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Episode 172: A STORM OF SWORDS, DAENERYS II: "Legion, Part 1" SHOW NOTES!
🕑 Added 2022-01-31 15:00:07 +0000 UTCHello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.
And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.
Welcome to the one hundred and seventy-second episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Legion, Part 1: An Analysis of ASOS, Daenerys II,” in which Daenerys visits gothic, gonzo hell in the form of Astapor.
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Question
James of House Keene, Lord of the Forest City, Admiral of the Cuyahoga, and Warden of the Western Reserve, a small council patron, asks:
We all know Martin created Davos Seaworth as a way to give us a POV in Stannis’ camp without giving us a Stannis POV. I suspect Martin created Areoh Hotah for the same purpose except for Doran Martell. I think it’s interesting that Martin only has two non-Westerosi POV characters: Areo Hotah and Melisandre. Do you think Hotah was made to provide both a non-Westerosi perspective AND a POV in Doran Martell, or is there some other reason why we have Areo instead of Doran himself? Perhaps Doran knows something Martin doesn’t want the audience to know (yet)?
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But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Daenerys Targaryen, she decided that Illyrio Mopatis could wait. She needed an army first. Let’s find out about that army and the hellscape that produces them in this synopsis of ASOS, Daenerys II, Part 1!
Synopsis
In the center of the Plaza of Pride stood a red brick fountain whose waters smelled of brimstone, and in the center of the fountain a monstrous harpy made of hammered bronze. Twenty feet tall she reared. She had a woman's face, with gilded hair, ivory eyes, and pointed ivory teeth. Water gushed yellow from her heavy breasts. But in place of arms she had the wings of a bat or a dragon, her legs were the legs of an eagle, and behind she wore a scorpion's curled and venomous tail.
I have the strangest feeling of being in a desert, gothic hell for some reason.
Dany knows the statue is the Harpy of Ghis. Old Ghis was an empire that fell five thousand years before under the onslaught of the Valyrian Empire who destroyed the empire so badly that the Ghiscari language was mostly forgotten. So, the people spoke a bastardized version of High Valyrian. That didn’t mean that the symbols of Old Ghis were gone though. The Harpy of Old Ghis had a thunderbolt in its claws. This harpy had chains. This is Astapor.
"Tell the Westerosi whore to lower her eyes," the slaver Kraznys mo Nakloz complained to the slave girl who spoke for him. "I deal in meat, not metal. The bronze is not for sale. Tell her to look at the soldiers. Even the dim purple eyes of a sunset savage can see how magnificent my creatures are, surely."
Kraznys spoke High Valyrian in a Ghiscari growl, and Dany understands him -- even if she pretends she doesn’t. Thus, a slave girl from Naath translates. She asks if the Unsullied are magnificent. They might be okay, Dany replies. But she needs to know about their training. The slave girl translates this to Kraznys as Dany trying to talk the price down. In response, Kraznys asks the slave girl if the Westerosi are so ignorant. Everyone knows about the Unsullied who master spear, shield and short sword. But Kraznys wants these questions to end. It’s hot out here.
Dany agrees with Kraznys on it being hot as the sun bakes the plaza and slave girls fan Dany and Kraznys. But there was something weird about the Unsullied:
If the Unsullied felt the heat, however, they gave no hint of it. They could be made of brick themselves, the way they stand there. A thousand had been marched out of their barracks for her inspection; drawn up in ten ranks of one hundred before the fountain and its great bronze harpy, they stood stiffly at attention, their stony eyes fixed straight ahead. They wore nought but white linen clouts knotted about their loins, and conical bronze helms topped with a sharpened spike a foot tall. Kraznys had commanded them to lay down their spears and shields, and doff their swordbelts and quilted tunics, so the Queen of Westeros might better inspect the lean hardness of their bodies.
"They are chosen young, for size and speed and strength," the slave told her. "They begin their training at five. Every day they train from dawn to dusk, until they have mastered the shortsword, the shield, and the three spears. The training is most rigorous, Your Grace. Only one boy in three survives it. This is well known. Among the Unsullied it is said that on the day they win their spiked cap, the worst is done with, for no duty that will ever fall to them could be as hard as their training."
That is, um, something.
Kraznys then tells Dany that the Unsullied before her have been standing immobile for a day and a night with no food or water. They will do their duty until their death. That’s courage according to Kraznys. But it’s madness per Barri- um, Arstan. He taps his staff hard against the bricks, signaling his anger. He didn’t want to be there, had advised her not to buy a slave army or visit Astapor. Dany brought him so that she would have opposing counsel from both Arstan and Jorah who wanted to purchase the Unsullied. She left her dragons back in her ships in order to protect them from would-be dragonslayers.
When Kraznys is informed of what the “smelly old man” said, he informs them that the Unsullied standing day and night without food and water is discipline, obedience.
