Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 13 - Barristan/Outro Ft. BryndenBFish

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

Heavy is the cloak, they say - or is it blinded by the white?  Eliana and Chloe unravel the the legend himself, Ser Barristan Selmy.  Barristan Selmy finds himself alone with his regrets, set aside by yet another 'King'. Our last regular Barristan episode (with a Special SNEAK PATREON PREVIEW coming next week )! Say goodbye to our White Knight for now! SIGN UP for our Patreon - first charge will be September 1st - ahead of time: patreon.com/girlsgonecanon if you sign up for a $10+ tier by September 1st you will get a BELWAS DESERVED BETTER sticker shipped to you :)    intro by Anton Langhage   Identification of the Archaeological ‘Invisible Elderly’: An Approach Illustrated with an Anglo‐Saxon Example: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oa.2408 Sex and the elderly: Attitudes to long-lived women and men in early Anglo-Saxon England: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319845926_Sex_and_the_elderly_Attitudes_to_long-lived_women_and_men_in_early_Anglo-Saxon_England NobodySuspectsTheButterfly on Galaza Galare as the Harpy: http://nobodysuspectsthebutterfly.tumblr.com/post/148446995618/galazza-galare-the-harpy   Check out BryndenBFish at the following: @NotACast  | Notacast Podbean  | @BryndenBFish_ | Wars&PoliticsofASOIAF        Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/   Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor    

This episode will contain minor spoilers for the winds of winter. Hello and welcome to Girls Gone Canon episode 13, our Barristan outro. Featuring me, Chloe, one of your co-hosts of Girls Gone Canon. And also featuring me, another one of your co-hosts of Girls Gone Canon. And also featuring me, another one of your co-hosts of Girls Gone Canon, Eliana. And today we are so excited to have on with us the wonderful and one of our great friends, Brynden B. Fish, also known as Jeff, author of the book The Cautioner's Tale, named 2018 and 2019 Book of the year we've also recently gotten word um from a few press releases and publishers that he has won the newberry award for children's fiction and

the pulitzer prize he's also been nominated for the hugo awards so give a hand to jeff awards so give a hand to jeff whoa crowd goes wild hey buddies how are we doing tonight oh my god that's the voice you used to greet us earlier when you came on the call yeah that's as if we haven't been talking for an hour as we're coming on to this this uh this episode so hi i'm super freaking excited to be on with you guys it's a uh pleasure to to talk about barriston especially since one of the things that i do is i am one of the co-hosts of the not a cast podcast if you guys are listening to that and along with poor clinton otherwise known as emmet and we're not going to get into barriston stuff until like freaking 2023 at this point i think if we're charting it out correctly so super freaking excited to talk about barriston so quick blurb about me i'm jeff otherwise known as brendan beefish you might know me from twitter

from reddit i've done a few other things elsewhere on the internet that you have maybe famous or infamous depending on your perspective and it's a and the cautioner's tale i am the author of the world famous 2018 2019 and i've gotten word that it'll be the 2020 book of the year uh as well that is the book called the cautioner's tale so it's uh yeah i'm excited to be here it's it's it's cool it's uh it's yeah it's lit it's lit hashtag lit it says you 20 somethings and we'll say but i'm not 20 something that's for sure you're almost as old as Barristan. I am. You can basically call me Sir Grandfather for this episode. We are so excited to have you on, Sir Grandfather. No, we are.

Jeff has written at extent about the situation in Meereen, things that are happening, different plots in the books like that. So we were really excited to get him on also because we're okay with him. He's all right. I think it's kind of funny that Jeff's's all like yeah i'm so excited i like never get to talk about barrison and everyone jeff has a patreon uh at not a cast not a cast as a patron in which they released an episode about barrison and he's also talked about uh the situation, there's one of my long eyes. Damn it. Jeff's also talked about the situation in Marine with Radio Westeros.

They did a really, really fun skit for that. Yes, yes. It was a few years ago now, so I think it was like 2016. They did a really cool thing where they did like a radio broadcast of Yolk Boy and Lady Gwynn and myself all playing the roles of different reporters reporting on the Battle of Meereen, which is something that will be occurring in the Winds of Winter, which I believe that you guys are going to be talking about here in

the next few weeks. Yeah, this week we are doing this Barristan outro. However, it is not our last Barristan episode, you guys. Gasp. Next week is going to be our last episode for Barristan. However, this episode is not going to be our last episode for Barristan. However, this episode is not going to be a normal episode. It is going to be a taste at what our Patreon episodes will be like.

We have special episodes. We have many topics, not just the winds of winter episodes, but we are going to be doing Barristan one and a look at the summary of Barristan two in the coming weeks. Sweet. Can't wait. I'm super excited.

He'll hear you' takes on it because it's been, those two chapters are among my favorites from the Winds of Winter sample chapters. I know people talk about the Forsaken or the Theon chapters, and I do love those chapters a lot, but those two Barristan In the Elaine chapter. And the Elaine Sansa dancing

chapter, that one too, people allegedly like. Allegedly. Oh my god, I know it's no sansa too in agot but it's it's a good chapter it's a good chapter okay jeff i was the writer of a very important essay that explored jeff brindanby fish's uh opinions on sansa if you haven't seen it please let me. I will hit you a link personally to your email or your DM. If you want that, you can send us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. Or if you just want to make fun of Jeff, that's something we do too here.

Yeah, you can find me at BrendanBFish on Twitter. And you can send me a tweet that I won't read. And then I'll immediately mute you. Because that's what you deserve. If not a full block. It really depends on how i'm feeling that day did we invite jeff on here just to neg him yeah i feel it sort of sort of kind of feels like you soy boy i am the soy boy half of the not a cast podcast so oh my god the soyist the soyist

well we are excited that jeff is here for our 13th episode. Lucky 13. We are teenagers now. Woo! As Warren called out. Yes, Warren Dudson on Twitter did call that out. That was fun. We do have a couple other announcements in general housekeeping. I'll let Eliana get into it. Speaking of Patreon, we are going to start releasing and opening up our Patreon tiers

for all of you to subscribe to and sign up for. We're very excited to start doing this soon and we're doing an early bird special. So anyone who signs up for our $10 tier or more by the 1st of September, so that's

September 1, you're going to get a special edition. I pushed for this Bellwoss Deserved Better sticker.. Bellwoss deserved better sticker. A Bellwoss deserved Girls Gone Canon sticker. It still needs to be designed. We're going to make this. And it's going to be amazing. And maybe you can put it on your car.

Put it on your laptop. Put it on your face. Put it on your car. Put it on your cat. Put it on your Bellwoss. I don't know. Put it everywhere. All right?

All right. Sign up. Make multiple accounts. Get a bazillion stickers. Put it on everything. It's going to be great. I'm really selling us. Look at me. I should be in sales. So we're really excited for that. We're excited for our Patreon tiers. We are going to release those tiers this weekend when the podcast is released. That will go up on our Patreon, which is patreon.com slash girls gone canon.

Next weekend, it will be open for sign up starting in August on the 1st. So like she said, $10 or more tier by the 1st of September, you'll get that sticker. And it is a special edition. Very special edition. I guess you need to give us your address. But yeah, you want a sticker. It's worth it, though. We won't show up.

We won't. I don't have that money or time. Yeah we really don't. Another really cool thing that we are going to do next week is we did get some product from Fire and Suds which is an A Song of Ice and Fire themed bath product company.

They have given us a dragon egg and a pot of wildfire bath bombs so we have those to give away so next episode we are going to start that giveaway look out for details then just to explain do you want to explain quickly what a bath bomb is for because some people might not know what a bath bomb is if you don't know what a bath bomb is it is like bliss fizzy fun stuff i don't know it's like basically it's like a bunch of stuff put together it makes your bath all sparkly and pretty and it fizzes up in the water and i don't know it's fun it's fun you deserve it you deserve to birth a dragon egg

and of course after next week's episode we are going to be starting a new point of view. It will be a bit short-lived as well, so watch out for that information in our Barristan Winds of Winter episode. We've been saving up some really great comments and tweets from all of you that we wanted to address in our Barristan outro slash overview because we thought it would be better for the overarching discussion so to start it all off going back again to our good friend shakespeare of thrones who just like has a lot of great takes it's not it's not our fault she just has great takes all right she starts off and says anyway I have known a few berries in my more... military line of work. People are always like,

You really have to remember that Berry is from another era. He's old school. He knows his stuff and he gets the job done. And yeah, that's all true. But there's also this understanding that Berry is a dying breed and won't be around much longer. It's sad, but also indicative of a dying era in general, where the system benefited this one type of guy who didn't have to critically think about things so much, and now he does, and it's hard, and he wishes things were like how they were, or how he imagined they were. This is such an important POV for old-school

Westeros that still doesn't understand. I love Grandpa. I just wish we could sit down and have a talk. From Shakespeare with Thrones. I love Shakespeare with Thrones. Shakespeare with Thrones just did a really good gif thread the other day on Shakespeare and Game of Thrones and gifs. And it was just good. So please go give Shakespeare with Thrones a follow. She deserves it. She's very smart and gifts. And it was just good. So please go give Shakespeare Thrones a follow.

She deserves it. She's very smart and wonderful and lovely. She's very smart. This is really exactly how I feel. I feel like in the last few weeks, a couple of people have maybe not really understood how I feel about Barry. I do like Barristan.

It's just, I love him. He's a great guy. It's not that I don't love him. He's sweet. He has a good heart. He means well, but he's so old fashioned. He's stuck in this way that doesn't work anymore. Just like the rest of Westeros. I talk a lot about how the second generation is who this story is really about now. It's not about Cersei. It's not about Littlefinger. Those people are going to die.

They are not the people that are going to lead Westeros after this war they aren't the leaders so Barristan is like Shakespeare said part of that old generation and we are waiting for it to die and it's really sad but it's not about him in the end it's about what came from it yeah and same I also really love Barristan and I love his good intentions and I talked about I'm gonna come back to this later but I just love the trope that Barristan inhabits he's like not as good uncle Iroh but whatever um I think that Barristan's just a super bold warrior as his name says I just don't think he's that bold necessarily of a person and this is something that george r martin has really just been trying to impress upon his readers since a game of thrones with robert's story which is why

it's so great like i'd never piece this together until we were doing this pov reading in this order right so that bravery and courage that barriston shows on the battlefield isn't necessarily the same as having strong moral fortitude and now i think that barriston has a lot more moral fortitude than robert for sure because barriston in that room was all like let's not send assassins after the 13 year old girl that sounds like a really bad idea but i just sort of feel a lot of frustration that barriston hasn't had to be bold in making actual real-life adult choices until now, at 63. And, like, as you said in a previous episode, Chloe, I mean, how could he? When would that have happened?

Like, it's, in some ways, it's kind of his fault, not, but circumstances have also fallen that, like, when would that have happened? So I just think it's really interesting that we're reading Barristan's story alongside so many of these younger characters, because as you were saying, A Song of Ice and Fire is the story of this next generation of these younger people. And so we're ending up with this sort of coming of age story, like this Bildungsroman in miniature for a character who's already lived most of his life, who's experienced most of it, As opposed to a young person who's just stepping into their shoes for the first time. So I think that's very interesting. And maybe I'm just kind of bitter and jealous. Because I've kind of had to make some real life choices.

And live my life. And strive to be a functioning adult. Before Barristan has. I mean I've never fought like on a battlefield. No you're right. There's a great point to be made that you talk about barriston counseling robert back in a game of thrones edit six don't send hard knives after denarius because that is dishonorable at the same juncture he doesn't take the next step and say if you do this i'm done as your king's guard that's what ned does but Barristan, when the decision is finally made, he steps back and says, okay, that's just the way that shit is, is that I have to serve and obey.

He's essentially, he's a little bit more advanced in terms of his thinking and understanding than Arya Wotah is, but he's basically a serve, protect, obey type figure more than anything else. And it haunts him. It significantly and seriously haunts him throughout his arcs we find in the dance of dragons that he saw all these terrible and horrible things but he felt that the only thing he could do was to serve and obey the king and that worked out well when he was serving someone like jaharis the second it didn't work out so well when he's serving someone like eris the second it didn't also work out well when he's serving someone like Ares II. It didn't also work out well when he's serving someone like Robert as well. These are people who are bad kings, but Barristan has been brought up in this chivalric, noble type of thinking and line of morality and ethics that he thinks that that's the noblest good that he could do as a warrior.

