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Episode 73: A CLASH OF KINGS, PROLOGUE: "Red, Part 1" SHOW NOTES!
🕑 Added 2019-08-05 14:00:03 +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 seventy-third episode of the Not A Cast, entitled: “Red, Part 1: An Analysis of the Prologue to ACOK,” in which Old Man Cressen stares down a giant Eye of Sauron in the sky before explaining a bunch of backstory and wishing he wasn’t so damn old. I feel that.
Talk about the split
This episode is brought to you by our Small Council:
- Hand of the King WolfmanZack
- Grand Maester Timbob
- Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N.
- Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
- Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
- Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
- Jancy O, Lady Commander of the Night’s Watch
- Lord Gene, Master of Coin
- Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
- Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
- Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
- Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
- Lord Baby the Onion Baby
- Lord Blackheart the Defiant, Master of Zorse
- Lord Micah: Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
- Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
- The High Bearded Priest
- The Blue-Ringed Octoling
- Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
- Lady Xena Valyrian
And our newest member of our small council. Say hello to Hedrigal, Captain of the Air Ship Arrogance! Welcome, Hedrigal!
Thank you councillors very much!
Spoiler warning: All published books - 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!
E Mail
Lady May, a brand new Sworn Sword patron, sent us a lovely note over patreon that we wanted to share
Let me preface with saying this may be long, especially for an introvert who would much rather silently support than ever make my voice known, but I felt compelled. You have been warned.
I took a fantasy lit class my junior year in college, way back in 2007. A Game of Thrones was one of the books among ten others we read that semester. The problem with that, I had two other literature courses that required a book a week! The result led me having to utilize SparkNotes quite frequently and especially with AGOT. I started my re-read two days after season eight premiered. I love the lore and theories that asoiaf has sparked. My only regret is that I didn't know about the vast and fantastic community until recently. Also, I had no idea "to stan" or "stanning" was a thing!
I listened to quite a few podcasts that were not for me and became discouraged. I found your podcast around the time I was on Jon IV. I immediately started listening to all your previous podcasts. Few creators have ever kept me so wholly engaged in the content. I got caught up around Jon VIII, but I couldn't put the book down. I finished reading ADWD and immediately picked up the Dunk & Egg novellas, and now I'm halfway through Fire & Blood.
I cannot thank you both enough for creating such amazing content. I have never subscribed to a creator before (my husband and I are avid gamers, and we have our favorite streamers), you guys were my first. I love the discussion and the insight you both have. It is refreshing, intelligent, and delivered brilliantly. I cannot wait for Dany X and to dive back into ACOK with you guys and everything after that.
As a side note, you both have mentioned Stannis in every single episode since the very first episode, and it makes my heart so happy.
-Mayra (pronounced "my-EE-dah")
Question
Lord Travis, master of ships and warden of the waves, a small council member, asks:
We all agree that the show didn’t handle the One True King as well as they could have. But one thing they did well, in my opinion, is build a relationship between Stannis and Shireen that, to my knowledge, doesn’t exist in the books. We get no scene of Stannis admonishing Selyse for being harsh to the Princess nor Stannis telling his daughter why he did everything he could to save her life from greyscale. Those are touching scenes in the show and actually build a heart and soul for his grace. Of course, we all know that part of its inclusion was to make the sacrifice even more tragic.
With that being said, do you think we will get interactions between Stannis and Shireen in the books similar to what we got in the show?
Further, why do you think George hasn’t included them thus far in the series?
Synopsis
The comet's tail spread across the dawn, a red slash that bled above the crags of Dragonstone like a wound in the pink and purple sky.
The triumphant songs of dragons and the cries for northern independence fade into the ether, and we open back on the lifeless surface of the moon. Or Dragonstone. It’s Dragonstone. The red comet under which Dany birthed dragons now flies over the bleak, barren, haunted island of Dragonstone and our elderly point of view: Maester Cressen.
