Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 15 ADWD Quentyn The Windblown/The Spurned Suitor
Episode Date: August 17, 2018Family, duty, honor - Quentyn Martell sets off on an adventure, losing companions and faith along the way, to marry the dragon queen.  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 The Last Butterfly by Wodkah for Men's Lives have Meaning  check out JoeMagician's piece on Brienne/Pretty Meris   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  Â
Transcript
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Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are.
Welcome to Girls Gone Canon, episode 15.
Quentin Martell, the windblown and the spurned suitor.
I am one of your hosts, Chloe.
You can find me on the internet as at Liza Narber on Twitter, Liza Narber on Tumblr,
and Drunk, a Song of Ice and Fire History on Podbean and Twitter.
And hello, I'm Eliana, the other one of your hosts, and you would probably know me as Glass
Table Girl on the Maester Monthly Podcast or on the A Song of Ice and Fire subreddit.
So yes, lucky episode 15, our quenceniera, if you will.
Oh my god, I'm literally quitting this.
I can't believe you just pulled that where did
that come from who are you because you said 15 i was like what can i do with this number
quinceanera okay i'm oh my god i can't uh it is our quinceanera
i i literally you just ruined the podcast.
I can't.
I did.
It is episode 15.
Next episode, we can drive.
That's exciting.
As our super fan Warren would say.
Shout out to him.
Couple housekeeping notes before we jump on into some emails and tweets of note.
And our lightning round we are just finishing doing
a giveaway for fire and suds two bath bombs we will have the results of the winner of who won
that from twitter next week on the show for you and along with that we have soft launch our patreon
which means you can begin making pledges now if you so desire uh right now you'll see that on
the page it says x number of money per creation that's just so that we can like put a pause on
everything for now you're not going to be billed like every single week per creation it's only once
a month and as a reminder people who pledge ten dollars or above will get a Bellwass deserved better sticker.
And you can vote on which sticker you would like for us to print.
People who are on Patreon, though, they actually get a say.
But on Twitter, you can also vote for funsies.
Yeah, watch out for that poll coming soon on Twitter and Patreon.
And of course, we did have a couple iTunes reviews.
As you know, my wife Eliana loves the iTunes reviews.
It's her favorite thing.
I do not get any satisfaction out of them
and do not feel positively when I read them,
so don't leave them for me, but for Eliana.
They're for her.
Eliana, do you want to read us a-
Where does this come from?
Every episode I say it.
I don't have feelings about things. I about i know eliana do you want to lead
us in with the first review and i'll grab that second sure so our first review has an amazing
title called smash the subscribe button girls gone canon is some of if not the smartest most
articulate and genuinely hilarious asswaf literary slash meta discussion out there, Chloe and Aliana are thoughtful and inclusive with no punches pulled.
For author, characters, and readers alike, come for the get a job, stay for the dad no, experience the strong bellas.
Can't wait for your Patreon, ladies.
Well done.
XOXO Sarah B. at Ski-san oh thank you suki-san
i love sarah she's so great come really get a job stay for the dad no that was good she should sell
things like us like yeah she just sold us she really did she's i mean like i don't know that
i don't know that all these things about us. I'm going to take it though. Yeah. Thank you.
And another review we got catching up on it from Ricky Barnhart with two blue hearts.
Spoiler alert.
Eliana loves the emoji titles.
Eliana is an emoji hound.
So I am too.
I like emojis.
They're fun.
They're fun.
They're so fun.
Hi girls.
Love the show.
Got introduced to you on LML's live stream and I thought you guys were great.
I spent the last week catching up. Love the flow of your episodes. How easy hours go by when you dive into the show got introduced to you on lml's live stream and i thought you guys were great i spent the last week catching up love the flow of your episodes how easy hours go by when you dive into the show i love your back and forth with each other and all the impressions and
storytelling you guys do to help bring it alive i love a song of ice and fire so much for this
reason the story's great but going back and rereading with deep analysis with friends
makes it so much better can't wait for allVs lined up, excited for the next four years.
Oh my God.
That's really daunting to say out loud.
I also just want to plug Amanda,
AKA Crow's Foods,
Crow's Foods daughter,
who is on that stream with us.
And she's also very great.
So yes,
give her a follow,
check out her stuff.
And of course,
LML,
he's been doing some really awesome Sansa symbolism streams lately with maester mary uh which if you haven't checked out
her stuff you should always also check out her stuff and of course the ever lovely san rixian
mallory who is a wonderful artist she does great drawings prints she has some really cool t-shirts
and if you stay tuned we might just have a spoiler alert some fun
san rixian stuff to give away in the coming time so we will keep you updated on that
i'm very excited me too without further ado we will jump right into our lightning round of what
we missed of course because quentin has so few chapters he has about four chapters and they are
spread across the book,
distributed pretty evenly. You get about one pretty much per quarter. There are several
chapters in between. So for now, all I am going to have us read for these lightning rounds is
just what applies, anything that's in or around Slaver's Bay. In Tyrion 3, Tyrion takes up the
name Hugor Hill, joining Raleigh Duckfield and Haldan Halfmaester to reach the Little Rhoyne and the Shy Maid.
Hugor meets a ghost from the past, thought to be long dead, and learns of a plot to join Daenerys Targaryen.
Daenerys 2. The murder of Daenerys' forces has accelerated at the hands of the Harpy.
Dany implements a blood tax to fund a new force around the city and she takes hostages from the wealthy families. His dar presents his case for the fighting pits to once
more be opened, and Daenerys considers it before going to see her dragons.
In Tyrion IV, banned from drinking wine aboard the Shy Maid, Tyrion finds himself making his rounds,
spying on the naked Septa L'Amour during her bath, breaking his fast with Yandri and Ysilla, Turtles. I love them.
I know. Daenerys III.
Sarazul and Doxos,
the Carthian merchant, visits
Daenerys and attempts to sway her
away from abolishing slavery,
offering her instead 13
ships if she will leave for Westeros
immediately. She refuses
his offer, and after holding court the next
day, as tensions are
rising, she summons Zaro to give
him her official response.
Zaro tells her that she will
die screaming, and she throws him
out of the palace. The next day, the
Carthene have left a bloody
glove for Dany, a
declaration of war.
In Tyrion 5,
floating past the ruins of the Croyane tyrian reveals he's figured out the
griff family secret young griff is the long-fought dead agon targaryen and griff is john connington
tyrian reveals his own secret of lannister roin and the stonemen by john connington
tyrian is treated with vinegar to reduce grayscale infection tyrian plays a game of
savas with agon probing him for information and learning of the baby switch. Planting a new course of action into Aegon's brain,
he later convinces Halden to let him find a brothel,
searching for Tysha.
Drunk, Tyrion leaves the brothel and becomes a captive of Jorah Mormont
as a prisoner to be delivered to the Queen.
In Daenerys IV, the Green Grace meets with Daenerys,
once more suggesting she take a husband from the cities.
This time, she suggests Hizdar Zolorak.
Daario Naharis returns, and Daenerys lustfully sends for him, but becomes upset with his barbaric suggestions on how to rule, and sends him away.
Then the Lost Lord.
He's queer, and he's's here with the disappearance of tyrian
john khan continues their route to meet with the golden company with denarius staying in marine
their plans have been complicated and the golden company is not quite as enthusiastic about their
invasion of westeros agon uses this opportunity to come into his own as a leader, giving a compelling speech
to retake Westeros
and avenge Princess Elia Martell,
claiming that Daenerys will have
to join him in the end.
The chapter ends with Jon Connington
surveying his hand, watching
greyscale begin to spread.
Whoa, such good chapters.
I know, I'm so excited.
