#arch yronwood

[stannis-the-freaking-mannis]

old art alert 💅

(euron is not the best boy wtf)

[greywoe]

so two dornish winesellers and a frog enter volantis

[greenbloods]

Arianne thinks of Quentyn so much throughout her POVs, fearing that he’s planning to usurp her, so I wanted to see how much Quentyn thought of her.

This is the only time I could find that he thought of her, and even then not by name. Granted, Quentyn only has four chapters in all, but it’s still such a stark contrast with how much Quentyn thinks of his father and Cletus and Gerris and Arch, of Lord Yronwood and the kiss he received from the Drinkwater twins. It’s clear through Arianne and Quentyn POVs that their relationship is strained and distant at best. And all this because Quentyn was sent away to be fostered, to pay for his uncle Oberyn’s slaying of the Yronwood lord. The difference between the the Doran-Elia-Oberyn trio and the Arianne-Quentyn-Trystane trio is so raw and palpable--the love that tied the previous generation, that should by right have been present in the younger generation too, instead spoiled by the seeds of suspicion and doubt that came about from the older generation’s actions. Where is the tenderness between Elia and Oberyn in the relationship between Arianne and Quentyn? It barely had a chance to exist. Doran and Oberyn didnt knowingly create the schism between Arianne and Quentyn but it’s because of them that Arianne dwells so heavily on Quentyn, while Quentyn barely feels the impact of Arianne on his life.

[jozor-johai]

The Dornish in TWOW

Just looking at a bunch of things we know, thinking about potential future developments.

Maybe this is in part to defend why we need to care about the Dornish plotlines—I don't think GRRM introduced these for no reason, and as I'm trying to point out, those four chapters in FeastDance, plus our two from TWOW, have placed Dornish in a lot of different plotlines. If these start to converge at all, the Sand Snakes are suddenly going to be a very valuable and knowledgeable power bloc.

In fact, let me say: looking at all these moving parts, I don't think there's any way that Doran has a "master plan" ... yet. However, they've got agents in so many places that if they all report back to Doran—and Doran plans in response, say midway through TWOW maybe—then we might see a whole bunch of storylines shift at once.

In the Aegon/Golden Company situation:

Arianne Martell, along with Daemon Sand and Elia Sand have joined up with the Golden Company at Griffin's Roost. Arianne has left for Storm's End, where Connington is waiting, apparently having taken the castle.

Interestingly, we also know that "Spotted" Sylva Estermont (Santagar), another member of the Arianne-Myrcella plot, has been hurriedly shipped off to Greenstone to marry the elderly Lord Eldon Estermont. However, Greenstone has been taken by Marq Mandrake of the Golden Company, and Jon Connington has arranged for Mandrake to bring any noble captives from Greenstone to Cape Wrath—and, now that Spotted Sylva is an Estermont, that means her. I suspect that means we see Sylva and Arianne reunited quite soon.

Meanwhile, in King's Landing (which the Golden Company are undoubtedly heading towards)

Nymeria Sand has been sent to King's Landing to officially take the vacant Dornish seat on the Small Council.

Tyene Sand has been sent to act as a septa and gain the trust of the High Sparrow, meaning the Dornish are also trying to have an agent within that power bloc as well. Since we last see Cersei accompanied at all times by a septa, we might see Tyene and Cersei interact in TWOW.

If Arianne is still with the Golden Company by the time Aegon reaches King's Landing, it's possible that we might see Nymeria and Tyene reunited with their cousin within the city walls.

Meanwhile, in Oldtown

"Alleras" aka Sarella Sand is in Oldtown, working with Sam and formerly Archmaester Marwyn "the Mage." They will probably be witness to whatever Euron pulls down there so would also be a useful source of information.

Meanwhile, across the Narrow Sea—

In the Dany plot arc:

Archibald Yronwood and Gerris Drinkwater are in Meereen, down one frog. To get the Tattered Prince's help with the dragons, Quentyn Martell promised to give Pentos to the Tattered Prince once it was taken (and in the process, promising it would be taken). Barristan utilizes these two Dornish to transfer the terms of that deal to the Barristan-"Dany"-Shavepate coalition, which they agree to in exchange for a ship to Dorne to return Quentyn's bones.

This is quite interesting, because it places these Dornishmen as the hinge to a number of moving parts. For one, it means Barristan is relying on them to confirm the terms of the Pentos agreement with Team Dany. In addition, it means that they will become a potential source of information for Doran Martell as to the situation in Meereen (chaos as of now) and Quentyn's fate. I suspect that Doran will not be pleased with Quentyn's fate in Meereen.

I also suspect that a report of the current situation in Meereen will look like this: Dany is missing, the dragons are out of control, and the remaining forces on Dany's side are in chaos fighting a losing siege. Depending on when Arch and Drink leave Meereen to return Quentyn's bones, Doran might get a pretty unflattering picture of Dany's situation—which he may then use to calculate his next moves.

However, as Arch and Drink return home, they may cross paths with a few other Dornishmen:

Andrey Dalt, who we last saw with Arianne in The Queenmaker**,** is currently en route to Norvos to stay with Lady Mellario, estranged wife of Doran Martell and mother to Arianne, Quentyn, and Trystane, is in Norvos. This is also where Areo Hotah is from, and I sometimes wonder if we've heard so much about it because we'll see it at some point. If we don't see Andrey on his way to Norvos, we may see Andrey in Norvos if Dany stops there on her way out of the Dothraki Sea.

Garin of the Greenblood, who was also with Arianne and Drey, is en route to Tyrosh. I'm personally quite convinced we'll see Garin again because he's been identified with a jade earring and a single gold tooth—which will make him very easily recognizable from another POV. Dorne under Prince Doran Martell appears to have a very close relationship with Tyrosh: as a girl, Arianne played in the Water Gardens with the green-haired daughter of the Archon of Tyrosh, and might have been sent to Tyrosh herself if not for Mellario's objections. If that had happened, she might have been betrothed to Viserys Targaryen there, in secret. If the current leaders of Tyrosh are at all like that Archon, Garin may be headed for a very cushy placement in Tyrosh, perhaps under the Archon.

Meanwhile, in Dorne:

Last we heard, Trystane Martell was meant to accompany Myrcella Baratheon back to King's Landing by land, led by Ser Balon Swann. However, Doran intends to waylay this plan by getting Myrcella to request that Balon to hunt down Darkstar...

Gerold "Darkstar" Dayne has fled, apparently to his home in High Hermitage, following the disaster of the Myrcella expedition.

If Doran's plan goes off as intended, then Areo Hotah, Obara Sand, and Ser Balon Swann will be traveling together to High Hermitage "to beard Darkstar in his den." It's hard to say what exactly is going to happen here, but that's another moving part to keep track of—and one that will potentially, finally, introduce Dawn to the story.

Besides that, the youngest three Sand Snakes are all over Dorne—one each in Hellholt, Sunspear, and the Water Gardens. Ellaria Sand is with her youngest in Hellholt. I don't think they're major players but it's good to keep track of them.

Final Thoughts

After compiling all this, I’m realizing I’m much more interested (and convinced by) a unified Dornish effort yet to be created. There’s no way that Doran is able to see the future perfectly enough to plan ahead of all of these variables, but one power player having all these points of access is going to be pretty rare and valuable moving forward.

And, as I’ve suggested in the post here, I think it’s likely that the information they get about Dany might be biased and outdated by the time it reaches Doran, which could lead to a miscalculation.

[goodqueenaly]

What was the tacit "hostage" agreement when Quentyn was sent to Yronwood to foster? Like, was it "as long as Quentyn's here, we know Oberyn won't kill any of our other family members, lest we kill Quentyn?" Or "no matter what geopolitical mess comes up, you'll have to do what we say, cuz we have Quentyn?"

I think on the surface, the idea was that Quentyn would be taken from the Martell family and re-branded, so to speak, as an Yronwood in all but name. Oberyn Martell had seemingly (certainly in the view of the Yronwoods) murdered old Lord Yronwood, removing not just a member of the family but the head of the family with no legal repercussions. This event created what Doran grimly refers to as a "blood debt" in discussing the situation with Mellario: without going so far as to judicially murder a member of the Martell family to even the score, the Yronwoods would remove a son of House Martell and raise him as an Yronwood, in a way replacing Lord Edgar (at least as an individual in the overall count of the Yronwood dynasty). The longterm, if not precisely permanent, absence of Quentyn from the Martell family unit would not only echo the actually permanent absence of the dead Lord Edgar, but also serve as a reminder to Prince Doran that the Yronwoods were a powerful enough family within Dorne to demand, and receive, a prince and the second in line to Sunspear as recompense - in other words, a family not to cross with impunity.

Now obviously, as Gyldayn notes (reflecting on another fostering arrangement), "every ward is also a hostage, as a wise man once said". In a worst case scenario, if the Martells committed some further major transgression or grievous insult against the Yronwoods, it might have seemed at least possible that the Yronwoods would kill Quentyn. It's not, to be clear, that I think Lord Anders was actually looking to do as much: indeed, Quent seems to have felt very fond of and comfortable as a de facto member of the whole Yronwood family, from the foster father to whom he pointedly gave the honor of knighting him to the foster brother who was his best friend to the foster sister whom he dreamed of eventually marrying (a comfort Anders returned by sending his heir, two of his sworn swords, and his kinsman Arch with Quentyn across the Narrow Sea). Nevertheless, the mere fact of Quentyn's fostering with the family most openly opposed to the Martells generally and Doran's family (specifically his brother) in particular may have made it seem like there was a sword over Quentyn's head so long as he was with the Yronwoods.

[aegor-bamfsteel]

Out of these two Dornish knights, who do you think would be a more suitable pick for the Kingsguard and why: Ser Archibald Yronwood or Ser Daemon Sand?

It depends on what the monarch is looking for.

Barristan calls Arch “the true steel” (acknowledged as the best warrior of the three) and “not as slowwitted as he seems” (he’s definitely more levelheaded than Gerris who lets his anger get the better of him). However, he’s also quick to violence, not thinking the long-term, and lacking in social graces. He offers to kill Hizdahr so Quentyn can marry Dàny, mocks the names of leaders, attracts Hizdahr’s attention unnecessarily, gives up secret plans to Barristan, he bets wildly and loses often, plus his seasickness plays a big role in his willingness to go along with plans. Arch is a good friend and warrior, but he’s lacking in subtlety and can’t really keep secrets. If the monarch (maybe a Stannis type) wants a loyal strong man who isn’t strategically minded, and doesn’t care if he doesn’t fit into court life, they might choose Arch.

Meanwhile, Daemon Sand seems more straightforwardly levelheaded, even if he does show his disapproval of the Lannisters in small ways (asking for the Sand Snakes to be freed and not drinking during the Swann feast). He counsels Arianne about Jon Connington/Aegon and offers to go alone to report on the camp, so he’s more strategically minded. He’s not the nicest to his charge Princess Arianne, mocking her a few times to her face, but I’m guessing that’s the exception since they’re ex-lovers clearly not over each other, and is polite enough counseling Lady Toland. He also has enough of a moral compass to condemn Gerold Dayne for his role in the plot, again to plot leader Arianne. Clearly he’s not just someone who takes orders, but can plan long-term and can question the monarch. On the other hand, he does let his emotions cloud his interactions with his charge because he had an affair with her, which is a huge taboo for the Kingsguard. So if the monarch (maybe a Renly with the Tyrells type. Idk man, most of the rulers in this series don’t really like taking opposing advice) was looking for a capable sword who can come up with his own strategies, understands the downsides of plans/rumors, is willing to challenge their decisions, has more social intelligence, but also prone to acting on emotions, they might choose Daemon.

[istumpysk]

Operation Stumpy Re-Read

ADWD: The Spurned Suitor (Quentyn III) [Chapter 60]

"Let him [Beans] think what he wants, so long as he delivers the message," said Quentyn.

"He'll do that much. I'll wager you get your meeting too, if only so Rags can have Pretty Meris cut your liver out and fry it up with onions. We should be heeding Selmy. When Barristan the Bold tells you to run, a wise man laces up his boots. We should find a ship for Volantis whilst the port is still open."

It's not enough for him to die. I need his reputation destroyed as well.

+.+.+

Volantis, Quentyn thought. Then Lys, then home. Back the way I came, empty-handed. Three brave men dead, for what?

Let your father ask himself these questions.

Will Daenerys be making those same stops? Maybe.

+.+.+

His father would speak no word of rebuke, Quentyn knew, but the disappointment would be there in his eyes. His sister would be scornful, the Sand Snakes would mock him with smiles sharp as swords, and Lord Yronwood, his second father, who had sent his own son along to keep him safe …

It's not clear to me that he's wrong, which is unfortunate.

+.+.+

"It is still not too late to abandon this folly," Gerris said, as they made their way down a foetid alley toward the old spice market. The smell of piss was in the air, and they could hear the rumble of a corpse cart's iron-rimmed wheels off ahead. "Old Bill Bone used to say that Pretty Maris could stretch out a man's dying for a moon's turn. We lied to them, Quent. Used them to get us here, then went over to the Stormcrows."

"As we were commanded."

"Tatters never meant for us to do it for real, though," put in the big man. "His other boys, Ser Orson and Dick Straw, Hungerford, Will of the Woods, that lot, they're still down in some dungeon thanks to us. Old Rags can't have liked that much."

We talk about how insane attempting to tame a dragon is, but how about this?

The Tattered Prince's men are locked in dungeons because of Quentyn, and now Quentyn wants to meet with him after lying and deserting.

I swear to god this kid wants to die.

+.+.+

"No," Prince Quentyn said, "but he likes gold."

Gerris laughed. "A pity we have none. Do you trust this peace, Quent? I don't. Half the city is calling the dragonslayer a hero, and the other half spits blood at the mention of his name."

I'm confident these freedman will regret advocating for dragons.

+.+.+

"Harzoo," the big man said.

Quentyn frowned. "His name was Harghaz."

"Hizdahr, Humzum, Hagnag, what does it matter? I call them all Harzoo. He was no dragonslayer. All he did was get his arse roasted black and crispy."

"He was brave." Would I have the courage to face that monster with nothing but a spear?

Harghaz was brave.

Quentyn is foolish.

+.+.+

Gerris put a hand on Quentyn's shoulder. "Even if the queen returns, she'll still be married."

"Not if I give King Harzoo a little smack with my hammer," suggested the big man.

"Hizdahr," said Quentyn. "His name is Hizdahr."

"One kiss from my hammer and no one will care what his name was," said Arch.

They do not see. His friends had lost sight of his true purpose here. The road leads through her, not to her. Daenerys is the means to the prize, not the prize itself. "'The dragon has three heads,' she said to me. 'My marriage need not be the end of all your hopes,' she said. 'I know why you are here. For fire and blood.' I have Targaryen blood in me, you know that. I can trace my lineage back—"

He is entirely responsible for his own stupid decisions, but it's silly to pretend she had no influence.

+.+.+

"Fuck your lineage," said Gerris. "The dragons won't care about your blood, except maybe how it tastes. You cannot tame a dragon with a history lesson. They're monsters, not maesters. Quent, is this truly what you want to do?"

"This is what I have to do. For Dorne. For my father. For Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry."

"They're dead," said Gerris. "They won't care."

[...]

"No doubt. But that was not my question. Men's lives have meaning, not their deaths. I loved Will and Cletus too, but this will not bring them back to us. This is a mistake, Quent. You cannot trust in sellswords."

Gerris Drinkwater is a great character.

Barristan Selmy, wrong again.

If this one had been the prince, things might have gone elsewise, he could not help but think … but there was something a bit too pleasant about Drinkwater for his taste. False coin, the old knight thought. He had known such men before. - The Discarded Knight, ADWD

+.+.+

"They are men like any other men. They want gold, glory, power. That's all I am trusting in." That, and my own destiny. I am a prince of Dorne, and the blood of dragons is in my veins.

Maybe he's right? He does appear to suffer from Targaryen Delusion.

He's losing me.

+.+.+

At this hour the house was less than half full. A few of the patrons favored the Dornishmen with looks bored or hostile or curious. The rest were crowded around the pit at the far end of the room, where a pair of naked men were slashing at each other with knives whilst the watchers cheered them on.

I'm going to pretend underground pit fighting was happening the entire time it was banned. That tends to be what happens you outlaw things.

Side note, today I learned underground pit fighting also happens in Westeros.

Question (from yours truly) what the hell is with Biter? Is he just a bad guy or is he something more....

George treated us to a never before heard back story of Rorge and Biter.....Rorge ran a dog and bear fighting place in Flea Bottom. Biter was an orphan whom Rorge grabbed up and raised ferally to fight in the pits. (Link)

Bwah!

Barristan Selmy in shambles.

+.+.+

"My ragged raiment?" The Pentoshi gave a shrug. "A poor thing … yet those tatters fill my foes with fear, and on the battlefield the sight of my rags blowing in the wind emboldens my men more than any banner. And if I want to move unseen, I need only slip it off to become plain and unremarkable."

Including in case this becomes relevant later.

+.+.+

Then a door he had not seen before swung open, and an old woman emerged, a shriveled thing in a dark red tokar fringed with tiny golden skulls. Her skin was white as mare's milk, her hair so thin that he could see the scalp beneath. "Dorne," she said, "I be Zahrina. Purple Lotus. Go down here, you find them." She held the door and gestured them through.

Aren't golden skulls a Golden Company thing?

Zahrina tried to buy Tyrion and Jorah in a previous chapter. Is she important? Probably not.

+.+.+

He [The Tattered Prince] gestured at the bench across from him. "Sit. I understand you are a prince. Would that I had known. Will you drink? Zahrina offers food as well. Her bread is stale and her stew is unspeakable. Grease and salt, with a morsel or two of meat. Dog, she says, but I think rat is more likely. It will not kill you, though. I have found that it is only when the food is tempting that one must beware. Poisoners invariably choose the choicest dishes."

I'll keep that in mind for the future.

Daenerys wouldn't know locusts are delectable, but Hizdahr would.

Strong Belwas bellowed, "Locusts!" as he seized the bowl and began to crunch them by the handful.

"Those are very tasty," advised Hizdahr. "You ought to try a few yourself, my love. They are rolled in spice before the honey, so they are sweet and hot at once." - Daenerys IX, ADWD

+.+.+

"I am a prince of Dorne," said Quentyn. "I had a duty to my father and my people. There was a secret marriage pact."

"So I heard. And when the silver queen saw your scrap of parchment she fell into your arms, yes?"

"No," said Pretty Meris.

I have so much secondhand embarrassment right now.

+.+.+

"No? Oh, I recall. Your bride flew off on a dragon. Well, when she returns, do be sure to invite us to your nuptials. The men of the company would love to drink to your happiness, and I do love a Westerosi wedding. The bedding part especially, only … oh, wait …" He turned to Denzo D'han. "Denzo, I thought you told me that the dragon queen had married some Ghiscari."

"A Meereenese nobleman. Rich."

The Tattered Prince turned back to Quentyn. "Could that be true? Surely not. What of your marriage pact?"

"She laughed at him," said Pretty Meris.

Daenerys never laughed. The rest of Meereen might see him as an amusing curiosity, like the exiled Summer Islander King Robert used to keep at King's Landing, but the queen had always spoken to him gently. "We came too late," said Quentyn.

She did laugh, and none of the Dornishmen know what was said afterwards.

"Prince Doran." He sank back onto one knee. "Your Grace, I have the honor to be Quentyn Martell, a prince of Dorne and your most leal subject."

Dany laughed.

The Dornish prince flushed red, whilst her own court and counselors gave her puzzled looks. "Radiance?" said Skahaz Shavepate, in the Ghiscari tongue. "Why do you laugh?"

"They call him frog," she said, "and we have just learned why. In the Seven Kingdoms there are children's tales of frogs who turn into enchanted princes when kissed by their true love." Smiling at the Dornish knights, she switched back to the Common Tongue. "Tell me, Prince Quentyn, are you enchanted?" - Daenerys VII, ADWD

What she said isn't important, it's how it looks.

Quentyn is dead, it's Drinkwater and Yronwood who will tell Doran and/or Arianne what happened.

+.+.+

"Yurkhaz zo Yunzak was the man who hired you."

"He signed our contract on behalf of his city. Just so."

"Meereen and Yunkai have made peace. The siege is to be lifted, the armies disbanded. There will be no battle, no slaughter, no city to sack and plunder."

"Life is full of disappointments."

Over Barristan Selmy's dead body.

+.+.+

"How long do you think the Yunkishmen will want to continue paying wages to four free companies?"

The Tattered Prince took a sip of wine and said, "A vexing question. But this is the way of life for we men of the free companies. One war ends, another begins. Fortunately there is always someone fighting someone somewhere. Perhaps here. Even as we sit here drinking Bloodbeard is urging our Yunkish friends to present King Hizdahr with another head. Freedmen and slavers eye each other's necks and sharpen their knives, the Sons of the Harpy plot in their pyramids, the pale mare rides down slave and lord alike, our friends from the Yellow City gaze out to sea, and somewhere in the grasslands a dragon nibbles the tender flesh of Daenerys Targaryen. Who rules Meereen tonight? Who will rule it on the morrow?" The Pentoshi gave a shrug. "One thing I am certain of. Someone will have need of our swords."

"I have need of those swords. Dorne will hire you."

[...]

"I will pay you part when we reach Volantis, the rest when I am back in Sunspear. We brought gold with us when we set sail, but it would have been hard to conceal once we joined the company, so we gave it over to the banks. I can show you papers."

A very bad idea quickly getting worse.

+.+.+

The Tattered Prince finished his wine, turned the cup over, and set it down between them. "So. Let me see if I understand. A proven liar and oathbreaker wishes to contract with us and pay in promises. And for what services? I wonder. Are my Windblown to smash the Yunkai'i and sack the Yellow City? Defeat a Dothraki khalasar in the field? Escort you home to your father? Or will you be content if we deliver Queen Daenerys to your bed wet and willing? Tell me true, Prince Frog. What would you have of me and mine?"

"I need you to help me steal a dragon."

Caggo Corpsekiller chuckled. Pretty Meris curled her lip in a half-smile. Denzo D'han whistled.

The Tattered Prince only leaned back on his stool and said, "Double does not pay for dragons, princeling. Even a frog should know that much. Dragons come dear. And men who pay in promises should have at least the sense to promise more."

"If you want me to triple—"

"What I want," said the Tattered Prince, "is Pentos."

How is Dorne going to give you Pentos?

Sorry, I've hit a point where I don't remember a single thing that comes next. Is this contract still active?

That seems less than ideal.

Final thoughts:

Call me Boomer Barry, I think I'm ready to leave Meereen.

-> return to menu <-

[neithergodsnormen]

Below the cut are all the individual HCs I had posted to his old blog, coming soon are the HCs I had in relation to letters and a specific verse

Quentyn and Cookies from an Anon

Quentyn is more than a little bit of a cookie lover. When he was younger he would steal cookies from the kitchens on a daily basis. This had grown tenfold when he was sent to Yronwood, often the Prince would just walk in the kitchen and take three cookies for each hand and shove just as many in his mouth before wandering out. They had become a sort of comfort food for him, as his mother or Tyene would often sneak cookies to him if he was unable to snatch any.

Quentyn Hogwarts House

Quentyn is a Ravenclaw, cos he values wisdom above all else. Just because you are smart and value wisdom don’t mean you can’t sometimes do stupid shit. Like trying to catch and tame a dragon.

Quentyn and Suicidal Ideation

After the Corsair attack on the way to Essos, Quentyn fell to the deepest despair he ever had fallen to. The deaths of Cletus, Ser Willam and Maester Kedry affect him deeply. In his mind he kept blaming himself, debating just slipping off the side of the ship and into the waves. Another thought he had was to use his dagger to slit his wrists in order to end it as atonement for their deaths. Quentyn blamed himself for their deaths until the moment of his own death. As he lay dying he thought the days of agony were perhaps a punishment from the gods for letting his friends die.