And, you know, to kind of bring it back to the question that was asked, there's something really interesting at work going on in A Song of Ice and Fire where you have the death of an era. And it's not just that it's a second generation. I think that's a fantastic point. It's also the death of chivalry altogether. And you can see this in places like the battlefield. You know, one of the things that I've written about is that I think in the Winds of Winter that you're going to see some sort of confrontation between Aegon Targaryen and the Golden Company versus the Knights of Summer and the chivalric reachmen who are coming for him, as we find out in one of Arianne's Winds of Winter chapters. And one of the things that John Connington has come to the realization is, and John Connington is another dude who's in the same era as Barristan, is that I can't fight the way, the chivalric way. I have to fight, I have to like break the rules

and be this immoral or rather amoral individual who can, has to murder children if needs to be. I can burn, I have to burn down a whole town in order to save Westeros. That's kind of the mentality that John Cunnington has. Barristan's still stuck in this. If, you know, it can solve things with like the honorable sword and it just doesn't necessarily going to work out as what he finds out in Meereen. Is that him drawing his sword against Kraz and imprisoning his Darzoh Lorik? That doesn't solve anything. It creates a whole lot of problems for Barristan and for Meereen at large. Yeah. And for Daenerys when she comes back.

Yes. Oh my god, Daenerys. Dany's gonna be like, what have you done to my house? Right? My bed with the dying kid with his death juices all over it? I leave for a night and you throw a party and you break my expensive vase?

That's what it's gonna be like. All of her expensive vases yeah except they're people's lives so oh that hurts people dearestin uh hey i'm very excited for whenever we get to john connington let's have jeff back on um and next uh i think that this discussion segues perfectly into this tweet from another friend slash another favorite Aswath person. Yeah. Jeff, you want to read his tweet? Sure.

This is a tweet from Aziz from History of Westeros. Hi, Aziz, first. And then secondly, your tweet says, Regarding Barristan, I have a point I'd like to get your thoughts on if it's not too late. He, that is Barristan, strikes me as the Westerosi equivalent of a child star slash actor. A life defined by inborn talent, famous at a young age, lives in a bubble, messed up ideas about sex and love, etc. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. You know, there's a great point that i think that many people have made i think you guys have made it but i know that emmett's made it on on the not a cast podcast and that all of these characters that are coming from robin's rebellion have are all stilted in that age where they had some sort of experience and trauma happened to them for ned stark it's when he encountered his sister dying at the Tower of Joy. For someone like Barristan, so for Barristan, he always goes back to when I was a boy, I was the bold boy because I did the tourney at Blackhaven. And then I led the king out at Duskendale. And these things

all are kind of grounding Barristan and not allowing him to progress forward. So he still thinks, he knows that he's old, but he still thinks that, he still thinks of himself in the same ways that he thought of himself as a young man. And that does have consequences for for Barristan and again for Maureen, too. Yeah, major consequences for Barristan and those around him. I think the pressure of living up to this legendary name he crafted for himself has kind of inflated his high morality stance in a way. himself has kind of inflated his high morality stance in a way it reminds me of people like clinging to their beliefs for voting and but they vote for corruption in office and idly sit by and don't say anything when bad things are really happening they just put their heads down and say

well that's too bad i think uh i think barrison has a lot of internal conflict about that and about what's right in the eyes of others and what's right to him and actually executing those things and there's some points i'm going to come we're going to come back to later but i also just really like this idea that aziz brings up about that defined by inborn talent and also living in a bubble and how barristin being that legend in the same way that a child star slash actor is you're living in stories and barristin's just been living in songs and stories so uh we have another tweet yeah we uh have eric more the turnkey on twitter at lord snow 317 tweeted at us he uh quote retweeted

some really awesome art by mike caprotti of barriston that we posted with a quote i will not suffer the murder of children except that or i'll have no part in this and i love what eric quote tweeted he quote tweeted oh Barristan, you sweet summer child. You brought the monster to the children and went outside to play at war. Which, as you know, coming up in the Winds of Winter, which we will talk about in a bit, Barristan is outside leading in the Battle of Fire

while the Shave Pates have taken over the city internally and they're holding and having control over Meereen internally and they're you know holding and having control over marine internally and not at the battle so i mean he left all the children there so i want to come back right now to something that jeff has just said especially in the context of this quote jeff said that when robert was all like i'm sending hired knives after danny and barrison said don't do that. But he didn't do anything.

Barristan here saying, accept that or I'll have no part in this. That shows some growth in him, right? Or do you think that this was an empty threat? I think it's an interesting question, but it's kind of an, it's not an empty threat. It's more of Barristan, what are you doing to prevent the murder of children in Meereen? What is the actual thing that, what is the policy that you're implementing to save these kids? Because one of the things that's brought up in Barristan's final chapter in The Dance with Dragons is that he goes back up to the Queen's Chambers and he sees all these kids. And they're sitting around in a circle and they're spinning a knife at each other. And it's like very, very clear foreshadowing of what's going to happen to

these poor kids and they're going to play spin the bottle yes except for the playing spin the knife and then they're chopping off like bits of their hair it's it's really kind of really it struck me a few years ago when i was rereading it i was like oh my god that's very very clear about what's going to happen to them. Very, very clear. Very, very clear. God damn it. This is why I get fired weekly. So what is Barrison doing to save the kids? I think he's accepting that Skahaz will not turn against him or will not go back on his word.

And Skahaz doesn't strike me as the type of person that you necessarily want to just trust and not verify. I think you want to leave people to defend the kids. And there's no indication from both Dance and the Winds of Winter that Barristan has left, say, someone's sully to guard the kids or even left, you know, some of his freedmen company or sellswords or anyone. So basically they're in the tender mercies and cares of Skahaz Mokandak and that man does not have too much in the way of tenderness or care for these children. Well, and to that, I mean,

Barristan also doesn't really have the power to take hostages or anything either from those people, you know? I mean, what's he gonna do? Say to Skahaz, okay, what do you hold dear that I can take as insurance that you're not gonna kill these children? He doesn't have that power, even to do something like that. And he doesn't really, I mean, he doesn't really have the gumption as Aliana was saying

that, you know, he's not really bold enough to do that. He wouldn't do that or make a move like that. He thinks there's too much at stake and he wouldn't want to play dirty like that where, you know, Skahaz is all the little finger saying, hey, that's how the game is played. You got to play dirty or get played. There's a great point that you bring up there. Why Barristan can't do that is because he's already given up the game in that he has told Skahaz that I will not suffer the murder of children except that I'll have no part in this. Skahaz knows even if Barristan took a member of House Kandak, he can act at will because he's not going to lift a finger to kill a child in the event that Skahaz goes back on his word. And that's just really, really – I mean it's great.

I think it's great. I mean I applaud. Allow me my one little clap for Barristan here. That's it. That's all you get, buddy, because I appreciate you saying I will not suffer the murder of children, but you're not fucking doing anything to prevent the murder of children in Marine. Yeah. He's and it almost shows a bit of self-importance, right? Because he thinks that just his involvement would swing the tide of whether someone makes a decision to murder children or not as opposed to

he's taking a passive throwing my hands up in the air washing my hands of the situation as opposed to as you were saying that active whereas I think even if it were difficult based on things that Ned has said in the dungeon and just also how Ned is

Ned would have fought even if he knew he had no chance. No chance or no choice. Why can't a man be brave? Alright. And that brings us to we have a lot of we've been saving a lot of tweets, everyone.

We've just gotten such good stuff this whole time. I feel like therison uh pov has gone by really quickly i feel like this has been so fast compared to ned uh so it's hard because i got really attached the last week i want to say so now it's all these tweets i'm like we're saying goodbye soon next week's it yeah so we saved the best for second to the last and and just brought a lot of stuff so this one is from all of these friends we have so many friends mighty isabel who has caught up with the podcast and says, catching up. What does it say to a filthy doiless like me that the POV? Oh, my God, Isabel.

I love you. That untangled, the mirror knees not, is the one that so, so, so does not understand what a young girl, the queen, wants. And my first response is a link to. We'll put a link in the podcast. We're not putting a link to we'll put a link in the podcast to the music video for Christina Aguilera's What a Girl Wants What a Girl Needs It's gonna be a stop I don't need it in my head

I don't need this this hell, this nightmare We are gonna talk a little bit about Barristan and how he kind of deals with the females in his life in a bit later so we'll save that for them but i do love also like a filthy doylist like me isabel's great i know there's so much insinuation there and like i'm not gonna i'm living for it i i want to throw it out there and everyone else can just you can all just draw your own conclusions but like i'm with i see you isabel yeah we did get an email from josh who emailed us i believe we talked about we had one of his points in our net outro episode actually

uh but josh sent us another email and he said i just wanted to say i am with eliana there is more to strong belwas than meets the eye i just can't tell if the cupbearer kazimapal will get a second chance to poison strong belwas before danny can make him the ruler of marine kind regards josh why would you say that to me i mean a hashtag the truth that there's more to strong Belwis than meets the eye, but Belwis deserves better than what you are offering to me and to him. Like what? The whole kingdoms? All of them?

Yes, everything. The Asaga Mice and Fire. All of it, yes. The Asaga Mice and Fire? He deserves the Asaga Mice and Fire. He deserves this seven book book series. This eight book. This twelve book he deserves this uh seven book book series this eight book this 12 book book series this three book book series the three books the trilogy that took over the nation well that was a good romp we have to get our bellwosses in while we can

uh i guess that brings us to let's talk about what barriston's life means to the reader and to the story and dig into kind of what we learned so to start off a big piece of characterization for barriston that sets him apart from many of the other characters is that he is a pov that is much older than many of them. And I just want to sort of talk a little bit about how he's going to die. Yeah, we're all going to die. Barristan and his

age. And this came up a little in our parenting episode. Our parenting panel with LML. But you're also going to hear people often talk about how folks who lived in the medieval ages had to mature much faster than people nowadays because of the short life expectancy which i don't really think is true because cognitive development just because

we didn't have an understanding of it didn't actually change but anyways um it's also because the lifespan in the medieval times it gets skewed because of the number of infant deaths that occur. Yes. But people actually, if they survive past infancy, the average lifespan was about 60 to 65 years. Yes. We're going to go with – yes. Thank you, Jeff. Jeff majored in history.

I did. So what he said is actually very legit. So trust Jeff. He majored in history, so what he said is actually very legit. So trust Jeff, he majored in history. But yeah, like as you were saying, the high infant mortality rate skews it because people often cite the statistic, which is true, that the average age of death is 30. But if you count all the babies who died at like one and two, of course, that's going to drop the number because that's how averages work. like one and two of course that's going to drop the number because that's how averages work but the idea that the average age is 30 would of course make pearson extremely remarkable and of course while 63 it is notable the assertion that folks died in their 30s isn't entirely accurate as jeff was saying

research from archaeologists at the australian national university they were looking at some of these anglo-saxon grit and medieval graveyards and while of course these are from very specific time periods like the anglo-saxon graveyards are from very very early medieval periods as opposed to like the times that uh a song of Ice and Fire claims to be inspired by. A sizable number of adults did die between the ages of 25 and 45. But like as Jeff was saying, if, for example, men who reached ages, I think it was 20 or 25, could reasonably expect to live up to age 50. And the things that would cut life short were disease or violence. 50 and the things that would cut life short were disease or violence and actually a good number of people would live to like like about half of them would live up to 55 or older we're gonna link

these studies and you know taking that into context with i like this i really like this quote by brown ben plumb i also just really like brown ben plumb because i think he's another interesting side like flip side of the coin to Barristan, I think. I just like these old men who are good at fighting. It's an interesting trope that I am fond of. You guys should do a Brown Ben episode for your Patreon. We should do a Taken episode. So Brown Ben Plum says there are old sellswords and bold sellswords, but no old bold sellswords.