I say this like every time we talk about shunt
connington but i'm so excited i know i really can't wait to get there oh so much and of course
this leads us into the windblown quentin and his crew have found their ticket to marine join the
windblown to defend yunkai then turn cloak when they're close enough the other members sell sword
company warn that they must prepare for a real fight a real battle against real unsullied and Then turn cloak when they're close enough. The other members sell sword company,
warn that they must prepare for a real fight,
a real battle against real unsullied and a real live fire breathing dragon.
Because the battle Quentin just fought in Astapor,
barely a scratch, though it felt real enough.
Fate though, throws them a bone when the tattered prince drafts a plan that falls perfectly in line with Quentin's own.
And so the chapter begins. Legends and fairy
tales aren't the only stories in Quentin's chapters. Rumors also surround him. For example,
the dragon queen, they say, is heading south to ravage Yunkai. There's this great line that
illustrates how rumors happen. Frog had it from Dick dick straw who had it from old bill bone
who had it from a pentoshi named miriam maracas who had a cousin who served as a cupbearer to
the tattered prince like what does this mean girls politics on planetos is very much a game of
telephone and it becomes hard to distinguish the truth from tales quentin is now a prince
transformed into a frog a classic fairy tale
even in this world as danny does note later but that it exists in real life also shows how martin
is playing with these conventions the tattered prince's history is also shrouded in gossip
maybe like the clothes that the tattered prince wears which is like i don't know
joseph's technical or dream code but bad his history is
also a patchwork of lies and truths when the tattered prince was 3 and 20 as dick straw had
told the story the magisters of pentos had chosen him to be their new prince hours after beheading
their old prince instead he'd buckled on a sword, mounted his favorite horse, and fled to the disputed lands, never to return.
He had ridden with the Second Sons, the Iron Shields, and the Maiden's Men, then joined with five brothers-in-arms to form the Windblown.
Of those six founders, only he survived.
And we're definitely going to come back to his character motivations in the spurn suitor
what he wants and what he did but this also kind of reminds me of oberon in regards for what the
tattered prince did with his life that he fought and rode everywhere and turned from his rule
interesting because the windblown are relatively new compared to the other cell sword companies
that can cite their lineages some of them not all of them but can cite their lineages compared to the other sellsword companies that can cite their lineages some of
them not all of them but can cite their lineages back to the century of blood which we discussed
a bit ago in that baristan episode yeah and the windblown were founded around 270 ac they command
only about 2 000 people on horse and foot but this reminds us that the tattered prince is actually not
young whatsoever especially when he has his interactions in the barriston chapters as we kind of went back on
it's something to think on he is about the same age as barriston if not older
it kind of reminds me of one of our good friends joe magician 42 joe magician uh you can find him
on youtube on reddit on twitter but he has a great essay about Brienne being pretty Maris, basically pretty Maris.
He has a great essay about how pretty Maris resembles Brienne if she had gone bad or if she had continued on with her life.
And the Tattered Prince kind of reminds me as another version of Barristan.
He's an elegant old man with a tattered cloak, always trying to get home, trying to go west.
And of course, as Brown Ben Plum says, there are old sellswords and bold sellswords, but no old bold sellswords.
I have a question. So you said that, like, the Windblown only commands about 2,000 people on horse and foot.
Is that large or small compared to other sellsword companies?
I don't know. Sorry to put that on you. i was like maybe chloe knows this because i don't so company of the cat they command about 3 000 the second sons are
about 500 storm crows i want to say are also about 500 horses so it's not uh the brave companions
even have about a hundred so i mean it's relatively large but it isn't exactly company of the cat large uh it's no golden company etc
okay okay i'm just curious to fit in quentin agrees to play jairus's squire which allows
him to stay close but away from the thick of battle initially quentin's pride is kind of
bruised he's earned the right to be called a knight and he put in the work for it
i kind of wonder if there's like this air of youth in the way that Quentin takes offense to this initially.
Barristan didn't seem to bristle at all at having to play the squire, and he's way older than Quentin,
and of course has risen much higher as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.
But I guess the reason why he can feel comfortable doing that is, I once you've made it as like lord commander of the king's guard like
you don't have to prove yourself to anyone like he's made it and a lot of quentin's storyline as
you can see is him feeling the need to prove himself i also have this question about knighthood
uh as it exists in essos like it seems that this concept of a knight and a squire is known and accepted in Essos.
We see it here with Quentyn and Jarrus.
We see it again later on with Strong Belwas
and, of course, Barristan.
So we know that knighthood derives from that Andal tradition
and that the Andals and Andalos were originally located in Essos.
So does the tradition of knighthood still survive in Essos
because of
that old location despite their migration to Westeros? Like could it have spread to the
surrounding cultures and areas and just stuck around? I don't know. I've got a couple thoughts
on that. I mean I guess when you think about it it's kind of like how some customs either stay
like you were saying or even a lot of people that find that Westeros isn't exactly their brand of living and go east can find favor in those old traditions but I'd also go even farther to say
that the idea of squiring stayed because it was wrapped up in slavery almost which we will get a
little bit into that uh historically in just a bit we learn more about the rumors that surround-long members. Good dick, Dario, he told them.
But even he's not big enough for her.
She wrote with a dothraki and grew accustomed to being fucked by stallions,
so now no man can fill her.
And Books, the clever Valentin swordsman who always seemed to have his nose
poked in some crumbly scroll, thought the dragon queen both murderous and mad.
Her cow killed her brother to make her queen.
Then she killed her cow to make her queen. Then she killed her cow
to make herself Khaleesi. She practices blood sacrifice, lies as easily as she breathes, turns
against her own on a whim. She's broken truces, tortured envoys. Her father was mad too. It runs
in the blood. It runs in the blood. King Aerys too had been mad. All of Westeros knew that. He had
exiled two of his hands and burned a third. Ifarius is as murderous as her father must i still marry her prince duran had never spoken
of that possibility there's just so much to unpack oh yeah here like i can't even i just can't even
like first off of course these are the sorts of rumors that the men in The Windblown are spreading about Daenerys, the Silver Queen, because, I mean, she's a powerful woman, you know, she's like out here and she's trying to get it and she's trying to like get her goals painting her as unstable or as promiscuous or as um as deadly you
know there's a lot of i think freudian undertones of like that threat of castration that's why
there's so much painted about her being like this this terrifying like murderous figure when
they're unable to control her or have her then they like think of her as this terrifying
thing and you know it speaks they talk about like those powerful men that she cut down in her own
like lust for power quote unquote powerful like her brother and then her call and how she manipulated them. And there's also some historical, I think, parallels here too.
Yeah.
And absolutely the big thing is, like you said earlier,
it's the Westerosi game of telephone brought to Easterosi.
You're looking at, she did kill a slaver and trick him with her dragons,
but that's not necessarily really bad.
I mean, you're just looking
at all these stories are being taken out of context she her brother did get killed not to
make her queen not what she chose she did not choose that but it i mean she was khaleesi regardless of
whether or not her brother was killed like he it's funny because she's the one who's painted as
power hungry and like violent when we know that it was really Viserys who was all of those things.
And now she's come to try to bring freedom and to liberate these cities and she's being painted as a complete villain for it.
Yeah.
Sure.
And I mean, like I said, you can really see George channeling some other like ideas from history here.
Yeah. And I know a lot of people have made mention of something like Elizabeth Bathory being kind of a influence for this.
And I don't know if I'd 100% say for this, there are some other things that might go along with it.