Quentyn and Arianne

Quentyn would follow Arianne everywhere as they grew up. Until the day he was sent away it was an almost perfect mirror of Oberyn and Elia. Had he not been sent to the Yronwoods their relationship probably would have stayed such a mirror of their aunt and uncle. Quentyn gets very offended any times someone suggests taking away his sister’s right as heir. If conversation of putting him in charge of Dorne is brought up to him in any manner, he will cut off communication with the offending party. This communication cut can last for years.

Favorite Quentyn Headcanons as asked by an anon

Quentyn was a big mama’s boy before he went to Yronwood. Even to this day he writes letters to her, even if he does not send them. This is done for comfort. Quentyn will support his sister as his Princess until his dying breath. If anyone even suggests that he try to take her birthright he cuts off contact from them, for they are dead to him. Quentyn cried the day he heard of Trystane’s birth and no one could comfort him. This is because he was convinced that his parents had replaced him and did not love him anymore. Quentyn blames his uncle for his being taken from his family and finds it hard to forgive him for the death of the Yronwood lord that resulted in his being taken as a glorified hostage. Quentyn’s favorite cousin is Tyene, and it is because of her and her visits that most poisons cannot touch him. She built his immune system to poison slowly over time just to see if it was possible. Quentyn suffers from severe depression and anxiety. This mostly stems from the separation he had from his family when he was five years old. Quentyn reads more than the other boys he grew up around. He’s even borrowed and read the book on dragons that his sister refers to as a dreary tome. Quentyn use to dream of dragons coming to Yronwood and flying him back home to Sunspear. Quentyn is not touched by sweetsleep not because of Tyene, but because of how many times he had to be sedated by the Maester in Yronwood. This was because he suffered severe insomnia from the time he was brought to them at age five until he was nearly ten years old. Quentyn is good at parkour, this is mostly because of the times he had to run when playing with the other boys. Because he was smaller he could not outrun the likes of Cletus, Gerris and Arch. As a result he learned to vault over things and slide under others. Quentyn likes to sing and write songs and to write poetry. This is something he usually keeps to himself.

[aboveallarescuer]

All mentions of Dany in other POVs

This is a list with all mentions of Dany and/or her dragons and/or events involving Dany in other POVs.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Epilogue

“We have these tales coming from the east as well. A second Targaryen, and one whose blood no man can question. Daenerys Stormborn.”

“As mad as her father,” declared Lord Mace Tyrell.

That would be the same father that Highgarden and House Tyrell supported to the bitter end and well beyond. “Mad she may be,” Ser Kevan said, “but with so much smoke drifting west, surely there must be some fire burning in the east.”

Grand Maester Pycelle bobbed his head. “Dragons. These same stories have reached Oldtown. Too many to discount. A silver-haired queen with three dragons.”

“At the far end of the world,” said Mace Tyrell. “Queen of Slaver’s Bay, aye. She is welcome to it.”

“On that we can agree,” Ser Kevan said, “but the girl is of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror, and I do not think she will be content to remain in Meereen forever. If she should reach these shores and join her strength to Lord Connington and this prince of his, feigned or no … we must destroy Connington and his pretender now, before Daenerys Stormborn can come west.”

ADWD The Queen's Hand

He stood beside the parapets of the highest step of the Great Pyramid, searching the sky as he did every morning, knowing that the dawn must come and hoping that his queen would come with it. She will not have abandoned us, she would never leave her people, he was telling himself, when he heard the prince’s death rattle coming from the queen’s apartments.

~

At his command, Quentyn Martell had been laid out in the queen’s own bed. He had been a knight, and a prince of Dorne besides. It seemed only kind to let him die in the bed he had crossed half a world to reach. The bedding was ruined—sheets, covers, pillows, mattress, all reeked of blood and smoke, but Ser Barristan thought Daenerys would forgive him.

~

He should have stayed in Dorne. He should have stayed a frog. Not all men are meant to dance with dragons. As he covered the boy once more, he found himself wondering whether there would be anyone to cover his queen, or whether her own corpse would lie un-mourned amongst the tall grasses of the Dothraki sea, staring blindly at the sky until her flesh fell from her bones.

“No,” he said aloud. “Daenerys is not dead. She was riding that dragon. I saw it with mine own two eyes.” He had said the same a hundred times before … but every day that passed made it harder to believe. Her hair was afire. I saw that too. She was burning … and if I did not see her fall, hundreds swear they did.

~

“They await the Hand’s pleasure below.”

I am no Hand, a part of him wanted to cry out. I am only a simple knight, the queen’s protector. I never wanted this. But with the queen gone and the king in chains, someone had to rule, and Ser Barristan did not trust the Shavepate.

~

“The fighting pits will remain closed,” said Selmy. “Blood and noise would only serve to call the dragons.”

“All three, perhaps,” suggested Marselen. “The black beast came once, why not again? This time with our queen.”

Or without her. Should Drogon return to Meereen without Daenerys mounted on his back, the city would erupt in blood and flame, of that Ser Barristan had no doubt. The very men sitting at this table would soon be at dagger points with one another. A young girl she might be, but Daenerys Targaryen was the only thing that held them all together.

“Her Grace will return when she returns,” said Ser Barristan.

~

The hostages again. He would kill them every one if I allowed it. “I heard you the first hundred times. No.”

“Queen’s Hand,” Skahaz grumbled with disgust. “An old woman’s hand, I am thinking, wrinkled and feeble. I pray Daenerys returns to us soon.” He pulled his brazen wolf’s mask down over his face. “Your council will be growing restless.”

“They are the queen’s council, not mine.”

~

Though he had assumed the title of Hand, Ser Barristan would not presume to hold court in the queen’s absence, nor would he permit Skahaz mo Kandaq to do such. Hizdahr’s grotesque dragon thrones had been removed at Ser Barristan’s command, but he had not brought back the simple pillowed bench the queen had favored. Instead a large round table had been set up in the center of the hall, with tall chairs all around it where men might sit and talk as peers.

~

“You had best guard that tongue, ser.” Ser Barristan did not like this Gerris Drinkwater, nor would he allow him to vilify Daenerys. “Prince Quentyn’s death was his own doing, and yours.”

~

“He offered her his heart,” Ser Gerris said again. “She needed swords, not hearts.”

“He would have given her the spears of Dorne as well.”

“Would that he had.” No one had wanted Daenerys to look with favor on the Dornish prince more than Barristan Selmy.

~

“What he did he did for love of Queen Daenerys,” Gerris Drinkwater insisted. “To prove himself worthy of her hand.”

The old knight had heard enough. “What Prince Quentyn did he did for Dorne. Do you take me for some doting grandfather? I have spent my life around kings and queens and princes. Sunspear means to take up arms against the Iron Throne. No, do not trouble to deny it. Doran Mar-tell is not a man to call his spears without hope of victory. Duty brought Prince Quentyn here. Duty, honor, thirst for glory … never love. Quentyn was here for dragons, not Daenerys.”

~

The Dornishmen, Hizdahr, Reznak, the attack … was he doing the right things? Was he doing what Daenerys would have wanted? I was not made for this. Other Kingsguard had served as Hand before him. Not many, but a few. He had read of them in the White Book. Now he found himself wondering whether they had felt as lost and confused as he did.

~

Galazza Galare was attended by four Pink Graces. An aura of wisdom and dignity seemed to surround her that Ser Barristan could not help but admire. This is a strong woman, and she has been a faithful friend to Daenerys.

~

“Have there been any further tidings of our sweet queen?”

“None as yet.”

“I shall pray for her. And what of King Hizdahr, if I may be so bold? Might I be permitted to see His Radiance?”

“Soon, I hope. He is unharmed, I promise you.”

“I am pleased to hear that. The Wise Masters of Yunkai asked after him. You will not be surprised to hear that they wish the noble Hizdahr to be restored at once to his rightful place.”

“He shall be, if it can be proved that he did not try to kill our queen. Until such time, Meereen will be ruled by a council of the loyal and just. There is a place for you on that council. I know that you have much to teach us all, Your Benevolence. We need your wisdom.”

“I fear you flatter me with empty courtesies, Lord Hand,” the Green Grace said. “If you truly think me wise, heed me now. Release the noble Hizdahr and restore him to his throne.”

“Only the queen can do that.”

~

“I know these were not the words you wished to hear,” said Galazza Galare. “Yet for myself, I understand. These dragons are fell beasts. Yunkai fears them … and with good cause, you cannot deny. Our histories speak of the dragonlords of dread Valyria and the devastation that they wrought upon the peoples of Old Ghis. Even your own young queen, fair Daenerys who called herself the Mother of Dragons … we saw her burning, that day in the pit … even she was not safe from the dragon’s wroth.”

“Her Grace is not … she …”

“… is dead. May the gods grant her sweet sleep.” Tears glistened behind her veils. “Let her dragons die as well.”

ADWD The Dragontamer

“Is that rain? Your whores will be gone.”

“Not all of them. There are little snuggeries in the pleasure gardens, and they wait there every night until a man chooses them. Those who are not chosen must remain until the sun comes up, feeling lonely and neglected. We could console them.”

“They could console me, is what you mean.”

“That too.”

“That is not the sort of consolation I require.”

“I disagree. Daenerys Targaryen is not the only woman in the world. Do you want to die a man-maid?”

Quentyn did not want to die at all. I want to go back to Yronwood and kiss both of your sisters, marry Gwyneth Yronwood, watch her flower into beauty, have a child by her. I want to ride in tourneys, hawk and hunt, visit with my mother in Norvos, read some of those books my father sends me. I want Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry to be alive again. “Do you think Daenerys would be pleased to hear that I had bedded some whore?”

“She might be. Men may be fond of maidens, but women like a man who knows what he’s about in the bedchamber. It’s another sort of sword-play. Takes training to be good at it.”

The gibe stung. Quentyn had never felt so much a boy as when he’d stood before Daenerys Targaryen, pleading for her hand. The thought of bedding her terrified him almost as much as her dragons had. What if he could not please her? “Daenerys has a paramour,” he said defensively. “My father did not send me here to amuse the queen in the bedchamber. You know why we have come.”

“You cannot marry her. She has a husband.”

“She does not love Hizdahr zo Loraq.”

“What has love to do with marriage? A prince should know better. Your father married for love, it’s said. How much joy has he had of that?”

~

“Dorne remembers Aegon and his sisters. Dragons are not so easily forgotten. They will remember Daenerys as well.”

“Not if she’s died.”

“She lives.” She must. “She is lost, but I can find her.” And when I do, she will look at me the way she looks at her sellsword. Once I have proven myself worthy of her.

~

“What’s that for?” Arch asked.

“Daenerys used a whip to cow the black beast.” Quentyn coiled the whip and hung it from his belt. “Arch, bring your hammer as well. We may have need of it.”

~

Warrior, grant me courage, he prayed. He did not want to do this, but he saw no other way. Why else would Daenerys have shown me the dragons? She wants me to prove myself to her. Gerris handed him a torch. He stepped through the doors.

The green one is Rhaegal, the white Viserion, he reminded himself. Use their names, command them, speak to them calmly but sternly. Master them, as Daenerys mastered Drogon in the pit. The girl had been alone, clad in wisps of silk, but fearless. I must not be afraid. She did it, so can I. The main thing was to show no fear. Animals can smell fear, and dragons … What did he know of dragons? What does any man know of dragons? They have been gone from the world for more than a century.

~

Last and longest the beast stared at Pretty Meris, sniffing. The woman, Quentyn realized. He knows that she is female. He is looking for Daenerys. He wants his mother and does not understand why she’s not here.

Quentyn wrenched free of Gerris’s grip. “Viserion,” he called. The white one is Viserion. For half a heartbeat he was afraid he’d gotten it wrong. “Viserion,” he called again, fumbling for the whip hanging from his belt. She cowed the black one with a whip. I need to do the same.

ADWD The Kingbreaker

“One guardsman amongst forty. All waiting for the empty tabard on the throne to speak the command so we might cut down Bloodbeard and the rest. Do you think the Yunkai’i would ever have dared present Daenerys with the head of her hostage?”

No, thought Selmy. “Hizdahr seemed distraught.”

“Sham. His own kin of Loraq were returned unharmed. You saw. The Yunkai’i played us a mummer’s farce, with noble Hizdahr as chief mummer. The issue was never Yurkhaz zo Yunzak. The other slavers would gladly have trampled that old fool themselves. This was to give Hizdahr a pretext to kill the dragons.”

Ser Barristan chewed on that. “Would he dare?”

“He dared to kill his queen. Why not her pets? If we do not act, Hizdahr will hesitate for a time, to give proof of his reluctance and allow the Wise Masters the chance to rid him of the Stormcrow and the bloodrider. Then he will act. They want the dragons dead before the Volantene fleet arrives.”

Aye, they would. It all fit. That did not mean Barristan Selmy liked it any better. “That will not happen.” His queen was the Mother of Dragons; he would not allow her children to come to harm.    

~

“Daario might piss on us if we were burning. Elsewise do not look to him for help. Let the Stormcrows choose another captain, one who knows his place. If the queen does not return, the world will be one sellsword short. Who will grieve?”

“And when she does return?”

“She will weep and tear her hair and curse the Yunkai’i. Not us. No blood on our hands. You can comfort her. Tell her some tale of the old days, she likes those. Poor Daario, her brave captain … she will never forget him, no … but better for all of us if he is dead, yes? Better for Daenerys too.”

Better for Daenerys, and for Westeros. Daenerys Targaryen loved her captain, but that was the girl in her, not the queen. Prince Rhaegar loved his Lady Lyanna, and thousands died for it. Daemon Blackfyre loved the first Daenerys, and rose in rebellion when denied her. Bittersteel and Bloodraven both loved Shiera Seastar, and the Seven Kingdoms bled. The Prince of Dragonflies loved Jenny of Oldstones so much he cast aside a crown, and Westeros paid the bride price in corpses. All three of the sons of the fifth Aegon had wed for love, in defiance of their father’s wishes. And because that unlikely monarch had himself followed his heart when he chose his queen, he allowed his sons to have their way, making bitter enemies where he might have had fast friends. Treason and turmoil followed, as night follows day, ending at Summerhall in sorcery, fire, and grief.

Her love for Daario is poison. A slower poison than the locusts, but in the end as deadly. “There is still Jhogo,” Ser Barristan said. “Him, and Hero. Both precious to Her Grace.”

“We have hostages as well,” Skahaz Shavepate reminded him. “If the slavers kill one of ours, we kill one of theirs.”

For a moment Ser Barristan did not know whom he meant. Then it came to him. “The queen’s cupbearers?”

“Hostages,” insisted Skahaz mo Kandaq. “Grazdar and Qezza are the blood of the Green Grace. Mezzara is of Merreq, Kezmya is Pahl, Azzak Ghazeen. Bhakaz is Loraq, Hizdahr’s own kin. All are sons and daughters of the pyramids. Zhak, Quazzar, Uhlez, Hazkar, Dhazak, Yherizan, all children of Great Masters.”

“Innocent girls and sweet-faced boys.” Ser Barristan had come to know them all during the time they served the queen, Grazhar with his dreams of glory, shy Mezzara, lazy Miklaz, vain, pretty Kezmya, Qezza with her big soft eyes and angel’s voice, Dhazzar the dancer, and the rest. “Children.”

“Children of the Harpy. Only blood can pay for blood.”

“So said the Yunkishman who brought us Groleo’s head.”

“He was not wrong.”

“I will not permit it.”

“What use are hostages if they may not be touched?”

“Mayhaps we might offer three of the children for Daario, Hero, and Jhogo,” Ser Barristan allowed. “Her Grace—”

“—is not here. It is for you and me to do what must be done. You know that I am right.”

“Prince Rhaegar had two children,” Ser Barristan told him. “Rhaenys was a little girl, Aegon a babe in arms. When Tywin Lannister took King’s Landing, his men killed both of them. He served the bloody bodies up in crimson cloaks, a gift for the new king.” And what did Robert say when he saw them? Did he smile? Barristan Selmy had been badly wounded on the Trident, so he had been spared the sight of Lord Tywin’s gift, but oft he wondered. If I had seen him smile over the red ruins of Rhaegar’s children, no army on this earth could have stopped me from killing him. “I will not suffer the murder of children. Accept that, or I’ll have no part of this.”

~

That is what I fear. If King Hizdahr was innocent, what they did this day would be treason. But how could he be innocent? Selmy had heard him urging Daenerys to taste the poisoned locusts, shouting at his men to slay the dragon. If we do not act, Hizdahr will kill the dragons and open the gates to the queen’s enemies. We have no choice in this. Yet no matter how he turned and twisted this, the old knight could find no honor in it.

~

Some of them had been training for the fighting pits when Daenerys Targaryen took Meereen and freed them from their chains. Those had had a good acquaintance with sword and spear and battle-axe even before Ser Barristan got hold of them. A few might well be ready. The boy from the Basilisk Isles, for a start. Tumco Lho.

~

Rhaegar had chosen Lyanna Stark of Winterfell. Barristan Selmy would have made a different choice. Not the queen, who was not present. Nor Elia of Dorne, though she was good and gentle; had she been chosen, much war and woe might have been avoided. His choice would have been a young maiden not long at court, one of Elia’s companions … though compared to Ashara Dayne, the Dornish princess was a kitchen drab.

Even after all these years, Ser Barristan could still recall Ashara’s smile, the sound of her laughter. He had only to close his eyes to see her, with her long dark hair tumbling about her shoulders and those haunting purple eyes. Daenerys has the same eyes. Sometimes when the queen looked at him, he felt as if he were looking at Ashara’s daughter …

~

The boy went running off, and the king turned back to Selmy. “I dreamed you found Daenerys.”

“Dreams can lie, Your Grace.”

~

“It was your pit, your box, your seats. Sweet wine and soft cushions, figs and melons and honeyed locusts. You provided all. You urged Her Grace to try the locusts but never tasted one yourself.”

“I … hot spices do not agree with me. She was my wife. My queen. Why would I want to poison her?”

Was, he says. He believes her dead. “Only you can answer that, Magnificence. It might be that you wished to put another woman in her place.” Ser Barristan nodded at the girl peering timidly from the bed-chamber. “That one, perhaps?”

The king looked around wildly. “Her? She’s nothing. A bedslave.” He raised his hands. “I misspoke. Not a slave. A free woman. Trained in pleasure. Even a king has needs, she … she is none of your concern, ser. I would never harm Daenerys. Never.”

“You urged the queen to try the locusts. I heard you.”

“I thought she might enjoy them.” Hizdahr retreated another step. “Hot and sweet at once.”

“Hot and sweet and poisoned. With mine own ears I heard you commanding the men in the pit to kill Drogon. Shouting at them.”

Hizdahr licked his lips. “The beast devoured Barsena’s flesh. Dragons prey on men. It was killing, burning …”

“… burning men who meant harm to your queen. Harpy’s Sons, as like as not. Your friends.”

“Not my friends.”

“You say that, yet when you told them to stop killing they obeyed. Why would they do that if you were not one of them?”

Hizdahr shook his head. This time he did not answer. “Tell me true,” Ser Barristan said, “did you ever love her, even a little? Or was it just the crown you lusted for?”

“Lust? You dare speak to me of lust?” The king’s mouth twisted in anger. “I lusted for the crown, aye … but not half so much as she lusted for her sellsword. Perhaps it was her precious captain who tried to poison her, for putting him aside. And if I had eaten of his locusts too, well, so much the better.”

~

“You will be kept a prisoner until the queen returns. If nothing can be proved against you, you will not come to harm. You have my word as a knight.”

ADWD Victarion I

The war for Meereen was won, the captain claimed; the dragon queen was dead, and a Ghiscari by the name of Hizdak ruled the city now.

Victarion had his tongue torn out for lying. Daenerys Targaryen was not dead, Moqorro assured him; his red god R’hllor had shown him the queen’s face in his sacred fires. The captain could not abide lies, so he had the Ghiscari captain bound hand and foot and thrown overboard, a sacrifice to the Drowned God.

~

Sailing out of Myr, the Dove brought them no fresh news of Meereen or Daenerys, only stale reports of Dothraki horsemen along the Rhoyne, the Golden Company upon the march, and others things Victarion already knew.

~

They had been running empty, Victarion learned, making for New Ghis to load supplies and weapons for the Ghiscari legions encamped before Meereen … and to bring fresh legionaries to the war, to replace all the men who’d died. “Men slain in battle?” asked Victarion. The crews of the galleys denied it; the deaths were from a bloody flux. The pale mare, they called it. And like the captain of the Ghiscari Dawn, the captains of the galleys repeated the lie that Daenerys Targaryen was dead.

“Give her a kiss for me in whatever hell you find her,” Victarion said. He called for his axe and took their heads off there and then. Afterward he put their crews to death as well, saving only the slaves chained to the oars. He broke their chains himself and told them they were now free men and would have the privilege of rowing for the Iron Fleet, an honor that every boy in the Iron Islands dreamed of growing up. “The dragon queen frees slaves and so do I,” he proclaimed.

~

“The silver queen is gone,” the ketch’s master told him. “She flew away upon her dragon, beyond the Dothraki sea.”

“Where is this Dothraki sea?” he demanded. “I will sail the Iron Fleet across it and find the queen wherever she may be.”

The fisherman laughed aloud. “That would be a sight worth seeing. The Dothraki sea is made of grass, fool.”

~

“He bearded the lion in his den and tied the direwolf’s tail in knots, but even Dagon could not defeat the dragons. But I shall make the dragon queen mine own. She will share my bed and bear me many mighty sons.”

~

His dusky woman was enough to satisfy his appetites until he could reach Meereen and claim his queen.

~

A great wind came up then, a wind that filled their sails and swept them north and east and north again, toward Meereen and its pyramids of many-colored bricks. On wings of song I fly to you, Daenerys, the iron captain thought.

ADWD The Griffin Reborn

“Prince Doran’s younger son has been betrothed to Myrcella Baratheon, which would suggest that the Dornishmen have thrown in with House Lannister, but they have an army in the Boneway and another in the Prince’s Pass, just waiting …”

“Waiting.” He frowned. “For what?” Without Daenerys and her dragons, Dorne was central to their hopes. “Write Sunspear. Doran Martell must know that his sister’s son is still alive and has come home to claim his father’s throne.”

~

“My lord does have one prize to offer,” Haldon Halfmaester pointed out. “Prince Aegon’s hand. A marriage alliance, to bring some great House to our banners.”

A bride for our bright prince. Jon Connington remembered Prince Rhaegar’s wedding all too well. Elia was never worthy of him. She was frail and sickly from the first, and childbirth only left her weaker. After the birth of Princess Rhaenys, her mother had been bedridden for half a year, and Prince Aegon’s birth had almost been the death of her. She would bear no more children, the maesters told Prince Rhaegar afterward.

“Daenerys Targaryen may yet come home one day,” Connington told the Halfmaester. “Aegon must be free to marry her.”

ADWD The Spurned Suitor

“Even if the queen returns, she’ll still be married.”

“Not if I give King Harzoo a little smack with my hammer,” suggested the big man.

“Hizdahr,” said Quentyn. “His name is Hizdahr.”

“One kiss from my hammer and no one will care what his name was,” said Arch.

They do not see. His friends had lost sight of his true purpose here. The road leads through her, not to her. Daenerys is the means to the prize, not the prize itself. “ ‘The dragon has three heads,’ she said to me. ‘My marriage need not be the end of all your hopes,’ she said. ‘I know why you are here. For fire and blood.’ I have Targaryen blood in me, you know that. I can trace my lineage back—”

“Fuck your lineage,” said Gerris. “The dragons won’t care about your blood, except maybe how it tastes. You cannot tame a dragon with a history lesson. They’re monsters, not maesters. Quent, is this truly what you want to do?”

