasn’t thinking about immediate consequences. His lifelong fixation on those savior prophecies suggests to me that he was tapped in on some level to the approaching Long Night and either couldn’t or wouldn’t process how his plans for that would interfere with his duties as the crown prince. 

I mean, there is a middle ground. There’s no reason he couldn’t have planned to legitimize any of their children and eventually set her up with a respectable marriage. But I think the ice-and-fire union, especially one done in the eyes of the old gods, makes sense on those mythic terms he seems to have been using. And on a narrative level, I think the wedding Jon brokers in ADWD gets a fair amount of page time in such a massive book because it sets up the character’s own past.

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

Your insights into asoiaf are original and thought-provoking. Thank you so much for sharing them!

Thank you!

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

This is really two questions: First, I don't understand why Jon sort of bent the knee (as much as "I'd bent the knee, but . . ." is swearing fealty) on the boat - she'd already told him she was going to join the fight, so why do that? Second, if Jon and Dany do have sex, how will Jon react if / when he finds out that they're aunt and nephew? Will he just brush that off, in the general trauma of not being Ned's son? Thanks!

1) I think the simplest explanation is that he actually meant what he’s been saying all along - he really does care more about the Night King’s army and less about who has what title. His reservations earlier in the season were that she wasn’t committed to that cause. But she proved herself, and even went so far as to validate his doubts, which she really didn’t have to do. If you’re trying to build a coalition, you have to know when to take yes for an answer. 

2) I don’t know if that’s as weird for him as it is to us? Presumably he knows the Stark family tree has some pretty tangled branches itself and that doesn’t seem to be an issue for them.The Targaryen sibling marriages are taboo for anthropological reasons, but other than that, it’s not like people in-universe have enough information to worry about genetics. I actually don’t know one way or the other, but I think you’re probably right that there are going to be much heavier concerns.

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

A while ago I was thinking about the timeline with Lyanna being abducted by Rhaegar (i'm certain we're going to learn she ran off with him, but with that power dynamic and age gap I'm still not gonna call it consent, sorry George) and Ned coming back with a baby after she's died and it struck me as weird that no one's wondered in universe if Ned's bastard might be Lyanna's. The known story is that Lyanna was raped; the timeline adds up; Ned never says a word.

I get, realistically speaking, that people overlook things that seem obvious all the time (and this is far from the only narrative in ASOIAF that strikes me as unrealistic that I recognize is the narrative because it’s gotta be), and that a nobleman having a bastard seems more likely than a Secret Targaryen Prince, but Ned’s secrecy on the matter + the understanding of Lyanna’s story being what it is makes it seem like the obvious conclusion to me?

tl;dr Ned goes off to save his raped baby sister, comes back with her body and a newborn baby and a stony refusal to discuss who the mother was. It’s just weird to me that there haven’t been rumors about that. I’m not asking if you know why there aren’t rumors, because I get that it’s mainly obvious to us because of our access to Ned’s inner monologue and all those weird visions. I just wonder if you or anyone else also thinks this looks like something people might have gossiped about.

Yeah, it strikes me as a realistically irrational thing. People will always prefer to chase around red herring life-sized scandals than to question the big picture. You can run your mouth speculating about an affair and nobody really cares. But Ned is the king’s best friend, a powerful person who’s well-liked in his community; if you just casually accuse him of treason, people might care. 

So I kind of understand why there’s not gossip. It does seem like the kind of thing that might occur to someone like Tyrion or Maester Aemon, and there’s an outside possibility that Varys put two and two together but has so far left well enough alone.

It kind of reminds me of the Trunchbull effect?

Matilda said, “Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it. Be outrageous. Go the whole hog. Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it’s unbelievable…”

Professional flop Ned Stark shot the moon and got one over on everyone. 

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

I loved your meta on Jon Snow and Visenya's parallels. It was great, and something I've thought about way too much. I'm glad I saw it, because it really put into words what I saw when reading about both characters.

Thanks! Glad it wasn’t just me.

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

Welcome back! I'm glad to see you back. 😁

Thank you!