"Sheep are obedient," said Arstan when the words had been translated. He had some Valyrian as well, though not so much as Dany, but like her he was feigning ignorance.
Kraznys mo Nakloz showed his big white teeth when that was rendered back to him. "A word from me and these sheep would spill his stinking old bowels on the bricks," he said, "but do not say that. Tell them that these creatures are more dogs than sheep. Do they eat dogs or horse in these Seven Kingdoms?"
"They prefer pigs and cows, your worship."
"Beef. Pfag. Food for unwashed savages."
Dany ignores them and proceeds to inspect the line of slave soldiers, noticing that there were Dothraki, Lhazarene, Free Cities men, Qartheen, Summer Islanders, others she doesn’t know and even Ghiscari in the ranks. The Ghiscari sell their own. They were tall and short, between the ages of fourteen to twenty. But they weren’t men per se. They were a unit, and they were eunuchs.
Dany asks why the Unsullied are castrated as men with dicks are stronger, etc. According to Kraznys, they were cut to make them absolutely obedient, loyal and fearless. Barristan says all men fear death. But Kraznys insults Barristan in Ghiscari and then tells the girl to say that the Unsullied are not men. Death and maiming mean nothing to them either. To demonstrate this, he whips an Unsullied across the cheek and asks if he wants another lashing. But before this can happen, Dany says she’s seen how strong the Unsullied are and how they suffer pain bravely.
Kraznys chuckled when he heard her words in Valyrian. "Tell this ignorant whore of a westerner that courage has nothing to do with it."
"The Good Master says that was not courage, Your Grace."
"Tell her to open those slut's eyes of hers."
"He begs you attend this carefully, Your Grace."
Kraznys moves to the next eunuch in line and demands his sword. The Unsullied soldier kneels and offers his sword. Kraznys commands him to stand, and then he cuts from his belly up to his ribs and then saws the blade back and forth across the nipple. In horror, Dany demands to know what Kraznys is doing, but Kraznys tells her to shut up. Men don’t need nipples, eunuchs definitely don’t need nipples. And then the nipple hangs from a thread of skin, and then Kraznys slashes and sends the flesh to the ground.
Kraznys turned back to Dany. "They feel no pain, you see."
"How can that be?" she demanded through the scribe.
The reason is the wine of courage: a potion made of nightshade, bloodfly larva, black lotus root and other secret ingredients. The Unsullied drink it with every meal, and it makes them fearless. It makes them feel less fear, less pain. So, the Unsullied can never be tortured or give up information. As for the castration, Kraznys has more information to convey:
"In Yunkai and Meereen, eunuchs are often made by removing a boy's testicles, but leaving the penis. Such a creature is infertile, yet often still capable of erection. Only trouble can come of this. We remove the penis as well, leaving nothing. The Unsullied are the purest creatures on the earth." He gave Dany and Arstan another of his broad white smiles. "I have heard that in the Sunset Kingdoms men take solemn vows to keep chaste and father no children, but live only for their duty. Is it not so?"
"It is," Arstan said, when the question was put. "There are many such orders. The maesters of the Citadel, the septons and septas who serve the Seven, the silent sisters of the dead, the Kingsguard and the Night's Watch . . . "
"Poor things," growled the slaver, after the translation. "Men were not made to live thus. Their days are a torment of temptation, any fool must see, and no doubt most succumb to their baser selves. Not so our Unsullied. They are wed to their swords in a way that your Sworn Brothers cannot hope to match. No woman can ever tempt them, nor any man."
Arstan says that there are other means of temptation, but Kraznys objects, saying that the Unsullied have no interests outside of duty. They don’t even have names. They own nothing outside of their short sword. To demonstrate this, Kraznys turns to an Unsullied and asks his name. Red Flea today, Black Rat yesterday, Brown Flear the day before that, and he isn’t sure what the name was four days ago. They have disks that are tossed into a pile, and a name is chosen at random each new day.
Barry the Arstan says that’s madness to have to remember a new name every day, but Kraznys says that’s how they maintain their discipline. If they can’t do that, they’re culled in training. And there are other requirements too:
"Those who cannot are culled in training, along with those who cannot run all day in full pack, scale a mountain in the black of night, walk across a bed of coals, or slay an infant."
Dany's mouth surely twisted at that. Did he see, or is he blind as well as cruel? She turned away quickly, trying to keep her face a mask until she heard the translation. Only then did she allow herself to say, "Whose infants do they slay?"
"To win his spiked cap, an Unsullied must go to the slave marts with a silver mark, find some wailing newborn, and kill it before its mother's eyes. In this way, we make certain that there is no weakness left in them."
Shocked, Dany asks if she heard correctly. She did. But the coin is not for the mother. It’s for the child’s mother. The Unsullied cannot steal. But then there’s the other killing they have to do: they are given a puppy when they are castrated, and at the end of the year, they have to strangle it. If they can’t do that, they’re killed and fed to the dogs as a lesson.