And while Barristan isn't a sellsword, he is cavorting with a bunch of sellsword companies right now. And he's turned cloak enough that, like, I mean, what's the difference? Just because he's not getting paid. Like, he's getting paid with, I don't know, compliments. Nice armor. Oh, yeah. like i mean what's the difference just because he's not getting paid like he's getting paid i don't know compliments and nice armor oh yeah wait that comes up a lot that came up in that last dance chapter it comes up in that first wins chapter yeah he's wearing that armor he is just like scaly and he's really into white and gold into his fashion yeah stunting stunting frontin they use the word frontin a lot also in that wins chapter frontin apostrophe um frontin martel so oh my god maybe there's also do you understand my life now, Jack? Class discussion that could be occurring here.

You know, those sellswords had to actively chase conflict, whereas the Kingsguard doesn't really need to. They can sit cushy next to the king so long as nothing bad happens in these difficult situations. But in general, being an old knight is a testament to Barristan's ability. And, of course, plays into that formidable old man trope. So, I don't know. In short, Barristan being 63 while living a life of fighting is impressive. And if it weren't for events like Robert's Rebellion, Barristan being of that age wouldn't necessarily be out of the ordinary

for nobility or necessarily strange for people living in a society like Westeros. I mean, I think it's a great point that you make that Barristan living to the age of 63, given the lifestyle that he's chosen, a warrior, a squire, a knight, a warrior, a Kingsguard, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, surviving how many wars? You know, from Robert's rebellion dusk and dale uh was he a part of the kingswood brotherhood the suppression of that yeah by with arthur dane i know jamie lansdowne wasn't i just don't remember he killed uh simon toyn there you go yep you're absolutely correct and so and then after that he we don't we don't get this from

the books itself we actually get this from from one of the history documentaries that they had. History documentaries. One of the history and lore videos from Game of Thrones that Barristan was a part of the taking of Old Wyk during the Greyjoy Rebellion, serving alongside of Stannis Baratheon. So I have to get my Stannis mentioned to this episode at least one time. Oh, my God. We've done so well not mentioning St stannis every episode i just i just had to do it one time and so and that's that one goes out to emmet right there so um oh my god so so yeah and and then he survives again how many battles when he's on daenerys's

side he survives the march up from Yunkai. He survives taking the, taking Meereen all together, which is a crazy feat if you think about all the shit, literally and figuratively, they went through to get into the city of Meereen.

And then he survived fighting against Kraz, probably the best pit fighter. And obviously, and George does do a great job of making this very intentional that it wasn't necessarily a fair fight because Kras doesn't have any armor on.

And, you know, Kras calls him a coward at one point and embarrassing, of course, says this coward's about to kill you, which is a great line. I think it's fantastic. And then he's out to march again on the Battle of Fire. But he's 63 years old, having survived countless wars, countless single combats, countless rescues,

countless, not countless. I mean, these are all counted, but you get my point that there's a lot of things, factors going into it. So it's a testimony to Barristan and his skill at arms that he survived for as long as he has. Yep, any day now. Any day now. Right. Yeah. yeah though i have a random fun fact of when i was studying our niece which is that filipino martial art i didn't stay very long but my teacher was talking

about how there are old men who have studied it for a long time and what that their age has given them is not just of course a lot of knowledge and practice making those moves they've learned shortcuts that have made them very efficient in fighting and i'm sure barrison of course has a lot of that knowledge too he was fighting with a staff our niece and the screamer sometimes as opposed to using two sticks you use a staff so yeah i mean the same kind of example goes for golf too i remember my um my uh i know you guys laugh as much as you fucking want. It's basically for Barrison, he's in his 60s in the same way my uncle is in his early 70s now, but he's a very good golfer. But he's very good because he knows the techniques extremely well and he's practiced his entire life.

But he can't drive the ball nearly as far as he can now, but he has the ability to have a fantastic short game because he's been doing that his entire life for 60 plus years. Barrison's the same way in that he's not as fast as these other men of the Kingsguard. He's definitely not as good as Jamie Laster is right now. For instance, where Jamie Laster pre-removal of his sword hand, I would say he probably might not even square off against someone like Sir Balon Swan, who seems to be a fantastic knight in his own right. But he has the technique that might net him some amount of survivability on a battlefield or in single combat. He's got that old band strength.

And experience. We talked about that in previous episodes where Barristan talks about how the pit fighters don't have real world fighting experience, whereas he does. Yes. Absolutely. And with that, the pit fighting in Meereen brings us right to politics in Meereen. I know Jeff has a lot that he wants to say about the politics in marine and i do too so let's get on into it well i think the first thing like when you talk about the politics of marine so many readers unfortunately dismiss marine because they're like oh it's fucking marine you

know i hate this city you know i can't wait for danny to like clear out of the city and get back to west rose where it's really important and everything like that. But no, you're wrong and bad and ugly. The marine is important. The marine is important because it's basically George saying, what does the Game of Thrones look like in a place that isn't King's Landing, Winterfell, Riverrun, Old Town, or even like Castle Black and places like that? or even like Castle Black and places like that. He's asking, he's essentially expanding the lens of where he wants to,

he's essentially expanding the lens of politics and examining what the Game of Thrones looks like in a place like Meereen. And it's really fascinating, I think. And I think it's extremely undervalued as a set piece. And as a, I think it's really eventful and plotful and very, I really enjoy it, especially these Barristan chapters are fantastic in kind of getting into the nitty gritty of Meereen. You know, it's funny, like on the meta side, I really feel that you can almost read George's anger and frustration and his inability to write A Dance of Dragons fairly quickly in Dany's Meereen chapters, where she's angry and bitter and frustrated and constantly feeling that she's being set back from the advances and the successes she made earlier. But then when you get to Barristan, the plot really kind of picks up in its pace, really kind of you start hitting point after point after point after point, and the beats start just kind of increasing in terms of its

tempo. So talking a little bit about the politics of Meereen, when we talk about Meereen, we have to look at it as a city that is extraordinarily factional. And what I mean by that is that there are disparate, there are three major groups in Marine, and there's probably a fourth one too, within the walls of Marine that have different aims, different motivations, and they have different kind of subsets of people. and they have different kind of subsets of people in the group. So briefly, the three factions are one, Dany and her children, two, Skahaz Mokandak and his Shave Pates,

and three, the Great Masters, primarily seen in the Sons of the Harpy, as well as some of the characters that Dany and Barristan encounter and deal with in The Dance with Dragons. To get a little bit more in depth,arius targaryen again as you guys talked about took marine at the end of a storm of swords and has set herself up there in order to learn how to rule marine but she didn't come alone or simply with her army she brought a whole population into the city mostly former slaves but also you have unsullied, you have Selsors and the Stormcrows and the Second Sons, although the Second Sons then defect to Yunkai at the midway through A Dance of Dragons. And Dany's, their motivations and goals are simply pretty

simple. They don't want to return to Sael, but they do not want to return to slavery and they want to make Meereen slave-free. Dany, though, has a separate goal in mind as i talked about as i alluded to earlier danny's goal is to learn how to rule so marine is kind of her testing tube in order to figure out what makes for a good rule and how she can learn if she can learn how to rule the city of marine she'll have a better chance of being a good ruler in westeros but ultimately danny's goal is to come back to is to but ultimately danny's goal is to return to westeros and make war in westeros yeah marine is very much the stepping stone for daenerys it's as much as the veil and king's landing was for sansa to learn how to play and learn how to be a part of a game and still is it's like how the wall is john's way of learn how to rule that is very much so denarius's

stepping stone to get to westeros marine while george doesn't flesh it out as well as i think he could have and the same criticism can be levied against the dothraki i think that maybe we should be interrogating the perception that it is a stepping stone for Daenerys, that it's just a petri dish where she experiments and learns how to rule, because we see that she very much cares about the outcomes of Meereen. And I think that while, of course, yes, it's a work of fiction and a story, we should be thinking of Meereen still as a population of people these are people these are danny's people and when she thinks of it at the end of a storm of swords she goes the sounds

of my city and what she stays for is she realizes that the peace that she so longed for and the freedom that she longed to bring to slaver's bay did not take hold in either yunkai or astapor and she doesn't want to necessarily make the same mistake in Meereen and I think this is something that neither Jorah nor Baerson necessarily relate to I think that they are like why is Daenerys wasting her time here and sure she thinks like how can I rule the seven kingdoms if I cannot rule a single city? But I do want to question the idea that it's just a stepping stone when there, I think that that mindset is, I think that mindset can be a little problematic.

Sure. And you're right about that. And that Daenerys faces that choice at the end of A Storm of Swords, but she also faces it in A Dance with Dragons, where she finds out that Yunkai is besieging Astapor and is on the brink of taking the city from the people that she didn't necessarily install, but are there acting on behalf of her. Which, you know, they're ostensibly acting on behalf of her. They're not actually acting on behalf of her. And she's presented with basically three options, or she's presented with two options to begin with. First, stay within Meereen and kind of let Astapor deal with its own problems. Or secondly, march against

Astapor, march against Yunkai and liberate Astapor. But there's a third option. And who presents that option but none other than Ser Barristan Sel selmy who urges denar who says there's a third way westeros and war in westeros and danny to her credit and benefit she rejects barriston's option to abandon marine to its fate take her army and her people and go back to westeros she has a real stake in marine and in ensuring it's peaceful or rather it's peaceful and to ensure its survival going forward. And that's where I think a lot of, I'll even give just for Jeff since he's here, there's a lot of Stannis parallels with the future, the queen who cared and Daenerys was the queen who cared. She wasn't, she thinks of them as her people and as her children and she

thinks of them lovingly and she doesn't want to just leave uh she doesn't want to go straight to Westeros she wants to do it right and she wants them to be in the right hands and them to be liberated from basically everything they're experiencing and basically what we are looking at you know people like the green grace they want to keep that old lifestyle and keep that going So Daenerys has a lot to basically learn from the Dothraki right now and come back and save her people and make sure they're okay before she can do anything. So it's going to be really interesting to see who she actually instills to kind of keep things level. And hopefully it's strong Balwes. Yeah, absolutely. but the same juncture the question i have and maybe this is a question that eliana can answer does daenerys consider the meronese her people and that when i

speak about the meronese i guess i'm speaking more about the great masters does she think of them as her people or is she more thinking of the lower classes and former slaves of marine that have kind of rallied around her and her cause in Meereen? I would say it's definitely more of the latter because you can see how adversarial she feels and how alien she feels amongst the traditions and customs of the great masters. And how she feels that she's constantly performing for them. how she feels that she's constantly performing for them and i think she relates more to those who have been enslaved than necessarily the masters yeah yeah i agree and she says something in dan in her first chapter in the dance of dragons where she says i hate the city but i must don my floppy ears or and i think she says that later on, where she feels that compelled to follow the customs of Meereen, while at the same time despising the city and despising – I guess she's despising the city, but despising more of the one class of people that is diametrically opposed to her in Meereen.

And those being the Harpy, which we'll be talking about – those being the Great Masters and or the Harpy, which we'll be talking about in a little bit. But to kind of take it a little bit more from Meereen itself and talk a little bit more about her children, she does have a significant military presence in Meereen. Her army is composed of Unsullied. There was about 11,000 that she brought from Astapor in the Storm's Swords, counting some of the casualties she took in taking the city of Meereen and some of the casualties she suffered in the Sons of the Harpy insurgency. I would estimate she's probably got about 10,000 on Sully left there. She's also got three Freedmen companies. They are known as the Free Brothers, the Mother's Men, and the Stalwart Shields.

Stalwart Shields being my favorite of the companies because they are named for that one dude, Stalwart Shield, who was the one who was lying with the – Oh, yeah. The one who was murdered by – yeah, he was murdered by the Sons of the Harpy. And he used to lie with the sex workers in Marine because he just wanted their comfort. And I think it's really sad he got murdered as a result of that yeah but i do i do love the fact that they they he was such an inspirational example that they named one of their companies the stalwart shields i think that's fucking great they're estimated to be about 2 000 in number according to the wiki vice and fired i believe

that's also mentioned in one of danny's A Dance of Dragons chapters. And then she has one seltzer company, the only one that's left her because the Second Son's abandoned her midway through A Dance of Dragons, and that is the Storm Crows, led by the dashing, good-dicked Dario. He's not dicked.