But Elizabeth Bathory was a noble woman and well born. People claimed she was a serial killer in Hungary and in
Transylvania in the Habsburg monarchy. And she and a few others were accused of torturing and killing
hundreds of young women from the late 1500s until early 1600s with highest count estimate being 650,
which came from a book a serving girl
actually claimed she had overheard a court official say they saw in one of Elizabeth's
private journals. Her family's influence kept her from facing a trial, and she was held in
solitary confinement until she died four years after that in 1614. I would say in the end,
Bathory comes up, I don't know, a bit closer to a Cersei Qyburn
kind of ordeal, if only because of the family ties keeping her off trial and the fact that
everyone knows but no one's actually seen it.
Rumor mill, like Bathory would kill serving girls, daughters of peasants, lure them in
with offers for money and job as servants, and then kill them off.
Beatings, burnings, cannibalism, mutilations,
flesh bitten off the faces, starving, freezing to death, needles, you name it, was brought up.
I would even go as far to say Bathory has a great sort of parallel to Shira Seastar or Danielle Lothston with the rumor mill, which we'll definitely get into when we hit our Sansa chapters or our
Arya chapters of the whole redheads are witches discourse but in this stake it serves
kind of as an intense rumor mill circulating around daenerys yeah it's i guess i don't know
it might have been true with bathory but yeah for sure and she rsc star and daniel lawson were some
more of those like powerful women and it's interesting to see that similarity
because i think this is definitely something we're going to see in westeros people have talked about
it of course but like this is just a snapshot of what we're going to see regarding the reputation
danny's going to have when she comes into westeros that idea of like murderous and mad
and i think that jairus ends up internalizing some of this messaging about danny a little too much because you can see how much he fears like her and like this powerful woman thing when he's
like calling her a bitch and stuff like in marine uh in his exchange with barrison and he blames so
much of quentin's death on danny whereas barrison's like uh it's because you didn't want to take
responsibility for any of it and quentin on the other hand, he's met with Dany one-on-one,
and while he still lives in these stories and ideas of adventure
and how he felt his own tale of heroism should go,
I give him the credit of willing to try and see past those rumors
and learn who Daenerys truly was,
though he still kind of missed and couldn't grasp what her goals were so slaver's
bay is a goddamn nightmare there are corpses everywhere children fighting no rules just chaos
there's this line uh in it in this chapter that the priestess and her torn robes impaled upon a
stake and attended by a cloud of glistening green flies this imagery just gives me such lord of the
flies vibes that way that everything's going towards that violence and destruction that chaos
and away from civilization it's becoming this world where there are no rules and along with
it comes that loss of innocence for quentin and his crew and i don't know if it's necessarily
worth noting but I'm
gonna make this connection anyway where like the Lord of the Flies refers to Beelzebub
who is a prince of demons which I think ties in nicely with poor Quentin aka Emmett's like blogs
and essays about talking about the characterization of the tattered prince as the devil to whom
Quentin the character not the blog, has sold his soul to.
And of course, there's this other great line that is some crazy imagery and kind of not so foreshadowing.
And fires, fires everywhere. He could close his eyes and see them still.
Flames whirling from brick pyramids larger than any castle he had ever seen.
Plumes of greasy smoke coiling upward like great black snakes.
Rum bitch!
We get it, he's gonna die.
I know.
Go home, Quentin.
Go home!
Just, like, go, like, play in the water gardens.
Go be like Doran, you know?
Yeah, because that's gonna go well for him.
I mean, it would go better if he did.
Like, maybe they would avoid a lot of things if he
did that yeah those kids are gonna die though yeah because of like him yeah he should have just
gone home anyway go home quentin the cities uh are full of ashes or turn to ashes which is likened
to snowflakes and you know it draws again that idea of like how far
is it from ice to fire right it kind of reminds me of um in the show house of the undying visions
when denari sees uh the throne room and snow is coming down or is it ash yeah i find that really
interesting that it just like the snow falling in King's Landing or the ash.
That's what it kind of reminds me of.
And I think we're going to see a lot of that coming up in the winds of winter coming out tomorrow.
Next, you have Archibald, a.k.a. Green Guts, which is also an amazing name, getting really into his role play and asking Quentin if he's cleaned his armor.
And the armor that he's
asking about is like of the Windblown and it's been worn from like years of fighting but also
years of different people wearing it. Frog's kit was only slightly better and Sir Jairus's was
notably worse. Company Steel, the armorer, had called it. Quentin had not asked how many other
men had worn it before him or how many men had died in it they had abandoned their own fine armor in Volantis along with their
gold and their true names wealthy knights from houses old and honored did not cross the narrow
sea to sell their swords unless exiled for some infamy it sooner poses poor than evil Quentin
had declared when Jairus explained his ruse to them, which of course, keep in mind that
they abandoned all of their gold and their true names when they were in Volantis. So these guys
are now poor Highborns. They're in banks. Right. It's in the bank. It's in Swiss bonds. Yeah,
they're like, oh, great paper. We're going to come back to this. In many ways, it's funny that
Quentin says like, I'd'd rather i'd sooner be poor
poses poor than evil like jordan's seen mostly justifiably as more egalitarian than like the
rest of westeros because like of course women can inherit and rule and because of their society's
more openness when it comes to sexuality but you can also see that they still very much have that
classist structure uh even in our humblest of characters like quentin like sure poor is better
than evil um but the wording like makes it seem like it's something disgraceful and also this idea
i'm i'm like looking at these things now because you brought it up chloe like that shedding of old
costumes and names that reminds me of that point you brought up in eddard's chapters where edd like
has to borrow the clothes showing that he can't be himself in king's landing yeah and i mean
quentin shows more nut than just that in these chapters choosing his honor over what can get
him ahead ambition wise ned refuses to play the High Lord's Game of Thrones and chooses the Honorable
Brout, which gets him killed, and Quentin refuses to play an evil role to succeed in
his plot.
You know, if everything hadn't gone down the way it did, at least Ned, in some respects,
knew when it was time to turn tail.
He just didn't- he wasn't afraid to turn tail, you know, and go back home.
It was a little too late.
Well, I think Quentin probably felt the same way when he was standing in front of the dragons,
but too little too late.
So the Tattered Prince then announces that they are riding for Meereen.
And this causes Quentin to feel that they must enact their plan soon.
And Jairus shushes them like, yeah, don't go like my god the plan in front of everyone like amateur hour I love the way though
it's done that amateur hour is done because of the way that George RR Martin wants to build this like
he's hinted a little bit earlier that there's a plan and now it's a brought up again with a little
more urgency but it hasn't exactly been revealed which builds that suspense yeah and it's just like we
mentioned last episode that these chapters read a lot like how ned and barryson chapters sometimes
read they immerse you in the action forcing you to pick up all the pieces in between by the time
you've put those pieces together and what the state of action is you're already kind of in the
midst of the action we get a sense of like some of the geography here. It's a six to eight day ride to Yunkai from Astapor.
And they already have an idea of some of the Yunkish generals who are being
carried around by their slave armies.
And this harkens back to some of those points that we brought up in that
Barristan Winds episode again,
where it shows how unprepared some of these slaver cities are for combat.
I mean, also stilts yeah which
we'll get to stilts i mean yeah we should do more research someone let's tell them to ask about this
at worldcon uh quentin still really likes describing people as roaches and it's a word
that he uses for the yunkish underlings what you mean quentin i would rather be a poor than an evil i guess martel
it reminds you like yo yes quentin is a good boy disappointing his dad like all of us end up doing
but like also the highborn like quentin is highborn i wonder if like this is an intentional
thing or not i don't know he was born like that he keeps calling people roaches but like he was
born believing that he deserved something and he deserved this like highborn destiny um i guess yeah not necessarily his
destiny as being a king but he he's he's become accustomed to being like highborn you know and
while danny didn't grow up like that she grew up believing that she deserved visceri's abuse
until one day she realized maybe i don't or Jon believing that he deserved to
sit all the way at the far end of the table yeah yo Quentyn I got you this destiny at straight fire
many of the windblown struggle to remember the names of the different Kaskari that they meet, since the sellsword company is, I guess, primarily made up of members from the Free Cities and Westerosi.