Arstan Whitebeard tapped the end of his staff on the bricks as he listened to that. Tap tap tap. Slow and steady. Tap tap tap. Dany saw him turn his eyes away, as if he could not bear to look at Kraznys any longer.
"The Good Master has said that these eunuchs cannot be tempted with coin or flesh," Dany told the girl, "but if some enemy of mine should offer them freedom for betraying me . . . "
"They would kill him out of hand and bring her his head, tell her that," the slaver answered. "Other slaves may steal and hoard up silver in hopes of buying freedom, but an Unsullied would not take it if the little mare offered it as a gift. They have no life outside their duty. They are soldiers, and that is all."
Dany says she needs soldiers. How many does she need? How many does Astapor have for sale? Eight thousand are available now. They sell them by the thousand or the hundred. They used to sell by ten, but that was an unsound investment as the Unsullied intermingled with other slaves and grew out of their soldierly habits. And sure, Dany could get slave soldiers from Yunkai and Meereen, but they are not quality soldiers like the Unsullied.
“Tell her they are like Valyrian steel, folded over and over and hammered for years on end, until they are stronger and more resilient than any metal on earth."
As for officers, Dany must appoint officers over them. And the Unsullied come sold with sword, shield, spear, sandals, quilted tunic and spiked caps. Any other armor must be provided by the owner.
Dany doesn’t have any more questions; so, she asks Arstan what she should do. Tell them no, he says. Dany asks why, knowing that Kraznys will get that translated later on.
"My queen," said Arstan, "there have been no slaves in the Seven Kingdoms for thousands of years. The old gods and the new alike hold slavery to be an abomination. Evil. If you should land in Westeros at the head of a slave army, many good men will oppose you for no other reason than that. You will do great harm to your cause, and to the honor of your House."
"Yet I must have some army," Dany said. "The boy Joffrey will not give me the Iron Throne for asking politely."
"When the day comes that you raise your banners, half of Westeros will be with you," Whitebeard promised. "Your brother Rhaegar is still remembered, with great love."
"And my father?" Dany said.
Ah, well, um, Aerys is remembered. He made Westeros peaceful. But maybe Dany should just go to Illyrio and hang out for a while to let her dragons grow while sending secret messages across the Narrow Sea to grab up loyal lords? Like the ones who abandoned Aerys for Robert? Dany counters. Yeah, but those lords may want a return of dragons. Oh they may? She turns back to Kraznys and the slave girl and says she needs to consider.
The slaver shrugged. "Tell her to consider quickly. There are many other buyers. Only three days past I showed these same Unsullied to a corsair king who hopes to buy them all."
"The corsair wanted only a hundred, your worship," Dany heard the slave girl say.
He poked her with the end of the whip. "Corsairs are all liars. He'll buy them all. Tell her that, girl."
Dany knew she would take more than a hundred, if she took any at all. "Remind your Good Master of who I am. Remind him that I am Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, the Unburnt, trueborn queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. My blood is the blood of Aegon the Conqueror, and of old Valyria before him."
But Dany’s words don’t move Kraznys. Old Ghis ruled a massive empire when Valyrians were fucking sheep. They are the sons of the harpy. Anyways, Kraznys is tired and bored of trying to convince and bribe Dany. He’d be happy to serve as a guide to Astapor for Dany or to sex her. He’ll also feed her dog brains, a stew of octopus and unborn puppy.
"Tell her how pretty the pyramids are at night," the slaver growled. "Tell her I will lick honey off her breasts, or allow her to lick honey off mine if she prefers."
"Astapor is most beautiful at dusk, Your Grace," said the slave girl. "The Good Masters light silk lanterns on every terrace, so all the pyramids glow with colored lights. Pleasure barges ply the Worm, playing soft music and calling at the little islands for food and wine and other delights."
"Ask her if she wishes to view our fighting pits," Kraznys added. "Douquor's Pit has a fine folly scheduled for the evening. A bear and three small boys. One boy will be rolled in honey, one in blood, and one in rotting fish, and she may wager on which the bear will eat first."
Tap tap tap, Dany heard. Arstan Whitebeard's face was still, but his staff beat out his rage. Tap tap tap. She made herself smile. "I have my own bear on Balerion," she told the translator, "and he may well eat me if I do not return to him."
It’s hard not to quote so much of the dialogue in this chapter, because it’s so truly gonzo.
Anyways, Kraznys engages in casual misogyny about how Jorah will be the one making the decision instead of Dany, and Dany says that she’s heading out to think about everything she’s learned.
She gave her arm to Arstan Whitebeard, to lead her back across the plaza to her litter. Aggo and Jhogo fell in to either side of them, walking with the bowlegged swagger all the horselords affected when forced to dismount and stride the earth like common mortals.