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

Hey, you're back!

Hey, I’m back!

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

first response to The Queen’s Justice

The Queen’s Justice really nailed one of the major reasons I am so invested in Jon.

(This is mostly about Jon but a little bit more about me than I’m totally comfortable with? Oh well.)

I talk a lot about the stigma of Jon’s bastard status and about the ways this secret that he has but doesn’t know has shaped his life and character. And I think those things are abstractly interesting, but they also kind of hit me where I live. I am neuroatypical, which is a very different kind of invisible difference from Jon’s. It’s just a thing, you know? It’s not good or bad in and of itself. What was a bad thing was that I went for most of my life without any kind of diagnosis, and only got a useful diagnosis in the last couple of years. So for most of my life I had these daily experiences that I now recognize as systemic ableism – but which at the time I could only understand as my fault.

Being set apart in a way that you don’t get to understand or acknowledge, even to yourself...it messes with your head. It’s infuriating. It makes you feel crazy. It’s like living with a small carbon monoxide leak: not enough gas to kill you, not a big enough hole you would see, just enough to make you dizzy, to make you depressed, to make you forget. You don’t learn the same confidence other people have in their understanding of the world.

It’s hard to articulate because it’s such a schematic, first principle kind of thing. What I mean is the pattern in the character’s opinions and decisions. Jon can get past everything he’s been taught about the wildlings to form an alliance with them because he’s not as attached to everything he’s been taught. He can realize that Sam is brave even though it’s the last thing that Sam would think about himself. He can give Arya Needle because he hasn’t fundamentally internalized the widely-accepted social norm that a girl shouldn’t have a sword, and because he doesn’t get what an unnerving thing it is for a kid Arya’s age to have a real sword. But that default insecurity makes it harder for him to tell when he’s really not safe.

Humans are adaptive creatures. Not always efficiently adaptive, but adaptive. That ability not to take norms and expectations for granted, the willingness to question what he’s been told about people or even what people say about themselves is kind of a spidey sense you develop when everything….just seems off, even when it’s clearly happening. That’s a big part of why he’s able to come to grips with the approaching white walker threat, even as the people around him get stuck in various degrees of denial.

Hence the main thrust of ADWD + S5/6/7:

JON: People. Winter is coming.

PEOPLE: Yeah, great metaphor, we get it.

JON: No, for real, winter is LITERALLY FUCKING COMING.

PEOPLE: Mm-hmm. Hey, are you doing something new with your hair?

JON: Seriously! Focus!

PEOPLE: I like it, it’s cute.

It’s infuriating to argue with someone who won’t get it (whatever “it” is). But it’s also profoundly disorienting to have what seems like an opportunity to convince someone.

That might seem all over the place. The Queen’s Justice struck a nerve because it isn’t.

In this episode, Jon is further away from the the immediate issue he’s so sure about. Dragonstone is farther south than he’s ever been; it’s sunny and comparatively warm and a totally new environment; he’s surrounded by people who actually don’t know the story, rather than people who have heard but aren’t grappling with it. He’s also closer to the central mystery of his identity about which he really does know nothing, that glitch in the Matrix which shaped him into a person who would take on this mission. I mean!

It literally went right over his head!

MISSANDEI: You stand in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Rightful Heir to the Iron Throne, Rightful Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains.

DAVOS: This is Jon Snow. [awkward pause] He’s King in the North.

Davos graciously tries to make the awkwardness about his own background, but Davos has been at court for years, he knows how Robert and Stannis were addressed. This is a reflection of Jon’s discomfort. It’s not like he’s hard to introduce formally: “Jon, the Second of his Name, Lord of Winterfell and King in the North.” Or if you wanted to get poetic, “Jon Snow, the White Wolf, King of Winter and Defender of the North.” I mean, better than that, just that it’s possible. But it’s hard to present yourself, to let yourself be known, when you are actually, justifiably, uncertain about who you are. Missandei, by sharp contrast, knows exactly who Daenerys is, because Daenerys knows exactly who Daenerys is.