And it kind of makes me wonder, like, why aren't there as many Kaskari, or maybe like Carthene citizens, or not citizens, but like people in any of these sellsword companies?
Like, surely there's got to be some runaways from these
societies yeah and there may be some runaways but i think it boils down to they haven't really had
the reason to since they've kind of banded together in the free cities like something in history that
i've started to really understand in kind of this whole we've just been doing a lot of the slavers
bay chapters so i'm kind of like getting it finally yeah the valeria straight up fucked them up dude which is why you see people like krazen's monoclaws
rising up and denarius obviously shooting him down but geese is a proud old culture and when
they were destroyed by the new dragon lords after a thousand years it left fragments of their people
with nothing but slavery to carry their economy and highborn people.
And there's that line in Dany 3 in A Storm of Swords where Krasin says,
Old Geese ruled an empire when the Valyrian were still fucking sheep, and we are the sons of the Harpy.
It all comes down to exactly how Dany ends Krasin's.
Dragons.
The Valyrian won each time with dragons, five times to be be exact and geese was shot to shit each time and of course geese brought over slavery and inundated it into all the different free cities
because that was what they had to survive on so that's what makes danny taking the unsullied and
pulling her trickery with her dragons so intense which of course we'll come back to this in just a minute but and i think going back to
all those comparisons that emmett was drawing last time between you know the vietnam war and
quentin's chapters and of course george r martin was very influenced by the vietnam war he came
of age during that time and was protesting against it that's very much like what happened
there like you can't we never think about it how a lot of the situation in vietnam was the
instability that led to that war was because of the french occupation there and that's what created that power vacuum and when they had to pull out after World War II.
Yeah, oh, definitely.
I think that's such a great point to tie it all back to the way that the Valyrian Empire just destabilized everything.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean, it's just like Emmett and you and i talked about last time that it's a
wheel of time and here's the wheel again denarius has come with her dragons hey yeah and you know
to rub to throw salt on the wound i guess i mean they're not delirians whatever but like the wind
blown give the giscari mocking nicknames because they can't remember anyone's names.
So among the Ghiscari that we meet is the Yellow Whale,
who we meet again in Tyrion's chapters.
And it turns out to be his master, Yezen Zokagas.
We also meet someone that they call Girl General.
The other girl.
Who is this?
Oh my god. That's our third host girl general oh god we should put we should put that listed somewhere girl general she's a 16 year old who she has she leads slave
soldiers but she breeds them which is like really kind of messed up like what and people like i mean
people really did that in real life people are terrible
yep and she fancies herself a youngish daenerys targaryen which of course speaks to those
external trappings uh as we were talking about earlier like just the external things that people
see with danny but i think it it definitely misses the core of danny's character if what
she's doing is breeding and leading like breeding slave soldiers to be like this army for her
wait you're saying that's not what Dany's doing?
I thought that was it that's the story
that's the song of ice and fire
I mean hot take she couldn't
she couldn't actually do that with Gensalid
if she wanted to
I mean like she couldn't either way
too you know I mean you know
when the wind blows
um
doesn't really matter to me yeah me either doesn't really
matter doesn't really matter okay mama just killed a man misha just killed a man okay yeah
misa just killed a man yeah it's a lot like what we see in the brothel when jorah captures kyrian and the silver-haired
sex worker it's the the denarius targaryen effect like i saw denarius wearing army shorts and flip
flops so now i wear army shorts and flip flops you know i mean that's even though no one's seen her
but we then also see little pigeon little pigeon. Little Pigeon! Little Pigeon.
Pretty birb swag.
Okay.
Who is himself apparently short,
but he leads these soldiers on stilts,
and he too is into breeding slaves,
and he breeds tall slaves with other tall slaves with the hope that they're eventually going to get tall enough
that he's going to dispense with the stilts.
I guess that provides some context.
I'm still confused. I still think it's a bad
strategy, but...
It's hard to not
kind of, like, shit on George for some of this
because you're just like, what the fuck?
But whatever.
There might be historical context. I don't know.
I get it, but it's also kind of
like, okay, George, whatever. They're just... there might be historical context i don't know i get it but it's also kind of like okay george
whatever like yeah they're just why maybe it's not the best for war i don't know it just seems
a little silly on the page you know kind of i guess suspension of disbelief i'm just waiting
for like all the birds to come out wearing big marabou like feather boas and like on their stilts
with like sparkly glitter eyeliner or something which i'm fine with but like
maybe not the time it's not the time for this george or maybe it should be the time and that
would would you call it we could call it the time of the birds oh we could the hour of the wolf it's
the hour of the birds someone later calls something the hour of the ghost so like i don't see why we
can't call it our verbs i call it the hours of the eliana i'm gonna call it whatever i want yeah exactly
apparently that's how this works yeah they literally just make shit up george george is
just like saying things right now like god george even the little pigeon and his herons paled beside
the folly of the brothers the sellswords called the
clanker lords the last time the slave soldiers of yonkai had faced the dragon queens on sullied
they broke and ran the clanker lords had devised a stratagem to prevent that they chained their
troops together in groups of 10 wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle which we do see this during
the battle of fire in the winds of winter which again reinforces perhaps not the best
strategy it prevents them from marching fast and their irons announce where they're going to be
because it's so like what is even the point of having like slave soldiers if they're not
like what is the point and apparently like the yunkai just like have no idea how to do a battle
there's a couple things to break down here.
It expands on Old Geese's defeat, but at the same time, it also kind of shows the kind of environment of their slaves and their slavery
and how it's more important that they don't lose a single slave rather than, you know, lose or win.
And it is definitely, though, an expansion to Old Geese being defeated,
because once Old Geese was defeated,
the Dragonlords turned to Yunkai to beat them into submission as well.
And the Yunkai learned slavery from the remnants of Geese,
which is all they had.
So, of course, this brings us to the Green Grace.
See the Green Grace and the people that she mentions being beaten to slavery.
Dude, she fucking hates Daenerys.
Valyria caused their slavery. Like, she fucking hates Daenerys. Valyria caused their slavery.
Like, Daenerys is that blood.
Like, so Daenerys, she just wants to ruin her life, dude.
Like, she doesn't care.
She's like, all right, I'm smart and I'll ruin it.
So after the Valyrians fell in the Doom,
they had nothing else to hold on to
except slavery in these slavery cities, the Slaver's Bay.
Geese took command of the slave trade because it was the one thing they already had a hold on and they slavery in these slavery cities the slaver's bay yeast took command of the slave
trade because it was the one thing they already had a hold on and they were good at the young
have never had to battle because they've just been a part of the overarching boot over the
slaver cities yeah there's just so much here that like explains how everything got this way and it's
just it was a stability built on a silent violence. Yes. It wasn't peace.
You see often that people say that Daenerys disrupted the peace in Slaver's Bay, but she didn't.
It's not a free peace.
Yeah, everything is chaos now.
Yeah.
It's a blood peace.
It is still violence.
I also want to send, to just really change up the mood here like a shout out to the name lord bobble cheeks with this lot the windblown think it's no wonder that the other sellsword companies
defected to denarius they're like oh my god this is who they hired this is what they have the
windblown now are seem very apprehensive about facing real unsullied who are coming with dragons and they say it's going to be
a real fight quentin feels what he experienced and asked for was a real fight which kind of shows how
unprepared he is for these battles which kind of a meta perhaps on how unprepared we are for what's
coming on the horizon and also just to add to that even, kind of the whole idea of, oh, what do you know of winter?