And that is the synopsis of ASOS, Daenerys II, Part One. Well, this is quite the chapter in many, many ways. And it’s all setting the foundation for everything that’s coming for Daenerys Targaryen’s story for the remainder of the published books. What did you think, ser?
Depth
A Storm of Swords isn’t much for new settings. Most of the book focuses on deepening the drama in places we’ve already been–King’s Landing, Castle Black, Dragonstone, Harrenhal, Riverrun, the Twins. The major exception is Slaver’s Bay, a location George teased in book one and now unveils in book three, so it can basically take over the story in book five. But before it becomes the Meereenese Knot full of multiple POVs and subplots, and before real-world events changed its meaning for the author and audience alike, Slaver’s Bay is a hellish gauntlet for Daenerys Targaryen, one that throws the possibilities and pitfalls of her overall rise to power into sharp relief. In Qarth, she was more or less drifting. That changes now, as she’s forced to choose how she will interact with the world around her–what she will create, and what she will leave behind.
She starts making those big decisions in her next chapter, and they start coming one after another in a dizzying rise to power. This chapter is more about setting the stage, and it does so with hideous precision. This is a different kind of horror than Sam’s opening chapter, which was about pure chaos, Sam’s POV breaking down in the face of the undead. This chapter explores a distinct structure: Astapor, the infernal machine, a temple to human misery. In order to ground what Dany does next, George has to chill you to the bone while also setting your heart on fire, and he does both.
Yeah, it really feels like George is priming the reader to want Dany to burn this fucking city to the ground. Astapor is horror like you said. But it’s less the cold, uncaring, supernatural horror seen north of the Wall. It’s a hot horror where people subject other people to inhuman practices. It’s body horror as brought about by torture. It’s psychological horror of the depths that humans will go when their entire society is addicted to misery. Slaver’s Bay is truly the worst place on Planetos. Given what we find out about Yunkai and Meereen in later ASOS/ADWD chapters, it’s hard to argue that Astapor might be the worst city of them all. We want this city to burn. But should we? We’ll unpack all that especially in Daenerys III. But for now, let’s zero in on the city of Astapor itself in the context of the rest of Slaver’s Bay and its own internal identity and reputation.
- Intro to Astapor
- Each city in Slaver’s Bay is color-coded to represent its place in Dany’s story. Yunkai is yellow–a color associated with fear and cowardice, perfect for the city of craven slavers who do nothing but hire sellswords and then manage them so poorly that most of the sellswords flip sides
- Meereen is made of many colors, a metaphor for the political complexity of the city and the number of factions and journeys caught up in it
- But Dany begins in Astapor, and Astapor is red. As Barristan says:
- "Bricks and blood built Astapor … and bricks and blood her people … the bricks of Astapor are red with the blood of the slaves who make them."
- Astapor is built on blood, stained and sustained by it, like the Red Keep grown to the size of a city. George establishes the tone right away:
- In the center of the Plaza of Pride stood a red brick fountain whose waters smelled of brimstone …
- The smell of brimstone is not exactly a subtle cue. Astapor is hell: a fiery pit full of obscene torments. It’s the worst place in the world, a locus of punishment and suffering so intense that it seems to transcend reality
- Dany’s journey in Slaver’s Bay begins with her staring down the symbol of it all: the harpy, bronze and baleful, rearing above her with eyes and fangs of ivory, the legs of an eagle, the poisonous tale of a scorpion, and wings like a bat…or a dragon, making her Dany’s twisted mirror image
- Even after Dany sacks Astapor, she can’t escape the harpy. It returns to dominate her story in ADWD, as the Sons of the Harpy strike her freemen from the shadows, leaving the harpy behind, painted in blood
- The harpy exemplifies the class of masters that dominates Slaver’s Bay. It’s how they see themselves, and how they want their slaves to see them
- The harpy is a symbol inherited from Old Ghis, an empire that has been dead and gone for millennia. It was wiped out by the Valyrians, Dany’s own ancestors. George describes it with more hellish imagery, emphasizing that this has always been the history of empires:
- Old Ghis had fallen five thousand years ago, if she remembered true; its legions shattered by the might of young Valyria, its brick walls pulled down, its streets and buildings turned to ash and cinder by dragonflame, its very fields sown with salt, sulfur, and skulls.
- The Valyrians salted the earth. They not only conquered the people, they wiped out the gods: a total metaphysical defeat, absolute erasure
- So the Masters of Astapor only pretend to be descended directly from Old Ghis, in the same way the Old Way Ironborn pretend that the Iron Islands have maintained their precious cultural and ethnic purity for millennia
- "Old Ghis ruled an empire when the Valyrians were still fucking sheep … and we are the sons of the harpy."