DAENERYS: So many men have tried to kill me. I don’t remember all their names. I have been sold like a brood mare. I have been shamed and betrayed, raped and defiled. Do you know what kept me standing through all those years in exile? Faith. Not in any gods. Not in myths and legends. In myself. In Daenerys Targaryen.

DAVOS: He’s the first to make allies of wildlings and Northmen. He was named Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. He was named King in the North. Not because of his birthright. He has no birthright, he’s a damn bastard. All those hard sons of bitches chose him as their leader because they believe in him. All those things you don’t believe in? He faced those things for the good of his people, he fought those things for the good of his people, he risked his life for his people, he took a knife in the heart for his people! He gave up his own – [Jon shakes his head]

Daenerys speaks to her own experiences. Jon allows Davos to speak for him – and then, only to go so far.

It’s not as if his story is objectively less believable than hers. White walkers aren’t more magical than dragons. It’s just as weird to be the Unburnt as it is to be the De-Stabbed. They should both be dead af. Daenerys has enough faith in Daenerys that she expects other people to believe her too. Jon does not have that much trust in Jon, and he doesn’t even realize that he’s standing inside the reason why.

Part of the difference is Tyrion’s thing about what feel good to believe. Dany should have been killed, but instead she got dragons. Jon should still be dead, and all he got out of the experience is existential despair. Daenerys has a proactive ambition: she’s thinking about winning the Seven Kingdoms. Jon isn’t looking to win something, he just wants people to get to keep being people and not turn into zombies.

DANY: We all enjoy what we’re good at.

JON: I don’t.

When it comes to the politics, which are a means to an end rather than something he cares about, Jon gets how important it is for him to project strength. He doesn’t flinch at giving up his sword, he won’t kneel, he isn’t thrown by her selective presentation of history, she has to get off the throne and come down to speak on his level.

When it comes to the core issue, though, the thing he’s never expressed doubt about before? Which he’s firmly and unequivocally asserted in front of much larger and more hostile audiences?

JON: The army of the dead is on the march.

TYRION: The army of the dead.

JON: You don’t know me well, my lord, but do you think I’m a liar or a madman?

TYRION: No. I don’t think you are either of those things.

JON: It’s hard for me to fathom, it really is. If someone told me about the white walkers and the Night King... [trails off] You probably don’t believe me.

TYRION: I do, actually. I didn’t before.

JON: Grumpkins and snarks, you called it. Do you remember? You said it was all nonsense.

TYRION: It was nonsense. Everybody knew it. But then Mormont saw them, you saw them, and I trust the eyes of an honest man more than I trust what everybody knows.

JON: How do I convince people who don’t know me that an enemy they don’t believe in is coming to kill them all?

TYRION: Good question.

JON: I know it’s a good question. I’m looking for an answer.

DANY: I will allow you to mine the dragonglass and forge weapons from it. Any resources or men you need I will provide for you.

JON: Thank you. So you believe me then, about the Night King and the army of the dead?

DANY: You’d better get to work, Jon Snow.

Asking Tyrion to vouch for him is a reasonable part of the pitch to Dany and her advisers. But he stays on it, asking for private reassurance from Tyrion, trying to pin Dany down even after he gets what he wants from her.

You believe me, right? You don’t think I’m crazy, do you? I’m not crazy, right?

...ooof.

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

But I Am Not a Khal

One of S6′s most exciting (and apparently most underrated?) aspects to me is that all the power brokers leading factions of the Great Game in the south are women. Ellaria recruits Olenna to join up with Yara to support Daenerys against Cersei. These women are all on the field for their own reasons, with their own strengths, liabilities, and styles. Exactly one of them is a conventionally feminine white woman under forty.

The next tier of influence in the Targaryen coalition is also pretty striking. By my count there are eight named characters in one faction or another. Four of them, Missandei and the Sand Snakes, are women of color. The other four are Grey Worm, Theon, Varys, and Tyrion, all of whom have bodies and experiences which exclude them from their world’s construct of masculinity. Once Daenerys dismisses Daario, there is nobody on her team who speaks from a place of conventional male privilege.