You know, what do you know, you sweet summer child?
You know nothing about it.
This is, he was not going to survive the winter, dude.
He didn't even survive, like, the fall.
Damn.
All right.
Off stage and days ago, Quentin and the Windblown apparently faced a Butcher King.
Quentin thinks that he was trained in fighting
but it's nothing compared to the actual like real thing which is a running theme throughout these
books and probably will be very much for the winds of winter it's gonna be true for definitely
westeros when the others come and a quote he remembered jarrus sidling up just before the
fight began stay close close to Arch.
Whatever happens, remember, you're the only one of us who can get the girl.
Which, like, no pressure, dude.
You're the only one.
To be fair, if Jairus had just said he was Quentin from the very beginning when they meet Daenerys,
he might get the girl.
You know, I mean, or he could dye his hair blue.
Or if he just grew a mustachio
yeah you could get the girl but i is he gonna get is he gonna get that sweet dragon
that sweet firepower i don't know i don't know i don't know probably not
i if i were a dragon i'd roast them we roast them on this podcast so oh yeah okay and you know maybe if quentin just like stopped calling
slaves and lower classes and other people like roaches i don't know maybe that would give him
a better chance right like he enters this city and he's like i gotta get this girl to bang me out
and then he's like also i hate her people yeah i'm a neg her people and that's gonna work fucking
trash people trash ass slaves god trash people, trash ass slaves
god get a life trash ass slaves
come on Quentin
Quentin get your shit together
Quentin go home
no he doesn't
you don't belong here
Cleon the Great is finally killed
I guess a second time by Kago
corpse killer, this is how he gets his name
corpse killer but no one says it to his face
because turns out the Astapori were so desperate to give heart to their insully that they
took cleon's corpse and put him on a horse which like gives me some black water vibes with a
renly's armor but you know grosser eat that peach girl get it i've been eating a lot of
peaches this summer y'all i really love your peaches i want to shake
your tree green boys screaming for their mothers he thought but he killed them all the same by the
time he left the field his sword was running red with blood and his arm was so tired he could
hardly lift it which like apparently not a real fight no we finally get the real plan while quentin is fine with the physically dirty parts of adventure
he hates the moral dirt they're going with the windblown to yunkai then turning clope to join
the meronese despite their short time together quentin feels guilty about abandoning his new
brothers which of course like quentin's kind of like the kid in your friend group as a kid like little seven year old that pushes up
his glasses like Chucky Finster
the whole time he's just like I don't know about
this are we gonna get in trouble
guys we're gonna get in trouble you guys I don't know
about all this are you telling me that Jairus is
Tommy Pickles no Tommy's
not that much of an asshole
I know exactly he's Angelica
Jairus is Angelica
and Jairus That didn't work out
as well as I was hoping. Maybe like Arch
is Phil or Lil?
Archibald is definitely Phil or Lil.
Phil.
Yeah.
Well, he's big enough
he probably needs to be both of them, I guess.
Or Spike. Spike. I'm Spike.
And yeah, in response to that you know like jerry's is like yeah it's not honorable he's warning and i mean jerry still
sucks but apparently he's the entire brains of this operation now somehow he's like lecturing
quentin on how the rumors about like danny Dany and her location, they're just rumors and, you know, he's warning them about when the right time is for them to defect.
Quentin warns that Archibald might be getting too close to the Windblown and Archibald's going to feel bad about defecting, though I think actually Quentin's just talking about himself and is just pinning it on Archibald.
Quentin's just talking about himself and is just pinning it on Archibald he says that they can't get caught like like you said he's all like oh no we're gonna get in trouble or else they're gonna
like get tortured by pretty Maris and again check out Joe Magician's essay on the similarities
between Brienne and pretty Maris then we get this great line because as we all know the gods are not
good but for once the gods were listening and they are able to turn their cloaks even earlier.
But the gods are still not good.
My favorite, favorite plot. Turn cloak. Die harder.
Oh my god, that is what it is.
It literally is. It's too much.
Oh my gosh.
The Tatter Prince announces that they have a new job.
Now we are chasing away the starving and
sick astapore chase them either back home or north to marine you know it sounds like a good idea going
home but that conveniently enough um he wants the tattered prince wants some of his men to defect to
the other sellsword companies that are serving Daenerys like why
this is so weird that's what we want
to do oh my god
I've never thought of that before
which of course this is like
step one in Quentyn's
journey failing as hard as like it does
stuff is going way
too easy which kind of
reminds me of Barristan Selmy's
The Winds of Winter chapters cause he's the winds of winter chapters because
he's gonna die but i digress i just don't think he's gonna die then but now that you
are bringing up our previous pvos povs it's also like ned's chapters where everything
seems like it's going too well yep the gods are never good
the tattered prince tells everyone that they each have their own like nice little sob story to tell
of why denarius should take them in and like turns out everyone in this camp is like awful
they're all terrible people we also get this great little easter egg if any of you have ever read
the duncan egg novellas especially the Sword, which is the sexiest of all of
the Song of Ice and Fire stories, in my
humble opinion. It's the hottest.
There's just so much
tension. And we get this
person with the
name Weber, and is it
a descendant, maybe, of Lady Rohan Weber?
And
the Tattered Prince says of him that he nurses claims to Lance Lost in Westeros.
So, like, definitely.
That's definitely who he is.
Yeah, it has to be a descendant from Coldmoat of some sort.
And it wouldn't surprise me at all, especially because earlier on in this chapter, we got that line about knights defecting from Westeros because they you know are infamous or whatever
and they defect over to Easteros because they can't live there anymore oh my god it would be
so amazing if he was also back in Westeros trying to reclaim his lands with I don't know like
Dany's camp and stuff especially with the whole Blackfyre thing another Blackfyre rebellion yeah
because all we're seeing right now are back and forth,
just the outlines of the families coming forward and who's going to support who.
Obviously, we know Dorne is going to fall into the Blackfyre camp.
They will have the Ironwood support, as the Ironwoods have supported for many, many years
with Blackfyres on and off in the previous wars.
So it's definitely interesting.
We get that quote from the Tattered Prince,
The best ruses always have some seed of truth.
And I think this seems to be a role
that a lot of the good players of the Game of Thrones
live by in these books.
It also works, I think, on a meta level as well.
Hemingway has been known to say,
all you have to do is write one true sentence
and that's how he would start his writing.
He would just find one true sentence and from there riff on that continue writing and
of course you know george r martin i think subscribes to a similar idea of thought when
it comes to writing like he went to the same journalism school as hemingway over at northwestern
um not at the same time of course because time and you know there's that necessity for human truth in order
for fiction to feel believable and that's why everyone loves the song of ice and fire so much
because we really just feel ourselves in it in the story so of course archibald my favorite big man
is like well this is fucking great a motherfucking dragon hunt like he's over there
like i just finished puking dude like off the boat like i just finished we're going on a dragon hunt
all right all right and that brings us to our next lightning round as we get ready to do this other
quentin chapter and again we're only doing the Essos chapters because, like, half the
entire book goes by.
There are only four Quentin chapters, okay?
So.
Tyrion VIII.
Captured and stuck in Volantis,
Jorah and Tyrion find themselves in
the merchant's house, and they're
hearing news that the Golden Company
is headed west without Tyrion.
Oh no. They speak with
the widow of the waterfront,
a triarch in Volantis, who gives
them a message to deliver
via the trading cog
Selesori Koran
and to tell Daenerys that they are waiting.
Tell her to come soon.