- In truth, the Masters are descended in part from their Valyrian conquerors, making them Dany’s distant cousins. They speak High Valyrian–with a Ghiscari twist, to be sure, but it’s still the language of their conquest
- They keep the symbol of Old Ghis, but with a twist. The harpy of Ghis had a thunderbolt in its claws–representing divine power a la the Greeks
- The harpy of Astapor carries something more mundane yet even more terrifying: chains, like the chains the Masters lock their slaves into
- This is George showing us how culture and history intertwine, the give and take process by which people define themselves. It’s always make believe; you’re always choosing bits and pieces as you wish
- Your first time through this chapter, you’re probably focused on the sheer awfulness of the atrocities embedded into Astapor on a systemic level
- On reread, though, these cultural complexities stand out, because Dany will have to engage with that complexity to rule in Slaver’s Bay
- You’re right that there’s a complexity there, and I think George does this by giving something of a detailed historical background of Slaver’s Bay and Astapor.
- Historically, the influences that George draws from with Slaver’s Bay are varied but not precisely geographically wide!
- The great empire of Ghis brought down by Valyria reads as a play on the Greek Dominion of the Mediterranean (and the Macedonian Empire specifically) brought down by the Roman Empire.
- We’ll later learn that there were five Ghiscari Wars fought between Valyria and the Empire of Ghis: a play on the four Macedonian Wars that brought the Greek States under Roman dominion.
- But the salting of the earth invokes the conclusion to the Siege of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War.
- Of course, salting the earth in Carthage as part of the city’s total devastation was a nineteenth century romantic invention -- though salting of the earth in cities did occur: albeit not in Carthage.
- But George loves his popular, romantic version of history rather than the academic, truer version of history.
- One last thing about the history piece of Slaver’s Bay: I think we’re seeing a real contrast with what we saw in Qarth where George didn’t seem that interested in the society of Qarth.
- Here, there’s real history behind the descendants of the Ghiscari, and I think ultimately the vile practice of slavery and the especially vile way they practice it is sourced in its history: how a whole people was subjugated by Valyria, taught to create a culture of servitude and violence
- Introducing the Unsullied
- You can see that cultural give-and-take process at work right away in this chapter in terms of how George handles the question of language
- The Masters are speaking High Valyrian, which they assume Dany doesn’t understand. Their translator Missandei speaks to Dany in the Common Tongue. But Dany understands everything being said, and so do we
- This is some really smart writing, feeding you worldbuilding and character information while also building tension, both dramatically and comedically
- You can imagine a much more pedestrian version of this scene in which everyone is speaking plainly to each other. This way is so much richer
- It shows us the Masters’ worldview. They’re so arrogant that they can’t imagine the “Westerosi whore” could possibly speak their tongue
- Yet as I said, that’s the language of the Valyrian conquerors, her ancestors. With enough time, High Valryian has become a shadow on the wall for these men–an image of power and wealth they see themselves in
- It’s been divorced from its origins, just like the image of the harpy, and so the Masters’ arrogance backfires, leading them into ignorance
- Dany knows them better than they know her, and so her cultural knowledge is translated into political advantage; George is following up on Dany’s attempts to assimilate into the Dothraki and the Qartheen
- For me, the Ghiscari are the most interesting example of this pattern, because of how Dany is both kin and stranger to them
- Is she Westerosi, or is she Valyrian? Which is her mother land, her mother tongue? She grew up in neither, truly, but in the Free Cities
- Individuals can cross these borders; Missandei speaks the Common Tongue fluently despite never having traveled to Westeros. So part of the slave economy at work here involves tutors who train translators
- In Slaver’s Bay, everything from economics to linguistics is intertwined to support the system. The slavers draw Dany’s attention away from the harpy, one symbol of their power, to another, the Unsullied
- The monstrosity of the harpy, the same dehumanization that leads to the creation of the Unsullied, leads the slavers to condescend to Dany
- The harpy also speaks to the monstrous, unnatural union, perhaps symbolizing how the Ghiscari culture is an amalgamation of its history as both conqueror and enslaver.