Standing between two twelve-foot tall gargoyles shaped as a hell-hound and wyvern, Cressen watches the red comet, disbelieving the plain omen above him. He is a skeptic, a maester, chained and bound to the Citadel of Oldtown, but the color of the Red Comet: the red of blood, fire and the setting sun disquiets him.
Such folly, he thinks to himself. Talking gargoyles and prophecies in the sky. I am an old done man, grown giddy as a child again.
Cressen wonders if his lifetime of knowledge and wisdom was deserting him, the same as his youth and health. He wonders if he’s becoming superstitious like some peasant.
And yet … and yet …
The comet flies over Dragonstone, even lighting its fiery plume by day now. But as if the very universe was challenging his skepticism of omens, a white raven had arrived from the Citadel the morning before. The end of summer. The omens were there, but what did they mean?
A quiet voice stirs Cressen from his inner-reflections. Pylos. He probably hadn’t wanted to disturb Cressen from his thoughts. Perhaps he should have shouted, given the “drivel” that’s become Cressen’s thoughts of late. Pylos announces that they have visitors. Princess Shireen.
Ever correct, Pylos called her princess now, as her lord father was a king. King of a smoking rock in the great salt sea, yet a king nonetheless. “Her fool is with her.”
Cressen turns from his gargoyles and asks for help into his chair, holding the wyvern to steady himself.
Pylos leads Cressen into his chambers, and Cressen reflects that he had once been a fast walker, but no more. Maester Cressen was two years shy of eighty years old, and was not in the best health. He broke his hip two years before. It had never healed. And Pylos? He was here to replace Cressen when he died. Cressen didn’t mind that so much. Someone would need to replace him, but it’d be better if the dying came later rather than sooner. Oh Cressen …
Pylos places Cressen at his desk, behind his books and papers. Shireen comes in shy with Patchface behind her with a “queer sideways walk” … never noticed that bit of unsettling detail before. And how else is Patchface described?
On his head was a mock helm fashioned from an old tin bucket, with a rack of deer antlers strapped to the crown and hung with cowbells. With his every lurching step, the bells rang, each with a different voice, clang-a-dang bong-dong ring-a-ling clong clong clong.
Eerie.
Cressen adopts his best “I’m your granddad” demeanor with Shireen, asking Pylos who’s come to see him. Of course it’s Shireen and “patches”, Shireen’s blue eyes blinking at Cressen:
Hers was not a pretty face, alas. The child had her lord father’s square jut of jaw and her mother’s unfortunate ears, along with a disfigurement all her own, the legacy of the bout of greyscale that had almost claimed her in the crib. Across half one cheek and well down her neck, her flesh was stiff and dead, the skin cracked and flaking, mottled black and grey and stony to the touch.
Shireen reports that Pylos said that she might be able to see the white raven, and Cressen agrees. He couldn’t deny her. She had been denied too often in her time.
Her name was Shireen. She would be ten on her next name day, and she was the saddest child that Maester Cressen had ever known.
Cressen believes that Shireen’s sadness is his shame and part of his failure. He asks Pylos to bring the white raven down, and Pylos consents, polite yet solemn.
If only [Pylos] had more humor, more life in him; that was what was needed here. Grim places needed lightening, no solemnity, and Dragonstone was grim beyond a doubt, a lonely citadel in the wet waste surrounded by storm and salt, with the smoking shadow of the mountain at its back.
But maesters go where they are sent. And so Cressen had gone to Dragonstone with his Lord Stannis twelve years before. But he hadn’t loved it. This wasn’t home. And lately, his dreams had been troubled, disturbed by visions of the red woman.
Patchface turns to watch Pylos climbing up to the rookery:
“Under the sea, the birds have scales for feathers. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.”
Cressen thinks on Patchface and how he was a sorry fool. Patchface has lost his sense of humor to the sea. The sea had also taken “half his wits and memory.” Also, Patchface is obese and soft. Only Shireen laughs at him. She was the only one who cares if Patchface lives or dies.