Yeah, it's not dicked. He does the dicking. The dicking is all done by Dario,'s why he's a dick ah right really you need to get your dario dick conjugations better get right get right with jesus i'll work with that work on that there are a handful of quotes from barrison's pov that i really liked as we read through these uh chapters this go round and i'm going to read them off. It's him regarding Dario. He has like this constant, almost distaste and hateful respect for Dario.

He like he hate loves him. You know, it's like his best frenemy. And he's always constantly comparing himself to Dario in a way like in the Queen's Guard, for example. Would Dario 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 but then you see in the king breaker him thinking of dario with like i said a hateful respect uh dario is vain and rash but he is dear to her grace he must be rescued before his storm crows decide to take matters into their own hands.

It can be done. I once brought the queen's father safely out of Duskendale where he was being held captive by a rebel lord but... And he trails off because he's old. Because he's old. As old as Jeff. That's hateful.

Thank you. I hope you live at least that long jeff i i i'm working on it no it's it's great dario is a terrific character again one of those characters that's completely undervalued by the fandom i won't go into all the reasons why dario is terrific and fantastic but i do love the fact that he symbolizes so much of danny's warlike draconic nature and i do also love the fact that he essentially proposes the red wedding in marine which i think is really interesting that one of his courses of action is ah well you getting married to his stars are lorik will be a great pretense to gather all the great masters together

and then we will close the gates and i will send my men and we will slaughter everyone. Holy shit, dude. You are basically Walter Frey in Meereen. But sexier. Sexy Walter Frey. Ew. Hell yeah. I am never going to fornicate again.

No, but he's great. But he's also, he's a captive, though, of the Yunkai as part of the deal that Daenerys made with Yunkai in order to forestall war, at least temporarily. And he's still being held captive. And even in the Winds sample chapters, we don't get indication that he's been killed. And you guys, I believe, had talked about in the last chapter from Barristan that the deal that he strikes with Archibald Ironwood and Garrus Drinkwater was that they would go in and convince the Windblown to go and liberate the prisoners to include Dario. And one of the things that Barristan says in – I don't know if I want to say it because that's a Winter's stuff and I don't want to get too much into it. He says it in dance, right? It's fine. Yeah. Yeah, you can still mention it. We don't agree if I want to say it because that's a Winter stuff and I don't want to get too much into it. He says it in dance, right? It's fine. Yeah, you can still mention it. We'd argue, yeah. Okay. Do whatever you want.

So another really kind of interesting and funny thing is that when Barristan is giving his badass speech about what's going to happen in the Battle of Fire, that he instructs his men that if they come across Dario somehow alive in the camp of the Yunkai, he thinks momentarily it might be better if he's dead. But given the fact that he's a great warrior, give him a sword and follow his lead in his example because he would know what to do, which I think is a testament of what you guys have talked about, of kind of that grudging respect that Barristan has for Dario. Yeah, and Eliana and I have actually discussed how it's probably a lot to do with uh gender and the warrior syndrome of you know like if he's a great warrior i will give him respect uh i mean you even see in i want to say if it's it might be the second chapter he sees a

woman that's fighting naked in chain mail and her boobies are like swinging everywhere in her in the bed i think i want to say it might be barriston too in the winds of her boobies are like swinging everywhere in her in the bed i think i want to say it might be barriston too in the winds of winter but like he's like what the hell is going on but you know dario is like such a piece of crap prick to him and he's just like this cocky little young fuck and he's all dario's all good dick dario's all just like cocky and awful and barriston's like i guess i respect you your sword not that sword the other one but uh in in the winds of winter that passage you reference he straight up says and if he should die heroically in battle so much the better like well hopefully dario will

die so i don't have to deal with him anymore damn so two things with that like yes absolutely regarding that whole like gender and warrior syndrome and i think that shiloh carol from who wrote the book medievalism in a song of ice and fire and game of thrones touches on that a little where she talks about how the whole idea of masculinity is wrapped up in this idea of physical power and that wasn't necessarily true in every society and maybe not necessarily even true in the actual medieval era but in the world of westeros and song of ice and fire that is how respect is gained for some reason through martial prowess and physical power but also a proposal is and this is gonna be a little weird is Barristan's feelings towards Dario

supposed to be like you know how sometimes there's those really kind of like fucked up things where fathers are like oh don't touch my daughter or I know what's best for my little girl and it's not this guy or whatever is that what Barristan's

character is supposed to be like in regards to being like hmm dario's like an okay guy i guess but also i hate how he's messing up my little girl or whatever it's weird to me the relationship that Barristan has towards Daenerys. And I think you hit on something. You look at it more as a father figure protecting his daughter from sexual impropriety, which is something that did occur and still does to this very day. to this, to this very day. My question though, is kind of, my question though, is what is Barristan's actual feelings towards Daenerys? Are they simply a chastely love that Barristan bears for Daenerys as the figure, as a, as a figure that he's worth, that as a queen that is worth serving? Or is it a little bit more than that?

And so I reread all of Barristan's chapters in preparation to come on to you guys' excellent podcast. And one of the things that really stuck out to me was the line where Barristan is talking about how Daenerys reminds him of Ashara Dayne. And we know that Barristan was very much infatuated with Ashara Dayne. Is Barristan potentially viewing Daenerys in a lens that is a bit more than simply chastely chivalric courtly virtue and love? Is there a bit of romantic feeling that barrison has for danny

i i don't it's not explicitly said in in the books as far as i know but i think that's a possibility for sure it's kind of like there was that line about i mean i think at the at the least he's definitely projecting very hard uh onto the situation. Definitely projecting, especially with the lines about Quentin and how Dorne sent her mud and how young girls would always choose fire over mud. They'd always not choose the nice guy. There was a lot of that going on with it.

I could see maybe even a little, but he does call her his little queen. His child queen. His child queen. I'm not sure, but at same time i mean that's not out of the question because ashara was a couple years older than daenerys but like was only a couple years older and he kind of felt the same way about her and had similar thoughts apparently so it is interesting i think it's just a lot of heavy projection yeah there's a lot of things being

foisted onto denarius from barrison like maybe daughter as jeff opposed maybe lover maybe child but also not child maybe maybe child queen uh but also just a stand-in replacement for this idea of honor which is a huge thing to just put onto someone like oh you are my path to honor like how jorah saw daniel initially but not anymore but like initially as you are my ticket home she represents so many things she represents yeah she represents home she represents this old lineage that he used to serve and this prospect for honor on top of maybe daughter, maybe lover, all these things. looking at Dario as both, this guy's not great, but at least he can wield a sword.

But at the same time, I can also see him as a, and then as an unconscious, if he has an unconscious or unrequited love for Daenerys, as a potential romantic rival. And I think that's something that we can, you guys can talk about more in your Barristan episode coming up for the Winds of Winter. Yeah, we can talk about it when the Winds of Winter comes out. Yeah, right when that comes out.

Next week, I think, is what I heard. Another four years! Let's hope not. So to kind of briefly go through the rest of some of the folks in Danny's party, you have the civilians there. If you go past the army, you have the freedmen from Astapor, Yunkai, and Meereen. They possess a wide skill set. You have folks like weavers. You've got people who are teachers and different types of civilians that are working with, that are in Meereen now, and they come from all over Slaver's Bay.

And then finally, you have the dragons. And the dragons, I put as a question mark whether they're actually on Barristan's side, because there's a great line that comes in Barristan's final chapter in The Dance with Dragons where Skahaz Mokandak asks, so I ask you, if the peace should fail and this battle should be joined, will the dragons come? Will they join the fight? They will come, Sir Barristan might have said.

The noise will bring them, the shouts and screams the scent of blood that will draw them to the battlefield just as the roar from daznak's pit drew drogon to the scarlet sands but when they come will they know one side from the other somehow he did not think so so um big question mark whether the dragons were should be actually considered as part of danny's side it seems like they're going to have the impact of potentially roasting and killing people from both sides in the coming battle yeah hashtag wild cards yeah i don't think that the dragons necessarily fall on one side or another i mean they're animals and we see this during the dance which you're gonna i guess come to later but also there's so much just not free will but just this force this entire force that

is supposed to i guess sort of represent the untameable in some ways uh you're playing with fire right and also the that idea of weaponry it's about whose hands they're in but this idea of baristan sort of waiting for denys to show up it I brought this up last episode with the corpses being thrown over the walls of Meereen but the battle for Meereen just gives me very Blackwater vibes and Barristan hoping for Dany to show up and save the day while no one like really knew for sure that the Lannister forces were going to make it. It in a way feels to me kind of like how they're hoping that Tywin Lannister and, you know, the Tyrells appear and they're able to secure that victory for the crown. Yeah, I think it's a great point.

And it feels very much like that Martin wanted to have the Battle of Meereen in A Dance with Dragons to close out the book in the same way that he had the Battle of Blackwater essentially close out A Clash of Kings sure r.i.p yeah it really also gives a sense to how george wanted to do this story in phases after uh deciding upon it not just being a trilogy so uh obviously he was hoping for three-ish phases but guess it's gonna be four, or five, maybe six. Maybe twelve. Maybe the 13 of Carth. The twelfth book.

Let's hope not. Let's hope it gets closed out at some point soon. In that twelfth book, hopefully we'll get the reveal on who the Harpy is since no one knows. A lot of us know. I know knows. No one knows. Bullshit. Bullshit. I know, right?

Everyone knows. Come on. I think it's so funny because there's – I've seen so many outlandish theories, but I don't feel like I've seen a whole lot of outlandish theories about who the Harpy is. There's pretty much a broad general agreement about who the Harpy is. And who is the Harpy? We can all say it at three, two yeah three two one his dog what are you what i'm just kidding what happened you tricked me i was taking this very seriously everyone

but no you're right you galagalar is definitely the harpy. And she is the one who is controlling, essentially, the harpy who has the aims of restoring slavery in Meereen. That is initially until they're willing to abandon slavery, reopen the fighting pits, and to preserve the kingship of the magnificent and worshipful Hizdar Zolorek. So about the Galazagalar, as you guys have talked about previously, she is a, she knows the green grace. She is essentially in charge of the religious practice in Meereen. And, you know, just get it totally out of the way. Galaza is the freaking harpy, but because you fucking nitwit morons are going to come huffing and puffing into my mentions with yesterday's dinner on your breath takes, here's why she is the harpy uh one she's unusually knowledgeable about the harpy's actions and motivations she knows about the sons of the harpies murdering the miranese weaver before

danny even tells her in danny's fourth chapter she knows the exact number of people the sons of the harpy have killed when baristan imprisonsdar, and she gives them motivation for why they're attacking to get Hizdar freed. Hmm, that seems a little suspicious, huh? Hmm. Hmm, right? And then, of course, it's her plan to marry Daenerys and Hizdar and her belief that it will end the violence, and then it works. Like, wow, what a coincidence that the very thing that you say,

if you marry Hizdar Zoloric then the then the violence will end seems pretty interesting right a little bit suspicious it's not a setup no of course not not a setup whatsoever and then seemingly she's sympathetic to daenerys but she's also the one who's pushing the harpy's dress code and the code of conduct onto daenerys and for that point i actually uh read a noble one nobody suspectsflies, excellent post on Tumblr. I will send you guys the link if you guys want to link that in your show notes. An excellent Tumblr in general. Yes.

Yeah. If you haven't checked out Butterfly, please check out her Tumblr. She writes great stuff on all sorts of Aeswaf stuff. I love this quote from the Green Grace in A Dance of Dragons. The Mother of Dragons must don the Tokar or be forever hated, warned the Green Grace, Galaza Galar. You know, like, obviously you're like, oh, that's not, that's not like a very silent, subtle, almost threat to your reign whatsoever.

No. On Wednesdays, we wear pink. Right? We wear green, more like. you can't sit with us uh and there's also another line uh in dance which i have a lot of emotions about glaza galar i think she's a sneaky old bitch and i like her but i mean minus like all the bad like slavery money and shit but i mean like besides that she's like damn good, good for you. Hustle. It's a hustle.