- Because Dany understands High Valyrian, and because George translates it for us, both her and the reader can peek beneath the surface of diplomacy and see the Masters for who they really are, what they’re really saying: using crude words and xenophobia to belittle Dany’s intelligence
- This accomplishes several goals at once. It makes us hate the Masters, more than we would’ve if we only heard the polite translation of their words. In particular, George leads us to fucking despise Kraznys mo Nakloz, one of the most odious characters in a story hardly lacking for them. He’s a brutal overseer and a sneering sexist
- By contrast, we’re led to sympathize with Missandei even more than we would have otherwise. Now we (and Dany) see how hard her job is
- She has to do more than translate: she has to shape her master’s words into polite diplomacy, and also interpret the true meaning of Dany’s words for him. If she doesn’t, she’ll suffer for the deal falling apart, even though Kraznys is the one being obnoxious: the system in a nutshell
- When Kraznys calls Dany a slut or talks at length about what it would be like to fuck her, Missandei has to come up with a plausible diplomatic niceity to say instead, in the Common Tongue, as fast as possible
- So we see how intelligent and hardworking she is, and how lazy and uncaring Kraznys is. Obviously, slavery is an atrocity no matter the traits of the individuals involved. But I think George is trying to contrast the Masters’ self-indulgence with the discipline enforced upon their slaves
- The author emphasizes the uncomfortable heat, shimmering waves of it in the air, not just to add to the hellish atmosphere, but to demonstrate what that discipline has made of the Unsullied
- They stand there, row on row, baking in the hot sun like the bricks that make up the city, as Dany thinks; no shade like the Masters get
- This isn’t just cruelty, though it is that. It’s a product showcase, as far as the Masters are concerned: the fact that the Unsullied can bear the heat without flinching is an object lesson in their discipline
- What makes the Unsullied so effective, what makes them an attractive purchase in the flesh markets of Slaver’s Bay, is that they have been stripped of their humanity, representing the inhumanity of this system
- They are chosen young, taken from their families. Their training is so intense that it kills two out of every three. Those who survive are experts with sword and spear and shield; they can carry a full pack all day, scale a mountain in the dead of night, and walk across a bed of coals
- Part of this reminds me of the selection of U.S. Special Forces soldiers who undergo an extraordinarily rigorous training program designed to weed out those who don’t possess the physical and mental fortitude for the job.
- I spent a limited amount of time over fifteen years ago participating in one phase of the Special Forces Green Beret Qualification Course (or Q-Course) in which the candidates parachuted in at night, ruck-marched without sleep through eight miles of dense North Carolinian terrain and then linked up with us: guerrilla role-players.
- And then without sleep, we immediately rolled into missions, testing their endurance, strength and mental stamina.
- As the Ballad of the Green Berets goes: one hundred men we’ll test today, but only three win the Green Beret.
- However, a lot of this training that the Unsullied undergo resembles not that of modern militaries but those of Ancient Greece -- specifically the Spartans.
- The Spartan training system was known as the Krypteia or “hidden, secret.”
- It may have been part of the Spartan secret police, but what’s known most from this is how rigorous the training was.
- The men put into this regimen had to survive without shoes, go without food or water for periods of time, etc.
- Now … the thing about all of this is that it’s not entirely certain what went into the Krypteia or the agoge as accounts came from non-Spartan Greeks like Aristotle or Plato or Romans like Plutarch.
- However, George probably had this in mind when he constructed the Unsullied, choosing to embrace story over the vagaries of real history.
- But the discipline extends beyond the physical to the mental and emotional. Each Unsullied must take a silver coin to to the slave market and kill a baby in its mother’s arms. Hard to imagine anything worse
- Dany assumes at first that the coin is for the mother and is outraged: you pay off her love and grief? But it’s even worse than that
- The coin is for the baby’s master, because the Masters consider that baby to be property, not a person; killing the baby is stealing from his master, and the Unsullied are not permitted to steal
- Killing the baby? That’s fine, that’s the status quo. But depriving the masters of money? That’s what would challenge the system
- It reminds me of Chiswyck’s story about gangrape in the Riverlands back in Arya’s ACOK chapters. It establishes not only that these hideous actions occur, but that they are normal, part of the status quo
- Gregor paid for rape and murder and then asked for his change back. In both cases, the bitter punchline is about the dehumanization that goes with treating people like property. Humans become currency. Nothing but a tool to gain advantage, nothing but raw material
- And lest we think that this is just George dipping into the dark fantasy and imagination to draw inspiration, let’s stay in the Spartan tradition and talk about this part of the ritual and how it’s reminiscent of an especially brutal aspect of Spartan training.
- After graduation from the agoge: or the three-phase Spartan training program, the Spartan state would declare war against the helots or slaves serving the Spartans.
- The young men who graduated from this training would then go out into the countryside and kill helots -- especially those who looked strong. They struck against large communities of helots.
- Scholar speculate that the autumn killing season was likely intended to keep the helot population down and prevent slave rebellions from occurring.
- What’s left unstated here in Daenerys II is that the likely reason why the Unsullied do this is to maintain population control over the large masses of slaves operating in Slaver’s Bay -- to prevent overpopulation and rebellion.
- And as we’ll likely see in TWOW, there is a real threat when the slave population vastly outnumbers the free population come Volantis.