“This is what I have to do. For Dorne. For my father. For Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry.”

“They’re dead,” said Gerris. “They won’t care.”

“All dead,” Quentyn agreed. “For what? To bring me here, so I might wed the dragon queen. A grand adventure, Cletus called it. Demon roads and stormy seas, and at the end of it the most beautiful woman in the world. A tale to tell our grandchildren. But Cletus will never father a child, unless he left a bastard in the belly of that tavern wench he liked. Will will never have his wedding. Their deaths should have some meaning.”

~

“Denzo, I thought you told me that the dragon queen had married some Ghiscari.”

“A Meereenese nobleman. Rich.”

The Tattered Prince turned back to Quentyn. “Could that be true? Surely not. What of your marriage pact?”

“She laughed at him,” said Pretty Meris.

Daenerys never laughed. The rest of Meereen might see him as an amusing curiosity, like the exiled Summer Islander King Robert used to keep at King’s Landing, but the queen had always spoken to him gently. “We came too late,” said Quentyn.

~

“How long do you think the Yunkishmen will want to continue paying wages to four free companies?”

The Tattered Prince took a sip of wine and said, “A vexing question. But this is the way of life for we men of the free companies. One war ends, another begins. Fortunately there is always someone fighting someone somewhere. Perhaps here. Even as we sit here drinking Bloodbeard is urging our Yunkish friends to present King Hizdahr with another head. Freedmen and slavers eye each other’s necks and sharpen their knives, the Sons of the Harpy plot in their pyramids, the pale mare rides down slave and lord alike, our friends from the Yellow City gaze out to sea, and somewhere in the grasslands a dragon nibbles the tender flesh of Daenerys Targaryen. Who rules Meereen tonight? Who will rule it on the morrow?” The Pentoshi gave a shrug. “One thing I am certain of. Someone will have need of our swords.”

~

“So. Let me see if I understand. A proven liar and oathbreaker wishes to contract with us and pay in promises. And for what services? I wonder. Are my Windblown to smash the Yunkai’i and sack the Yellow City? Defeat a Dothraki khalasar in the field? Escort you home to your father? Or will you be content if we deliver Queen Daenerys to your bed wet and willing? Tell me true, Prince Frog. What would you have of me and mine?”

“I need you to help me steal a dragon.”

ADWD The Discarded Knight

Daenerys Targaryen had preferred to hold court from a bench of polished ebony, smooth and simple, covered with the cushions that Ser Barristan had found to make her more comfortable. King Hizdahr had replaced the bench with two imposing thrones of gilded wood, their tall backs carved into the shape of dragons. The king seated himself in the right-hand throne with a golden crown upon his head and a jeweled sceptre in one pale hand. The second throne remained vacant.

The important throne, thought Ser Barristan. No dragon chair can replace a dragon no matter how elaborately it’s carved.

~

“Is it true?” a freedwoman shouted. “Is our mother dead?”

“No, no, no,” Reznak screeched. “Queen Daenerys will return to Meereen in her own time in all her might and majesty. Until such time, His Worship King Hizdahr shall—”

“He is no king of mine,” a freedman yelled.

Men began to shove at one another. “The queen is not dead,” the seneschal proclaimed. “Her bloodriders have been dispatched across the Skahazadhan to find Her Grace and return her to her loving lord and loyal subjects. Each has ten picked riders, and each man has three swift horses, so they may travel fast and far. Queen Daenerys shall be found.”

A tall Ghiscari in a brocade robe spoke next, in a voice as sonorous as it was cold. King Hizdahr shifted on his dragon throne, his face stony as he did his best to appear concerned but unperturbed. Once again his seneschal gave answer.

Ser Barristan let Reznak’s oily words wash over him. His years in the Kingsguard had taught him the trick of listening without hearing, especially useful when the speaker was intent on proving that words were truly wind. Back at the rear of the hall, he spied the Dornish princeling and his two companions. They should not have come. Martell does not realize his danger. Daenerys was his only friend at this court, and she is gone. He wondered how much they understood of what was being said. Even he could not always make sense of the mongrel Ghiscari tongue the slavers spoke, especially when they were speaking fast.

Prince Quentyn was listening intently, at least. That one is his father’s son. Short and stocky, plain-faced, he seemed a decent lad, sober, sensible, dutiful … but not the sort to make a young girl’s heart beat faster. And Daenerys Targaryen, whatever else she might be, was still a young girl, as she herself would claim when it pleased her to play the innocent. Like all good queens she put her people first—else she would never have wed Hizdahr zo Loraq—but the girl in her still yearned for poetry, passion, and laughter. She wants fire, and Dorne sent her mud.

~

Martell was dancing in a vipers’ nest, and he did not even see the snakes. His continued presence, even after Daenerys had given herself to another before the eyes of gods and men, would provoke any husband, and Quentyn no longer had the queen to shield him from Hizdahr’s wroth. Although …

The thought hit him like a slap across the face. Quentyn had grown up amongst the courts of Dorne. Plots and poisons were no strangers to him. Nor was Prince Lewyn his only uncle. He is kin to the Red Viper. Daenerys had taken another for her consort, but if Hizdahr died, she would be free to wed again. Could the Shavepate have been wrong? Who can say that the locusts were meant for Daenerys? It was the king’s own box. What if he was meant to be the victim all along? Hizdahr’s death would have smashed the fragile peace. The Sons of the Harpy would have resumed their murders, the Yunkishmen their war. Daenerys might have had no better choice than Quentyn and his marriage pact.

~

Reznak mo Reznak cleared his throat noisily. “Meaning no offense, yet it seems to me that Her Worship Queen Daenerys gave you … ah … seven hostages. The other three …”

“The others shall remain our guests,” announced the Yunkish lord in the breastplate, “until the dragons have been destroyed.”

A hush fell across the hall. Then came the murmurs and the mutters, whispered curses, whispered prayers, the hornets stirring in their hive. “The dragons …” said King Hizdahr.

“… are monsters, as all men saw in Daznak’s Pit. No true peace is possible whilst they live.”

Reznak replied. “Her Magnificence Queen Daenerys is Mother of Dragons. Only she can—”

Bloodbeard’s scorn cut him off. “She is gone. Burned and devoured. Weeds grow through her broken skull.”

~

Ser Barristan watched them, thoughtful. What would Daenerys want? he asked himself. He thought he knew.

~

“Leave the city. Return to Dorne.”

The Dornishmen exchanged a look. “Our arms and armor are back in our apartments,” said Gerris Drinkwater. “Not to mention most of the coin that we have left.”

“Swords can be replaced,” said Ser Barristan. “I can provide you with coin enough for passage back to Dorne. Prince Quentyn, the king made note of you today. He frowned.”

Gerris Drinkwater laughed. “Should we be frightened of Hizdahr zo Loraq? You saw him just now. He quailed before the Yunkishmen. They sent him a head, and he did nothing.”

Quentyn Martell nodded in agreement. “A prince does well to think before he acts. This king … I do not know what to think of him. The queen warned me against him as well, true, but …”

“She warned you?” Selmy frowned. “Why are you still here?”

Prince Quentyn flushed. “The marriage pact—”

“—was made by two dead men and contained not a word about the queen or you. It promised your sister’s hand to the queen’s brother, another dead man. It has no force. Until you turned up here, Her Grace was ignorant of its existence. Your father keeps his secrets well, Prince Quentyn. Too well, I fear. If the queen had known of this pact in Qarth, she might never have turned aside for Slaver’s Bay, but you came too late. I have no wish to salt your wounds, but Her Grace has a new husband and an old paramour, and seems to prefer the both of them to you.”

“This Ghiscari lordling is no fit consort for the queen of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“That is not for you to judge.” Ser Barristan paused, wondering if he had said too much already. No. Tell him the rest of it. “That day at Daznak’s Pit, some of the food in the royal box was poisoned. It was only chance that Strong Belwas ate it all. The Blue Graces say that only his size and freakish strength have saved him, but it was a near thing. He may yet die.”

The shock was plain on Prince Quentyn’s face. “Poison … meant for Daenerys?”

“Her or Hizdahr. Perhaps both. The box was his, though. His Grace made all the arrangements. If the poison was his doing … well, he will need a scapegoat. Who better than a rival from a distant land who has no friends at this court? Who better than a suitor the queen spurned?”

Quentyn Martell went pale. “Me? I would never … you cannot think I had any part in any …”

That was the truth, or he is a master mummer. “Others might,” said Ser Barristan. “The Red Viper was your uncle. And you have good reason to want King Hizdahr dead.”

“So do others,” suggested Gerris Drinkwater. “Naharis, for one. The queen’s …”

“… paramour,” Ser Barristan finished, before the Dornish knight could say anything that might besmirch the queen’s honor.

ADWD Tyrion XI

“The silver queen—”

“—is dead,” insisted Sweets. “Forget her! The dragon took her across the river. She’s drowned in that Dothraki sea.”

“You can’t drown in grass,” the goat boy said. “If we were free,” said Penny, “we could find the queen. Or go search for her, at least.”

You on your dog and me on my sow, chasing a dragon across the Dothraki sea. Tyrion scratched his scar to keep from laughing. “This particular dragon has already evinced a fondness for roast pork. And roast dwarf is twice as tasty.”

~

The fact that there were any good wells at all within a day’s march of the city only went to prove that Daenerys Targaryen was still an innocent where siegecraft was concerned. She should have poisoned every well. Then all the Yunkishmen would be drinking from the river. See how long their siege lasts then. That was what his lord father would have done, Tyrion did not doubt.

~

There was no better place to hear the latest news and rumors than around the well. “I know what I saw,” an old slave in a rusted iron collar was saying, as Tyrion and Penny shuffled along in the queue, “and I saw that dragon ripping off arms and legs, tearing men in half, burning them down to ash and bones. People started running, trying to get out of that pit, but I come to see a show, and by all the gods of Ghis, I saw one. I was up in the purple, so I didn’t think the dragon was like to trouble me.”

“The queen climbed onto the dragon’s back and flew away,” insisted a tall brown woman.

“She tried,” said the old man, “but she couldn’t hold on. The cross-bows wounded the dragon, and the queen was struck right between her sweet pink teats, I hear. That was when she fell. She died in the gutter, crushed beneath a wagon’s wheels. I know a girl who knows a man who saw her die.”

In this company, silence was the better part of wisdom, but Tyrion could not help himself. “No corpse was found,” he said.

The old man frowned. “What would you know about it?”

“They were there,” said the brown woman. “It’s them, the jousting dwarfs, the ones who tilted for the queen.”

The old man squinted down as if seeing him and Penny for the first time. “You’re the ones who rode the pigs.”

Our notoriety precedes us. Tyrion sketched a courtly bow, and refrained from pointing out that one of the pigs was really a dog. “The sow I ride is actually my sister. We have the same nose, could you tell? A wizard cast a spell on her, but if you give her a big wet kiss, she will turn into a beautiful woman. The pity is, once you get to know her, you’ll want to kiss her again to turn her back.”

Laughter erupted all around them. Even the old man joined in. “You saw her, then,” said the redheaded boy behind them. “You saw the queen. Is she as beautiful as they say?”

I saw a slender girl with silvery hair wrapped in a tokar, he might have told them. Her face was veiled, and I never got close enough for a good look. I was riding on a pig. Daenerys Targaryen had been seated in the owner’s box beside her Ghiscari king, but Tyrion’s eyes had been drawn to the knight in the white-and-gold armor behind her. Though his features were concealed, the dwarf would have known Barristan Selmy anywhere. Illyrio was right about that much, at least, he remembered thinking. Will Selmy know me, though? And what will he do if he does?

~

“The queen watched us tilt,” Penny was telling the other slaves in line, “but that was the only time we saw her.”

“You must have seen the dragon,” said the old man.

Would that we had. The gods had not even vouchsafed him that much. As Daenerys Targaryen was taking wing, Nurse had been clapping irons round their ankles to make certain they would not attempt escape on their way back to their master. If the overseer had only taken his leave after delivering them to the abbatoir, or fled with the rest of the slavers when the dragon descended from the sky, the two dwarfs might have strolled away free. Or run away, more like, our little bells a-jingle.

“Was there a dragon?” Tyrion said with a shrug. “All I know is that no dead queens were found.”

~

“...Might be they did but decided to say elsewise, to keep you slaves quiet.”

“Us slaves?” said the brown woman. “You wear a collar too.”

“Ghazdor’s collar,” the old man boasted. “Known him since we was born. I’m almost like a brother to him. Slaves like you, sweepings out of Astapor and Yunkai, you whine about being free, but I wouldn’t give the dragon queen my collar if she offered to suck my cock for it. Man has the right master, that’s better.”

 ADWD The Iron Suitor

And I must needs reach the dragon queen before the Volantenes.

In Volantis he had seen the galleys taking on provisions. The whole city had seemed drunk. Sailors and soldiers and tinkers had been observed dancing in the streets with nobles and fat merchants, and in every inn and winesink cups were being raised to the new triarchs. All the talk had been of the gold and gems and slaves that would flood into Volantis once the dragon queen was dead.

~

“Is it still to be Meereen?”

“Where else? The dragon queen awaits me in Meereen.” The fairest woman in the world if my brother could be believed. Her hair is silver-gold, her eyes are amethysts.

Was it too much to hope that for once Euron had told it true? Perhaps. Like as not, the girl would prove to be some pock-faced slattern with teats slapping against her knees, her “dragons” no more than tattooed lizards from the swamps of Sothoryos. If she is all that Euron claims, though … They had heard talk of the beauty of Daenerys Targaryen from the lips of pirates in the Stepstones and fat merchants in Old Volantis. It might be true. And Euron had not made Victarion a gift of her; the Crow’s Eye meant to take her for himself. He sends me like a serving man to fetch her. How he will howl when I claim her for myself. Let the men mutter. They had sailed too far and lost too much for Victarion to turn west without his prize.

 ADWD The Queensguard

You were the queen’s man,” said Reznak mo Reznak. “The king desires his own men about him when he holds court.”

I am the queen’s man still. Today, tomorrow, always, until my last breath, or hers. Barristan Selmy refused to believe that Daenerys Targaryen was dead.

Perhaps that was why he was being put aside. One by one, Hizdahr removes us all.

~

Despite all the queen had done, the sickness had spread, both within the city walls and without. Meereen’s markets were closed, its streets empty. King Hizdahr had allowed the fighting pits to remain open, but the crowds were sparse. The Meereenese had even begun to shun the Temple of the Graces, reportedly.

The slavers will find some way to blame Daenerys for that as well, Ser Barristan thought bitterly. He could almost hear them whispering��Great Masters, Sons of the Harpy, Yunkai’i, all telling one another that his queen was dead. Half of the city believed it, though as yet they did not have the courage to say such words aloud. But soon, I think.

~

Not for the first time, Selmy wondered at the strange fates that had brought him here. He was a knight of Westeros, a man of the stormlands and the Dornish marches; his place was in the Seven Kingdoms, not here upon the sweltering shores of Slaver’s Bay. I came to bring Daenerys home. Yet he had lost her, just as he had lost her father and her brother. Even Robert. I failed him too.

Perhaps Hizdahr was wiser than he knew. Ten years ago I would have sensed what Daenerys meant to do. Ten years ago I would have been quick enough to stop her. Instead he had stood befuddled as she leapt into the pit, shouting her name, then running uselessly after her across the scarlet sands. I am become old and slow. Small wonder Naharis mocked him as Ser Grandfather. Would Daario have moved more quickly if he had been beside the queen that day? Selmy thought he knew the answer to that, though it was not one he liked.

He had dreamed of it again last night: Belwas on his knees retching up bile and blood, Hizdahr urging on the dragonslayers, men and women fleeing in terror, fighting on the steps, climbing over one another, screaming and shouting. And Daenerys …

Her hair was aflame. She had the whip in her hand and she was shouting, then she was on the dragon’s back, flying. The sand that Drogon stirred as he took wing had stung Ser Barristan’s eyes, but through a veil of tears he had watched the beast fly from the pit, his great black wings slapping at the shoulders of the bronze warriors at the gates.

The rest he learned later. Beyond the gates had been a solid press of people. Maddened by the smell of dragon, horses below reared in terror, lashing out with iron-shod hooves. Food stalls and palanquins alike were overturned, men knocked down and trampled. Spears were thrown, cross-bows were fired. Some struck home. The dragon twisted violently in the air, wounds smoking, the girl clinging to his back. Then he loosed the fire.

It had taken the rest of the day and most of the night for the Brazen Beasts to gather up the corpses. The final count was two hundred fourteen slain, three times as many burned or wounded. Drogon was gone from the city by then, last seen high over the Skahazadhan, flying north. Of Daenerys Targaryen, no trace had been found. Some swore they saw her fall. Others insisted that the dragon had carried her off to devour her. They are wrong.

Ser Barristan knew no more of dragons than the tales every child hears, but he knew Targaryens. Daenerys had been riding that dragon, as Aegon had once ridden Balerion of old.

“She might be flying home,” he told himself, aloud. “No,” murmured a soft voice behind him. “She would not do that, ser. She would not go home without us.”

Ser Barristan turned. “Missandei. Child. How long have you been standing there?”

“Not long. This one is sorry if she has disturbed you.”

~

It was his failures that haunted him at night, though. Jaehaerys, Aerys, Robert. Three dead kings. Rhaegar, who would have been a finer king than any of them. Princess Elia and the children. Aegon just a babe, Rhaenys with her kitten. Dead, every one, yet he still lived, who had sworn to protect them. And now Daenerys, his bright shining child queen. She is not dead. I will not believe it.

Afternoon brought Ser Barristan a brief respite from his doubts. He spent it in the training hall on the pyramid’s third level, working with his boys, teaching them the art of sword and shield, horse and lance … and chivalry, the code that made a knight more than any pit fighter. Daenerys would need protectors her own age about her after he was gone, and Ser Barristan was determined to give her such.

The lads he was instructing ranged in age from eight to twenty. He had started with more than sixty of them, but the training had proved too rigorous for many. Less than half that number now remained, but some showed great promise. With no king to guard, I will have more time to train them now, he realized as he walked from pair to pair, watching them go at one another with blunted swords and spears with rounded heads. Brave boys. Baseborn, aye, but some will make good knights, and they love the queen. If not for her, all of them would have ended in the pits. King Hizdahr has his pit fighters, but Daenerys will have knights.

~

If the queen had commanded me to protect Hizdahr, I would have had no choice but to obey. But Daenerys Targaryen had never established a proper Queensguard even for herself nor issued any commands in respect to her consort. The world was simpler when I had a lord commander to decide such matters, Selmy reflected. Now I am the lord commander, and it is hard to know which path is right.

~

“I have the poisoner.”

“Who?”

“Hizdahr’s confectioner. His name would mean nothing to you. The man was just a cats paw. The Sons of the Harpy took his daughter and swore she would be returned unharmed once the queen was dead. Belwas and the dragon saved Daenerys. No one saved the girl. She was returned to her father in the black of night, in nine pieces. One for every year she lived.”

“Why?” Doubts gnawed at him. “The Sons had stopped their killing. Hizdahr’s peace—”

“—is a sham. Not at first, no. The Yunkai’i were afraid of our queen, of her Unsullied, of her dragons. This land has known dragons before. Yurkhaz zo Yunzak had read his histories, he knew. Hizdahr as well. Why not a peace? Daenerys wanted it, they could see that. Wanted it too much. She should have marched to Astapor.” Skahaz moved closer. “That was before. The pit changed all. Daenerys gone, Yurkhaz dead. In place of one old lion, a pack of jackals. Bloodbeard … that one has no taste for peace. And there is more. Worse. Volantis has launched its fleet against us.”

“Volantis.” Selmy’s sword hand tingled. We made a peace with Yunkai. Not with Volantis. “You are certain?”

“Certain. The Wise Masters know. So do their friends. The Harpy, Reznak, Hizdahr. This king will open the city gates to the Volantenes when they arrive. All those Daenerys freed will be enslaved again. Even some who were never slaves will be fitted for chains. You may end your days in a fighting pit, old man. Khrazz will eat your heart.”

His head was pounding. “Daenerys must be told.”

“Find her first.” Skahaz grasped his forearm. His fingers felt like iron. “We cannot wait for her.

~

“Daenerys signed that peace,” Ser Barristan said. “It is not for us to break it without her leave.”

“And if she is dead?” demanded Skahaz. “What then, ser? I say she would want us to protect her city. Her children.”

Her children were the freedmen. Mhysa, they called her, all those whose chains she broke. “Mother.” The Shavepate was not wrong. Daenerys would want her children protected. “What of Hizdahr? He is still her consort. Her king. Her husband.”

“Her poisoner.”

Is he? “Where is your proof?”

“The crown he wears is proof enough. The throne he sits. Open your eyes, old man. That is all he needed from Daenerys, all he ever wanted. Once he had it, why share the rule?”

Why indeed? It had been so hot down in the pit. He could still see the air shimmering above the scarlet sands, smell the blood spilling from the men who’d died for their amusement. And he could still hear Hizdahr, urging his queen to try the honeyed locusts.

ADWD Tyrion X

The next piece of chattel was already being led up to take their place. A girl, fifteen or sixteen, not off the Selaesori Qhoran this time. Tyrion did not know her. The same age as Daenerys Targaryen, or near enough. The slaver soon had her naked. At least we were spared that humiliation.

~

Mormont paid no mind to the mongrel crowd; his eyes were fixed beyond the siege lines, on the distant city with its ancient walls of many-colored brick. Tyrion could read that look as easy as a book: so near and yet so distant. The poor wretch had returned too late. Daenerys Targaryen was wed, the guards on the pens had told them, laughing. She had taken a Meereenese slaver as her king, as wealthy as he was noble, and when the peace was signed and sealed the fighting pits of Meereen would open once again. Other slaves insisted that the guards were lying, that Daenerys Targaryen would never make peace with slavers. Mhysa, they called her. Someone told him that meant Mother. Soon the silver queen would come forth from her city, smash the Yunkai’i, and break their chains, they whispered to one another.

And then she’ll bake us all a lemon pie and kiss our widdle wounds and make them better, the dwarf thought. He had no faith in royal rescues. If need be, he would see to their deliverance himself.

ADWD Jon IX

“Let us hope so. The narrow sea is perilous this time of year, and of late there have been troubling reports of strange ships seen amongst the Step-stones.”

“Salladhor Saan?”

“The Lysene pirate? Some say he has returned to his old haunts, this is so. And Lord Redwyne’s war fleet creeps through the Broken Arm as well.

On its way home, no doubt. But these men and their ships are well-known to us. No, these other sails … from farther east, perhaps … one hears queer talk of dragons.”

“Would that we had one here. A dragon might warm things up a bit.”

“My lord jests. You will forgive me if I do not laugh. We Braavosi are descended from those who fled Valyria and the wroth of its dragonlords. We do not jape of dragons.”

ADWD Tyrion IX

“We failed at that as well. No one threw coins.” Not a penny, not a groat.

“They will when we get better.” Penny pulled off her helm. Mouse-brown hair spilled down to her ears. Her eyes were brown too, beneath a heavy shelf of brow, her cheeks smooth and flushed. She pulled some acorns from a leather bag for Pretty Pig. The sow ate them from her hand, squealing happily. “When we perform for Queen Daenerys the silver will rain down, you’ll see.”

~

At Joffrey’s wedding feast, he recalled, one rider had displayed the direwolf of Robb Stark, the other the arms and colors of Stannis Baratheon. “We will need both animals if we’re to tilt for Queen Daenerys,” he said. If the sailors took it in their heads to butcher Pretty Pig, neither he nor Penny could hope to stop them … but Ser Jorah’s longsword might give them pause, at least.

“Is that how you hope to keep your head, Imp?”