In Daenerys 5,
Dany counts enemy ships in the harbor
and has also counted the success of her
betrothed in keeping the murders down in Meereen
the bloody flux is creeping into Meereen
and Dany has been advised to keep survivors
out of the city
she realizes that she must marry Hizdar
for the good of her city
we have a Dany chapter again
Dany 6
Daenerys visits a camp of the dying
ordering the living fed and to be cleaned.
And the dead burnt.
Daario returns and Daenerys gets that good dick.
Good dick, Daario.
Get it.
Get it, girl.
I also love that she straight up tells Barristan in that chapter, as we discussed during the Barristan chapter,
keep him away from me.
I never want to see him again.
And then, like, he comes back and she's like, I lied.
And I mean, who hasn't done that once?
Right, right, right.
Or like, don't let me, don't let me text him back.
Don't let me text him back.
That's literally what that was.
In The Watcher, Erioh Hotha surveys the room
as Balan Swan presents Gregor's head.
And Duran summons his daughter and the Sand Snakes
to pledge their loyalty and carry out
his super special Master Dornish
plan to get
vengeance for their lost loved ones.
Oh my god.
What? Doran has a master plan.
Right? Master plan.
Master plan Doran. For sure, Zs.
Master plan is death
for all people. Alright tyrian nine tyrian
joss on a pig and a storm cripples the trading cog tyrian penny and jorah are captured by a
slaver ship right real straightforward that was it you can really condense those tyrian chapters
honestly that's what happened in denarius seven denarius meets three dornish men who bring gifts for her and they are
not frankincense gold or myrrh quentin martell reveals a secret marriage pact between ariane
and viserys and denarius remembers the prophecy from quayt turning quentin away to marry hisdar
meaning messiah vibes tyrian 10 tyrian jorah and Penny are almost bought by Brown Ben Plum of the Second
Sons, but instead they're purchased by a man named Yezzin. Oh, there you go. Oh, oh. They are later
summoned to perform for Yezzin and his guests, and Tyrion excels in Savas, winning money for his new
master. Yezzin announces they will perform in Dasnok's pit for the Silver Queen in the city of
Meereen. Daenerys VIII, Meereen is being besieged by Yunkai and its allies, holding a slave market
right outside the city. Hostages are exchanged to ensure peace during the ceremonies to come,
and Daenerys speaks with Brown Ben Plum, wondering what the right thing for her to do is and how to
convince them to come to her side. She speaks to the Dornish envoys, but Dany refuses to abandon her city and advises them to leave. She returns to bed with her
new husband, allowing him to have his drunken way with her before passing out. Missandei comforts
Daenerys while she fails to fall asleep. Which brings us to Daenerys IX. The fighting pits have reopened, and chaos ensues.
The smell of blood brings Drogon to the pit, and Daenerys mounts and tames him, flying away from her problems at last.
In the Queensguard, which we've visited before, Barristan tries to keep the peace and do what Daenerys would want of him,
but finds himself battling honor in a city that
seems more foreign to him than ever set aside by king his dark Barristan begins to uncover a deeper
plot like y'all don't know what happened yeah we've been there we've been there the iron suitor
it's just the Betty Hill theme yuckity sex that's it Victarorian is outside of slaver's bay ready to go marry danny but his arm
wound is gross and he could die of infection but then they find makoro and makoro is all i'm gonna
fix your arm and he does in tyrian 11 the pale mare affects the slavers outside a marine and
their master is dying tyrian penny and jorah escape the grasp of the slavers and meet with That brings us to the Discarded Knight.
The Myrines demand the dragons be put down and other courtly betrayals.
Barristan advises the Dornishmen to leave.
Yes.
Okay, before something deadly befalls them.
Dun dun dun!
And this leads us right into the Spurn suitor.
Quentin Martell's companions press him to return home while they all have their health,
but Quentin chooses to stay in the east until he finds Daenerys.
He attempts to strike a deal with the Tattered Prince, hoping to hire the Windblown,
but their betrayal left a sour taste in the Tattered Prince's mouth.
When double the gold doesn't sound good enough,
Quentin reveals his plan to steal one of Daenerys' dragons.
The prince names his ultimate price.
His home, Pentos.
Jairus returns to the pyramid at the hour of ghosts sounds made up okay you can just
our fucking our tequila all right my favorite i think he found yeah i mean he found some of
the windblown drinking in the meronese cellars it is that time all right he finds old bill bone
beans books bill bone daggons uh kudos to kudos to chloe for coming up with that. Anytime.
Jera slips Beans a gold dragon to keep him from slicing him open
as a deserter and to get a message
delivered. Apparently, everyone
on the Windblown's pretty pissed
about the desertion by the Dornishmen.
What? Yeah, so this meeting's definitely
gonna happen, if not, like, because
they're willing to meet with him, but also just so they
can murder the shit out of them jurors you know dropping that wisdom here he comments
that they should be heating beerists and saw me like he says when beerist in the bowl tells you
to run a wise man leases up his boots and like they should like run bitch as we said earlier
get the fuck out yeah drink like this is the nicest thing i'm
ever gonna say about him so pay attention man men all men this is he kind of nutted up during this
trip but like he's just kind of a goddamn dick bag dude like i hope we get hate mail about how
much i hate men apparently because that's what that means but literally i only do if their name is drink yeah honestly i'm surprised we haven't
yeah just that one time um
volantis quentin thought then lease then back home back the way i came empty-handed three brave men
dead for what you know this is a question that like we try and
answer all the time you know like turn down for what and i mean what's the point of four dead men
to quentin that's my question like ever think of that what's the point of four dead men and do like
sirens going off bingo like she said it bitch turn back now before you get to the dragon's lair that's
typical fairy tale like you turn back there's signs on the wall that literally say turn back and here they are they keep going quentin thinks
about how he wants to see the green blood again sunspear and the water gardens he wants to breathe
the beautiful the crisp mountain air and ironwood compared to like the air in slaver's bay
he thinks but he knows that he'll see the disappointment in his
father's eyes and he thinks how his sister would be scornful and the sand snakes would be merciless
and facing lord ironwood after losing his son and of course just like we talked about last week with
arianne and the sand snakes and their scorn and how he grew up with them probably making fun of
him terribly because
he's the younger brother and of course the disappointment of lord ironwood hurts the most
of all of this of him losing his friends i never meant for any of you to die quentin thinks our
poor sad son indeed our poor sad son and regarding that i think everyone just needs like all the
people back indoors just like shut
the fuck up because like this entire journey was way harder than anyone else thought it would be
like quentin isn't just sailing across the world like it is in normal times like this isn't the
same essos that oberon visited like sure while oberon spent a lot of time in the disputed lands
and those were like involved in skirmishes and wars like that was still a mostly peace that was still like a mostly quieter essos right like everything
wasn't falling apart this is a war-torn continent and doran didn't think that through and because
of doran's lack of foresight and planning quentin and his friends are paying the
price there's so many and i guess it's kind of like the chosen boy hero journey kind of thing
but it kind of there's just so many harry potter goddamn parallels with this like with quentin
telling his friends to go that this is his task and he'll see it to the end and archibald says
that he and drink will stay if he stays which of course as we know
yes quentin is saying please go and being selfless but he's the one that dies he's not
harry potter he's not the boy who lived during this yeah he's one of the weasley twins oh that's
not i mean you could say that's a pretty that's a holy comparison i know i really liked
them all right he's i don't know there's no corollary for quentin i guess no but i mean
it's really just the hero yeah it's the hero's journey but it's also the fact that sometimes
you're not the hero sometimes in life you're the windshield and sometimes you're the bug you know
and quentin's the bug the roasted bug dude damn
yeah and i mean like
instead you know archibald's like yeah he's gonna just stay and i'm like is archibald taking this
seriously i'm sure or maybe archibald's just really committed to his mission i don't know
if anything i think both of them are committed to Quentin. I think, yeah.