- On the day a new Unsullied boy is castrated, he’s given a puppy: a consolation prize, a distraction from the pain. Imagine how much you’d come to love that little dog, who loves you when no one else does
- And now imagine finishing your training and being ordered to strangle that puppy. What’s left of your heart breaks; you become part of the machine that took everything from you, that does not even permit you a name but forces you to memorize a new one every day. You are a flea, then a worm, then a rat; you are vermin, and you are complicit in your own suffering
- It makes a good lesson, as Kraznys says. If you can’t bring yourself to do it, you’re killed and fed to the remaining dogs. Nothing goes to waste
- This is cruelty as a science, an industry, extending categorically beyond the depravity of an individual sadist like Ramsay
- This is a self-sustaining loop of suffering that swallows up everything in its path, reducing the rainbow of life to blood-red
- As she walks the ranks of the Unsullied, Dany sees that they come from all over: Dothraki and Lhazarene, Qartheen and Summer Islanders, even Ghiscari with the same hair and skin color as Kraznys himself
- All of Essos takes part, and all that diverse humanity is melted down and forged into something else. As Dany thinks, their eyes have different colors and shapes, but they all look the same, empty inside
- It’s all so awful that Dany flinches once, almost giving the game away. We’re right there with her, flinching away from the horror of it all
- But she has to keep her lord’s face on–she has to keep pretending that this is all business as usual, because it is, for an entire continent
- Astapor is hell because it’s profitable; there is a market for soldiers who will stand and fight no matter what. Supply and demand built Astapor
- Is it so different from how the Others operate? Emptying out their zombie slaves, reducing them to cannon fodder? What is mind control but the ultimate discipline? Humans break, as Septon Meribald tells us; in order to create soldiers that will not break, you need to empty them of humanity
- It’s a melting pot in the worst possible way where all races and sizes are reduced to a unit.
- There’s the Ottoman Janissaries or Syrian/Egyptian Mamluks: slaves who become soldiers that George stated were inspirations for the Unsullied.
- But the system of slavery practiced in Essos is not sourced to race-based slavery, saying:
- There is no racial component to slavery as practiced on Essos. It is based on slavery as it existed in the ancient world. The Romans and Greek were just as willing to enslave other Greeks and Romans as they were Celts, Goths, Germans, and Africans. It's on the page.
- Of course, George is correct about the form of slavery practiced in classical Rome and Greece: it wasn’t race-based. Race - as defined by tone of skin - is a modern conception.
- I think the one thing that gets me about this, though, is that even if the system isn’t based on race, the chattel slavery practiced has its hallmarks to the race-based version of slavery seen most prominently in the United States.
- We know that GRRM is well-aware of this as American slavery is a central feature of his 1982 vampire novel Fevre Dream (which we’re covering for our monthly chapter by chapter patreon episodes)
- In this chapter, we see whippings, maimings, markings, etc done to the Unsullied by their slaver masters, and this invokes the American slave system in tone.
- So, while the practice of slavery was based on non-race-based slavery, the emotions this part of the chapter invokes are solidly American.
- Barristan’s counter-arguments
- Throughout this chapter, Dany is in the position of not being able to directly express her feelings about the horrorshow she’s witnessing
- Not only is she hiding her fluency in Valyrian from the slavers, but she’s also trying to avoid looking weak in front of them; she doesn’t want to be taken advantage of, as Missandei tells Kraznys:
- "The Westerosi woman is pleased with them, but speaks no praise, to keep the price down.”
- So instead, George has Barristan poke the bear, allowing him to speak for Westeros and also at some level the audience
- Dany brought “Arstan” along specifically because he bitterly opposes coming here at all; she knows that leaders need to hear from competing sources of information to get as close to the right call as possible, an example of how she’s consciously trying to be better than Viserys was
- Barristan undercuts the slavers’ narrative about the Unsullied, which is all about how they’re a tribute to martial glory: mankind perfected like Valyrian steel: “absolutely obedient, absolutely loyal, and utterly without fear”
- When Kraznys brags that the Unsullied are so brave they’d starve for him out here, Barristan says that’s not courage, but madness
- Courage, as Ned would say, is about the choice to be brave in spite of fear. If fear has been steamrolled out of you, there’s no way to be brave
- Are the Unsullied obedient? Sure, Barristan says. So are sheep! All Kraznys can do in response is call them dogs; he concedes the point that he doesn’t treat the Unsullied like fully fledged individual human beings, and Barristan believes only such a person can achieve martial glory
- In a deliberately stomach-churning sequence, Kraznys tortures his own soldiers to show off how they’ve been numbed to pain
- We’re in body horror territory, like Kraznys is a mad scientist who believes his experiments have improved upon humankind
- Barristan believes this is a perversion of what it means to be a warrior. Fear isn’t an obstacle you remove–it’s the engine of the whole process
- All through the negotiations, Barristan is tapping his staff against the ground, loud sharp taps like the hammering of an enraged heartbeat
- He is clearly just barely restraining himself from beating Kraznys to death with that thing; he is heartsick and furious, and so are we. You project yourself into him as a vessel for moral revulsion at slavery
- But George’s favorite thing is complicating our catharsis, so he’s doing more with Barristan than just giving us someone to cheer for
- When Kraznys talks about covering three boys with honey, blood, and fish before betting on which one bears eat first, Barristan looks away
- This sums up both Westeros’ perspective on Essosi slavery and Barristan’s own past with the Mad King’s atrocities
- You don’t participate, you don’t condone, but you also don’t do anything about it. You look away, and tell yourself that you are good
- That’s the only option he can offer Dany, and it rubs her raw because it feels like passive complicity, as Jaime argued about the Kingsguard
- Barristan’s perspective is rooted in the Kingsguard as a synecdoche for Westerosi values; since Dany isn’t actually familiar with Westeros, Barristan acts as tutor and emissary, telling her what Westeros will think
- But in the process, he inadvertently reveals the blindspots of his worldview, the ones that have tripped him up before and will again
- Westeros won’t accept a monarch leading a slave army, he says. Solid, practical advice. But what are Westeros’ institutions like?