“Ser Imp, if you please. And yes. Once Her Grace knows my true worth, she’ll cherish me. I am a lovable little fellow, after all, and I know many useful things about my kin. But until such time I had best keep her amused.”

“Caper as you like, it won’t wash out your crimes. Daenerys Targaryen is no silly child to be diverted by japes and tumbles. She will deal with you justly.”

Oh, I hope not. Tyrion studied Mormont with his mismatched eyes. “And how will she welcome you, this just queen? A warm embrace, a girlish titter, a headsman’s axe?” He grinned at the knight’s obvious discomfit. “Did you truly expect me to believe you were about the queen’s business in that whorehouse? Defending her from half a world away? Or could it be that you were running, that your dragon queen sent you from her side? But why would she … oh, wait, you were spying on her.” Tyrion made a clucking sound. “You hope to buy your way back into her favor by presenting her with me. An ill-considered scheme, I’d say. One might even say an act of drunken desperation. Perhaps if I were Jaime … but Jaime killed her father, I only killed my own. You think Daenerys will execute me and pardon you, but the reverse is just as likely. Maybe you should hop up on that pig, Ser Jorah. Put on a suit of iron motley, like Florian the—”

The blow the big knight gave him cracked his head around and knocked him sideways, so hard that his head bounced off the deck.

~

“The widow said this ship would never reach her destination. I took that to mean that once we were out to sea beyond the reach of triarchs, the captain would change course for Meereen. Or perhaps that you would seize the ship with your Fiery Hand and take us to Daenerys. But that isn’t what your high priest saw at all, is it?”

“No.” Moqorro’s deep voice tolled as solemnly as a funeral bell. “This is what he saw.”

ADWD Tyrion VIII

“Have you come to pray with me?”

“Someone told me that the night is dark and full of terrors. What do you see in those flames?”

“Dragons,” Moqorro said in the Common Tongue of Westeros. He spoke it very well, with hardly a trace of accent. No doubt that was one reason the high priest Benerro had chosen him to bring the faith of R’hllor to Daenerys Targaryen. “Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all.”

~

Twice exiled, and small wonder, Tyrion thought. I’d exile him too if I could. The man is cold, brooding, sullen, deaf to humor. And those are his good points. Ser Jorah spent most of his waking hours pacing the forecastle or leaning on the rail, gazing out to sea. Looking for his silver queen. Looking for Daenerys, willing the ship to sail faster. Well, I might do the same if Tysha waited in Meereen.

~

“Daenerys has a kind heart and a generous nature.” It was what she needed to hear. “She will find a place for you at her court, I don’t doubt. A safe place, beyond my sister’s reach.”

Penny turned back to him. “And you will be there too.”

Unless Daenerys decides she needs some Lannister blood, to pay for the Targaryen blood my brother shed. “I will.”

~

“Does our captain mean to test the curse?”

“Our captain would prefer to be fifty leagues farther out to sea, well away from that accursed shore, but I have commanded him to steer the shortest course. Others seek Daenerys too.”

Griff, with his young prince. Could all that talk of the Golden Company sailing west have been a feint? Tyrion considered saying something, then thought better. It seemed to him that the prophecy that drove the red priests had room for just one hero. A second Targaryen would only serve to confuse them. “Have you seen these others in your fires?” he asked, warily.

“Only their shadows,” Moqorro said. “One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood.”

  ADWD Tyrion VII

“What is he saying?” Tyrion asked the knight.

“That Daenerys stands in peril. The dark eye has fallen upon her, and the minions of night are plotting her destruction, praying to their false gods in temples of deceit … conspiring at betrayal with godless outlanders …”

The hairs on the back of Tyrion’s neck began to prickle. Prince Aegon will find no friend here. The red priest spoke of ancient prophecy, a prophecy that foretold the coming of a hero to deliver the world from darkness. One hero. Not two. Daenerys has dragons, Aegon does not. The dwarf did not need to be a prophet himself to foresee how Benerro and his followers might react to a second Targaryen. Griff will see that too, surely, he thought, surprised to find how much he cared.

~

Tyrion had just swallowed another locust. He almost choked on it. Is he mocking me? How much could he know of Griff and Aegon? “Bugger,” he said. “I meant to hire the Golden Company myself, to win me Casterly Rock.” Could this be some ploy of Griff’s, false reports deliberately spread? Unless … Could the pretty princeling have swallowed the bait? Turned them west instead of east, abandoning his hopes of wedding Queen Daenerys? Abandoning the dragons … would Griff allow that?

~

“We need swift passage to Meereen.”

One word. Tyrion Lannister’s world turned upside down.

One word. Meereen. Or had he misheard?

One word. Meereen, he said Meereen, he’s taking me to Meereen. Meereen meant life. Or hope for life, at least.

“Why come to me?” the widow said. “I own no ships.”

“You have many captains in your debt.”

Deliver me to the queen, he says. Aye, but which queen? He isn’t selling me to Cersei. He’s giving me to Daenerys Targaryen. That’s why he hasn’t hacked my head off. We’re going east, and Griff and his prince are going west, the bloody fools.

Oh, it was all too much. Plots within plots, but all roads lead down the dragon’s gullet. A guffaw burst from his lips, and suddenly Tyrion could not stop laughing.

“Your dwarf is having a fit,” the widow observed. “My dwarf will be quiet, or I’ll see him gagged.”

Tyrion covered his mouth with his hands. Meereen!

~

“...Have you heard Benerro preach?”

“Last night.”

“Benerro can see the morrow in his flames,” the widow said. “Triarch Malaquo tried to hire the Golden Company, did you know? He meant to clean out the red temple and put Benerro to the sword. He dare not use tiger cloaks. Half of them worship the Lord of Light as well. Oh, these are dire days in Old Volantis, even for wrinkled old widows. But not half so dire as in Meereen, I think. So tell me, ser … why do you seek the silver queen?”

~

“Keep your silver. I have gold. And spare me your black looks, ser. I am too old to be frightened of a scowl. You are a hard man, I see, and no doubt skilled with that long sword at your side, but this is my realm. Let me crook a finger and you may find yourself traveling to Meereen chained to an oar in the belly of a galley.” She lifted her jade fan and opened it. There was a rustle of leaves, and a man slid from the overgrown archway to her left. His face was a mass of scars, and in one hand he held a sword, short and heavy as a cleaver. “Seek the widow of the waterfront, someone told you, but they should have also warned you, beware the widow’s sons. It is such a sweet morning, though, I shall ask again. Why would you seek Daenerys Targaryen, whom half the world wants dead?”

Jorah Mormont’s face was dark with anger, but he answered. “To serve her. Defend her. Die for her, if need be.”

That made the widow laugh. “You want to rescue her, is that the way of it? From more enemies than I can name, with swords beyond count … this is what you’d have the poor widow believe? That you are a true and chivalrous Westerosi knight crossing half the world to come to the aid of this … well, she is no maiden, though she may still be fair.” She laughed again. “Do you think your dwarf will please her? Will she bathe in his blood, do you think, or content herself with striking off his head?”

Ser Jorah hesitated. “The dwarf is—”

“—I know who the dwarf is, and what he is.” Her black eyes turned to Tyrion, hard as stone. “Kinslayer, kingslayer, murderer, turncloak. Lannister.” She made the last a curse. “What do you plan to offer the dragon queen, little man?”

My hate, Tyrion wanted to say. Instead he spread his hands as far as the fetters would allow. “Whatever she would have of me. Sage counsel, savage wit, a bit of tumbling. My cock, if she desires it. My tongue, if she does not. I will lead her armies or rub her feet, as she desires. And the only reward I ask is I might be allowed to rape and kill my sister.”

~

“If I were Volantene, and free, and had the blood, you’d have my vote for triarch, my lady.”

“I am no lady,” the widow replied, “just Vogarro’s whore. You want to be gone from here before the tigers come. Should you reach your queen, give her a message from the slaves of Old Volantis.” She touched the faded scar upon her wrinkled cheek, where her tears had been cut away. “Tell her we are waiting. Tell her to come soon.”

ADWD The Windblown

The word passed through the camp like a hot wind. She is coming. Her host is on the march. She is racing south to Yunkai, to put the city to the torch and its people to the sword, and we are going north to meet her.

~

“We’ll get provisions in Yunkai, maybe fresh horses, then it will be on to Meereen to dance with the dragon queen. So hop quick, Frog, and put a nice edge on your master’s sword. Might be he’ll need it soon.”

~

“Arch is the best fighter of the three of us,” Drinkwater had pointed out, “but only you can hope to wed the dragon queen.”

Wed her or fight her; either way, I will face her soon. The more Quentyn heard of Daenerys Targaryen, the more he feared that meeting. The Yunkai’i claimed that she fed her dragons on human flesh and bathed in the blood of virgins to keep her skin smooth and supple. Beans laughed at that but relished the tales of the silver queen’s promiscuity. “One of her captains comes of a line where the men have foot-long members,” he told them, “but even he’s not big enough for her. She rode with the Dothraki and grew accustomed to being fucked by stallions, so now no man can fill her.” And Books, the clever Volantene swordsman who always seemed to have his nose poked in some crumbly scroll, thought the dragon queen both murderous and mad. “Her khal killed her brother to make her queen. Then she killed her khal to make herself khaleesi. She practices blood sacrifice, lies as easily as she breathes, turns against her own on a whim. She’s broken truces, tortured envoys … her father was mad too. It runs in the blood.”

It runs in the blood. King Aerys II had been mad, all of Westeros knew that. He had exiled two of his Hands and burned a third. If Daenerys is as murdeous as her father, must I still marry her? Prince Doran had never spoken of that possibility.

~

Their mistress could not have been more than sixteen and fancied herself Yunkai’s own Daenerys Targaryen.

~

“Daenerys may be halfway to Yunkai by now, with an army at her back,” Quentyn said as they walked amongst the horses.

“She may be,” Gerris said, “but she’s not. We’ve heard such talk before. The Astapori were convinced Daenerys was coming south with her dragons to break the siege. She didn’t come then, and she’s not coming now.”

“We can’t know that, not for certain. We need to steal away before we end up fighting the woman I was sent to woo.”

“Wait till Yunkai.” Gerris gestured at the hills. “These lands belong to the Yunkai’i. No one is like to want to feed or shelter three deserters. North of Yunkai, that’s no-man’s-land.”

He was not wrong. Even so, Quentyn felt uneasy. “The big man’s made too many friends. He knows the plan was always to steal off and make our way to Daenerys, but he’s not going to feel good about abandoning men he’s fought with. If we wait too long, it’s going to feel as if we’re deserting them on the eve of battle. He will never do that. You know him as well as I do.”

~

“You’d have us turn our cloaks?”

“I would,” said the Tattered Prince.

Quentyn Martell almost laughed aloud. The gods are mad.

The Westerosi shifted uneasily. Some stared into their wine cups, as if they hoped to find some wisdom there. Hugh Hungerford frowned. “You think Queen Daenerys will take us in …”

“I do.”

~

“Meris will command you,” said the Tattered Prince. “She knows my mind in this … and Daenerys Targaryen may be more accepting of another woman.”

~

“The best ruses always have some seed of truth,” said the Tattered Prince. “Every one of you has ample reason for wanting to abandon me. And Daenerys Targaryen knows that sellswords are a fickle lot. Her own Second Sons and Stormcrows took Yunkish gold but did not hesitate to join her when the tide of battle began to flow her way.”

 ADWD The Lost Lord

A ferocious southern sun beat down upon the crowded riverfront of Volon Therys, but heat was the last and least of Griff’s concerns. The Golden Company was encamped three miles south of town, well north of where he had expected them, and Triarch Malaquo had come north with five thousand foot and a thousand horse to cut them off from the delta road. Daenerys Targaryen remained a world away, and Tyrion Lannister … well, he could be most anywhere.

~

“The plan was to reveal Prince Aegon only when we reached Queen Daenerys,” Lemore was saying.

“That was when we believed the girl was coming west. Our dragon queen has burned that plan to ash, and thanks to that fat fool in Pentos, we have grasped the she-dragon by the tail and burned our fingers to the bone.”

“Illyrio could not have been expected to know that the girl would choose to remain at Slaver’s Bay.”

“No more than he knew that the Beggar King would die young, or that Khal Drogo would follow him into the grave. Very little of what the fat man has anticipated has come to pass.”

~

“I assume you know that the Targaryen girl has not started for the west?”

“We heard that tale in Selhorys.”

“No tale. Simple truth. The why of it is harder to grasp. Sack Meereen, aye, why not? I would have done the same in her place. The slaver cities reek of gold, and conquest requires coin. But why linger? Fear? Madness? Sloth?”

“The why of it does not matter.” Harry Strickland unrolled a pair of striped woolen stockings. “She is in Meereen and we are here, where the Volantenes grow daily more unhappy with our presence. We came to raise up a king and queen who would lead us home to Westeros, but this Targaryen girl seems more intent on planting olive trees than in reclaiming her father’s throne. Meanwhile, her foes gather. Yunkai, New Ghis, Tolos. Bloodbeard and the Tattered Prince will both be in the field against her … and soon enough the fleets of Old Volantis will descend on her as well. What does she have? Bedslaves with sticks?”

“Unsullied,” said Griff. “And dragons.”

“Dragons, aye,” the captain-general said, “but young ones, hardly more than hatchlings.” Strickland eased his sock over his blisters and up his ankle. “How much will they avail her when all these armies close about her city like a fist?”

Tristan Rivers drummed his fingers on his knee. “All the more reason that we must reach her quickly, I say. If Daenerys will not come to us, we must go to Daenerys.”

“Can we walk across the waves, ser?” asked Lysono Maar. “I tell you again, we cannot reach the silver queen by sea. I slipped into Volantis myself, posing as a trader, to learn how many ships might be available to us. The harbor teems with galleys, cogs, and carracks of every sort and size, yet even so I soon found myself consorting with smugglers and pirates. We have ten thousand men in the company, as I am sure Lord Connington remembers from his years of service with us. Five hundred knights, each with three horses. Five hundred squires, with one mount apiece. And elephants, we must not forget the elephants. A pirate ship will not suffice. We would need a pirate fleet … and even if we found one, the word has come back from Slaver’s Bay that Meereen has been closed off by blockade.”

~

And then Prince Aegon spoke. “Then put your hopes on me,” he said. “Daenerys is Prince Rhaegar’s sister, but I am Rhaegar’s son. I am the only dragon that you need.”

Griff put a black-gloved hand upon Prince Aegon’s shoulder. “Spoken boldly,” he said, “but think what you are saying.”

“I have,” the lad insisted. “Why should I go running to my aunt as if I were a beggar? My claim is better than her own. Let her come to me … in Westeros.”

Franklyn Flowers laughed. “I like it. Sail west, not east. Leave the little queen to her olives and seat Prince Aegon upon the Iron Throne. The boy has stones, give him that.”

The captain-general looked as if someone had slapped his face. “Has the sun curdled your brains, Flowers? We need the girl. We need the marriage. If Daenerys accepts our princeling and takes him for her consort, the Seven Kingdoms will do the same. Without her, the lords will only mock his claim and brand him a fraud and a pretender. And how do you propose to get to Westeros? You heard Lysono. There are no ships to be had.”

~

“By now the lion surely has the dragon’s scent,” said one of the Coles, “but Cersei’s attentions will be fixed upon Meereen and this other queen. She knows nothing of our prince. Once we land and raise our banners, many and more will flock to join us.”

“Some,” allowed Homeless Harry, “not many. Rhaegar’s sister has dragons. Rhaegar’s son does not. We do not have the strength to take the realm without Daenerys and her army. Her Unsullied.”

“The first Aegon took Westeros without eunuchs,” said Lysono Maar. “Why shouldn’t the sixth Aegon do the same?”

“The plan—”

“Which plan?” said Tristan Rivers. “The fat man’s plan? The one that changes every time the moon turns? First Viserys Targaryen was to join us with fifty thousand Dothraki screamers at his back. Then the Beggar King was dead, and it was to be the sister, a pliable young child queen who was on her way to Pentos with three new-hatched dragons. Instead the girl turns up on Slaver’s Bay and leaves a string of burning cities in her wake, and the fat man decides we should meet her by Volantis. Now that plan is in ruins as well.

“I have had enough of Illyrio’s plans. Robert Baratheon won the Iron Throne without the benefit of dragons. We can do the same. And if I am wrong and the realm does not rise for us, we can always retreat back across the narrow sea, as Bittersteel once did, and others after him.”

Strickland shook his head stubbornly. “The risk—”

“—is not what it was, now that Tywin Lannister is dead. The Seven Kingdoms will never be more ripe for conquest. Another boy king sits the Iron Throne, this one even younger than the last, and rebels are thick upon the ground as autumn leaves.”

ADWD Tyrion VI

“And when the pisswater prince was safely dead, the eunuch smuggled you across the narrow sea to his fat friend the cheesemonger, who hid you on a poleboat and found an exile lord willing to call himself your father. It does make for a splendid story, and the singers will make much of your escape once you take the Iron Throne … assuming that our fair Daenerys takes you for her consort.”

“She will. She must.”

“Must?” Tyrion made a tsking sound. “That is not a word queens like to hear. You are her perfect prince, agreed, bright and bold and comely as any maid could wish. Daenerys Targaryen is no maid, however. She is the widow of a Dothraki khal, a mother of dragons and sacker of cities, Aegon the Conqueror with teats. She may not prove as willing as you wish.”

“She’ll be willing.” Prince Aegon sounded shocked. It was plain that he had never before considered the possibility that his bride-to-be might refuse him. “You don’t know her.” He picked up his heavy horse and put it down with a thump.

The dwarf shrugged. “I know that she spent her childhood in exile, impoverished, living on dreams and schemes, running from one city to the next, always fearful, never safe, friendless but for a brother who was by all accounts half-mad … a brother who sold her maidenhood to the Dothraki for the promise of an army. I know that somewhere out upon the grass her dragons hatched, and so did she. I know she is proud. How not? What else was left her but pride? I know she is strong. How not? The Dothraki despise weakness. If Daenerys had been weak, she would have perished with Viserys. I know she is fierce. Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen are proof enough of that. She has crossed the grasslands and the red waste, survived assassins and conspiracies and fell sorceries, grieved for a brother and a husband and a son, trod the cities of the slavers to dust beneath her dainty sandaled feet. Now, how do you suppose this queen will react when you turn up with your begging bowl in hand and say, ‘Good morrow to you, Auntie. I am your nephew, Aegon, returned from the dead. I’ve been hiding on a poleboat all my life, but now I’ve washed the blue dye from my hair and I’d like a dragon, please … and oh, did I mention, my claim to the Iron Throne is stronger than your own?’ ”

Aegon’s mouth twisted in fury. “I will not come to my aunt a beggar. I will come to her a kinsman, with an army.”

“A small army.” There, that’s made him good and angry. The dwarf could not help but think of Joffrey. I have a gift for angering princes. “Queen Daenerys has a large one, and no thanks to you.” Tyrion moved his crossbows.

“Say what you want. She will be my bride, Lord Connington will see to it. I trust him as much as if he were my own blood.”

~

“But,” Prince Aegon said, “without Daenerys and her dragons, how could we hope to win?”

“You do not need to win,” Tyrion told him. “All you need to do is raise your banners, rally your supporters, and hold, until Daenerys arrives to join her strength to yours.”

“You said she might not have me.”

“Perhaps I overstated. She may take pity on you when you come begging for her hand.” The dwarf shrugged. “Do you want to wager your throne upon a woman’s whim? Go to Westeros, though … ah, then you are a rebel, not a beggar. Bold, reckless, a true scion of House Targaryen, walking in the footsteps of Aegon the Conqueror. A dragon.

“I told you, I know our little queen. Let her hear that her brother Rhaegar’s murdered son is still alive, that this brave boy has raised the dragon standard of her forebears in Westeros once more, that he is fighting a desperate war to avenge his father and reclaim the Iron Throne for House Targaryen, hard-pressed on every side … and she will fly to your side as fast as wind and water can carry her. You are the last of her line, and this Mother of Dragons, this Breaker of Chains, is above all a rescuer. The girl who drowned the slaver cities in blood rather than leave strangers to their chains can scarcely abandon her own brother’s son in his hour of peril. And when she reaches Westeros, and meets you for the first time, you will meet as equals, man and woman, not queen and supplicant. How can she help but love you then, I ask you?”

~

“Then rouse him. We have tidings he’d best hear. The queen’s name is on every tongue in Selhorys. They say she still sits in Meereen, sore beset. If the talk in the markets can be believed, Old Volantis will soon join the war against her.”

Haldon pursed his lips. “The gossip of fishmongers is not to be relied on. Still, I suppose Griff will want to hear. You know how he is.” The Halfmaester went below.

The girl never started for the west. No doubt she had good reasons. Between Meereen and Volantis lay five hundred leagues of deserts, mountains, swamps, and ruins, plus Mantarys with its sinister repute. A city of monsters, they say, but if she marches overland, where else is she to turn for food and water? The sea would be swifter, but if she does not have the ships …

~

“That was another age. Come, we’d best hear what that priest is going on about. I swear I heard the name Daenerys.”

Across the square they joined the growing throng outside the red temple. With the locals towering above him on every hand, the little man found it hard to see much beyond their arses. He could hear most every word the priest was saying, but that was not to say he understood them. “Do you understand what he is saying?” he asked Haldon in the Common Tongue.

“I would if I did not have a dwarf piping in my ear.”

“I do not pipe.” Tyrion crossed his arms and looked behind him, studying the faces of the men and women who had stopped to listen. Everywhere he turned, he saw tattoos. Slaves. Four of every five of them are slaves.

“The priest is calling on the Volantenes to go to war,” the Halfmaester told him, “but on the side of right, as soldiers of the Lord of Light, R’hllor who made the sun and stars and fights eternally against the darkness. Nyessos and Malaquo have turned away from the light, he says, their hearts darkened by the yellow harpies from the east. He says …”

“Dragons. I understood that word. He said dragons.”

“Aye. The dragons have come to carry her to glory.”

“Her. Daenerys?”

Haldon nodded. “Benerro has sent forth the word from Volantis. Her coming is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. From smoke and salt was she born to make the world anew. She is Azor Ahai returned … and her triumph over darkness will bring a summer that will never end … death itself will bend its knee, and all those who die fighting in her cause shall be reborn …”

“Do I have to be reborn in this same body?” asked Tyrion. The crowd was growing thicker. He could feel them pressing in around them. “Who is Benerro?”

Haldon raised an eyebrow. “High Priest of the red temple in Volantis. Flame of Truth, Light of Wisdom, First Servant of the Lord of Light, Slave of R’hllor.”

The only red priest Tyrion had ever known was Thoros of Myr, the portly, genial, wine-stained roisterer who had loitered about Robert’s court swilling the king’s finest vintages and setting his sword on fire for mêlées. “Give me priests who are fat and corrupt and cynical,” he told Haldon, “the sort who like to sit on soft satin cushions, nibble sweetmeats, and diddle little boys. It’s the ones who believe in gods who make the trouble.”

~

“What news from downriver? Will it be war?”

Qavo shrugged. “The Yunkai’i would have it so. They style themselves the Wise Masters. Of their wisdom I cannot speak, but they do not lack for cunning. Their envoy came to us with chests of gold and gems and two hundred slaves, nubile girls and smooth-skinned boys trained in the way of the seven sighs. I am told his feasts are memorable and his bribes lavish.”

“The Yunkishmen have bought your triarchs?”

“Only Nyessos.” Qavo removed the screen and studied the placement of Tyrion’s army. “Malaquo may be old and toothless, but he is a tiger still, and Doniphos will not be returned as triarch. The city thirsts for war.”

“Why?” wondered Tyrion. “Meereen is long leagues across the sea. How has this sweet child queen offended Old Volantis?”