Without attaching a moral judgment to the storytelling here, this is pretty rare. This is interesting.

It opens up some intriguing comparisons between the characters’ different cultures. Daenerys and Yara click readily because they’re in similar situations. The Dothraki and the ironborn are similar in some ways. These hard nomadic cultures equate femininity with weakness and they have no place for weakness. That leads to the kind of glaring inequality on display in the kingsmoot, which rests on a thousand other, less visible, denials of opportunities. But those relatively small and ruthlessly efficient groups in a khalasar or on a ship means that when an unconventional leader does break through, there’s no decorative role to stuff her into, and no cover for the mediocre man who’s in her place. 

These two are on their way to a world which is restrictive in different ways, where there is a space for some women who are conventionally feminine – but it can be a small and restrictive one in a lot of ways. Daenerys will be trying to at least navigate a world with different expectations of her, and she’ll be doing that while coming up against Cersei, who’s spent her whole life trying to break out of them.

These characters will shape a new world, and how they do this has a lot to do with how they experienced the old one. Daenerys has learned about authority from men, both from watching them and from relating to them. When she commits to becoming a conqueror, she doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but she does put her own spin on it.

I, Drogo, will do this. I will take my khalasar west to where the world ends and ride wooden horses across the black salt sea as no khal has done before. I will kill the men in iron suits and tear down their stone houses. I will rape their women, take their children as slaves, and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak. This I vow, Drogo, son of Bharbo. I swear before the Mother of Mountains as the stars look down in witness.  (You Win or You Die)

I ask your oath, that you will live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm. I will ask more of you than any khal has ever asked of his khalasar! Will you ride the wooden horses across the black salt sea? Will you kill my enemies in their iron suits and tear down their stone houses? Will you give me the Seven Kingdoms, the gift Khal Drogo promised me before the Mother of Mountains as the stars looked down in witness? Are you with me, now and always? (Blood of My Blood)

Khal Drogo declares what he will do and expects his khalasar to follow. It is a statement of his own charisma and ambition. Daenerys asks the khlalasar what they will do. She tells them she’s asking for something hard and unprecedented. Her pointed omission of rape and enslavement is a major alteration of cultural norms. And as the sun beats down in witness, she gives – not promises, not offers, gives – them something incalculably precious.

Every khal who ever lived chose three bloodriders to fight beside him and guard his way. But I am not a khal. I will not choose three bloodriders. I choose you all.

That is a radical disruption of the relatively minimalist Dothraki social hierarchy, imposed from top-down, seemingly on a whim. It’s the kind of thing you can only do when you have real, serious power. It’s also the kind of thing you’d only think to do if you had a visceral experience of disempowerment.

This is a different story than it would be if you ripped Daenerys out of context and dropped her into a more conventional narrative. There are challenging and nuanced questions here: Is this decision fair? Is it moral for the Breaker of Chains to give a blanket promotion to thousands of unrepentant slave traders? Is it tactically smart? Is it wise in the long term? And when you saddle a narrative with Smurfette Syndrome, it always becomes loaded, it often becomes unbalanced, it sometimes becomes overpowered. Those subtle questions can disappear, or at least be harder to appreciate. Daenerys – like Yara, like Cersei, like a a lot of the characters who won’t even cross her path – can be a complex and singular figure precisely because there are other people like her on the screen.

Like I said, no opinion on whether anyone else should like it. But I am intrigued.

[zaldrizer-sovesi]

If Jaime had revealed about the Wildfire underneath City for his reason killings Aerys and with him being celebrated as a hero for saving the city, do you think the game would go to his head?

IMO if Jaime were inclined to be susceptible to the game, he would never have given up Casterly Rock to join the kingsguard, Cersei or no Cersei. 

Also, I think the game is in his head more because he feels like he’s losing it. And I’m not actually sure that he would be applauded for saving the city, as unfair as that sounds. The approbation and scorn for the Kingslayer is, in part, really feeding on everyone else’s guilt for failing to put a stop to Aerys.