- Kraznys goes for the gut here, saying that the Kingsguard–along with the Night’s Watch, the maesters, etc–are the real perversions of humanity
- They ask the same tremendous discipline that is asked of the Unsullied, but without any of the physical restrictions–no castration, no numbing
- In Kraznys’ view, this is the atrocity: “poor things,” he calls them. They are doomed to the torment of temptation, which the Unsullied cannot feel
- Surely most of them break their vows anyway! Why not do as the slavers do, and remove the possibility of that happening?
- As it turns out, the Unsullied are still perfectly capable of making choices, as we’ll see in Dany’s next chapter
- Kraznys is just making excuses for this abominable system; no doubt he learned from older merchants to make this speech to doubtful westerners
- But one thing he says is true: the Westerosi institutions that Barristan so reveres are absurd in terms of their relationship with individual choice
- Jaime said the same thing: they make you take so many vows that they are bound to come into conflict, setting you up to fail. They don’t relieve you of the burden of choices and consequences, they only pretend to
- It’s not so much that the Kingsguard and the Unsullied are equivalent in terms of the suffering involved, but that the ideal Kingsguard would choose to act like he was Unsullied–the ideal is total dedication to duty
- And there’s something inhumane about that, as Barristan knows. Remember what Varys told Tyrion: Barristan believed that Mandon Moore knew nothing but duty, yet didn’t seem to think that was a positive thing
- So despite presenting himself as the moral center here, Barristan is coming unmoored from his own belief systems as he sees them carried to their full exaggerated extent here in Slaver’s Bay
- Barristan also just isn’t being honest with Dany about who he is and why he’s here serving her, and the reason for his dishonesty prevents him from giving her accurate or helpful advice
- Barristan is testing Dany to see how similar she is to her father, which means he can’t tell her what her father was actually like
- So when Dany correctly points out that she will need an army to take the Iron Throne from the Lannisters, Barristan has to repeat Illyrio’s lie that they’re all sowing dragon banners over there
- They loved Rhaegar, after all! And my father, Dany asks? That’s where Barristan’s narrative falls apart, as he has to dance around the truth
- The other truth that Barristan fails to share with Daenerys here is that beyond the Kingsguard, the septons and septas, there are multiple institutions in Westeros that resemble slavery.
- Arya saw first-hand how Tywin Lannister practiced warfare in the Riverlands, taking massive amounts of captives to Harrenhal and putting those that survived the march up to work -- without pay.
- And remember all those people who died along the way? That’s quite similar to the ordeal the smallfolk in the Riverlands face.
- Then there’s the Ironborn practice of taking salt wives and thralls. Barristan is familiar with this practice too as he took part in the Greyjoy Rebellion.
- Finally, there’s the whole structure of feudalism and the presence of serfdom in Westeros itself.
- Tyrion and Quentyn will learn in ADWD how much of the economic machine of Essos is based around slavery and how Dany’s actions created a mass union of different city states to oppose her.
- How much of Westeros’ economy is sourced to the slave labor of serfs? How hard did the Westerosi lords fight against Aegon V’s moderate reforms when their livelihood came at stake?
- I think a lot of what animates Barristan is semantics. The word slavery is an abomination. The idea of being a slave in chains is abhorrent.
- Yet the practice of enslaving people to the land owned by a lord, of chaining them to march up to Harrenhal, to forcibly marry or make them work the mines in the Iron Islands: that’s all above board.
- That is so Barristan to object to a title, to object to a word when the practice continues unabated.
- It’s like the argument about whether the Unsullied are sheep or dogs between Barristan and Kraznys. It makes us feel good that Barristan is taking up the correct argument -- even if it doesn’t mean shit in actual practice.
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
Daenerys pretending not to understand the slavers pays off in the most dramatic way imaginable in her next chapter.
The staff that Barristan holds here will be vital for when he intercepts Mero of Braavos’ attempt to murder Dany outside of Yunkai.
Theory/Discussion
Who might that “corsair king” be?
Conclusion
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