It was these calamities that transformed my people into slavers, Galazagalar had told her at the Temple of the Graces, and I am the calamity that will change these slavers back into people, Dani had sworn to herself. The Green Grace is the puppet master behind the scenes in Meereen. She's attended

by all of the different graces. When Daenerys is gone, something I mentioned last week, the Blue Graces are needed in the city to tend to the sick from the Pale Mare, and they're nowhere to be found. Last episode, I said that, you know, Eliana and I discussed, they could have died. It's quite possibly, it could be a coincidence, could not be. But, you know, thinking about it, I feel more and more confident

it's probably not a coincidence. Galazza seems to pull the strings for Daenerys's marriage, and her character motivation is clearly spelled out in that quote about the calamities that transformed her people into slavers from Dany 3. That is basically her character motivation, that's her telling us, this is why I'm doing this. This is why I'm the villain. She also begins to spin her own narrative about Daenerys's death in the Queen's hand to Barristan after they go to court and Daenerys's death is announced. 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 wrath. By overpowering barrison in conversation and with

the court being told danny's dead it shows the spider web of the green grace and the slaver lord seizing pack power in the city so because we've been drawing so many comparisons between the situation we read and showing how yes the game of thrones is the same anywhere in the world i believe i want to say it was you that i was talking to right chloe who was saying that the danny and cersei chapters were when feast and dancer one book right they were supposed to actually have been very close to another like in terms of chronology and when the reading order and it makes me wonder if we were supposed to be reading galazic galare and uh the interactions she has with danny as being very similar to the interactions that cersei

has with the high sparrow you could see the differences in how each of them treats the leader of a religious order like how receptive are they to these different demands and, you know, how political, how that head of state interacts with this religious head, those ideas of political power and the concessions that each one makes and sort of judge each one individually, but compare them to one another. Yeah, doing things for the greater good, rearming their faith militant, so to speak. Definitely. And George did say Cersei and Daenerys chapters

originally were going to be some of them back to back to kind of promote the difference in their ruling style and the contrast between the two. Yeah, that's great. I think it's terrific. I think Martin has said specifically that one of the things that readers lost out in not having A Feast for Crows and A Dance of Dragons as one book is that very thing where you would be able to contrast and compare Daenerys and Cersei's rule of King's Landing versus Dany's rule of Meereen to Cersei's rule of Westeros and King's Landing mostly. But yeah, it's fascinating too to take a look at who Galazagalur is.

And I love that comparison with her as the High Sparrow. Although she is much more subtle than the High Sparrow, I would say. The High Sparrow is very much like – as soon as you're introduced to this guy in Cersei's sixth chapter in A Feast for Crows, you're like, this guy is going to fuck Cersei over big time. Galazagalir is much more subtle and much more of an advisor to Dany than the High Sparrow is. The High Sparrow is almost separated out from Cersei Lannister and her rule. They do occupy similar spaces in being religious figures that can stir the population into a frenzy on behalf of or against the ruling party, as we're going to find out.

But there is one key difference between Galazagalera and the High Sparrow, and that is the High Sparrow is male and Galazagalera is female. And that is, to me, another potential hint of who Galazagalera is, because the harpy in Ghiscari and our own culture is female. And it would be thematic, and it would make thematic and atmospheric sense for the harpy to be female. And as far as we know, she is the only major female great master character that Daenerys encounters in A Dance with Dragons, that Daenerys and Barristan encounter in A Dance with Dragons. So that seems very much to be pointing the reader to the fact that Galazagalir is the Harpy. But the one other character that is sometimes mentioned as the Harpy is Hystarzo Lorac. And the question I have for you gals is, is he a patsy of the Harpy, or

is he more part of the conspiracy as a whole? I think he's a total patsy. They are pinning it on him. I think he just knows he was promised the rule, and he was promised to have the throne in Meereen, and he is a total puppet king. If Galaza is the puppet

master, he is a total puppet king. He is the Tommen of the Circe you know that's or the Renly absolutely he's I guess he probably knows a little bit but they don't let him in all the board meetings you know he's just

got the money daddy's got the money in the wallet and they just say you're gonna be king in some of the previous chapters we've examined from barrison's point of view i do think you can see that in his stars reactions to how things have gone he sort of thinks i was promised to be king to have this like hot wife and this rule and be in charge of marine and then suddenly like barryson he said he's like oh i'm actually really responsible for these people now and people are dying but it seems to me that

george wants us to well he tries to provide this false breadcrumb trail that his dar is the harpy when barryson interrogates his darzolorek The Kingbreaker, he does act suspiciously-ish, but not that suspiciously, I would say, in that he's like, no, I'm not the Harpy. And then there's one point where he stops answering Barristan's questions, and Barristan takes that to be acknowledgement that he is the Harpy, but I think at that point, Hizdar knew what the game was, and that Barristan was not going to take

I'm not the Harpy as the answer to his questions. Yeah, hashtag lack of evidence against is not evidence for some meta commentary in this series. Never mind. And, to be fair,

it might be one of the things that is not good for barristin for his story that might be something that comes back to bite him and i think it will i really do think it will oh yes because the uh the one final faction in marine are the shave pates led by skahaz mokandak and these are a different type of people than we've described previously. They're Maronese, but they're not former slaves or lower-class Maronese. They are upper-class nobles who shave the flamboyant Ghiscari hairstyles to signify their abandonment of the Harpy lifestyle. And the question is whether they're actually true believers in Dany and her crusade

or whether they're taking advantage of the situation to assert themselves as the new power to be in Meereen. I think the Shave Pates are definitely using this situation to advance their position. They see Dany's cause as the better, easier, righteous path than supporting the Harpy and the power struggle. I think Skahaz sees Daenerys' side as a means to break away from the old instillment of the Graces and slavers and have control in this vacuum of power that's been left in Drogon and Daenerys' flight. He's kind of threaded himself and his own military across the Daenerys faction.

So it's like a, if we go down, we go down together or we take over kind of thing. And he seems to kind of want to be on what he thinks will be the winning side. He implements the brazen beasts and Daenerys promotes them throughout the city. But now if Daenerys rescinds that promotion, Skahaz has an upper hand as he has a position of power over the city with the brazen beasts. I also love that one quote from him to Barristan. We will rue your old man's honor before this game is done. It's a very Littlefinger-y taunt. Yeah, it is.

Very. I did warn you not to trust me. Skahaz Mokandak is really a fascinating figure. He's probably my favorite Myrnaes character himself. And he's really fascinating because he presents as an ally of Daenerys, but his motivation in taking

down his Tarzor Lorric and Barristan's chapters is not so noble because he has this line that I think is really dripping with this haunting... He has this line which really kind of indicates where his motivation in doing all this. And he has this line that says, Long has Kandak waited for this night, and Barristan thinks, That is as much as I fear.

And that's really, really, really indicative of what Skahaz is in this game for. He's in this game because Kandak has not taken the prominence that the Zolorak family has in Meereen. But now he has the chance to make things right. utilizing Barristan, the Unsullied, the Sellswords, the Freedman companies in order to ensure that his family comes into prominence and power in Rean. Is that how the song goes?

Yup. You know this song. You know this song. I think we did really good on that. I can feel it calling in the air yeah you know this song you know this song I think we did really good on that it's a classic calling in the air tonight oh lord patreon only content right

we should do karaoke for the patreon oh my god yes but you got me singing again yes okay but um you got me singing again that happens on this podcast by the way it's fun man i don't get to sing in not a cast i guess i should talk with emmet about that yeah you're real serious you uh you gotta come on girls gone canon you're an official girl gone canon right now you've gone canon hell yeah you could have oh yeah you could have the amen breakdown every time you say amen

brothers you put the you know the amen breakdown i can actually do it something like that yes yeah like that all right so talk about the locusts tell me about the locusts yes so i think skaha's mokandak's most interesting and soon to be infamous deed was to be the one who actually poisons the locusts that denaris is the one that poisoned locusts that strong bell was in just in danny's ninth chapter to dance with Dragons. And as always, I recommend Adam Feldman's excellent essay on it, which is called Who Poisoned the Locusts? In which he fingers Skahaz Mokandak as the figure as to why.

Fingers Skahaz Mokandak as the person who poisoned the locusts. And the reason why he does that is to jumpstart conflict between the overpowered Daenerys, her dragons, army and freemen versus the great masters that he wants to overthrow and kill and to include the children of the great masters. Yeah. Yeah, I love that essay series. can say that the miranese blot blogs have helped them rethink the way that the miranese chapters

have been positioned and think more deeply about it but of course part of those miranese chapters are barriston's pov chapters so just you know what are people's favorite parts what do you like about barriston's pov so far I uh I'm a sucker for overwhelmingly like guilty characters that slowly fill themselves with very mild self-loathing so between like the Barristan old man nostalgia breaks we've been doing and the pre a song of ice and fire exposition dumps which are also my favorite and even Barristan knowing he could have been better he could have been a true knight. His arc has been so satisfying to me,

especially as we've isolated it these last few weeks. He clings to his honor, to his religion, as we see in the last few chapters of his, him thinking about the Seven and the Warrior, to the things that make him feel human and make up for his past mistakes in his head. I also love that his story, which echoes Eddard's noir arc in A Game of Thrones, becomes a fable in the end as well,

from the masked beasts to the herons and the little pigeon and red lamb in his The Winds of Winter chapters. It reminds me of Tyrion 1 in A Dance with Dragons. The you Westerosi are all the same. You sew some beast upon a scrap of silk and suddenly you are all lions or dragons or eagles. But as Eliana and as Jeff and I have been saying,

it's the same everywhere you go. But the brazen beasts wear different masks also. So it's just really interesting kind of to see. I mean, even comparing to reading Ned last, there are many similarities in the arc and the journey, although Ned's plot feels a bit more like a beginning and Barristan's a means to an eventual end. I did find myself yearning for a look at more characters from time to time as he was very isolated in Meereen, but I think it was still a really good experience to get them back to back and get into his headspace.

Yeah, in fact, I think the Barristan-Ned comparison was the way that George was able to write his way out of the Merenese Knot. And I think what he ended up doing in order to finish A Dance with Dragons back in 2010, so he comes on to Barristan as a point of view character in early 2010 as the way that he can slice open the Merenese Knot, is that he hit on the idea that the game of thrones is played everywhere which is what i said earlier and they realized he could tell a meronese version of it through a ned stark archetype and that ned stark archetype is sir barriston selmy and i kind of just want to dig into this idea a little more i was talking with aziz a few weeks ago and he was talking about how he wanted to hear us talk a little more about this ned barriston thing and i think what's interesting to me is we've talked a little bit about how they inhabit very similar roles and of course they have conceptions of honor but I think that Ned is in some ways much more utilitarian than Barristan like the past that Ned has had leads

him to have a more complex relationship with that idea of honor and i think that's because he's had just more personal connections with different kinds of people and losses because of that which of course came out of the rebellion which also impacted berestin but with ned being that second son and then eventually becoming lord someone who didn't take any vows the way that bearston had ned had a family with his father and his siblings and probably his mother some woman i guess and he had like this best friend and then eventually ned had a new family that he made these personal connections very much shaped him and his conception of honor and how it works in the world

and of course honor's flexibility and different kinds of honor ned having gone through so much trauma and pain knows that life is not a song but that hurt prevented him from being able to pass that lesson on to his children. Whereas, coming back to Aziz again, he was talking about how Barristan is like that child star, and Barristan still very much has yet to learn that life is not a song. He's lived just so long being this legend of Barristan the bold lord commander of the king's guard, and so he's been able to just live in this fantasy and has lost very little in terms of those personal connections like we never see barriston

talk about his parents and he was the first son he was gonna inherit he was gonna get everything you know he's gonna get all these wheat stocks um and i want right i know i was thinking about that earlier and we don't hear him really talk about the rest of selmy's the woman that he was betrothed to mary who ends up marrying his cousin instead like he doesn't even seem to have very much friends or close connections among the king's guard maybe he has admiration for them which of course he alsomires Dario, so that doesn't say much. So despite having once been, quote unquote, brothers of the Kingsguard, you don't see the same connections between Barristan and the other Kingsguard that you see between, like, Jon and Pip and Gren and Sam, right? Yeah. And he doesn't really seem to mourn his brothers when he loses them.