“Sweet?” Qavo laughed. “If even half the stories coming back from Slaver’s Bay are true, this child is a monster. They say that she is blood-thirsty, that those who speak against her are impaled on spikes to die lingering deaths. They say she is a sorceress who feeds her dragons on the flesh of newborn babes, an oathbreaker who mocks the gods, breaks truces, threatens envoys, and turns on those who have served her loyally. They say her lust cannot be sated, that she mates with men, women, eunuchs, even dogs and children, and woe betide the lover who fails to satisfy her. She gives her body to men to take their souls in thrall.”

Oh, good, thought Tyrion. If she gives her body to me, she is welcome to my soul, small and stunted though it is.

“They say,” said Haldon. “By they, you mean the slavers, the exiles she drove from Astapor and Meereen. Mere calumnies.”

“The best calumnies are spiced with truth,” suggested Qavo, “but the girl’s true sin cannot be denied. This arrogant child has taken it upon herself to smash the slave trade, but that traffic was never confined to Slaver’s Bay. It was part of the sea of trade that spanned the world, and the dragon queen has clouded the water. Behind the Black Wall, lords of ancient blood sleep poorly, listening as their kitchen slaves sharpen their long knives. Slaves grow our food, clean our streets, teach our young. They guard our walls, row our galleys, fight our battles. And now when they look east, they see this young queen shining from afar, this breaker of chains. The Old Blood cannot suffer that. Poor men hate her too. Even the vilest beggar stands higher than a slave. This dragon queen would rob him of that consolation.”

Tyrion advanced his spearmen. Qavo replied with his light horse. Tyrion moved his crossbowmen up a square and said, “The red priest outside seemed to think Volantis should fight for this silver queen, not against her.”

“The red priests would be wise to hold their tongues,” said Qavo Nogarys. “Already there has been fighting between their followers and those who worship other gods. Benerro’s rantings will only serve to bring a savage wrath down upon his head.”

“What rantings?” the dwarf asked, toying with his rabble.

The Volantene waved a hand. “In Volantis, thousands of slaves and freedmen crowd the temple plaza every night to hear Benerro shriek of bleeding stars and a sword of fire that will cleanse the world. He has been preaching that Volantis will surely burn if the triarchs take up arms against the silver queen.”

“That’s a prophecy even I could make. Ah, supper.”

Supper was a plate of roasted goat served on a bed of sliced onions. The meat was spiced and fragrant, charred outside and red and juicy within. Tyrion plucked at a piece. It was so hot it burned his fingers, but so good he could not help but reach for another chunk. He washed it down with the pale green Volantene liquor, the closest thing he’d had to wine for ages. “Very good,” he said, plucking up his dragon. “The most powerful piece in the game,” he announced, as he removed one of Qavo’s elephants. “And Daenerys Targaryen has three, it’s said.”

“Three,” Qavo allowed, “against thrice three thousand enemies. Grazdan mo Eraz was not the only envoy sent out from the Yellow City. When the Wise Masters move against Meereen, the legions of New Ghis will fight beside them. Tolosi. Elyrians. Even the Dothraki.”

~

“You’re mine, Hugor.”

Tyrion could no more outrun him than outfight him. Drunk as he was, he could not even hope to outwit him. He spread his hands. “And what do you mean to do with me?”

“Deliver you,” the knight said, “to the queen.”

ADWD Davos II

The old fellow made a face. “Prince Viserys weren’t the only dragon, were he? Are we sure they killed Prince Rhaegar’s son? A babe, he was.”

“Wasn’t there some princess too?” asked a whore. She was the same one who’d said the meat was grey.

“Two,” said the old fellow. “One was Rhaegar’s daughter, t’other was his sister.”

“Daena,” said the riverman. “That was the sister. Daena of Dragon-stone. Or was it Daera?”

“Daena was old King Baelor’s wife,” said the oarsman. “I rowed on a ship named for her once. The Princess Daena.”

“If she was a king’s wife, she’d be a queen.”

“Baelor never had a queen. He was holy.”

“Don’t mean he never wed his sister,” said the whore. “He just never bedded her, is all. When they made him king, he locked her up in a tower. His other sisters too. There was three.”

“Daenela,” the proprietor said loudly. “That was her name. The Mad King’s daughter, I mean, not Baelor’s bloody wife.”

“Daenerys,” Davos said. “She was named for the Daenerys who wed the Prince of Dorne during the reign of Daeron the Second. I don’t know what became of her.”

"I do," said the man who'd started all the talk of dragons, a Braavosi oarsman in a somber woolen jack. "When we were down to Pentos we moored beside a trader called the Sloe-Eyed Maid, and I got to drinking with her captain's steward. He told me a pretty tale about some slip of a girl who come aboard in Qarth, to try and book passage back to Westeros for her and three dragons. Silver hair she had, and purple eyes. 'I took her to the captain my own self,' this steward swore to me, 'but he wasn't having none of that. There's more profit in cloves and saffron, he tells me, and spices won't set fire to your sails.' "

ADWD Tyrion III

Griff ignored the request. Instead he touched the letter to the candle flame and watched the parchment blacken, curl, and flare up. “There is blood between Targaryen and Lannister. Why would you support the cause of Queen Daenerys?”

“For gold and glory,” the dwarf said cheerfully. “Oh, and hate. If you had ever met my sister, you would understand.”

ADWD The Merchant's Man

That was before Prince Doran had summoned him to the Water Gardens. And now the most beautiful woman in the world was waiting in Meereen, and he meant to do his duty and claim her for his bride. She will not refuse me. She will honor the agreement. Daenerys Targaryen would need Dorne to win the Seven Kingdoms, and that meant that she would need him. It does not mean that she will love me, though. She may not even like me.

~

“Perhaps your silver queen would like a monkey,” said Gerris.

Quentyn had no idea what Daenerys Targaryen might like. He had promised his father that he would bring her back to Dorne, but more and more he wondered if he was equal to the task.

~

“And if Daenerys is dead before we reach her?” Quentyn said. “We must have a ship. Even if it is Adventure.”

Gerris laughed. “You must be more desperate for Daenerys than I knew if you’d endure that stench for months on end. After three days, I’d be begging them to murder me. No, my prince, I pray you, not Adventure.”

ADWD Tyrion II

“How many days until we reach the river?” he asked Illyrio that evening. “At this pace, your queen’s dragons will be larger than Aegon’s three before I can lay eyes upon them.”

“Would it were so. A large dragon is more fearsome than a small one.” The magister shrugged. “Much as it would please me to welcome Queen Daenerys to Volantis, I must rely on you and Griff for that. I can serve her best in Pentos, smoothing the way for her return. So long as I am with you, though … well, an old fat man must have his comforts, yes? Come, drink a cup of wine.”

“Tell me,” Tyrion said as he drank, “why should a magister of Pentos give three figs who wears the crown in Westeros? Where is the gain for you in this venture, my lord?”

The fat man dabbed grease from his lips. “I am an old man, grown weary of this world and its treacheries. Is it so strange that I should wish to do some good before my days are done, to help a sweet young girl regain her birthright?”

Next you will be offering me a suit of magic armor and a palace in Valyria. “If Daenerys is no more than a sweet young girl, the Iron Throne will cut her into sweet young pieces.”

“Fear not, my little friend. The blood of Aegon the Dragon flows in her veins.”

Along with the blood of Aegon the Unworthy, Maegor the Cruel, and Baelor the Befuddled. “Tell me more of her.”

The fat man grew pensive. “Daenerys was half a child when she came to me, yet fairer even than my second wife, so lovely I was tempted to claim her for myself. Such a fearful, furtive thing, however, I knew I should get no joy from coupling with her. Instead I summoned a bed-warmer and fucked her vigorously until the madness passed. If truth be told, I did not think Daenerys would survive for long amongst the horselords.”

“That did not stop you selling her to Khal Drogo …”

“Dothraki neither buy nor sell. Say rather that her brother Viserys gave her to Drogo to win the khal’s friendship. A vain young man, and greedy. Viserys lusted for his father’s throne, but he lusted for Daenerys too, and was loath to give her up. The night before the princess wed he tried to steal into her bed, insisting that if he could not have her hand, he would claim her maidenhead. Had I not taken the precaution of posting guards upon her door, Viserys might have undone years of planning.”

“He sounds an utter fool.”

“Viserys was Mad Aerys’s son, just so. Daenerys … Daenerys is quite different.” He popped a roasted lark into his mouth and crunched it noisily, bones and all. “The frightened child who sheltered in my manse died on the Dothraki sea, and was reborn in blood and fire. This dragon queen who wears her name is a true Targaryen. When I sent ships to bring her home, she turned toward Slaver’s Bay. In a short span of days she conquered Astapor, made Yunkai bend the knee, and sacked Meereen. Mantarys will be next, if she marches west along the old Valyrian roads. If she comes by sea, well … her fleet must take on food and water at Volantis.”

~

“For that matter, why would you? Slavery may be forbidden by the laws of Pentos, yet you have a finger in that trade as well, and maybe a whole hand. And yet you conspire for the dragon queen, and not against her. Why? What do you hope to gain from Queen Daenerys?”

“Are we back to that again? You are a persistent little man.” Illyrio gave a laugh and slapped his belly. “As you will. The Beggar King swore that I should be his master of coin, and a lordly lord as well. Once he wore his golden crown, I should have my choice of castles … even Casterly Rock, if I desired.”

Tyrion snorted wine back up the scarred stump that had been his nose. “My father would have loved to hear that.”

“Your lord father had no cause for concern. Why would I want a rock? My manse is large enough for any man, and more comfortable than your drafty Westerosi castles. Master of coin, though …” The fat man peeled another egg. “I am fond of coins. Is there any sound as sweet as the clink of gold on gold?”

A sister’s screams. “Are you quite certain that Daenerys will make good her brother’s promises?”

“She will, or she will not.” Illyrio bit the egg in half. “I told you, my little friend, not all that a man does is done for gain. Believe as you wish, but even fat old fools like me have friends, and debts of affection to repay.”

Liar, thought Tyrion. There is something in this venture worth more to you than coin or castles.

~

“I dreamed about the queen,” he said. “I was on my knees before her, swearing my allegiance, but she mistook me for my brother, Jaime, and fed me to her dragons.”

“Let us hope this dream was not prophetic. You are a clever imp, just as Varys said, and Daenerys will have need of clever men about her. Ser Barristan is a valiant knight and true; but none, I think, has ever called him cunning.”

“Knights know only one way to solve a problem. They couch their lances and charge. A dwarf has a different way of looking at the world. What of you, though? You are a clever man yourself.”

“You flatter me.” Illyrio waggled his hand. “Alas, I am not made for travel, so I will send you to Daenerys in my stead. You did Her Grace a great service when you slew your father, and it is my hope that you will do her many more. Daenerys is not the fool her brother was. She will make good use of you.”

~

“Our last news of Queen Daenerys is old and stale, I fear. By now she will have left Meereen, we must assume. She has her host at last, a ragged host of sellswords, Dothraki horselords, and Unsullied infantry, and she will no doubt lead them west, to take back her father’s throne.” Magister Illyrio twisted open a pot of garlic snails, sniffed at them, and smiled. “At Volantis, you will have fresh tidings of Daenerys, we must hope,” he said, as he sucked one from its shell. “Dragons and young girls are both capricious, and it may be that you will need to adjust your plans. Griff will know what to do. Will you have a snail? The garlic is from my own gardens.”

I could ride a snail and make a better pace than this litter of yours. Tyrion waved the dish away. “You place a deal of trust in this man Griff. Another friend of your childhood?”

“No. A sellsword, you would call him, but Westerosi born. Daenerys needs men worthy of her cause.”

~

“Black or red, a dragon is still a dragon. When Maelys the Monstrous died upon the Stepstones, it was the end of the male line of House Blackfyre.” The cheesemonger smiled through his forked beard. “And Daenerys will give the exiles what Bittersteel and the Blackfyres never could. She will take them home.”

A Feast for Crows

AFFC Samwell V

He held back only the secrets that he was sworn to keep, about Bran Stark and his companions and the babes Jon Snow had swapped. “Daenerys is the only hope,” he concluded. “Aemon said the Citadel must send her a maester at once, to bring her home to Westeros before it is too late.”

~

“Maester Aemon believed that Daenerys Targaryen was the fulfillment of a prophecy ... her, not Stannis, nor Prince Rhaegar, nor the princeling whose head was dashed against the wall.”

“Born amidst salt and smoke, beneath a bleeding star. I know the prophecy.” Marwyn turned his head and spat a gob of red phlegm onto the floor. “Not that I would trust it. Gorghan of Old Ghis once wrote that a prophecy is like a treacherous woman. She takes your member in her mouth, and you moan with the pleasure of it and think, how sweet, how fine, how good this is ... and then her teeth snap shut and your moans turn to screams. That is the nature of prophecy, said Gorghan. Prophecy will bite your prick off every time.” He chewed a bit. “Still ...”

Alleras stepped up next to Sam. “Aemon would have gone to her if he had the strength. He wanted us to send a maester to her, to counsel her and protect her and fetch her safely home.”

AFFC The Princess in the Tower

“...He has gone to bring us back our heart’s desire.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What is our heart’s desire?”

“Vengeance.” His voice was soft, as if he were afraid that someone might be listening. “Justice.” Prince Doran pressed the onyx dragon into her palm with his swollen, gouty fingers, and whispered, “Fire and blood.”

AFFC Samwell IV

“No one ever looked for a girl,” he said. “It was a prince that was promised, not a princess. Rhaegar, I thought ... the smoke was from the fire that devoured Summerhall on the day of his birth, the salt from the tears shed for those who died. He shared my belief when he was young, but later he became persuaded that it was his own son who fulfilled the prophecy, for a comet had been seen above King’s Landing on the night Aegon was conceived, and Rhaegar was certain the bleeding star had to be a comet. What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise! The error crept in from the translation. Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame. The language misled us all for a thousand years. Daenerys is the one, born amidst salt and smoke. The dragons prove it.” Just talking of her seemed to make him stronger. “I must go to her. I must. Would that I was even ten years younger.”

~

“I will add my voice to yours, maester. We will both tell them, the two of us together.”

“No,” the old man said. “It must be you. Tell them. The prophecy ... my brother’s dream ... Lady Melisandre has misread the signs. Stannis ... Stannis has some of the dragon blood in him, yes. His brothers did as well. Rhaelle, Egg’s little girl, she was how they came by it ... their father’s mother ... she used to call me Uncle Maester when she was a little girl. I remembered that, so I allowed myself to hope ... perhaps I wanted to ... we all deceive ourselves, when we want to believe. Melisandre most of all, I think. The sword is wrong, she has to know that . . . light without heat ... an empty glamor ... the sword is wrong, and the false light can only lead us deeper into darkness, Sam. Daenerys is our hope. Tell them that, at the Citadel. Make them listen. They must send her a maester. Daenerys must be counseled, taught, protected. For all these years I’ve lingered, waiting, watching, and now that the day has dawned I am too old. I am dying, Sam.”

AFFC Cat of the Canals

Sometimes she brought back sailor’s tales, of strange and wondrous happenings from the wide wet world beyond the isles of Braavos, wars and rains of toads and dragons hatching.

AFFC The Reaver

“It was not the god who spoke. Euron is known to keep wizards and foul sorcerers on that red ship of his. They sent some spell among us, so we could not hear the sea. The captains and the kings were drunk with all this talk of dragons.”

“Drunk, and fearful of that horn. You heard the sound it made. It makes no matter. Euron is our king.”

~

“It is daring to sail out of sight of land, so no word of our coming could reach these islands before us,” he growled, “but crossing half the world to hunt for dragons, that is something else.”

~

“A king must have a wife, to give him heirs. Brother, I have need of you. Will you go to Slaver’s Bay and bring my love to me?”

~

“No, to make an heir that’s worthy of him, I need a different woman. When the kraken weds the dragon, brother, let all the world beware.”

“What dragon?” said Victarion, frowning.

“The last of her line. They say she is the fairest woman in the world. Her hair is silver-gold, and her eyes are amethysts ... but you need not take my word for it, brother. Go to Slaver’s Bay, behold her beauty, and bring her back to me.”

“Why should I?” Victarion demanded.

“For love. For duty. Because your king commands it.” Euron chuckled. “And for the Seastone Chair. It is yours, once I claim the Iron Throne. You shall follow me as I followed Balon ... and your own trueborn sons shall one day follow you.”

My own sons. But to have a trueborn son a man must first have a wife. Victarion had no luck with wives. Euron’s gifts are poisoned, he reminded himself, but still ...

“The choice is yours, brother. Live a thrall or die a king. Do you dare to fly? Unless you take the leap, you’ll never know.”

Euron’s smiling eye was bright with mockery. “Or do I ask too much of you? It is a fearsome thing to sail beyond Valyria.”

“I could sail the Iron Fleet to hell if need be.” When Victarion opened his hand, his palm was red with blood. “I’ll go to Slaver’s Bay, aye. I’ll find this dragon woman, and I’ll bring her back.” But not for you. You stole my wife and despoiled her, so I’ll have yours. The fairest woman in the world, for me.

AFFC The Drowned Man

“Aegon Targaryen conquered Westeros with dragons.”

“And so shall we,” Euron Greyjoy promised. “That horn you heard I found amongst the smoking ruins that were Valyria, where no man has dared to walk but me. You heard its call, and felt its power. It is a dragon horn, bound with bands of red gold and Valyrian steel graven with enchantments. The dragonlords of old sounded such horns, before the Doom devoured them. With this horn, ironmen, I can bind dragons to my will.”

Asha laughed aloud. “A horn to bind goats to your will would be of more use, Crow’s Eye. There are no more dragons.”

“Again, girl, you are wrong. There are three, and I know where to find them. Surely that is worth a driftwood crown.”

 AFFC Cersei V

“Do you have any news of more import?”

“The slave revolt in Astapor has spread to Meereen, it would seem. Sailors off a dozen ships speak of dragons ...”

“Harpies. It is harpies in Meereen.” She remembered that from somewhere. Meereen was at the far end of the world, out east beyond Valyria. “Let the slaves revolt. Why should I care? We keep no slaves in Westeros. Is that all you have for me?”

AFFC The Queenmaker

If the sailors could be believed, the east was seething with wonders and terrors: a slave revolt in Astapor, dragons in Qarth, grey plague in Yi Ti. A new corsair king had risen in the Basilisk Isles and raided Tall Trees Town, and in Qohor followers of the red priests had rioted and tried to burn down the Black Goat.

AFFC Cersei IV

I hesitate to take up the council’s time with trifles, but there has been some queer talk heard along the docks of late. Sailors from the east. They speak of dragons ...”

“... and manticores, no doubt, and bearded snarks?” Cersei chuckled. “Come back to me when you hear talk of dwarfs, my lord.”

AFFC Prologue

“The dragon has three heads,” he announced in his soft Dornish drawl.

“Is this a riddle?” Roone wanted to know. “Sphinxes always speak in riddles in the tales.”

“No riddle.” [...]

“No dragon has ever had three heads except on shields and banners,” Armen the Acolyte said firmly. “That was a heraldic charge, no more. Furthermore, the Targaryens are all dead.”

“Not all,” said Alleras. “The Beggar King had a sister.”

“I thought her head was smashed against a wall,” said Roone.

“No,” said Alleras. “It was Prince Rhaegar’s young son Aegon whose head was dashed against the wall by the Lion of Lannister’s brave men. We speak of Rhaegar’s sister, born on Dragonstone before its fall. The one they called Daenerys.”

“The Stormborn. I recall her now.” Mollander lifted his tankard high, sloshing the cider that remained. “Here’s to her!” He gulped, slammed his empty tankard down, belched, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Where’s Rosey? Our rightful queen deserves another round of cider, wouldn’t you say?”

A Storm of Swords

ASOS Tyrion III

The eunuch drew a parchment from his sleeve. “A kraken has been seen off the Fingers.” He giggled. “Not a Greyjoy, mind you, a true kraken. It attacked an Ibbenese whaler and pulled it under. There is fighting on the Stepstones, and a new war between Tyrosh and Lys seems likely. Both hope to win Myr as ally. Sailors back from the Jade Sea report that a three-headed dragon has hatched in Qarth, and is the wonder of that city—”

“Dragons and krakens do not interest me, regardless of the number of their heads,” said Lord Tywin. “Have your whisperers perchance found some trace of my brother’s son?”

“Alas, our beloved Tyrek has quite vanished, the poor brave lad.” Varys sounded close to tears.

“Tywin,” Ser Kevan said, before Lord Tywin could vent his obvious displeasure, “some of the gold cloaks who deserted during the battle have drifted back to barracks, thinking to take up duty once again. Ser Addam wishes to know what to do with them.”

“They might have endangered Joff with their cowardice,” Cersei said at once. “I want them put to death.”

Varys sighed. “They have surely earned death, Your Grace, none can deny it. And yet, perhaps we might be wiser to send them to the Night’s Watch. We have had disturbing messages from the Wall of late. Of wildlings astir ...”

“Wildlings, krakens, and dragons.” Mace Tyrell chuckled. “Why, is there anyone not stirring?”

A Clash of Kings

ACOK Bran I

“Wolves often howl at the moon. These are howling at the comet. See how bright it is, Bran? Perchance they think it is the moon.”

 When Bran repeated that to Osha, she laughed aloud. “Your wolves have more wit than your maester,” the wildling woman said. “They know truths the grey man has forgotten.” The way she said it made him shiver, and when he asked what the comet meant, she answered, “Blood and fire, boy, and nothing sweet.”

 Bran asked Septon Chayle about the comet while they were sorting through some scrolls snatched from the library fire. “It is the sword that slays the season,” he replied, and soon after the white raven came from Oldtown bringing word of autumn, so doubtless he was right.

 Though Old Nan did not think so, and she’d lived longer than any of them. “Dragons,” she said, lifting her head and sniffing. She was near blind and could not see the comet, yet she claimed she could smell it. “It be dragons, boy,” she insisted. 

A Game of Thrones

AGOT Eddard XIII

“The girl. Daenerys. Only a child, you were right … that’s why, the girl … the gods sent the boar … sent to punish me …” The king coughed, bringing up blood. “Wrong, it was wrong, I … only a girl … Varys, Littlefinger, even my brother … worthless … no one to tell me no but you, Ned … only you …” He lifted his hand, the gesture pained and feeble. “Paper and ink. There, on the table. Write what I tell you.”

~

“The girl,” the king said. “Daenerys. Let her live. If you can, if it … not too late … talk to them … Varys, Littlefinger … don’t let them kill her. And help my son, Ned. Make him be … better than me.”

~

Certainly Varys had once been young. Ned doubted that he had ever been innocent. “You mention children. Robert had a change of heart concerning Daenerys Targaryen. Whatever arrangements you made, I want unmade. At once.”

“Alas,” said Varys. “At once may be too late. I fear those birds have flown. But I shall do what I can, my lord. With your leave.”

AGOT Eddard X

“The Targaryen girl—”

The king groaned. “Seven hells, don’t start with her again. That’s done, I’ll hear no more of it.”

“Why would you want me as your Hand, if you refuse to listen to my counsel?”

“Why?” Robert laughed. “Why not? Someone has to rule this damnable kingdom.”

AGOT Eddard VIII

“Robert, I beg of you,” Ned pleaded, “hear what you are saying. You are talking of murdering a child.”

“The whore is pregnant!” The king’s fist slammed down on the council table loud as a thunderclap. “I warned you this would happen, Ned. Back in the barrowlands, I warned you, but you did not care to hear it. Well, you’ll hear it now. I want them dead, mother and child both, and that fool Viserys as well. Is that plain enough for you? I want them dead.”

The other councillors were all doing their best to pretend that they were somewhere else. No doubt they were wiser than he was. Eddard Stark had seldom felt quite so alone. “You will dishonor yourself forever if you do this.”

“Then let it be on my head, so long as it is done. I am not so blind that I cannot see the shadow of the axe when it is hanging over my own neck.”