That's true. They do
stand by their boy.
Especially when
they blame everything on Daenerys later.
But anyways. Dickbag.
And
Denzel of Dahan turns up at Quentin's door
the very next evening, telling him
the prince will meet him by the spice market.
The door will be
marked with a purple lotus they say which is interesting because of course purple signifies
royalty for the tattered prince but the lotus is usually a symbol of purity and the mind generally
so i'm not sure exactly if that's supposed to mean anything but it is interesting uncle iroh's there
yeah um that's exactly what's happening That's what it feels like to me
Quentin arranges
for
both princes
himself and the tether prince
to bring only two men
so Denzel leaves
advising him to come at sunset
and not be followed
The Dornishmen then
leave an hour before sunset
and Quentin and Jairus wear their sword belts.
Archibald has his warhammer slung across his back.
I love that he calls Arch the big man, by the way.
I've grown very endeared and I've grown very fond
of Archibald in these chapters so far.
I'm like, I love the big man.
He's my favorite.
He's nice. I'm not sure I get him. I get him. I love the big man he's my favorite he's nice I'm
not sure I get him I get him I get him I understand him I don't think I get him I speak Archibald you
just need to what we need to do is we need to do an Archibald episode and we're gonna do that that'll
be our first Patreon episode available next and I'm just kidding we're not doing that
I mean unless we do a Riverdale episode, Archie. Stop.
Jairus once more tries to get Quentin to abandon this impossible task,
quit while you're ahead, but to no resolve.
Jairus highlights they broke
a pact of honor, which is very serious
to do to these mercenaries that have been around for
oh, you know, 60 years almost. Well, 40.
Whatever. I don't do math.
30 years. I don't do math and years i don't do math okay
and it said pretty maris can stretch a man's dying out for a whole moon's turn
which like i feel that you know one from one menstrual cycle to the next it's also how i
measure things that's when i time some of our threads on the subreddit yeah which also brings
me to like wait a second like is that like the westerosi period joke of
like when girls are on their periods they're mad is that what he was saying also is like is this
a period piece oh i i wish it were i don't think that's what they're thinking but it's
it's a thing i relate to and so i'm going to impose that on the story thank you me too project
project project project project project just like how Quentin projects wanting to
not defect onto Argybalt.
And how Barristan projects on Daenerys.
Anyways. Yeah. Anyways,
so although Tatters, the Tattered
Prince, wanted them to pretend
to go over to the Stormcrows,
they were never supposed to do it for realsies.
So, uh,
some of Tatter's
men, they're, like, still in the dungeon their names are sir orson
uh dick star that's not even like yeah that's my name someone within their camp you know dick star
like same dog uh hunger ford will of the woods yeah dick star dick star my new fave name quentin counter is like yeah we kind of fucked up but
tatters loves gold which jrs counter is like yo we don't have that to give them left like you
realize that right like we we abandon that we abandon that it We abandon that. It's in the bank. You have to get all the way back there.
Yeah, the nearest ATM is, like, three moons turns away from us.
Back in fucking Volantis.
Yeah.
Jairus comments that the city's peace is garbage.
Not untrue.
Half the city is calling the dragon slayer Hargaz a hero,
and half spit blood at his name.
Arshibald calls him Harzu because they all sound the same to him, like his dar, humzum, hognog, what does it matter?
I called them all Harzu. He was no dragon slayer. All he did was get his arse roasted black and crispy.
We stan!
He was so brave. Would I have that courage to face that monster with nothing but a spear? Foreshadowing!
Yeah, all he brought was his sudden spear.
He became his sigil.
Yeah, pretty much.
He died bravely, is what you mean. He died screaming.
He died screaming! Go home, Quentin. Just go home.
Quentin attempts to defend
his choice, that he has dragon
blood in him centuries back, and
Jairus actually tries to talk
some sense into him.
This is what I have
to do for Dord, for my
father, for Cletus and
Will and Maester Kedri.
They're dead, said Jarrus.
They won't care.
All dead, Quentin agreed.
For what? They bring me here
so I might wed the Dragon Queen.
A grand adventure, Cletus called it.
Demon roads and stormy season.
At the end of it, the most beautiful woman
in the world. A tale to tell our
grandchildren. But Cletus
will never father a child unless
he left a bastard in the belly of that tavern wench he liked. Will will never have his weddings.
Their deaths should have some meaning.
That was not my question. Men's lives have meaning, not their deaths. I loved Will and Cletus too, but this will not bring them back to us.
This is a mistake, Gwent.
You cannot trust sellswords.
And, again, for once, Jairus-
Ugh, this is so painful to say out loud.
Jairus actually sounds kind of normal, you know?
I'm kind of, like, annoyed at, like, how the voice of reason in this chapter is Jairus,
and, like, how much sense he's been making these past two chapters, but, like, you know, I get it.
I get along, I also get along with frat boys, I got a bunch of friends who are frat boys.
And, to be fair, maybe it's the framing.
Like, Quentin knows Jairus, and
it's, like you said, like, how dudes
support their shitbag friends and ignore
their shitbags, because, yes,
Barrison's POV might be a different generational
look at people and different point of view,
but Jairus straight up still has
some dickbag things. And,
okay, to double back on that, to be fair,
his friend did just die, so he's probably
just, like, you know, like, reaching out and being a dickbag, but he's still a dickbag.
Yeah, he could be, like, in that grief of, um, that stage of grief denial.
He's in denial about, like, his role.
Later on, he'll get to the anger and the depression part.
Wouldn't you say he's closer to the roin?
Ayyyyy.
Thanks.
Don't you say he's closer to the roin?
Ay.
Thanks.
And, yeah, I mean, again, I have dick-back friends that, like, I also like and I keep them around because they make good friends.
Sometimes I wonder, am I the dick-back friend?
I don't know.
Though, you know, with some further analysis, like, in The Merchant's Man, Quentin was talking about how he felt like he was the only one who was taking this entire like journey seriously. And he felt that Jairus was treating this like entire adventure like a game despite the deaths of their friends. But I think that maybe part of, for me,
maybe part of it is like the battle in Nassau. Like despite it not being a real battle by windblown
standards, maybe it like woke something up in Jairus to the reality of what they're facing now because now he's just like we need to go home like this this is a dumb idea
all over this is bad like yeah this is a bad idea like it's straight up it's over quentin it's done
you're not gonna get the girl like that's what this is so just i mean quentin's in denial
yeah exactly and like his whole plan we're about to learn is to go
chase after denarius like that's not gonna happen she's on a dragon somewhere dude like
do you know where dragons can go they fly away far away they fly like past continents or like
you know like as a lot of people maybe even like jerry's they think that she's been eaten and she's dead you know like they're like it's over yeah it's done you know as you as you read aloud like him saying
like i loved will and cletus also but this isn't gonna bring them back to us like it's not it's not
worth it and along with all this quinnan thinks that he trusts in my own destiny.
I am a prince of Dorne and the blood of dragons is in my veins.
Yeah, I'm just like, Quentin, what are you doing?
Like your own destiny, like your own destiny does not mean shit.
Like it's funny that for all the foolish choices that Quentin makes, like sometimes it feels as though he's just not actually making choices consciously, or intentionally, does that make sense?
He's just kind of letting himself fall into this lapid deity, and he's like, oh, I could not help it.
This is my destiny.
I had to do this.
And spoiler, it's not.
Yeah.
The flames of dragons are what's in your veins kid not the blood he had a chance to
save his friends to take them from this hell city to leave and the warnings were all there
the flames spiraling around him the dead bodies and he stayed he pressed on sometimes life isn't
about being the hero sometimes being the hero isn't about acting boldly it's acting with the
way to save lives before more innocents are butchered.