He might mourn the idea of oh arthur dane he was such a great or lewin but or lewin still a great name um he mourns the idea of them same way as he mourns the idea of ashara and he lives in these ideas of those people the songs and fantasies because he's never really gotten to know them and i think that's where baristan's conception of honor comes from and there's also a part of me that wonders if baristan struggles with making close bonds with anyone he doesn't really seem to make close connections with any of the boys that he's teaching he gets satisfaction of course out of being their teacher and guiding them and showing them what chivalry is but i mean again like chloe was saying did baristan ever have a chance to get to know anyone maybe maybe not is the king's

guard just set up so differently from the night's watch that this these fraternal bonds are not forged like we see though that arthur dana regar seemed to have a very close friendship maybe that's different from barriston but that what is honor compared to a woman's love barriston doesn't know that so he can't he has this one idea of what honor is right I think you're absolutely correct in that there are very key differences between Ned and Barristan and their personality and something that kind of comes to mind is a theme that gets brought up in the great HBO miniseries Band of Brothers and one of their episodes called The Replacements, I think that's the episode title, where they have a bunch of new guys that come into the company of men

who are fighting in World War II in Easy Company of 101st Airborne Division, and none of the old guys get close to the new guys because they feel like they're all going to be killed. And that, to me, reads as an interesting read into who barrison is psychologically because how many of the king's guard were killed during robert's rebellion i think it was all but him and and jamie essentially right yeah his favorite yeah right his favorite the one guy he doesn't he specifically doesn't like the one guy who stannis recounts, again, second Stannis mentioned. Hi, Emmett.

Is the – Hi, mom. Hi, mom. Hi, podcast husband. The one guy that he hates and thinks that he should have been sent to the wall is the one guy that survives and all the guys that he admired. And again, it's a detached admiration, as you point out excellently. That's the one guy that survives. Everyone else that he admires all dies. And I think that's very much speaking to the military nature that Barristan encounters in that.

You don't want to get too close to people because those close personal connections, they can break you in the long term if you're going to be watching these men and women die in battle as you're going to be progressing through your military career. and women die in battle as you're going to be progressing through your military career. I think for me, the Barristan-Ned connection and comparison is more thematic in the roles that they occupy in A Dance with Dragons for Barristan and Game of Thrones for Ned is that they're both Hand of the King. Barristan's final chapter is called The Queen's Hand where Barristan has to assume a role that he is completely unfamiliar and potentially unsuited for as the Hand of the Queen.

And as a political actor, Barristan also seems unsure of himself in the same way that Ned is constantly seeming out of his depth in King's Landing. Ned has had the background of being the Lord Paramount of the North and dealing with issues of rule and leadership. Barristan really hasn't. He was the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. He only had to deal with six other dudes besides himself as the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. And now he's thrust into the role of essentially running the city of Meereen. It seems a little bit fish out of the water for Barristan. And Barristan is constantly talking about how he doesn't have a mind for this that these plots were all the workings of varas and little finger back in king's landing and that he never really engaged in them that's very troubling i guess for barriston because he has to kind of be thinking a little bit outside

the box and barriston is very much in the thinker. Like I can solve things with my sword. I can figure things out more easily with, in a military context as opposed to a political and a peaceful rule leadership context. Absolutely. It really brings out a lot of the contrast between Ned and Barristan and their motivations and what they were capable of too. So I think you made a great point there.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome, buddy. But, you know, it's more as opposed to more general connections between Barristan essentially writing the Game of Thrones arc of a dude who's unsuited for a role being thrust into it and then having to deal with a role that he's unfamiliar with and the more specifics you kind of get some clear divergences between the two characters in their stories but in kind of the broad 10,000 foot view of Barristan he does occupy a similar role of Ned as being the befuddled a bit in over his head character who has

to deal with these different plots and conspiracies that are occurring in King's Landing at the time. Well, with that, we come to a little bit of what's to come for Barristan in The Winds of Winter, which I guess this can be a tiny bit of a preview for next week's episode. Reminder that we are doing a full Winds of Winter episode for Barristan next week. We want to briefly talk about where he's going in The Winds of Winter episode for Barristan next week. We want to briefly talk about where he's going in the Winds of Winter, a couple of our predictions that will move us towards the end of this episode,

and next week we will have a full, strong episode analysis of his first chapter in the Winds of Winter and the second chapter's summary, since we don't actually have it fully out right now. I thought you were going to say strong Melvis.

You said strong, then you paused. I was like, what? Is she going to? Are we doing? Is it a strong? Are we doing a strong Melvis? Is that what we're doing? I'm without Patreon. So, where Barristan is sitting right now in Me now in marine he is sitting between several povs that are about to conjoin like victorian and of course tyrian is also right in the area he

is right there too so he's sitting right in the middle of all of this uh and of course in the iron with the ironborn with victorian and victorian 1 in the Winds of Winter he says, free the slaves and feed the slavers to the sea but take the ships. We will have need of every hole to carry us back home. We're gonna get Victarion and Barristan interactions and they are gonna be the stupidest conversations I have ever

read. Oh my god, I never even realized it but yeah you're totally right hello old man like what are they gonna read like like what is he gonna say this is like me talking to barriston i don't maybe they're gonna talk about just like sports that's what like athletes do right maybe they'll talk about golf yeah or like oh you using sword like that i hold my axe like this yeah golf that was called it was golf yeah i i got it i got it after yeah uh-huh it took me it took me a second that's why i was like oh wait yes you're right like i'm tracking i'm i'm feeling the shade being thrown on me my lights have dimmed a little bit in my little study here.

Bring back Duke. He bolted like a bat out of hell upstairs for some reason. I'm not sure why. One of the things that I think is going to be funny is I can imagine a conversation between Barristan and Victarion going like, hey, Barristan, you know how I won the day and brought my ironborn

to feed the Yunkish? Embarrassed to be like, yeah, dude, you remember that one time where I totally like whipped your ass at Old Wick and took one of your great islands from the iron from one of your great iron islands during the Great Droidbund? That was a good time. That was a good time. I love that we're getting all these people finally meeting up and having awkward interactions. I love that eventually we'll probably get that with like Jamie and Bran and, you know, all these characters.

That is the best part about the last two books. I think you're right. One of the funny things is that Victarion has this line from the reaper chapter from a feast for crows, where he thinks about how he would give half his teeth for the chance to try his ax against the Kingslayer, the night of flowers. That was the sort of battle he understood.

It's so bad. It's, oh my god. I'm rooting for Loras. Or Jaime. I'm rooting for anyone that's not Victarion. I mean, I think Victarion's a fantastic character. I think he's hilarious. I think he's great.

When you guys get into Victarion someday down the road, I'll be definitely fascinated to see what you guys will say about him. I don't think that Barristan and Victarion will meet in single combat on the battlefield. I know that has been proposed as a potential theory, but I think Victarion, there's a possibility that Victar have victorian being tempted to blow the dragon horn like it like an idiot because he is an idiot or as george would say he's dumb as a stump and uh having him blow the dragon horn would very much fit victorian's character as that dumb dumb as a stump even knowing from the valyrian glyphs that the man who blows the horn will bring death upon himself which is what mccoro interprets to victorian in victorian's second chapter in the dance of dragons in the winds of winter victorian has basically he is setting uh these kids these uh thralls he's

setting these young thralls up to blow the horn each one of them one time because he figures if they blow it three times, they'll die like the other people have. But if each of them blows it one time really good, then it'll work out. And I just have a feeling like one of them's going to blow it weakly, like really badly. And he's going to be like, I'll do it.

And he grabs it from him and he just does it and he freaking dies. I've got it. So this is probably one of the those lines that i'm gonna giggle at in the winds of winter but in one of the fan recounts of the end of the victorian chapter from the winds of winter he's literally lying in his bed saying my dragon my horn my dragon my horn like over and over again to makoro and the dusky woman and you're like oh boy victorian how how much you have fallen my friend how much you have fallen but you have to do it in the victorian voice my dragon my horn my dragon my horn he's almost like milton in the off or in office space and he's just sitting

my dragon and then like he's gonna burn the building down but really he blows the horn and he died i don't know but like I'm just like so he burns himself down yes yes indeed so what's Barristan going to be doing in the winds of winter I know you guys are going to be talking about Barristan's opening moves in the book but read me in beyond

that like his like his broader scheme is he going to win the battle of fire is he going to be fighting Victarion which we don't i guess we had already talked about that cut that is he going to be surviving the battle of fire and we can talk about that more in depth in a little bit but your guys's thoughts about who barriston is going to be in the winds of winter and what his plot purpose and roles are going to be so I do think that Barristan definitely survives until later on

in the Winds of Winter just because we know that Tyrion Lannister is of course entering the stage of Meereen he's on the wings he's been trying to get a role up there on the stage of Meereen. He's on the wings. He's been trying to get a role up there on the stage

for a while. And we also know that George has said that Tyrion and Dany will cross paths towards the end of the book. And now like, I'm not taking the show as like canon or anything, but obviously they're going to meet somehow in marine and i think that barrison just has to still be there and in some sort of seat of political power for you know to meet tyrian to not necessarily embrace him but be like oh hello you're here and you know kind of welcome him in and be like i guess i have to let you stay here and you know i just think that bearson has to be there as a sort of post for tyrian to meet before he can sort of as a i don't know a way house or something for him to be able to meet up with Danny. Does that make sense?

Sure. How I've described that. Yeah, I think that's the link between definitely. Like you said, he's a political foothold. He needs someone he knows. Tyrion can't just show up and charm the Shave Pates. That's not going to happen for him. Those two will definitely have to come together at some point.

And that Barristan chapter will be great, too. He he's literally gonna have to hold his tongue so hard he's gonna hate him so much he's gonna be like all this little shit yeah they're gonna yeah barriston's gonna just not get along with all these people he's not gonna get along with victorian assuming victorian shows up he's not gonna get along with tyrian who's like oh by the way uh your shitty nephew fired me kind of also your sister and you did that thing that i hated your brother for where you killed that king but you kind of didn't and your dad so i mean it's gonna be great it's gonna be fantastic yeah yeah it's gonna be fantastic for sure so yeah so as you guys are going to be talking about next week which i'm very excited to hear your thoughts about barison's two winds of winter

chapters we know that he's going to be very much involved in the battle of fire because because he is the best and senior commander of danny's forces in marine and then you know i'll leave some of the particulars of the battle itself and how it opens up but there is some foreshadowing in a dance with dragons of different things that we're going to see one of the things that seems very strongly foreshadows that barriston is going to be engaged in some single combat with that fucking asshole bloodbeard the guy who killed grolio that dude needs to fucking die rude he needs to fucking die and Rude. He needs to fucking die. And I love this line from The Discarded Knight where Barristan is looking at Bloodbeard and he says, Give me half a reason to dance with you and we will see who is laughing at the end.

Bam! My skin is like tingling right now about all that shit. That's awesome. I love the fact that Barristan wants to kill this guy. And one of the things that's really sad is that grolio is that barriston has known grolio for a while sailed halfway around the world from pentos with grolio so he's kind of a friend for like a better term with grolio and he's and grolio's been murdered by bloodbeard and by the sellswords he's ready to deal justice to bloodbeard so i'm all about that and then you

have you have another line later in the chapter where it says, Sir Barristan never took his eyes off Bloodbeard. He came to Saka City, and his dar's pieces cheated him of his plunder. He would do whatever he must to start the bloodshed. I think that's really cool for Barristan that he's very much looking at Bloodbeard. And, you know, as much as I criticize Barristan for his kind of not the best moves in Marine, he does accurately view Bloodbeard, accurately surmise his intention of what, why he's doing what he's doing there. Um, but yeah, I think that's, that's that I think the battle of fire is going to be the one place that Barristan is going to shine.