“There is no axe,” Ned told his king. “Only the shadow of a shadow, twenty years removed … if it exists at all.”

“If?” Varys asked softly, wringing powdered hands together. “My lord, you wrong me. Would I bring lies to king and council?”

Ned looked at the eunuch coldly. “You would bring us the whisperings of a traitor half a world away, my lord. Perhaps Mormont is wrong. Perhaps he is lying.”

“Ser Jorah would not dare deceive me,” Varys said with a sly smile. “Rely on it, my lord. The princess is with child.”

“So you say. If you are wrong, we need not fear. If the girl miscarries, we need not fear. If she births a daughter in place of a son, we need not fear. If the babe dies in infancy, we need not fear.”

“But if it is a boy?” Robert insisted. “If he lives?”

“The narrow sea would still lie between us. I shall fear the Dothraki the day they teach their horses to run on water.”

The king took a swallow of wine and glowered at Ned across the council table. “So you would counsel me to do nothing until the dragonspawn has landed his army on my shores, is that it?”

“This ‘dragonspawn’ is in his mother’s belly,” Ned said. “Even Aegon did no conquering until after he was weaned.”

“Gods! You are stubborn as an aurochs, Stark.” The king looked around the council table. “Have the rest of you mislaid your tongues? Will no one talk sense to this frozen-faced fool?”

Varys gave the king an unctuous smile and laid a soft hand on Ned’s sleeve. “I understand your qualms, Lord Eddard, truly I do. It gave me no joy to bring this grievous news to council. It is a terrible thing we contemplate, a vile thing. Yet we who presume to rule must do vile things for the good of the realm, howevermuch it pains us.”

Lord Renly shrugged. “The matter seems simple enough to me. We ought to have had Viserys and his sister killed years ago, but His Grace my brother made the mistake of listening to Jon Arryn.”

“Mercy is never a mistake, Lord Renly,” Ned replied. “On the Trident, Ser Barristan here cut down a dozen good men, Robert’s friends and mine. When they brought him to us, grievously wounded and near death, Roose Bolton urged us to cut his throat, but your brother said, ‘I will not kill a man for loyalty, nor for fighting well,’ and sent his own maester to tend Ser Barristan’s wounds.” He gave the king a long cool look. “Would that man were here today.”

Robert had shame enough to blush. “It was not the same,” he complained. “Ser Barristan was a knight of the Kingsguard.”

“Whereas Daenerys is a fourteen-year-old girl.” Ned knew he was pushing this well past the point of wisdom, yet he could not keep silent. “Robert, I ask you, what did we rise against Aerys Targaryen for, if not to put an end to the murder of children?”

“To put an end to Targaryens!” the king growled.

“Your Grace, I never knew you to fear Rhaegar.” Ned fought to keep the scorn out of his voice, and failed. “Have the years so unmanned you that you tremble at the shadow of an unborn child?”

Robert purpled. “No more, Ned,” he warned, pointing. “Not another word. Have you forgotten who is king here?”

“No, Your Grace,” Ned replied. “Have you?”

“Enough!” the king bellowed. “I am sick of talk. I’ll be done with this, or be damned. What say you all?”

“She must be killed,” Lord Renly declared.

“We have no choice,” murmured Varys. “Sadly, sadly …”

Ser Barristan Selmy raised his pale blue eyes from the table and said, “Your Grace, there is honor in facing an enemy on the battlefield, but none in killing him in his mother’s womb. Forgive me, but I must stand with Lord Eddard.”

Grand Maester Pycelle cleared his throat, a process that seemed to take some minutes. “My order serves the realm, not the ruler. Once I counseled King Aerys as loyally as I counsel King Robert now, so I bear this girl child of his no ill will. Yet I ask you this—should war come again, how many soldiers will die? How many towns will burn? How many children will be ripped from their mothers to perish on the end of a spear?” He stroked his luxuriant white beard, infinitely sad, infinitely weary. “Is it not wiser, even kinder, that Daenerys Targaryen should die now so that tens of thousands might live?”

“Kinder,” Varys said. “Oh, well and truly spoken, Grand Maester. It is so true. Should the gods in their caprice grant Daenerys Targaryen a son, the realm must bleed.”

Littlefinger was the last. As Ned looked to him, Lord Petyr stifled a yawn. “When you find yourself in bed with an ugly woman, the best thing to do is close your eyes and get on with it,” he declared. “Waiting won’t make the maid any prettier. Kiss her and be done with it.”

“Kiss her?” Ser Barristan repeated, aghast.

“A steel kiss,” said Littlefinger.

Robert turned to face his Hand. “Well, there it is, Ned. You and Selmy stand alone on this matter. The only question that remains is, who can we find to kill her?”

“Mormont craves a royal pardon,” Lord Renly reminded them.

“Desperately,” Varys said, “yet he craves life even more. By now, the princess nears Vaes Dothrak, where it is death to draw a blade. If I told you what the Dothraki would do to the poor man who used one on a khaleesi, none of you would sleep tonight.” He stroked a powdered cheek. “Now, poison … the tears of Lys, let us say. Khal Drogo need never know it was not a natural death.”

Grand Maester Pycelle’s sleepy eyes flicked open. He squinted suspiciously at the eunuch.

“Poison is a coward’s weapon,” the king complained.

Ned had heard enough. “You send hired knives to kill a fourteen-year-old girl and still quibble about honor?” He pushed back his chair and stood. “Do it yourself, Robert. The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. Look her in the eyes before you kill her. See her tears, hear her last words. You owe her that much at least.”

“Gods,” the king swore, the word exploding out of him as if he could barely contain his fury. “You mean it, damn you.” He reached for the flagon of wine at his elbow, found it empty, and flung it away to shatter against the wall. “I am out of wine and out of patience. Enough of this. Just have it done.”

“I will not be part of murder, Robert. Do as you will, but do not ask me to fix my seal to it.”

~

“After you stormed out, it was left to me to convince them not to hire the Faceless Men,” he continued blithely. “Instead Varys will quietly let it be known that we’ll make a lord of whoever does in the Targaryen girl.”

Ned was disgusted. “So now we grant titles to assassins.”

Littlefinger shrugged. “Titles are cheap. The Faceless Men are expensive. If truth be told, I did the Targaryen girl more good than you with all your talk of honor. Let some sellsword drunk on visions of lordship try to kill her. Likely he’ll make a botch of it, and afterward the Dothraki will be on their guard. If we’d sent a Faceless Man after her, she’d be as good as buried.”

AGOT Eddard IV

“Why should Tyrion Lannister want Bran dead? The boy has never done him harm.”

“Do you Starks have nought but snow between your ears?” Littlefinger asked. “The Imp would never have acted alone.”

Ned rose and paced the length of the room. “If the queen had a role in this or, gods forbid, the king himself … no, I will not believe that.” Yet even as he said the words, he remembered that chill morning on the barrowlands, and Robert’s talk of sending hired knives after the Targaryen princess. He remembered Rhaegar’s infant son, the red ruin of his skull, and the way the king had turned away, as he had turned away in Darry’s audience hall not so long ago. He could still hear Sansa pleading, as Lyanna had pleaded once.

AGOT Eddard II

“Do you remember Ser Jorah Mormont?”

“Would that I might forget him,” Ned said bluntly. The Mormonts of Bear Island were an old house, proud and honorable, but their lands were cold and distant and poor. Ser Jorah had tried to swell the family coffers by selling some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver. As the Mormonts were bannermen to the Starks, his crime had dishonored the north. Ned had made the long journey west to Bear Island, only to find when he arrived that Jorah had taken ship beyond the reach of Ice and the king’s justice. Five years had passed since then.

“Ser Jorah is now in Pentos, anxious to earn a royal pardon that would allow him to return from exile,” Robert explained. “Lord Varys makes good use of him.”

“So the slaver has become a spy,” Ned said with distaste. He handed the letter back. “I would rather he become a corpse.”

“Varys tells me that spies are more useful than corpses,” Robert said. “Jorah aside, what do you make of his report?”

“Daenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What of it? Shall we send her a wedding gift?”

The king frowned. “A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and a bold man to wield it.”

Ned did not feign surprise; Robert’s hatred of the Targaryens was a madness in him. He remembered the angry words they had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had presented Robert with the corpses of Rhaegar’s wife and children as a token of fealty. Ned had named that murder; Robert called it war. When he had protested that the young prince and princess were no more than babes, his new-made king had replied, “I see no babes. Only dragonspawn.” Not even Jon Arryn had been able to calm that storm. Eddard Stark had ridden out that very day in a cold rage, to fight the last battles of the war alone in the south. It had taken another death to reconcile them; Lyanna’s death, and the grief they had shared over her passing.

This time, Ned resolved to keep his temper. “Your Grace, the girl is scarcely more than a child. You are no Tywin Lannister, to slaughter innocents.” It was said that Rhaegar’s little girl had cried as they dragged her from beneath her bed to face the swords. The boy had been no more than a babe in arms, yet Lord Tywin’s soldiers had torn him from his mother’s breast and dashed his head against a wall.

“And how long will this one remain an innocent?” Robert’s mouth grew hard. “This child will soon enough spread her legs and start breeding more dragonspawn to plague me.”

“Nonetheless,” Ned said, “the murder of children … it would be vile … unspeakable …”

“Unspeakable?” the king roared. “What Aerys did to your brother Brandon was unspeakable. The way your lord father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar … how many times do you think he raped your sister? How many hundreds of times?” His voice had grown so loud that his horse whinnied nervously beneath him. The king jerked the reins hard, quieting the animal, and pointed an angry finger at Ned. “I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as their dragons, and then I will piss on their graves.”

Ned knew better than to defy him when the wrath was on him. If the years had not quenched Robert’s thirst for revenge, no words of his would help. “You can’t get your hands on this one, can you?” he said quietly.

The king’s mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “No, gods be cursed. Some pox-ridden Pentoshi cheesemonger had her brother and her walled up on his estate with pointy-hatted eunuchs all around them, and now he’s handed them over to the Dothraki. I should have had them both killed years ago, when it was easy to get at them, but Jon was as bad as you. More fool I, I listened to him.”

“Jon Arryn was a wise man and a good Hand.”

Robert snorted. The anger was leaving him as suddenly as it had come. “This Khal Drogo is said to have a hundred thousand men in his horde. What would Jon say to that?”

“He would say that even a million Dothraki are no threat to the realm, so long as they remain on the other side of the narrow sea,” Ned replied calmly. “The barbarians have no ships. They hate and fear the open sea.”

The king shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “Perhaps. There are ships to be had in the Free Cities, though. I tell you, Ned, I do not like this marriage. There are still those in the Seven Kingdoms who call me Usurper. Do you forget how many houses fought for Targaryen in the war? They bide their time for now, but give them half a chance, they will murder me in my bed, and my sons with me. If the beggar king crosses with a Dothraki horde at his back, the traitors will join him.”

“He will not cross,” Ned promised. “And if by some mischance he does, we will throw him back into the sea. Once you choose a new Warden of the East—”

“He will not cross,” Ned promised. “And if by some mischance he does, we will throw him back into the sea. Once you choose a new Warden of the East—”

The king groaned. “For the last time, I will not name the Arryn boy Warden. I know the boy is your nephew, but with Targaryens climbing in bed with Dothraki, I would be mad to rest one quarter of the realm on the shoulders of a sickly child.”

AGOT Bran III

He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise.

[dwellordream]

In an AU where Doran Martell bonked his head and had a personality transplant, decided he didn’t need his revenge on the Baratheons/Lannisters and chose to shore up a marriage alliance with House Yronwood, would Ser Archibald Yronwood be a good enough marriage for Arianne? Or would Arch be too far down the succession (only a cousin to the main branch) to be a suitable match for Doran’s heir? Also, do you think the two would get along well?

I don’t think Archibald is her type. Like, at all lmao. I think Doran would be more likely to make a Yronwood match for Quentyn.

[hopelesslygazingthestars]

One blisteringly hot afternoon, Elia and Ashara lounged in the princess’ solar. Her friend sat across from her, atop her Dornish rug – that old filthy rug Ashara gifted her on arrival to Sunspear, all those years ago. It had seen more dances than the palace feast hall. It was where they twirled, Ashara with Elia, the music trapped by closed windows and doors. Once the colour of blood oranges, now it told an earthy tale of love and laughter, of more good times than anyone could ever be promised.
It was this perfectly normal day that Ashara came to a sobering realisation. Elia was oh so beautiful.
Ashara was supposedly composing a new melody on her handpan. Instead, whilst Elia was concentrating on her book, Ashara concentrated on her. She watched the way her dainty fingertips tapped idly on the frayed edges of the rug, the waves of her hair, her eyelashes fluttering when she blinked in shock at whatever she was reading. Ashara was enamoured. 
She met her dark orbs; the most beautiful in all of Dorne, she was certain. They were so dark they seemed almost black until the sunlight caught them, setting them molten hues of the very richest of browns, bright with life and laughter. 
Her skin – and Ashara had the good fortune of being able to feast her eyes on a great deal of it in the sticky heat. Usually she was covered in a shawl, lest she catch a chill and see her in bedridden for days, but today’s humidity called for minimal layers – her skin glowed a deep bronze that turned rosy at her cheeks and pink at her lips. And what lips they were; full and tempting as they twisted up into a smile. 
“Fuck,” Ashara breathed, dizzy from desire. She could not remember when she had felt the like of it. Perhaps never at all. Though she took pleasure in men, women always did seem to have a way of making her heart flutter quicker. 
Her thoughts drifted, to somewhere different, to a train of thought she knew she should not entertain. She should not have been imagining how soft her lips were, or how warm her tongue would feel against her own. 
More and more, every time they were together, she felt something stirring, until her heart ached to be rid of it, but yearned even harder to hold on to it simultaneously. 
Ashara wondered if this was another passing fancy. For that was always her problem—she fell in lust too easily. With a snorted laugh, a crooked smile, the movement of hands when they spoke; a unique intonation in a voice, and she would be infatuated. Ashara spent her short young years entangled in a mad love affair with the very concept of people. Nonetheless, her feelings were as changing as the waves of the Summer Sea. 
She snapped out of her reverie. Elia seemed startled, the rhythmic hum of her fingernails on the surface of the rug lost. They both stayed silent. 
The tension in the air was suffocating. It felt as if Ashara’s thoughts were so loud that Elia could hear them. 
“What dark cloud troubles your mind today?” Elia asked because she knew her too well. And simultaneously, not nearly well enough. 
“None at all.” Ashara responded far too quickly. 
“Tell your brows that. You’re frowning my dearest.” Elia teased. 
When Ashara felt her forehead, she was surprised to find the tell-tale signs of a deep frown. 
“Oh.” 
Elia’s black eyes studied her, though not quite as intensely as Ashara previously observed her. 
“Lady Ashara, do you miss your brother?” 
She did, of course she did, but not enough to call him back. He was finally doing something for himself, she could not begrudge him that. 
She shrugged. 
“You know he is with family, uncle Lewyn will care for him like his own son.” 
“I’m not worried about him.” 
Ashara answered, although her eyes again drifted to Elia’s taunting lips. 
Elia regarded her, eyes roaming from head to toe, and for a moment Ashara feared she might have been caught. Elia had always been able to read her as easily as the book in her hands, as if the words of Ashara’s thoughts were written across her forehead. 
“Do you wish to have gone with the Red Viper after all?” 
Not more than a few moons after they returned from the Scorched Rock, Oberyn bedded Lord Edgar Yronwood’s paramour, then challenged him to a duel. The young prince had won the duel. However, the whispers of Yronwood’s death, days later, spoke of Oberyn wielding a poisoned blade. Princess Furiosa had all but exiled the Red Viper, sending him on “duty” to Oldtown and then Lys. 
Before Oberyn’s departure he had begged Ashara to leave with him, to seek out adventures across the world together. He attempted to persuade her with vows of giving her heart’s desire. She would be free to dance, and sing, and indulge. Everything she had ever dreamed of, yet she refused when she realised it would mean leaving home… leaving Elia. 
“No, my place is with you, princess.” She answered honestly. 
Elia smiled. 
“You are good to stay with me, Asha. I couldn’t bear to lose you.” 
Now, Ashara smiled. 
“I will always stay with you, Elia. I have yet to meet a man I prefer to you. I fear that is my curse.” 
The words caught in her throat as puzzling sadness washed through her. 
“Don’t listen to your mother’s urgings, we are still prized maidens, and the time for husbands remains in the distance.” Elia deduced. 
Since Prince Doran’s wedding to the beautiful Lady Mellario of Norvos, Lady Dayne had put increasing pressure on both herself and Aethan to look towards marriage, much to Ashara’s chagrin. The mere idea of being tied down to a husband, locked up in his castle for the rest of her days, made her want to fling herself from a very high tower. She still vividly remembered the fiasco that was her parents’ marriage and had no desire for anything similar. 
“You must not have heard her endless nagging at the wedding.” 
Elia laughed then. It would have been difficult for anyone within earshot to not hear the grumblings of Lady Dayne. 
“You must look to the future, Ashara…will you grow old alone-” Ashara said, impersonating Lady Dayne’s incessant fussing. 
“No, no… ‘will you grow old with no family, Ashara… the boys already complain you only have eyes for Elia, Ashara…’” Elia teased, fingertips poking at Ashara with every sentence. 
“…If you are to be married soon, you need to at least pretend to find them half interesting, Ashara.” 
Elia mercilessly tickled at her sides, sending her into fits of giggles. 
“Princess.” Ashara reprimanded when she was all but gasping for breath. 
Elia smiled at her with feigned innocence and Ashara immediately sought revenge. 
It was only then she realised they may have gotten carried away. As her own laughter died down, she wound up pinning Elia down, wrists above her head, straddling her. 
She gazed long and hard at the dark eyes beneath, and Elia looked at her in a kittenish way, head tilted and eyes sparkling. Ashara felt as though her entire body became magnetised. Her thoughts raced, confused and sporadic, like a lightning storm inside her mind. For the life of her, Ashara could not comprehend why she suddenly felt this way. She decided her mind was malfunctioning when she thought she saw Elia visibly gulp, blink, and lock her gaze onto Ashara’s eyes. 
“I…” Ashara coerced herself to say, feigning normalcy in her voice. Although, for reasons beyond comprehension, not letting Elia’s wrists free, nor shifting so she no longer straddled her. 
And apparently, that was entirely acceptable with Elia, because she looked, then, like they were having the most ordinary conversation, in the most ordinary way. 
“I – I, simply, uh.” 
Her words were failing her miserably. Elia’s body was wriggling underneath her own, and her dress too thin, and seven hells, she was a disaster. Her eyes dropped down to Elia’s lips, and she cursed herself for being so obvious. 
Ashara cleared her throat and finally found her voice.
“I dare you to dance for me.” She spoke the first thing that came to her mind. 
Elia laughed musically at Ashara’s odd behaviour. 
“Why would I do that?” 
Her eyes were soft, yet hypnotizing like she was peering directly into the sun. In that moment, Ashara dropped her hands, moving to hold Elia’s face. 
“I shall bestow you a kiss if you do.” 
Ashara was pushing the boundaries of their relationship, was intrigued to see if this was simply lust or something else altogether. 
“And what makes you think I want to kiss you.” 
“Don’t you?” 
She knew she was not supposed to feel this way. Elia was her closest friend, a sister almost. 
Ashara gingerly caressed over her darkened cheeks and nose… and lips. When Elia shut her eyes, she stroked the tips of her thumbs over her eyelids ever so gently, feeling her lashes flutter against her skin. It was new territory for them, but Elia seemed to enjoy it, arching up into her touch and smiling. Then, Ashara kissed her; her eyelids, her cheeks, her nose…
Her hands shook slightly, her mind repeating the same sentence over and over, ‘do not do this…’ 
But the sound of her heart was beating so thunderously she could not concentrate. 
Their lips touched, and the world fell away. 
Elia’s mouth was firm against hers, but the kiss remained gentle, slow, and yet passionate, comforting in ways that words would never be.
They held it, before their lips began to move in perfect sync, slowly, cautiously. It was a few moments before it registered that Elia was kissing her back. She adjusted her hand from an impossibly soft cheek to the back of her head, fingers tangling in long, dark hair, lightly pulling Elia closer, adding greater pressure and deepening the kiss. 
When it came to an end, Ashara exhaled through her nose, not wanting to let go. Her entire body had been taken over by the overwhelming feeling of relief, combined with eccentric panic and lust. 
Onyx eyes opened and they stared at each other in a strange way. Ashara sat frozen as she deciphered exactly what the touching of their lips made her feel. 
“What was that for?” Elia asked, observing her as if calculating a complex cyvasse play. 
Unable to take the pressure of Elia’s scrutinizing gaze, she looked away when she answered. 
“I was curious, I suppose.” 
Ashara half expected Elia to laugh, instead of the words which came. 
“And have I sated your curiosity?” There was a playful lilt to her voice that washed Ashara’s anxieties away. 
“I’m not certain, let me steal another and we shall find out.” Ashara half jested. 
Elia halted Ashara in her descent with a hand to her chest. When she met her gaze, there was no longer amusement in her eyes. 
“I might allow you another, if you vow not leave me another heartbroken maiden, running from the gardens in the wake of your fancy.” She said gravely.
Something akin to guilt swirled in the pit of Ashara’s stomach. 
Ashara was in no hurry to give this newly discovered sensation up. It was a tingling that stirred low in her stomach, and she wanted it to consume her.
With another kiss, Ashara promised on soft lips.
“I would try my hardest for you.” 
They kissed, again, and again, and again. Until they were breathless, until they could not speak, until their giggles became hoarse and squeaky. 
At night, they fell into bed together. And because it was late, and only because of that, they helped each other with their undergarments rather than wake the servants. Though they had dressed and undressed in front of one another a million times, something was different between them. Disrobing transformed into something of a shy dance. 
Their hands were much less practiced than handmaidens, but they laughed and fumbled their way through it all the same. Ashara learned the way to twist her wrist so that the stays of Elia’s intricately woven vermilion silk dress loosened easily; and she also learned to ignore the way that her heart hammered at the softness of Elia’s skin against her fingertips. She attempted not to notice the way the straps had left marks against her back, angry and red, that she craved to smooth out with her palms, and if she was to be honest, with her mouth. 
She forced herself from staring when Elia stepped out of her drawers, naked and giggling. Instead, she passed over a nightgown as if the sight of her was nothing important. In a feigned cough, Ashara disguised the way her breath caught at a glimpse of Elia’s bronze body in the moonlight. As she observed her final preparations for sleep, Ashara desperately attempted to distract herself from ungodly musings about the shape of the princess, the swell of her breasts under her nightdress, and the dark softness at the apex of her thighs that she was not supposed to be hungry for. 
In the end, they laid side by side, silent, and not touching; other than the way their hands pressed together. 
Eventually, in the stillness of the moments before dawn, Ashara unveiled the full scope of her earlier realisation. 
‘So, this must be love,’ she thought. 
Ashara never intended to grow attached this way, yet in hindsight, she understood this was inevitable; only she had been blind to it from the very first greeting. How could she not love Elia? How could she not love those understanding onyx eyes, the pristine waves of her cocoa hair, the way her delicate hands fit in Ashara’s palms, her kisses, the scent of blood-oranges and honey emanating off her. 
‘Surely, this was love?’ 
There would never be another to show her fierce protection, attentive care and unwavering support, in the way Elia did. 
If this was love, oh seven hells, Ashara was royally fucked. 
However, when dawn gave light to day, Ashara concluded her feelings were wrong and she could not allow for feelings of love. Not with Elia, for in the dark she had come to think of every reason she could not pursue such feelings.
‘I would ruin you.’ Ashara thought admiring her sleeping princess. It was not pondered with malicious intent, only she knew, with time, she would certainly sully everything. Elia was too pure and sweet and good for Ashara. 
In the rear of her mind, Lady Dayne’s cursed words from long ago played like a Dornish mockingbird tormenting her to heel. 
‘You will be like me, selfish, melancholic down to your innermost core… incapable of love.’ 
Ashara knew what was likely to happen, and for the love she had, she refused to allow her feelings to consume them both. It would only result in a broken heart and a boat with a single destination to Starfall.
Ashara believed a little pain now, would spare them greater strife in future. Thus, she decided to run from love. 
Ashara was positive her quick change in mind would hurt the princess, yet she continued to vow into the dark that Elia would never need to fear anything; that Ashara would fight whatever life had to throw at her with her, and dance until her feet bled to keep that smile on her face, because Ashara had little to offer the world but she could offer that. She could do that. In the foggy depths of a confused mind maybe that was enough. 
When morning arrived, Ashara fell into a long perfected act, like nothing at all had occurred the day previous, ad if she noticed disappointment in dark eyes, she ignored it. 
This would not be the first time she broke a heart, nor the last, yet it would be the first her own broke alongside the one she returned battered. Elia would recover from it and Ashara would stumble into the next doomed love affair to split the earth beneath her, until there was nothing whole left in her to break.
Ashara thought to a conversation they once had. They debated the definition of humanness. To Elia, humanness was the capacity to be hurt. Though Elia was brilliant, knew things about the histories of Dorne and Westeros that might put a king to shame, knew about love and caring for children; Ashara knew humanness was the ability to hurt, to harm, to ruin. Why else did temples and empires tumble down if not for the efforts of humankind? Why else were little girls violated before they even understood what the word meant? Ashara knew it was inherently human to cause ruin. That is why she was just like the rug they cleaned over and over. No matter how much cleansing she did, she could never truly wash away her chaotic contaminating darkness.