Like Egg, lighting up Summerhall
to try to hatch dragons for his family's destiny?
That's not what's right sometimes,
and it makes people like Dunk
have to clean up the fucking mess
and die the hero, the true hero.
Mm-hmm.
Quentin knocks twice upon the door
with the purple lotus,
says the secret password, and he is let in.
They are let into the door by an old woman who is wearing a fringed dark red tocar with tiny golden skulls fringing it.
Which, of course, further foreshadowing through clothing clothing the old woman's tiny golden skulls
are basically quentin's tiny skull wrapped in flame in gold i mean george wouldn't have
referenced this old woman's outfit i mean this is straight up foreshadowing through clothing
this old tiny woman and then there's obviously this description of her of how her hair is modeled
and white and disappearing and she's old and wrinkled and i mean this is a woman we will see once we will never see this woman again in this entire story
but george took the time to describe her it's very obvious foreshadowing through clothing
also i just love this fashion statement yeah me too like very edgy yeah
they make their way through the under cellar, down steep, twisting stairs.
Arjabold pulls his dagger for protection as they near the bottom, and Jarrus brings up the rear.
They emerge in a brick vault with a red lantern hung on the door hook and a black candle on a barrel, the only light.
Taggo, corpse killer, paces the wine vats armed with his rock.
Maris cradles a crossbow and denso bars
the door i just want to throw this question out there for people like do you think that when denso
kills someone he says like to them like as a catchphrase like you're done so like do you think
that's a thing that he does i think i'm quitting the podcast is what i think oh Oh, so you're Dunzo. Oh my fucking God.
One too many, Quentin thinks.
The company ignored his terms and made their own.
The tattered prince sits sipping
a cup of wine with chain mail glittering
beneath his plain cloak.
Quentin comments,
the prince looks different
without his usual rags
and the prince offers them food and drink.
Juris counters that they brought three when two were agreed a piece the prince comments that pretty maris is no man
which like lololol i get it there are no men like maris only maris
i feel like that's like the best jamie quote to use for anything like it's just such a pompous
idiot line like there's no men like me, just me.
Like I could use it for everyone.
Yeah.
Oh, I was thinking, I was thinking Tolkien.
Oh yeah, that works too.
Yeah.
The Dornish crew offer their apologies for deceiving the Windblown and the Tattered Prince shrugs.
He cares not for their reasons, but of what they can do to make it up to them and earn the windblown crew back the windblown make fun of
quentin's failure in marrying daenerys commenting it's a pity they didn't desert them sooner to
marry her i still like that quentin thinks of danny charitably here um they say that she laughed
at him and especially compared to how Quentin's friends
see the situation like and of course Barristan explains it too like I don't know if Quentin's
misremembering the situation by saying that Daenerys didn't laugh but I interpret it as him
seeing it as Daenerys not laughing at him because she's not she's laughing at how it parallels the
story of the frog prince you know
and as we see in this chapter Quentin may have some understanding of languages like he uses the
slave's tongue as they say to get into the purple lotus location and I mean this would have been
like way better for him to have earlier on in his journey but like whatever right I also think like
I know earlier
you would kind of mentioned he didn't really seem to get the scope of it but i feel like anyone could
really see danny's predicament if they looked hard enough and archibald and jairus may not be in the
mindset quentin is quentin has taken on this task that he knows is huge and what it relates to is
daenerys being the queen and conquering westeros with her dragons and he beside her and gaining vengeance for Elia. The entire idea of people like Elia shouldn't die
because of the political game, that's not what should happen. So Quentyn may be more oriented
in the mind of politics than the other two are, and he might just understand that the sad smile
Daenerys gave him wasn't because he's an average looking frog, but because she has a people to
protect. And that's something that he's thinking that he would have to do if he were married to her.
Yeah, and it's something that maybe, for some part, I could see Doran trying to instill that in Quentin,
because you can see that's part of why he stayed out of the war for so long.
of why he stayed out of the war for so long the situation of the masters surrounding marine is discussed and we learned that yezen sokagas is dead they claim marine and yunkai have reached
peace which like lol yeah i'm so sure but the tattered prince knows that war changes daily
and someone surely will have need of their swords
tatters breaks it down after he finishes his wine he's like look y'all are proven oathbreakers and
liars you come into my house you try to join up with me again all to steal a friggin dragon
that's what you want like bro give me some more here like level level yeah i just like also it's funny because i don't think
and as we know quentin cannot pull it off but but the deal and the way that quentin is trying to like
do this in some ways i get very tyrian lannister vibes from this exchange um again with less faith
in quentin's ability to do the whole thing um whether it's like actually paying them back or like pulling the wool over their eyes because around this chapter close to
this chapter you have that moment where Tyrion is signing the second sons into his service and he's
promising them all of this gold he also doesn't have it on him now but he's like just just help
me take Casterly Rock and he got it we got it it's fine and like he does this again you
know he promises a whole place to people with like the veil when with the mountain clans there
and he's like yeah I'm gonna give you the eerie like and he's probably gonna follow through on
that promise but like Tyrion's the kind of person who can do that Quentin's the kind of person who's
gonna go die well and that's what's really interesting now that you say that, because I think we can look forward to Tyrion being the actual person to give Pentos to the Tattered Prince.
Yeah.
I think that's a lot of buildup to Tyrion being the person to do that.
I think Barristan will die, so no dice there.
But I think Tyrion will probably foster that agreement to foster almost that peace I wouldn't call it a
peace I guess but to give that control over for Pentos and to help affect the free cities something
else interesting here is in the previous chapter we learned that when the tattered prince is 23
he's offered the lifestyle to eventually be magister of Pentos and rule but turns it down
to adventure and fight and now here he is seeking to rule over
Pentos. Of course, we know that the Tatter Prince soon asks Barristan for the same exact thing.
He's not bending on this Pentos thing. This is an old man's regrets from a 40-year lifestyle of
fighting, much like Barristan has many years of regrets, and now the Tatter Prince wants what was
once his to take. And just like poor Quentin has said, and Eliana reiterated,
Quentin made a deal with the devil,
and Barristan needs to be warned that when you make a deal with the devil,
you're going to get burnt.
It is really, I just don't get the Tattered Prince.
And we don't get much of him.
We'll probably learn more about him in wins
when we do this whole like taking pentos and
pentoshi arc because of course tyrian's also come going to come with the information that oh
by the way illyrio's supporting this guy named like young griff who's really competing against
you but along with all of that like i i am curious as to what the tattered prince is all about because
the pentoshi system is really weird like they elect this one
person to be their leader and he's gonna rule and stuff and it's gonna be great but the moment
anything goes wrong they're like oh we're gonna execute this guy and maybe the tattered prince was
like no this is a this is absolutely like a poison apple i refuse to take this yeah but i don't know
we don't know anything we don't know
enough about him yeah that's an interesting point you bring up too like maybe he didn't want that
because he knew he would be in danger of taking it and now maybe he realizes he can change the
system i think we'll definitely learn more about it in tyrian chapters in the winds of winter i
think that is going to be our window into it uh but i think that's it for the spurn suitor and for of course the
windblown yeah and next time of course we'll be doing the chapter oh that's literally the name
of the chapter here's wonderow wait well of course though as we do that chapter we will do an outro
of the effect on quentin's story and you will find out what our
next point of view character is going to be that will be starting the week after and that point of
view character will also bring a special Patreon episode a Patreon only for September when their
arc is over uh so check that out it will be a special Winds of Winter chapter just for five
dollar and up patrons thanks so much for listening, you guys.
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i don't know i've been chloe you can find me on social media as at lies in arbor and i've been
eliana you can find me in various places as glass table girl thanks guys