It's going to be the pinnacle of Barristan's arc where he's in his element. But from there, after the Battle of Fire, you know, kind of anything is on the table for Barristan. From my perspective, there's a lot of trouble on the horizon. Everyone there's a lot of trouble for Barristan on the horizon because everyone has a motivation to want to see Sir Grandfather dead yeah and I mean even if we just look at it from a very just like a technical standpoint how many chapters will Barristan have in this book where will they be and then Daenerys when will Daenerys come back halfway through the book three quarters of the way through the book I mean right now at the end of the Winds of winter yeah yeah right like exactly there's so much if she because she's probably not coming back till about at least three quarters of the

way through the book i would wager like i would i would put a few bucks on that i don't think she'll come back before then i think it'll be about 75 in so you have tyrian and baristan then in marine and victorian i'm guessing die somehow, probably by halfway or three quarters of the way to the book. I don't believe he'll meet Daenerys, probably not. But as we know from kind of the Winds of Winter chapters, he is coming in from the rear on the Yunkish and they were worried it was going to be the Volantine fleet, but it was not. It was the Ironborn coming in. And they are killing off the enemies and helping, unbeknownst to them that they're helping, probably. They just think they're trying to win to get Daenerys.

So, I mean, there's so much happening and converging, and POVs that are going to be collapsed. It kind of makes you wonder where it's all going and technically how certain things can happen wild card check out the aces and jokers podcast oh my god they're they're nice people yeah i don't know about victorian i haven't thought about him enough to like really think about where i think his storyline is going but i definitely agree with the danny part yeah i don't think victorian will have more than like two or three chapters you know like i can't see his plot lasting more than three chapters this this book well the question is is barriston going to have more than three chapters in the winds of winter yeah you know i i think we've we've all are we can be pretty confident from the sample chapters of Wins that Victarion will have at least one more chapter and Barristan will have at least one more chapter. That seems pretty clear, right?

Right. of Blackwater, where you have seven chapters between the perspectives of Davos, Tyrion, and Sansa in the Clash of Kings. Having seven chapters from the perspectives of Barristan, Tyrion, and Victarion kind of makes sense, I think. It'd be a nice kind of paralleling with the Battle of Blackwater. But after the Battle of Fire, though, what happens with Barristan? You know, like I said, everyone seems to want him dead.

The Harpy is in a pickle. The Harpy, they want him dead. They want Barristan dead, but they don't want to get their ass sacked and sold as a slavery, which is what Yunkai and Volantis are interested in. And Barristan's the best commander and hope to defeat Yunkai. So what should they do? My take is that the Harpy will let Barristan win

the battle or fight the battle, and then they will try to take his life afterwards. But if they do so, who will do the deed? And this is where we get into someone's winner territory and that there's a great, and that Barron takes a look around the soldiers who are about to engage in the battle of fire and he sees a number of these pit fighters that are standing around to them and he has this really optimistic thought perhaps naive thought and that he thinks that freedom means something to them after all the pit fighters had more love for his dar than they had ever shown denarius but selmy was glad to have them all the same well he might not be glad to have them all the same if one of them tries to take his life in the Battle of Fire or

right after Barristan wins the Battle of Fire. But I personally think that he'll survive the Harpy assassination. And I think the people who might save him would be someone interesting, like the Stormcrows, which would be kind of cool because barrison is shown to have a dismissive and condescending attitude towards the storm crows you know as we were talking about earlier it'd be funny if dario saves barrison's life i think that would be kind of an interesting way that barrison would be like this dude saved my life come on anyone but this guy should have saved my life but you know it's it's interesting to, it's potentially interesting that they might be the factor that George introduces to save Barristan from the pit fighters that seem to be more aligned to his star than to Daenerys and her cause. Or hot take, it's not that hot.

It's the Second Sons. We know that Tyrion has enlisted them and they're about to switch sides. we know that Tyrion has enlisted them and they're about to switch sides and that's a perfect way for Tyrion's storyline to intersect with Barristan's for the second sons to save him and of course like as you said he disdains Dario but he must dislike Brown Ben Plum a sellsword who has turned cloak even more yeah that'd be great yeah and of course that will also help to make the pov slim down i mean that's where you can get less barristin for a hot minute and you'll be getting tyrian so even if he did four or five barristin chapters i just yeah i don't know i know jeff has his very spicy wonderful theory that he's written way too many words about that if you have listened to... Damn. I said what I said.

I'm doing five chapters on Ashara, so don't worry about it, you know? That's actually a hot take. Like, being like, oh, too many words. He knows what he's about. We've talked about it. He's like, I could have written more. I could have, yeah.

Only part 29 of the Blood of the Conqueror series was about Barristan. It was about Barristan Selmy, so... Only part 733 the Blood of the Conqueror series was about Barristan Selmy. Only part 733 out of 820 was about Barristan Selmy, but it was still great. It was still great. I appreciate that. Thank you. It was a good 180,000 word piece that I enjoyed.

No, but you have your take. And of course, if you listen to Nauticast's special Patreon episode about Sir Barristan Selmy, you will have heard it all about it and about his fate. But Jeff, would you like to give me your spicy hot summed up take that I totally respect? Hold on, I'm going to find... I do respect it. I respect it. It's very nuanced. We're just being mean because we're we're good friends with jeff you know how like so i was talking to someone recently this weekend like people you don't necessarily know

that well if you're in person you gotta like actually be nice to them but with my friends like i'm gonna bring out the cause like i have trust in our friendship i don't really like people so yeah well like with my friends i'm like yeah, yeah, no, I disagree. Like, what are you doing? Yeah. I mean, Jeff already knows how I feel about his theory. I think that it's wrong and ugly, but it's not bad. It's just wrong and ugly. See, you can be wrong and ugly, but still beautiful on the inside, just like me. Exactly. You're a beautiful butterfly, Jeff. I am. But, you know, to kind of take us back into this argument, I will quote the good and noble Azor Ahai, who is, of course, his Darzor Lorik from A Dance of Dragons, from Dany's first chapter. What are you doing? You know it's strong Belvis. where he says and I will present this to you all

if your graces will hear my arguments, my new arguments my beautiful arguments I have new words lovely words courteous and more apt to move the queens the best words this was the worst idea

why did we invite why did we save this for the worst idea why did we invite why did we save this for the end we've been going on so long we're almost at two hours it's great yeah you shouldn't have brought me on you guys brought the person who wrote 155,000 fucking words about Aegon in the Winds of Winter

more than George has probably written about us probably hey I understand you we know this fucking words about Aegon in the Winds of Winter. More than George has probably written about us all. Probably. Hey, I understand you. We know this. Yes. Yes. So I want to tell you all the story of a brave knight from the Stormlands who faces divided loyalties between the king and the queen.

He serves the queen for a long time, but eventually the queen dismisses him from his service and he goes to serve the king. The king being Aegon. Am I talking about Barristan Selmy? No, I'm actually not. I'm talking about Ser Criston Cole, who, of course, as we know from The Princess and the Queen, had served Queen Rhaenyra for a long time and was her lover, which is something that bears is not towards Daenerys, but the parallel still is there. And then eventually serves Aegon in the Princess and the Queen and becomes one of, one of Aegon's best commanders in the Dance of the Dragons and

eventually dies in the Dance of the Dragons. One of the things that George has talked about in interviews is that he plans on featuring a second Dance of the dragons in the winds of winter he has said something like i will not feature i will not he said that the second dance of the dragons will be a central plot of one of the books altogether fucking god damn i can't remember the quote um he said that the second dance of the dragons will be a central, central plot feature for a future book, that future book being either The Wind's Winter or A Dream of Spring. And I think there is a clear parallel when we're looking at The Princess and the Queen and The Dance of the Dragons to what we're going to be seeing with Aegon and Daenerys come the winter or a dream of spring. And there's a great little pull quote that I was reading today as we were praying for this episode where George is describing Aegon II and his greens.

And it says, quote, Aegon's greens enjoyed other advantages as well. Old Town, King's Landing, and Lannisport were the largest and richest cities in the realm. All three were held by greens. Every visible symbol of legitimacy belonged to Aegon. He sat the Iron Throne. He lived in the Red Keep. He wore the Conqueror's crown, wielded the Conqueror's sword, and had been anointed by a septent of the Faith before the eyes of tens of thousands. Grand Maester Orwell sat in his councils.

And, this is the important part, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard had placed the crown upon his princely head, and he was male, which in the eyes of many made him the rightful king, his half-sister, the usurper. One of the things Storges also talked about in A Feast for Crows is that time is a wheel and that what before chances happened in the past will happen again. I think we're going to be seeing something similar happening in the Winds of Winter or Dream Spring between Aegon and Daenerys Targaryen. And one of the things, and if George is going to intentionally parallel those two events, the two dances of the dragons, we're going to need to have different figures from the present time paralleling figures from the past. The one character who is going to be the Kristen Cole archetype in the second Days of the Dragons is Ser Barristan Selmy, who I believe is

going to turn cloak on Daenerys Targaryen at some point in the Winds of Winter and serve Aegon Targaryen. I'm not like a huge fan of the idea, only because I think it is really repetitive. I do, like, I always go between it. I'm like 50-50 split on it.

I do like it. It's hard technically thinking about it, because with the POVs converging and Daenerys and Tyrion and Barristan all coming together, I think his POV is going to get cut, if not him die off for it to be cut. And I also wonder, because most of the book is obviously going to be

Aegon and his battle to get there that's going to take most of the book is obviously going to be Aegon and his battle to get there. That's going to take most of the book for him to get to Westeros and have it, I mean, get it under his control, basically, and get the throne. And his POV, it might move maybe instead, and he would be another POV there because Jon-Conhan obviously will die from greyscale at some point. But to me, it's always just 50-50 and I emotionally can't see it. I personally think that Barristan might die by the middle of the book, maybe get four POVs in. I just don't feel like him turning his cloak one last time is satisfying. But at the same time, I can also see what else is he going to do after the battle. but at the same time i can also see like what else is he going to do after the battle if anything i actually feel completely opposite of jeff where i this reread made me feel like something about

dario betraying daenerys is going to happen and i know that's totally vanilla a swath right there but like something just about dario and the storm crows and about that those lines in the winds of winter about dario and about how, you know, Oh, follow him. And hopefully he just dies in the battle. It makes me think something's going to happen.

I do think that Barristan, if he does go out in this book, it will be like a bad-ass and possibly the masked men are going to be his downfall with the brazen beasts and Scahaz. There's just been so much focus on them. And I feel like there needs to be some sort of more payoff with them, especially since the Shave Pates have the city right now while he's out there in the Battle of Fire.

So I think that there are good points on both sides. And where I come is something kind of like a middle ground. I think that you both make really compelling points. Like, yes, do you think Barristan's going to die? And it's very much telegraphed throughout his chapters and i but on the other hand i do think he does have to make it to westeros like there's been so much setup in the past few books of like oh where did sir baristan go letting him leave the Kingsguard was a huge mistake because Barristan

lends such an air of legitimacy to whomever he serves, and that's such a big point of it. Like, that's been set up in, like, book one, book two, book three. Not book four.

But, um... Technically. book three not before but um technically it kind of kind of i mean they they like kind of touch on him and talk about it but it's just been such a big point that i think to not have barrison come back to westeros would be bad structure and bad storytelling because then you're sort of setting the audience up for something that doesn't really happen and for him to have done it throughout so many books shows that it's something that he wanted to keep as opposed to like there are things in game that you can see oh george might have been going this way and then he changes his mind but for him to have kept it throughout those books tells me that this is something that he wants to this is a storyline he definitely wants to pursue now as for what chloe was saying like there's just george has said that he has to start cutting povs and of course bear since pov as we

discussed in previous episodes was only created maybe not only but it was very much created as a solution to the Miranese knot so he isn't necessarily an essential POV when it comes to the end game of the story and while I think he has a very compelling story in what he's been unpacking in terms of being a living legend and the dying out of an old generation as well as different explorations of honor he's not essential and i think that in terms of structuring it just i think you lose something if he comes to Westeros validating Dany and then turns again to join Aegon's camp because he can only do it I in my opinion once he's in Westeros once more for him to like know that this other camp necessarily exists I mean Tyrion could

potentially tell him but there's that and then there's all the other issues of like we don't need two povs in a gun's camp technically it will be three because it would be arianne arianne arianne john khan and bearson we don't need all of those and then danny and tyrian and bearson we'd already have those i feel like berson would die perhaps close to the beginning of their landing in westeros and also just i'm gonna shoot myself in the foot when i say this because there's definitely uh examples against it and i'll bring up that example but i don't think that the storyline of A Song of Ice and Fire should be reliant on extra textual information. Like we shouldn't have to read the dance to be like, oh, this is what's going to happen. And it's a little redundant, but also at the same time, you know, of course.