[warsofasoiaf]

In an AU where Doran Martell bonked his head and had a personality transplant, decided he didn’t need his revenge on the Baratheons/Lannisters and chose to shore up a marriage alliance with House Yronwood, would Ser Archibald Yronwood be a good enough marriage for Arianne? Or would Arch be too far down the succession (only a cousin to the main branch) to be a suitable match for Doran’s heir?

I think the fostering of Quentyn would actually be solid enough foundation that Doran would seek other opportunities to secure a power base.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[goodqueenaly]

Hey it’s me the person who thinks everything in ASOIAF is connected to The Accursed Kings and I’m here to tell you that I think GRRM created the Herons (the Yunkish slave army bred and commanded by the so-called Little Pigeon) inspired by a certain part of the sixth novel in The Accursed Kings, Le lis et le Lion (The Lily and the Lion).

In The Lily and the Lion, Robert of Artois, exiled from the court of France, flees to England and the court of King Edward III. There, Robert suggests, to great enthusiasm, that Edward has a better right to the French throne than the current king, Philip VI, since “at the death of King Charles IV, Philip the Fair’s last son, the crown of France, even if one bowed to the French barons’ dislike of being ruled by a woman, should in all justice have gone through Queen Isabella [i.e. Edward III’s mother] to the only male in the direct line”. However, Edward fails to follow up this acclamation with a formal war against Philip VI, leaving Robert frustrated. Going hawking in the English countryside, Robert then makes these observations on seeing his quarry, a heron:

Robert and his equerry stared up at the battle in which speed of manoeuvre and sheer lust to kill counted for more than size and pacific strength.

‘‘Look at that heron,” cried Robert angrily; “It’s really the cowardliest of birds! It’s four times the size of my little falcon; it could kill it with a single thrust of its great beak; but the damned coward runs away![”]

...

“What a damned coward of a bird!” Robert repeated. “There’s almost no sport in taking it. These herons are noisy birds, but afraid of their own shadows, and start bawling when they see them. They’re really fit game only for villeins.”

But the heron then gives Robert an idea, and he presents the roasted bird to King Edward that evening with these words:

“Sire,” he cried, “I have here a heron taken by my falcon. The heron is the most cowardly bird in the world, for it flees before all others. I think the people of England should adopt it, and I should like to see it in the arms of England instead of the leopards. And it is to you, King Edward, that I offer it, for it belongs of right to the most cowardly and craven prince in the world who, disinherited of his Kingdom of France, lacks the courage to conquer that which is his.”

Edward then swears that he will launch his war against the King of France, and his courtiers follow suit, swearing oaths before the heron. (This is where the oath of Gautier de Mauny comes in.)

The book’s conclusion on herons being cowardly birds I think directly influenced GRRM in creating the Herons. Indeed, when he first introduces the concept of the Herons, as the free company’s recruits discuss the foolish Yunkish commanders in “The Windblown”, Archibald Yronwood practically quotes Robert of Artois and his experience:

“Herons are craven,” the big man put in. “One time me and Drink and Cletus were hunting, and we came on these herons wading in the shallows, feasting on tadpoles and small fish. They made a pretty sight, aye, but then a hawk passed overhead, and they all took to the wing like they’d seen a dragon. Kicked up so much wind it blew me off my horse, but Cletus nocked an arrow to his string and brought one down. Tasted like duck, but not so greasy.”

Just as the heron Robert of Artois caught was physically impressive - “a splendid bird ... from beak to feet almost as tall as a man” - so the Little Pigeon’s Herons are physically far more imposing than any other solider: “the tallest that any of the Windblown had ever seen; the shortest stood seven feet tall, the tallest close to eight”. Yet as Arch alludes to, herons are by nature (at least in this universe and that of The Accursed Kings) cowardly birds, more apt to take flight at the arrival of a predator than to use that advantage of their great size against an enemy. The Little Pigeon might pride himself on the astonishing height of his enslaved soldiers, but he has prioritized mere size over actual martial dominance: clumsy on stilts, their armor more fanciful and decorative than practical, the Herons are an object of derision rather than a terrifying fighting force (with Gerris Drinkwater laughing that “[n]othing scares me worse than stilt-walkers in pink scales and feathers. If one was after me, I’d laugh so hard my bladder might let go”).

Fittingly, then, when we actually see the Herons in battle (albeit for now only secondhand, in a reading of “Barristan II” TWOW), that inclination to flight over fight cited by both Robert of Artois and Arch becomes apparent. While Barristan initially targets the so-called “Harridan” trebuchet, he realizes that  “a maester’s chain is only as strong as his weakest link, and identifies the companies of the Yunkish lords as the weakest of his immediate foes, certainly weaker than the slave legions”. Barristan then “targets the Little Pigeon and his herons”, as “Barristan sees that they will be blind because of the dawn rising over the city, and like to break ranks easily”. Barristan’s unit charges into them, and “[i]n a moment, the herons are scattering and running away, led by the Little Pigeon himself”. Against the physically smaller force of Barristan, which nevertheless has something of the “speed of manoeuvre and sheer lust to kill” praised by Druon in Robert’s falcon, the Herons appear to flee almost immediately; their size and weapons - including “a spear as tall as [each Heron], with a leaf-shaped blade at either end” - count for no more than the “great beak” which Robert critically notes the heron refused to use against his falcon.

(It’s of course also worth pointing out that as people enslaved by the Little Pigeon, forced to have sex with partners he chooses for breeding purposes, the Herons have no incentive to serve as particularly stalwart defenders of him. Their flight is not cowardice in a personal, derogatory sense but the reaction of enslaved people, soldiers in name only, being put up against actual warriors led by one of the most talented and legendary knights ever to serve.)

[arrivedtoolate]

What are your favourite headcanons for quentyn?

I have a few headcanons that I really love for Quen. Most have to do with his family.

Quentyn was a big mama’s boy before he went to Yronwood. Even to this day he writes letters to her, even if he does not send them. This is done for comfort.

Quentyn will support his sister as his Princess until his dying breath. If anyone even suggests that he try to take her birthright he cuts off contact from them, for they are dead to him.

Quentyn cried the day he heard of Trystane’s birth and no one could comfort him. This is because he was convinced that his parents had replaced him and did not love him anymore.

Quentyn blames his uncle for his being taken from his family and finds it hard to forgive him for the death of the Yronwood lord that resulted in his being taken as a glorified hostage.

Quentyn’s favorite cousin is Tyene, and it is because of her and her visits that most poisons cannot touch him. She built his immune system to poison slowly over time just to see if it was possible.

Quentyn suffers from severe depression and anxiety. This mostly stems from the separation he had from his family when he was seven years old.

Quentyn reads more than the other boys he grew up around. He’s even borrowed and read the book on dragons that his sister refers to as a dreary tome.

Quentyn use to dream of dragons coming to Yronwood and flying him back home to Sunspear.

Quentyn is not touched by sweetsleep not because of Tyene, but because of how many times he had to be sedated by the Maester in Yronwood. This was because he suffered severe insomnia from the time he was brought to them at age seven until he was nearly ten years old.

Quentyn is good at parkour, this is mostly because of the times he had to run when playing with the other boys. Because he was smaller he could not outrun the likes of Cletus, Gerris and Arch. As a result he learned to vault over things and slide under others.

Quentyn likes to sing and write songs and to write poetry. This is something he usually keeps to himself.

[dunstfeder]

Update for the Dorne fandom...

Hey all. I am an active player of Blood of Dragons MUSH, the ASOIAF roleplaying game run by Elio and Linda of westeros.org fame. For those of you don’t know, a lot of stuff there is made up by them in order to flesh out the time period for the roleplayers, but there’s also some canon details incorporated either from GRRM’s notes or cut content from “The World of Ice and Fire.” The game itself has spanned the years 158 - 169 AC and there are some interesting details about the post-Dance era noted to be canon.

What’s considered canon: Princess Aliandra Nymeros Martell succeeded her father Prince Qoren, and is noted to have had some controversial trading policies with the Iron Throne during the regency of Aegon III. She was noted to have always treated Alyn Velaryon warmly when he visited Dorne as Master of Ships (ironically he would later be instrumental in Daeron I’s Conquest of Dorne), and there were many rumours about the extent of that warmth -- yes, heavily implying a relationship between Alyn and Aliandra in spite of her marriage to Drazenko Rogare (and, of course, his to Baela Targaryen). She is remembered as a controversial figure in Dornish history and her policies were very unpopular with her siblings.

Note: subject to change due to being unpublished (Fire and Blood could retcon this, for example)

Non-canon detalils fleshed out by Elio and Linda that I personally find interesting:

The currency of Dorne during its independence was the “golden sun.”

Prince Qyle, youngest child of Prince Qoren, died at 21 in an “accident” in a botched attempt to overthrow Princess Aliandra. 

Aliandra was never supposed to be heir. Her brother Prince Gaynor died at age 19 fighting pirates on the Stepstones mere days before the Dance broke out, leaving behind a 15-year-old widow, Tamsyn Toland. She would later go on to marry Ser Warryn Uller and their daughter Liane would be heir to Hellholt one day.

Prince Qoren had a bastard son called Ser Bastian Sand, “the Bastard of Sunspear.” He married Adara Ladybright and had 5 children also bearing the name Sand despite their legitimacy (like the children of Walder Rivers); 1 was promised to the the Citadel and 2 to the Faith. He died at age 43 in the Conquest of Dorne, at Hellholt.

Prince Qoren’s niece Lyrella Martell was married to Lord Guerin Wyl, who would imprison Prince Aemon in the pit of vipers that King Baelor I saved him from.

Princess Aliandra herself died childless at an “accident” at age 26, conveniently paving the way for the ascension of Princess Coryanne, Prince Qyle’s elder twin. She herself died seven years later at age 31 in a great fall; her paramour Ser Manfryd Qorgyle was imprisoned at Gaston Grey thereafter. 

The future Lady of Skyreach, Marcia Fowler, was a lady-in-waiting and good friends to Princess Coryanne. The Princess was also good friends with Damarya Allyrion, the heir to Godsgrace.

Ser Manfryd Qorgyle was actually the nephew of the Princess’s husband Ser Quinlan Qorgyle. Quinlan was the younger brother of the Lord Ganlos Qorgyle who would kill Lord Lyonel Tyrell in a bed of scorpions. 

Coryanne had four children: Marence, Cadan, Rhodry, and Ariana. Marence was 13 when she died and so he named Quinlan as regent - the title “Lord Protector of Dorne” was bestowed upon him. 

Marence gave up being a squire and was permitted to study at the Citadel (without forging any links) while his widowed father ruled in Sunspear.

Marence was married and widowed twice when he was young, first to Lady Tristana Jordayne, mother of Princess Mariah and Prince Maron, and the sickly Princess Vanora who did not long outlive Lady Tristana dying in childbed at 22. Marence and Tristana did not get along well due to her hot temper. His second wife was Lady Cordelia Yronwood, who he married when she was 14. She died in childbirth at 15 during the Conquest of Dorne, giving birth to Prince Malor.

Prince Cadan and Princess Ariana were two of the hostages sent to King’s Landing upon the Submission of Sunspear.

Prince Rhodry was the one to slay King Daeron by stabbing him in the neck with the pointy end of a peace banner.

Prince Cadan was married to Senara Santagar, heir to Spottswood, but their marriage was extremely complicated. The prince was rumoured to have affairs with many ladies, including Joleta Gargalen, heir to Salt Shore, Kellyn Crakehall Lannister, wife of the heir to Casterly Rock, (both of these are shrouded in at least some layer of mystery, however), and openly with Allia of Lys, who died while she was pregnant with the Prince’s child. By 165 they had separated so poorly that their two children were in different houses: the oldest, Leyla, a Martell, the younger, Aron, a Santagar. 

Prince Rhodry had a complicated love life, too. He was paramour to Ser Corentyn Yronwood, but Corentyn was killed by Ser Sarmion “the Stormbreaker” Baratheon in the conquest. During their paramourship he claimed a bastard Lewyn, though Ser Corentyn was rumoured to have an equal chance of fathering the child upon the unknown woman. At the end of the Dornish Rebellion he went to Braavos and came back with Samara Sand, the half-Dornish, quarter-Lyseni, quarter-Dothraki daughter of Ser Mavros Uller (the arch-rival of Ser Quinlan Qorgyle). She bore bastard twins, Oberyn Sand and Roxana Sand, in 162, but they were not claimed until 169, a few months after he was betrothed to Tanyth Toland.

In 163 Lady Linnet Yronwood, the Bloodroyal, rebelled against Prince Marence citing his alleged weakness in the Conquest and Rebellion. Due to crafty use of military tactics she nearly won, but agreed to settle the Yronwood-Martell feud by betrothing her son and heir, Farien, to Princess Ariana. The two married in 167 and their son Cletus was born in 169. 

In 166 a feud broke out between the Dalts and the Gargalens after Ser Blaise Dalt, heir to Lemonwood, was killed in a duel by Ser Willum Gargalen due to a dispute over to which house some wells belonged. During a feast of reconciliation, Prince Marence was poisoned. Ser Quinlan took up the regency once more, and the Prince sojourned with Lady Dayne from 166-169.

From 164-169, Prince Maron was in King’s Landing -- he was squire to Ser Aidan Dayne, “the Knight of the Twilight,” brother of Lady Dayne and captain of the guard of Prince Marence’s embassy to King Baelor.

In 169, Prince Rhodry was said to have killed the First Sword of Braavos and brought back with him the young daughter of an old keyholder family, Amalea Parnel. 

[poorquentyn]

Men’s Lives Have Meaning, Part 6: Father, Why?

Series so far here 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire.”

–The Lord of the Rings

So. Here we are. Quent didn’t turn back, so neither can I. Part of me wants to, though, because “The Dragontamer” will never be OK; this wound does not close. In Quentyn Martell’s final POV chapter, George R.R. Martin does nothing less than sit us down and ask us to stare directly into the sun. And so we flinch. We have to.

“The Dragontamer” is about the fire. The fire, from the Big Bang to Prometheus: the nexus of both creation and destruction, the tipping point between glory and horror, the spark of the first human thought and the embers from the last funeral pyre. The fire is the true object of Quent’s quest. His story has burned through every trope it touched upon, leaving none of the genre’s promises unbroken. By the end, he knows deep down that he will not succeed. He is not really trying to succeed, not anymore. What he’s looking for, what he descends into that dank dark dragonpit beneath the Great Pyramid to find, is an answer. 

What am I doing here? Father, why?

What was it all for? What did it all mean? Why did I live? Why am I dying? I gave it all I had in me and more! I did everything the songs said, even the stuff that contradicts the other stuff! I lost everything, and did things for which I can never forgive myself. Father, why? Author, why? God, why? Time stops, space falls away, and our hero is left alone with the fire at the heart of Story itself. Quent meets his maker. And this is what George said to him: your story was about seeing it, knowing it, being it, the fire, just for a moment before it kills you.

When he raised his whip, he saw that the lash was burning. His hand as well. All of him, all of him was burning.

Oh, he thought. Then he began to scream.

Were I there, while Drink screamed his name and the big man roared desperately for him to turn around, all I would’ve been able to do is whisper: “Quentyn, what do you see?”

Quentyn’s first three chapters are monumental achievements, but they would be empty signifiers floating in a semiotic void without “The Dragontamer” to give them meaning. They were scaffolding, and now the narrative architecture is complete, a bloodstone obelisk to be marveled at from every angle. Everything was leading to this: the dead friends and the screaming teenagers, the wicked Windblown and the “fires everywhere.” As such, the chapter hits like a mushroom cloud after a book-long doomsday countdown. In its imagery and tone as well as plot and theme, it is a chapter composed of fire, as glorious hideous shades of orange, yellow, and red flare up, ripple out, and consume everything in their path. It’s as if the author leeched away every sickening feeling you ever got in the back of your throat when you realized it was all going wrong, boiled it all down into a dye, and started to paint. “Suspenseful” doesn’t even begin to describe what it’s like to read Quent stepping into the void. The chapter is positively suffused with mortal terror, sweat-soaked with apprehension; “The Dragontamer” is dread given form. 

Quentyn felt light-headed. None of this seemed quite real. One moment it felt like a game, the next like some nightmare, like a bad dream where he found himself opening a dark door, knowing that horror and death waited on the other side, yet somehow powerless to stop himself. His palms were slick with sweat.

At last a pair of heavy iron doors rose before them, rust-eaten and forbidding, closed with a length of chain whose every link was as thick around as a man’s arm. The size and thickness of those doors was enough to make Quentyn Martell question the wisdom of this course. Even worse, both doors were plainly dinted by something inside trying to get out. The thick iron was cracked and splitting in three places, and the upper corner of the left-hand door looked partly melted.

“Fire and blood,” he whispered, “blood and fire.” The blood was pooling at his feet, soaking into the brick floor. The fire was beyond those doors. “The chains … we have no key …”

Arch said, “I have the key.” He swung his warhammer hard and fast. Sparks flew when the hammmerhead struck the lock. And then again, again, again. On his fifth swing the lock shattered, and the chains fell away in a rattling clatter so loud Quentyn was certain half the pyramid must have heard them. “Bring the cart.” The dragons would be more docile once fed. Let them gorge themselves on charred mutton.

Archibald Yronwood grasped the iron doors and pulled them apart. Their rusted hinges let out a pair of screams, for all those who might have slept through the breaking of the lock. A wash of sudden heat assaulted them, heavy with the odors of ash, brimstone, and burnt meat.

It was black beyond the doors, a sullen stygian darkness that seemed alive and threatening, hungry. Quentyn could sense that there was something in that darkness, coiled and waiting. Warrior, grant me courage, he prayed. He did not want to do this, but he saw no other way. Why else would Daenerys have shown me the dragons? She wants me to prove myself to her. Gerris handed him a torch. He stepped through the doors.

The green one is Rhaegal, the white Viserion, he reminded himself. Use their names, command them, speak to them calmly but sternly. Master them, as Daenerys mastered Drogon in the pit. The girl had been alone, clad in wisps of silk, but fearless. I must not be afraid. She did it, so can I. The main thing was to show no fear. Animals can smell fear, and dragons … What did he know of dragons? What does any man know of dragons? They have been gone from the world for more than a century.

The lip of the pit was just ahead. Quentyn edged forward slowly, moving the torch from side to side. Walls and floor and ceiling drank the light. Scorched, he realized. Bricks burned black, crumbling into ash. The air grew warmer with every step he took. He began to sweat.

Image by Dejan Delic

Waiting at the heart of this masterful exercise in horror writing are, of course, Rhaegal and Viserion. And never, not once, not in ASOIAF nor WOIAF nor the Dance novellas, has GRRM brought his dragons to life quite like this. They swim into Quent’s hyperventilating POV like they’ve been summoned from his nightmares, and the writing is so vivid here that I’m going to go ahead and get out of George’s way:

Two eyes rose up before him.

Bronze, they were, brighter than polished shields, glowing with their own heat, burning behind a veil of smoke rising from the dragon’s nostrils. The light of Quentyn’s torch washed over scales of dark green, the green of moss in the deep woods at dusk, just before the last light fades. Then the dragon opened its mouth, and light and heat washed over them. Behind a fence of sharp black teeth he glimpsed the furnace glow, the shimmer of a sleeping fire a hundred times brighter than his torch. The dragon’s head was larger than a horse’s, and the neck stretched on and on, uncoiling like some great green serpent as the head rose, until those two glowing bronze eyes were staring down at him.

Green, the prince thought, his scales are green. “Rhaegal,” he said. His voice caught in his throat, and what came out was a broken croak. Frog, he thought, I am turning into Frog again. “The food,” he croaked, remembering. “Bring the food.”

The big man heard him. Arch wrestled one of the sheep off the wagon by two legs, then spun and flung it into the pit.

Rhaegal took it in the air. His head snapped round, and from between his jaws a lance of flame erupted, a swirling storm of orange-and-yellow fire shot through with veins of green. The sheep was burning before it began to fall. Before the smoking carcass could strike the bricks, the dragon’s teeth closed round it. A nimbus of flames still flickered about the body. The air stank of burning wool and brimstone. Dragonstink.

“I thought there were two,” the big man said.

Viserion. Yes. Where is Viserion? The prince lowered his torch to throw some light into the gloom below. He could see the green dragon ripping at the smoking carcass of the sheep, his long tail lashing from side to side as he ate. A thick iron collar was visible about his neck, with three feet of broken chain dangling from it. Shattered links were strewn across the floor of the pit amongst the blackened bones—twists of metal, partly melted. Rhaegal was chained to the wall and floor the last time I was here, the prince recalled, but Viserion hung from the ceiling. Quentyn stepped back, lifted the torch, craned his head back.

For a moment he saw only the blackened arches of the bricks above, scorched by dragonflame. A trickle of ash caught his eye, betraying movement. Something pale, half-hidden, stirring. He’s made himself a cave, the prince realized. A burrow in the brick. The foundations of the Great Pyramid of Meereen were massive and thick to support the weight of the huge structure overhead; even the interior walls were three times thicker than any castle’s curtain walls. But Viserion had dug himself hole in them with flame and claw, a hole big enough to sleep in.

And we’ve just woken him. He could see what looked like some huge white serpent uncoiling inside the wall, up where it curved to become the ceiling. More ash went drifting downward, and a bit of crumbling brick fell away. The serpent resolved itself into a neck and tail, and then the dragon’s long horned head appeared, his eyes glowing in the dark like golden coals. His wings rattled, stretching.

All of Quentyn’s plans had fled his head. He could hear Caggo Corpsekiller shouting to his sellswords. The chains, he is sending for the chains, the Dornish prince thought. The plan had been to feed the beasts and chain them in their torpor, just as the queen had done. One dragon, or preferably both.

“More meat,” Quentyn said. Once the beasts were fed they will become sluggish. He had seen it work with snakes in Dorne, but here, with these monsters … “Bring … bring …”

Viserion launched himself from the ceiling, pale leather wings unfolding, spreading wide. The broken chain dangling from his neck swung wildly. His flame lit the pit, pale gold shot through with red and orange, and the stale air exploded in a cloud of hot ash and sulfur as the white wings beat and beat again.