Some of that Bloodraven reveal does come from the dunkin egg stories and not in dance so you know i'm gonna make my point and give my rebuttals to it so no i agree because i mean the thing is is it enriches the experience and you can pull further parallels from those things but i don't think it's meant to be like some Easter egg hunt to fill the plot out. Sure. And to me, it's just really time. What we have left with time. There's so much in this book because this has to set up the last book, the supposedly last book.

This has to set what should be the last book up. book this has to set what should be the last book up uh and you have to close a bunch of plot threads to get to this ramp up to where you everything can go off all of these all of these checkoffs guns and different plots can finally go off things that he's been building up to i mean the battle of fire you read the the summary of the second chapter for bearston and when we talk about it next week like you'll feel like such a resolution to things that were ramping up in Meereen before and all these tensions and that finally like you know he looks up and the ironborn are coming and they're not fucked out of their minds after all like because it was looking pretty grim you know it was just looking like there was sizzling flesh on every corner and just like gross and the dragons ran off and trebuchets were going off and it was just

not looking good for them and then somehow the ironborn are the saviors for once there but uh it does have that very black water feel so i guess we'll find out i mean either way i don't know i don't know man i really don't know it's like that I just really go back and forth. What do you mean either way? Like there's only one way. I mean, will we? I don't know. Yeah. When's 2019? I think it's interesting when you talk about the dance and Duncan and the kind of the other novel novellas as secondary material.

And I very much agree with that. as secondary material. And I very much agree with that. At the same time, I think that George, at some level, felt the need to expand on the history of A Song of Ice and Fire and the history of Westeros

in things like The World of Ice and Fire, The Princess and the Queen, The Rogue Prince and Fire and Blood Volume 1, because he felt that he didn't have the necessary foundation to push the story forward in The Winds of Winter. At the same juncture, though, and this is an interesting point, this is an important point, take the Dunkin' Egg novellas. The Dunkin' Egg novellas give us essentially the story of the Blackfires, right? We get in-depth on the Redgrass Field, on Daemon Blackfire and his brother Bittersteel, and on how the first Blackfire Rebellion was resolved in the Sworn Sword. At the same time,

though, George embedded essentially the story of the Blackfire Rebellions in Tyrion's second chapter in A Dance with Dragons. So you don't have to read the Duncan Egg novellas to understand something about the Blackfyre Rebellions. It more serves the function of the dedicated fan base that George has established and having this extra history, which is like, oh, well, there is a historical basis for the Black Fires, which goes deeper than that single paragraph that Tyrion gives to Illyrio or in his inner monologue in Tyrion's second chapter. Bloodraven is the same way where he is mentioned from time to time in the main series, but you get a lot more of Bloodraven in the Mystery Knight. in the mystery night. So I think that the dance of the dragons and the amount of words that George put against the dance of the dragons

in both the princess and the queen, the world of ice and fire and fire and blood volume one is a lot. It's like 80,000 words, I think. So it's essentially a quarter of the size of a feast for crows. So I think that it works for the more dedicated

and more hardcore fans that are like, ah, well, we can draw significant parallels from the histories and from extra textual things that George has said. But you might not necessarily

need that in the main books because The Dance of the Dragons has been referenced and talked about by the characters in the main books. So perhaps they can draw parallels there if they're smart enough to read into the books.

I just think that like going back to what Chloe was saying earlier, that it just would feel redundant to me because while history repeats itself, it doesn't do so entirely, right? There's a twist. Like Barristan's storyline, as we've talked about, is very much like Ned's, but it's a twist like baristan's storyline as we've talked about is very much like ned's but it's not exactly like ned's like charleston very well may survive this whole meronese plot and with this upcoming dance i think it's going to be bloody as the first dance was but while sure Rhaenyra's line

won in the long run but in the immediate aftermath of the dance Aegon the second one I very much think that it's going to be bloody, it's going to be ugly, but I think Dany's going to win over Fagon or Aegon. So I just think it doesn't have to be exactly one-to-one parallels. And something I think that would be really interesting for me, something that would be

more completative of his arc than having him turn cloak again would be him becoming a kingslayer and being responsible for killing his dar, for example, is something that I feel like is a possibility in his plot. And that being a means that kind of brings us to his end at some point. But I could see him actually, you know, breaking his honor and seeing a king that wasn't really being a good king or whatever and actually killing him instead. I would be really interested

if something like that goes down. I think that would just be really breaking and deconstructing that whole entire character down and just... By how does the wheat stalk judge the lion you know while I'm arguing against myself I just had an idea while I'm

making points against myself Danny learning that Barristan has made a pact with the windblown and gone against wishes and has been like yeah we're gonna we're gonna fucking take pentos what up uh that that could be impetus for letting him go i don't know yeah that's one of the the that's one of the arguments that i have that barriston will survive to meet

up with daenerys again is that is a checkoffhov's gun where Dany tells Barristan specifically no fuck the windblown we're not going I'm not going to betray Illyria Mopatis he's been my friend for the entirety of this book and then Barristan immediately says okay we're going to use the windblown we'll pay the we'll pay their price we'll give them pentos if they help us in the battle of fire that reads like something that is going to have like that danny and baristan have to interact again in order to resolve that at some level i could see that being a way that danny says you're done man like you're out of my service like get the fuck out of here at the same juncture though i feel that for baristan as a character he has to make a conscious decision to leave Daenerys. And I think that's important for Barristan because he's constantly searching for the

one true king throughout his arc. He thinks it's Rhaegar. Then he thinks he has to serve Robert. Then he thinks it's Viserys. Then he eventually transfers it. And Robert, then Joffrey, then Viserys, then Daenerys, and onwards and so forth. I think there's something to be said about Barristan being the one to have to decide to leave Dany's side.

I think that's going to be something that will bring Barristan to the brink, essentially. And I think you make a great point of Barristan becoming a kingslayer because there is a kind of two ships passing in the night sort of thing of Jamie and Barristan going in different directions in their arcs of Jamie kind of realizing that maybe he didn't make the best choices in his youth and kind of having a more humanizing arc, not a redemption arc because Jamie is not on a redemption course necessarily. Meanwhile, I'm still clapping.

Thank you. Thank you, thank you. But, you know, Jaime is kind of realizing some things about his service and about what it means to be a Kingsguard and how it's not all it's made up to be. Whereas Barristan is kind of on the same path that Jaime is kind of descending, though, as opposed to ascending. the same path that Jaime is kind of descending though as opposed to ascending and where you see that great thing about being the Kingsguard I love this line where Barristan thinks in I don't remember which chapter it is but is the worst Kingsguard were those who played the Game of Thrones which to me seems very much like the Christian Cole type figure perhaps Barristan will be the Christian Cole reborn figure you don don't need it. Of course, you don't need those secondary books in order to understand where Barristan is going

and understand the headspace that Barristan is in. But, you know, there's all sorts of arguments to be made about Barristan and his future and whether he is going to be the turn cloak or not. I like to think he is. Other people disagree, and that's fine. You can disagree and be wrong. That's totally fine.

Or you can disagree and be wrong, Jeff. Yeah. Okay, so I did want to propose one middle ground. One middle ground. You ready? A more middle ground than my middle ground? I was very middle ground. I was very middle ground.

So, we talked about earlier in the podcast about how people might be trying to make an attempt on Barristan's life. Is it possible that, say, Barristan gets knocked unconscious or is wounded or something and can't walk, and so he drops off as a point of view character going forward? survives the battle of fire he turns cloak but as he was put in place in marine not as totally but as essentially a stopgap measure to ensure that martin could publish the book in time for the end of season one of game of thrones is it possible that barrison will drop his point of view character but not drop dead i just feel like if we don't get his internal on it then why would it matter that's just my opinion like if it's gonna matter and if it does happen like i said it is a possibility i'm not writing it off i just can't get behind it but if it is something that happens we would have to see barrison's point of view for it to even matter I feel like it just has to matter yeah I can't I just can't I struggle to imagine it based on all of the

POVs that we've had now and the pattern that they followed we haven't necessarily fallen off with a POV like that yet not to say that it couldn't happen, but it doesn't seem like the modus operandi of these books. At least not his role. It's just such a break from how the POVs have been structured so far. I think that's totally fair. I just wanted to propose it as a... Yeah.

Maybe I'm thinking it more in terms of, like, Quentin's chapters in A Dance with Dragons where you get The Merchant's Band, which is, I think, chapter nine in A Dance with Dragons, and then The Windblown,

which is, like, chapter 26 or 27. Yeah, yeah. That I could see if they picked back up at the end of the book and suddenly it was him. It was kind of like how Ned's chapters are in A Game of Thrones where sometimes they pick up

in the middle of something and he recounts what happens. Relives the memory of what he's been doing for the past week or two. So maybe if it's something like that, that's the only way I could see it happening. And if he picks back up in the camp with Aegon and everyone or on the way there or something. But like I said, I think it would have to be one or the other.

You know, he's either going to die or he's going to live. That's my hot take. That's my spicy take on it. I mean, what I got from this is that Jeff thinks that Quentin was just very severely injured and wasn't actually dead. But he's still alive and not a POV anymore. That's what I took away from what he just said. Damn, we're doing that two podcasts in a row.

That's brave. It's brave and wrong. I mean, that is what Jeff believes. Alright. Is this our podcast? Can we be done? Yeah. I mean, Quentin is the Harpy, so. We did it.

We did it. Jeff, thank you so much for coming on with us tonight. This has been a blast. Can you please tell everyone where they can find you? Sure. And first of all, thank you guys. Thank you, gals, so much for having me on. It's an absolute pleasure to be chatting with you all and enjoying some of these last moments that you have with barriston

r.i.p at least in terms of what you guys are in the next book in the next book when you guys in the dream of spring he's a day on side at the second field of fire and but in the game of thrones in game of thrones where he dies in season five all right but yeah no just thank thank you guys so much for having me it's it's a pleasure and i've really enjoyed your all's podcast and i will continue to recommend it to everyone that i meet on the street and to everyone i meet on the Internet, too. But you can find me at Brenna B. Fish on Twitter, Brenna B. Fish on Reddit. My website is warsandpoliticsoficeandfire.wordpress.com.

Well, yeah. I also want to say thank you for joining us, Jeff. Thank you for singing with us. Of course. Yeah. I don't know how much we'll keep in. We'll see. He's a little flat, but

just kidding, Jeff. We'll probably keep it just for you, pal. Especially for you. Yeah, if you guys aren't listening to Not A Cast, you're wrong and ugly and bad. Yes. Your theories are bad. That's what I've made out of this. But if you are listening

to us, then you are beautiful and wonderful and not bad, and your theories are probably great. So thanks for listening, you guys. Probably. You can find us on Twitter as at Girls Gone Canon. You can also find us via email girlsgonecanon at gmail.com

Send us a message. Don't forget we're doing a giveaway starting next week, so we will give you more details about that next Friday. I have been Chloe. You can find me as at Liza Narber on the internet. And, of course, don't forget to just stay on this journey with us. You can find us in many of the same places that you can find Nauticast. So you can find us on Podbean, on iTunes, on Google Play, on Acast, and on Stitcher.

So subscribe to us. Keep your eyes peeled for our Patreon stuff that's coming out soon. And I've been Eliana, also known as GlassTableGirl on the Maester Monthly Podcast and on the A Song of Ice and Fire subreddit.

Same as Jeff. He's GlassTableBoy? GlassTableGuy Table Guy? No. No. Oh, GGG. Oh yeah, GG. GG no rage. We'll see you next week, you guys.

Have a good one.