A hand seized Quentyn by the shoulder. The torch spun from his grip to bounce across the floor, then tumbled into the pit, still burning. He found himself face-to-face with a brass ape. Gerris. “Quent, this will not work. They are too wild, they …”

The dragon came down between the Dornishmen and the door with a roar that would have sent a hundred lions running. His head moved side to side as he inspected the intruders—Dornishmen, Windblown, Caggo. Last and longest the beast stared at Pretty Meris, sniffing. The woman, Quentyn realized. He knows that she is female. He is looking for Daenerys. He wants his mother and does not understand why she’s not here.

Quentyn wrenched free of Gerris’s grip. “Viserion,” he called. The white one is Viserion. For half a heartbeat he was afraid he’d gotten it wrong. “Viserion,” he called again, fumbling for the whip hanging from his belt. She cowed the black one with a whip. I need to do the same.

The dragon knew his name. His head turned, and his gaze lingered on the Dornish prince for three long heartbeats. Pale fires burned behind the shining black daggers of his teeth. His eyes were lakes of molten gold, and smoke rose from his nostrils.

“Down,” Quentyn said. Then he coughed, and coughed again. The air was thick with smoke and the sulfur stench was choking.

Viserion lost interest. The dragon turned back toward the Windblown and lurched toward the door. Perhaps he could smell the blood of the dead guards or the meat in the butcher’s wagon. Or perhaps he had only now seen that the way was open.

Quentyn heard the sellswords shouting. Caggo was calling for the chains, and Pretty Meris was screaming at someone to step aside. The dragon moved awkwardly on the ground, like a man scrabbling on his knees and elbows, but quicker than the Dornish prince would have believed. When the Windblown were too late to get out of his way, Viserion let loose with another roar. Quentyn heard the rattle of chains, the deep thrum of a crossbow.

“No,” he screamed, “no, don’t, don’t,” but it was too late. The fool was all that he had time to think as the quarrel caromed off Viserion’s neck to vanish in the gloom. A line of fire gleamed in its wake—dragon’s blood, glowing gold and red.

The crossbowman was fumbling for another quarrel as the dragon’s teeth closed around his neck. The man wore the mask of a Brazen Beast, the fearsome likeness of a tiger. As he dropped his weapon to try and pry apart Viserion’s jaws, flame gouted from the tiger’s mouth. The man’s eyes burst with soft popping sounds, and the brass around them began to run. The dragon tore off a hunk of flesh, most of the sellsword’s neck, then gulped it down as the burning corpse collapsed to the floor.

The other Windblown were pulling back. This was more than even Pretty Meris had the stomach for. Viserion’s horned head moved back and forth between them and his prey, but after a moment he forgot the sellswords and bent his neck to tear another mouthful from the dead man. A lower leg this time.

The dragons are cinematic avatars of shadow and light, and simultaneously flesh-and-blood predators who smell prey. They are Become Death, but also children in search of their mother. This duality is in part what makes it so perfect that Quent’s quest ends with them. He, too, is on the precipice between self-conceptions, the sad scared shy kid (“I am turning into Frog again”) trying to psyche himself into believing that he can be a badass like his nuncle the Red Viper, even as he knows that “this will not work” and that he just wants to see his mother again before the end (see below). 

Indeed, “The Dragontamer” opens with our hero sensing the Stranger’s approach, a rattle of bones and a chuckle spread from ear to ear, as (in my mind) SHEL’s cover of “Enter Sandman” plays in the background:

The night crept past on slow black feet. The hour of the bat gave way to the hour of the eel, the hour of the eel to the hour of ghosts. The prince lay abed, staring at his ceiling, dreaming without sleeping, remembering, imagining, twisting beneath his linen coverlet, his mind feverish with thoughts of fire and blood.

Quent’s quest hath killed sleep, and his waking dreams bring him no comfort. What he’s “remembering” is no doubt Cletus’ death on the Meadowlark and the faces of the teenagers at Astapor as he cut them down. What he’s “imagining” is “fire and blood,” the very thing Doran sent him to find...and he found it, in a way Dad never dreamt. Thus, the quest’s beginning is linked to its end; it’s all one, the deaths of his friends and the Sack of Astapor and the dragontaming. All are facets of the same cursed diamond, different representations of the same idea, and that idea is that ASOIAF is eating our hero alive. 

Of course, the hero’s fear keeping him up the night he takes a big foolish romantic risk is a very common trope. What makes this different is that Quent is descending, not ascending--he’s headed to his death, and he knows it:

He stared at the candle for a long time, then put down his cup and held his palm above the flame. It took every bit of will he had to lower it until the fire touched his flesh, and when it did he snatched his hand back with a cry of pain.

“Quentyn, are you mad?”

No, just scared. I do not want to burn.

Image by Tiziano Baracchi

There’s a reason I have the image above, that of Quent reaching out to the fire, as my icon. It’s a moment in which the author interrogates his genre in terms of the mindset it instills in those who believe (or want to, anyway) in the stories and the songs. I’ve been saying that the story itself killed him, but perhaps a more accurate way to put it is that in the name of story, Quentyn killed himself. He committed suicide-by-dragon. Look again at this line: “...knowing that horror and death waited on the other side, yet somehow powerless to stop himself.” His inner monologue keeps urging him on, but in his heart of hearts, he knows better. Yet he walks into the fire anyway, because he cannot bear the thought of going home a failure, knowing his friends died for nothing and that Story is a lie. 

Drink, affable sleaze that he is, tells him that the solution is to get laid:

“I could not sleep.”

“Are burns a cure for that? Some warm milk and a lullaby might serve you well. Or better still, I could take you to the Temple of the Graces and find a girl for you.”

“A whore, you mean.”

“They call them Graces. They come in different colors. The red ones are the only ones who fuck.” Gerris seated himself across the table. “The septas back home should take up the custom, if you ask me. Have you noticed that old septas always look like prunes? That’s what a life of chastity will do to you.”

Quentyn glanced out at the terrace, where night’s shadows lay thick amongst the trees. He could hear the soft sound of falling water. “Is that rain? Your whores will be gone.”

“Not all of them. There are little snuggeries in the pleasure gardens, and they wait there every night until a man chooses them. Those who are not chosen must remain until the sun comes up, feeling lonely and neglected. We could console them.”

“They could console me, is what you mean.”

“That too.”

“That is not the sort of consolation I require.”

“I disagree. Daenerys Targaryen is not the only woman in the world. Do you want to die a manmaid?”

This puts me in mind of Jon’s line from ACOK: “Some men want whores on the eve of battle, and some want gods.” But Quent wants neither. This is what Quent wants:

Quentyn did not want to die at all. I want to go back to Yronwood and kiss both of your sisters, marry Gwyneth Yronwood, watch her flower into beauty, have a child by her. I want to ride in tourneys, hawk and hunt, visit with my mother in Norvos, read some of those books my father sends me. I want Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry to be alive again.

He never wanted to go on this quest, marry the beautiful princess, rule by her side. What he wanted, more than anything the wide world has to offer, is a quiet life at home with his wife. Back when I was a teenager m’self, I might’ve sneered at this, thinking it corny and dumb. The older I get, though, the more it resonates. Why pour yourself body and soul into a narrative that isn’t what the singers said it would be? Why throw your life away dreaming of adventure when adventure stinks? I shake my head to think how much time I wasted before I realized: the meaning of life isn’t to be a badass, it’s to be happy. Which, hey, might involve being a badass for some people...but not for Quent. 

I think this revelation of Quentyn’s motives is absolutely vital to making his story work on an emotional level. He’s not what Arianne thought he was, a whiny selfish pretender who wants something he hasn’t earned. He’s a conscript in a war that isn’t his, playing a role he doesn’t actually believe in, while all he wants is to go home, and for his friends to not have died because of him. We might like to think we’d be the Prince that was Promised, but only one in a million can be. Who are the rest of us, then? The rest of us are Quentyn Martell. If you seek his monument, look around you. 

Again, though, even as Quent knows at some level that he’s the Everyman, not the messiah, he keeps trying to tell himself differently: 

“Not all risks lead to ruin,” he insisted. “This is my duty. My destiny.” You are supposed to be my friend, Gerris. Why must you mock my hopes? I have doubts enough without your throwing oil on the fire of my fear.

“This will be my grand adventure.”

“Men die on grand adventures.”

He was not wrong. That was in the stories too. The hero sets out with his friends and companions, faces dangers, comes home triumphant. Only some of his companions don’t return at all. The hero never dies, though. I must be the hero. “All I need is courage. Would you have Dorne remember me as a failure?”

“Dorne is not like to remember any of us for long.”

Quentyn sucked at the burned spot on his palm. “Dorne remembers Aegon and his sisters. Dragons are not so easily forgotten. They will remember Daenerys as well.”

“Not if she’s died.”

“She lives.” She must. “She is lost, but I can find her.” And when I do, she will look at me the way she looks at her sellsword. Once I have proven myself worthy of her.

“From dragonback?”

“I have been riding horses since I was six years old.”

“And you’ve been thrown a time or three.”

“That never stopped me from getting back into the saddle.”

“You’ve never been thrown off a thousand feet above the ground,” Gerris pointed out. “And horses seldom turn their riders into charred bones and ashes.”

I know the dangers. “I’ll hear no more of this. You have my leave to go. Find a ship and run home, Gerris.” The prince rose, blew the candle out, and crept back to his bed and its sweat-soaked linen sheets. I should have kissed one of the Drinkwater twins, or maybe both of them. I should have kissed them whilst I could. I should have gone to Norvos to see my mother and the place that gave her birth, so she would know that I had not forgotten her.

GRRM doesn’t shy away from explicitly meta ruminations in Quentyn’s storyline. Here, the author is pointing out that quest narratives are built in part around losing people along the way; what Quent’s POV demonstrates is that we should not think of this as normal, because by thinking of it as normal, the meaning has slowly seeped away. If the rules of the genre are that you’re supposed to watch your companions die because this is all just part of your grand success story, then why should we care about that loss? Quent’s story, then, can be seen as GRRM’s ultimate genre deconstruction and reconstruction. Unexamined tropes lead to the mindset that got Quent killed: “I must be the hero.” 

What GRRM is saying with Quent’s arc in ADWD is the same thing he said with Sansa’s arc in AGOT: uncritically swallowing the values that stories feed you is dangerous. It leads you to believe that complicated problems are easily solved, that any costs are inherently worth the price, and that doing what you’re supposed to do will automatically lead to rewards. “The Dragontamer” stands as a natural, perfect climax to ADWD because the book’s other main characters are either struggling with leadership given these revelations (Jon and Dany) or reeling from their lives being destroyed by said revelations (Tyrion and Theon). Of course, those characters’ struggles extend backwards to the rest of the series, and forward to TWOW. Quent is more like Ned, introduced and killed off in the same book, forced to face at every step how Dad’s master plan to bring back “fire and blood” has gone horribly wrong:

Four Brazen Beasts stood guarding the door. Three held long spears; the fourth, the serjeant, was armed with short sword and dagger. His mask was wrought in the shape of a basilisk’s head. The other three were masked as insects.

Locusts, Quentyn realized. “Dog,” he said.

The serjeant stiffened.

That was all it took for Quentyn Martell to realize that something had gone awry. “Take them,” he croaked, even as the basilisk’s hand darted for his shortsword.

He was quick, that serjeant. The big man was quicker. He flung the torch at the nearest locust, reached back, and unslung his warhammer. The basilisk’s blade had scarce slipped from its leather sheath when the hammer’s spike slammed into his temple, crunching through the thin brass of his mask and the flesh and bone beneath. The serjeant staggered sideways half a step before his knees folded under him and he sank down to the floor, his whole body shaking grotesquely.

Quentyn stared transfixed, his belly roiling. His own blade was still in its sheath. He had not so much as reached for it. His eyes were locked on the serjeant dying before him, jerking. The fallen torch was on the floor, guttering, making every shadow leap and twist in a monstrous mockery of the dead man’s shaking. The prince never saw the locust’s spear coming toward him until Gerris slammed into him, knocking him aside. The spearpoint grazed the cheek of the lion’s head he wore. Even then the blow was so violent it almost tore the mask off. It would have gone right through my throat, the prince thought, dazed.

Gerris cursed as the locusts closed around him. Quentyn heard the sound of running feet. Then the sellswords came rushing from the shadows. One of the guards glanced at them just long enough for Gerris to get inside his spear. He drove the point of his sword under the brass mask and up through the wearer’s throat, even as the second locust sprouted a crossbow bolt from his chest.

The last locust dropped his spear. “Yield. I yield.”

“No. You die.” Caggo took the man’s head off with one swipe of his arakh, the Valyrian steel shearing through flesh and bone and gristle as if they were so much suet. “Too much noise,” he complained. “Any man with ears will have heard.”

“Dog,” Quentyn said. “The day’s word was supposed to be dog. Why wouldn’t they let us pass? We were told …”

“You were told your scheme was madness, have you forgotten?” said Pretty Meris. “Do what you came to do.”

The dragons, Prince Quentyn thought. Yes. We came for the dragons. He felt as though he might be sick. What am I doing here? Father, why? Four men dead in as many heartbeats, and for what? “Fire and blood,” he whispered, “blood and fire.” The blood was pooling at his feet, soaking into the brick floor. The fire was beyond those doors.

Now, why does the mission go horribly wrong at this particular moment? Because elsewhere in the Great Pyramid, Barristan Selmy is leading a coup against Hizdahr zo Loraq, and the Shavepate gave a different password (“Groleo”) to those locust-masked Brazen Beasts helping him do it. Indeed, no discussion of "The Dragontamer" is complete without talking about "The Kingbreaker." The two chapters happen at the same time and place, bringing the simmering tensions that have defined the Meereenese Knot to a head. At the center of the pyramid, the white knight topples a king; below the pyramid, the captive dragons burn a prince. Taken together, these chapters constitute ADWD's heart-in-your-throat climax (something the book's critics claim doesn't exist), every bit as much as the Battle of Blackwater in ACOK or the escalating conflict at the Wall in ASOS. The kingbreaking and dragontaming are on a smaller scale than those previous climaxes, but are no less compelling in execution and weighty in theme. This is especially so when you contrast the two, as GRRM encourages us to do by placing them side by side. "The Kingbreaker" plays host to one of the series' most cleanly and classically executed setpieces:

Ser Barristan moved closer to the king. “Are you the Harpy?” This time he put his hand on the hilt of his longsword. “Tell me true, and I promise you shall have a swift, clean death.”

“You presume too much, ser,” said Hizdahr. “I am done with these questions, and with you. You are dismissed from my service. Leave Meereen at once and I will let you live.”

“If you are not the Harpy, give me his name.” Ser Barristan pulled his sword from the scabbard. Its sharp edge caught the light from the brazier, became a line of orange fire.

Hizdahr broke. “Khrazz!” he shrieked, stumbling backwards toward his bedchamber. “Khrazz! Khrazz!”

Ser Barristan heard a door open, somewhere to his left. He turned in time to see Khrazz emerge from behind a tapestry. He moved slowly, still groggy from sleep, but his weapon of choice was in his hand: a Dothraki arakh, long and curved. A slasher’s sword, made to deliver deep, slicing cuts from horseback. A murderous blade against half-naked foes, in the pit or on the battlefield. But here at close quarters, the arakh’s length would tell against it, and Barristan Selmy was clad in plate and mail.

“I am here for Hizdahr,” the knight said. “Throw down your steel and stand aside, and no harm need come to you.”

Khrazz laughed. “Old man. I will eat your heart.” The two men were of a height, but Khrazz was two stone heavier and forty years younger, with pale skin, dead eyes, and a crest of bristly red-black hair that ran from his brow to the base of his neck.

“Then come,” said Barristan the Bold.

Khrazz came.

For the first time all day, Selmy felt certain. This is what I was made for, he thought. The dance, the sweet steel song, a sword in my hand and a foe before me.

The pit fighter was fast, blazing fast, as quick as any man Ser Barristan had ever fought. In those big hands, the arakh became a whistling blur, a steel storm that seemed to come at the old knight from three directions at once. Most of the cuts were aimed at his head. Khrazz was no fool. Without a helm, Selmy was most vulnerable above the neck. 

He blocked the blows calmly, his longsword meeting each slash and turning it aside. The blades rang and rang again. Ser Barristan retreated. On the edge of his vision, he saw the cupbearers watching with eyes as big and white as chicken eggs. Khrazz cursed and turned a high cut into a low one, slipping past the old knight’s blade for once, only to have his blow scrape uselessly off a white steel greave. Selmy’s answering slash found the pit fighter’s left shoulder, parting the fine linen to bite the flesh beneath. His yellow tunic began to turn pink, then red.

“Only cowards dress in iron,” Khrazz declared, circling. No one wore armor in the fighting pits. It was blood the crowds came for: death, dismemberment, and shrieks of agony, the music of the scarlet sands.

Ser Barristan turned with him. “This coward is about to kill you, ser.” The man was no knight, but his courage had earned him that much courtesy. Khrazz did not know how to fight a man in armor. Ser Barristan could see it in his eyes: doubt, confusion, the beginnings of fear. The pit fighter came on again, screaming this time, as if sound could slay his foe where steel could not. The arakh slashed low, high, low again.

Selmy blocked the cuts at his head and let his armor stop the rest, whilst his own blade opened the pit fighter’s cheek from ear to mouth, then traced a raw red gash across his chest. Blood welled from Khrazz’s wounds. That only seemed to make him wilder. He seized the brazier with his off hand and flipped it, scattering embers and hot coals at Selmy’s feet. Ser Barristan leapt over them. Khrazz slashed at his arm and caught him, but the arakh could only chip the hard enamel before it met the steel below.

“In the pit that would have taken your arm off, old man.”

“We are not in the pit.”

“Take off that armor!”

“It is not too late to throw down your steel. Yield.”

“Die,” spat Khrazz … but as he lifted his arakh, its tip grazed one of the wall hangings and hung.

That was all the chance Ser Barristan required. He slashed open the pit fighter’s belly, parried the arakh as it wrenched free, then finished Khrazz with a quick thrust to the heart as the pit fighter’s entrails came sliding out like a nest of greasy eels.

Blood and viscera stained the king’s silk carpets. Selmy took a step back. The longsword in his hand was red for half its length. Here and there the carpets had begun to smolder where some of the scattered coals had fallen. He could hear poor Qezza sobbing. “Don’t be afraid,” the old knight said. “I mean you no harm, child. I want only the king.”

He wiped his sword clean on a curtain and stalked into the bedchamber, where he found Hizdahr zo Loraq, Fourteenth of His Noble Name, hiding behind a tapestry and whimpering. “Spare me,” he begged. “I do not want to die.”

“Few do. Yet all men die, regardless.” Ser Barristan sheathed his sword and pulled Hizdahr to his feet. “Come. I will escort you to a cell.” By now, the Brazen Beasts should have disarmed Steelskin. “You will be kept a prisoner until the queen returns. If nothing can be proved against you, you will not come to harm. You have my word as a knight.”

The aged paladin, on One Last Job, cuts down a brash young opponent in order to defy and topple the cringing cowardly unworthy ruler. Aside from perhaps the description of Khrazz’s insides, it could have appeared in any number of not-remotely-deconstructive fantasy novels. And this fits the POV; Barristan Selmy is as old-school archetypal as they come. Quent, by contrast, is Not The Hero. Whereas Barristan the Bold has been a subject of triumphant songs and stories since he was a child, The Prince Who Came Too Late is swallowed up by his own adventure. It fits so well that the mechanisms of Barristan’s straight-laced fantasy story end up interfering with Quentyn’s deconstructive one. Even as Barristan reifies the genre’s values within his own story, he has in doing so inadvertently helped burn those values down in the context of Quentyn’s story. 

Image by Urukki Saki

What Barry and Quent have in common, however, is a set of companions with their own agenda. The white knight is accompanied by the Brazen Beasts, whose leader Skahaz mo Kandaq is IMO manipulating Barristan in order to rid himself of his nemesis Hizdahr (hence the locust masks, GRRM’s little hint as to who really poisoned the locusts at Daznak’s Pit). The frog prince is, as ever, reliant on the Windblown to advance his quest, and as ever, they are there to undercut the quest narrative’s values:

“They may ask for a word,” the Tattered Prince had warned them when he handed over the bundle. “It’s dog.”

“You are certain of that?” Gerris had asked him.

“Certain enough to wager a life upon it.”

The prince did not mistake his meaning. “My life.”

“That would be the one.”

“How did you learn their word?”

“We chanced upon some Brazen Beasts and Meris asked them prettily. 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.”

That Pentoshi saying is a perfect summary of the Tattered Prince’s role in Quent’s storyline. That our hero had to team up with the Windblown, take part in their atrocities, and then rely on them to get inside Meereen and now to (try and) tame a dragon, has given him the terrible knowledge of how the story-sausage is made. He’s seen the slaughterhouse floor, and now he can never metaphorically dine on tales of dashing derring-do again. The cost is simply too much, especially when Quent isn’t going to get the pie anyway. 

But he tries. One last time, he tries, and every time I read it, I can’t stop myself from hoping that this time, this time...

Quentyn let his whip uncoil. “Viserion,” he called, louder this time. He could do this, he would do this, his father had sent him to the far ends of the earth for this, he would not fail him. “VISERION!” He snapped the whip in the air with a crack that echoed off the blackened walls.

The pale head rose. The great gold eyes narrowed. Wisps of smoke spiraled upward from the dragon’s nostrils.

“Down,” the prince commanded. You must not let him smell your fear. “Down, down, down.” He brought the whip around and laid a lash across the dragon’s face. Viserion hissed.

And then a hot wind buffeted him and he heard the sound of leathern wings and the air was full of ash and cinders and a monstrous roar went echoing off the scorched and blackened bricks and he could hear his friends shouting wildly. Gerris was calling out his name, over and over, and the big man was bellowing, “Behind you, behind you, behind you!”

Quentyn turned and threw his left arm across his face to shield his eyes from the furnace wind. Rhaegal, he reminded himself, the green one is Rhaegal.

When he raised his whip, he saw that the lash was burning. His hand as well. All of him, all of him was burning.

Oh, he thought. Then he began to scream.

Image by Marc Fishman

Like I’ve said before, what we have in Quentyn’s sad little adventure is a horror story disguised as a fantasy story, GRRM using the former genre to interrogate the tropes of the latter. Quent can’t trade riddles with these dragons, nor flatter their egos, nor steal that one particular piece of treasure and then hightail it outta there. They are “monsters, not maesters,” and he is not their master, but meat. The fantasy story was in his head all along, a function of his inner monologue, not the world around him. The world around him is a horror story, and it has devoured him whole.

Around our own little fires, we tell stories to keep the children happy; the fires urge us on, converting our flailing gestures to dramatic shadow puppets. Quent spent his entire life in Plato’s Cave, watching the shadows dance, telling himself they were real even as his doubts grew. At the end, he finally steps outside, to find the fire waiting for him. This fire will save the world when the Others come for us; it marked Daenerys Targaryen as a savior figure worthy of wielding it against the Long Night, and will do the same for Jon Snow and (if I’m right) Tyrion Lannister. But when Quentyn Martell reached out to the eternal flame, it spoke to him as it did to Varys, and it said no. 

How does poor Quentyn respond? “Oh.” What else could he say? What else do you say to the abyss when it stares back? It echoes out like an “om” into the cosmos: Oh. My friends died for nothing. I flew too close to the sun. I’m never going home. 

I’m not the hero. 

This revelation is what’s been waiting for him all along. Not the princess, not the dragons themselves, not the songs to be sung, but a terrible diamond-hard clarity, a perfect knowledge of himself just as that self is utterly destroyed. No, no, it cannot be, my family, my friends, my story, I tried so hard...oh. 

Oh, the light.

the light

oh gods the LIGHT