Maester Cressen invites Shireen to sit with him, and then he asks what she’s doing up so early in the morning.
“I had bad dreams. About the dragons. They were coming to eat me.”
Oh, is that all, Shireen? Ho-ly sh-it.
Cressen thinks that Shireen has had nightmares all her life, and he tries to reassure her that the dragons can’t eat her. They’re made of stone, crafted by the Valyrians who used Dragonstone as the western-most outpost of their Freehold empire. The Valyrians also created the castle itself, shaping stones in ways lost to time. Cressen then proceeds to describe how the towers of Dragonstone are shaped to look like dragons to inspire fear, while the crenellations are shaped as dragons too. All to inspire fear. Cressen turns to Shireen.
“So you see, there is nothing to fear.”
Oh, good. Glad we got that sorted and are not misidentifying why Shireen has dreams the dragons are coming to eat her. Whew-sob!
But Shireen is unconvinced. Good girl. She asks about the red comet and says that Melisandre had told Mama Selyse that the comet represented dragonsbreath. Does that mean that the dragons have come to life?
The red woman, Maester Cressen thought sourly. Ill enough that she’s filled the head of the mother with her madness, must she poison the daughter’s dreams as well?
Cressen responds that this is just a comet, a star lost to the heavens, never to be seen again when it’s gone. I mean I get where Cressen is coming from here, but Melisandre isn’t wrong here. We’ll get to that. But Shireen is perceptive, stating that the white raven from the Citadel means that it’s the end of summer.
True enough, Cressen says, fingering each of the metals from the maester’s chain around his neck, thinking about how heavy the metal seems now. Cressen then states that the conclave met and determined that the longest summer in living memory was coming to an end. Shireen asks if it’ll get cold, and Cressen says that it will, but maybe they’ll have a long, warm autumn, lots of harvests. Oh God.
Patchfaces jingles his bells
“It is always summer under the sea. The merwives wear nennymoans in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.”
Shireen giggles, wanting a gown of silver seaweed. But then Patchface continues. Under the sea, it snows up, and the rain is dry as bone. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.” When Shireen asks if it will truly snow, Cressen says that it will, but he hopes and prays that doesn’t occur for a long time.
Finally, Pylos returns with the white raven to Shireen’s cries of delight. The bird spreads its wings leaping into the air and taking its place on the table beside Cressen. Pylos heads off to fetch Cressen’s breakfast, and Shireen is astonished when after Cressen introduces Shireen as “Lady Shireen,” the bird is able to say Lady. Patchface, as always, has some things to say:
“Clever bird, clever man, clever clever fool. The shadows come to dance, my lord, dance my lord, dance my lord. The shadows come to stay, my lord, stay my lord, stay my lord.”
Shireen states that she’s scared by him singing that and wants him to stop. Cressen thinks that he might have stopped him once, silenced him forever, and then we’re into a flashback.
Back in the day, Lord Steffon Baratheon went to Volantis on behalf of King Aerys II Targaryen, attempting to find a wife for Prince Rhaegar. During that time in Volantis, Steffon found Patchface, stating that he was the best fool about. Nimble, a juggler, riddler and magic performer, Patchface also sang in four languages.
“We have bought his freedom and hope to bring him home with us. Robert will be delighted with him, and perhaps in time, he will even teach Stannis how to laugh.”
The letter makes Cressen feel sad. No one had ever taught Stannis to laugh, least of all the boy Patchface. A storm had come up on Lord Steffon and his wife’s ship and sunk it in Shipbreaker Bay as Robert, Stannis and Cressen watched on in horror from the battlements of Storm’s End. Corpses floated onto the shores for days afterwards. On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead and Patchface washed on-shore. They thought him a corpse to throw onto the burial wagon, but the boy coughed water and sat up. The man who found him swore that Patchface was dead when they found him.
No one had ever explained those two days the fool had been lost in the sea. The fisherfolk liked to say a mermaid had taught him to breathe water in return for his seed. Patchface himself had said nothing. The witty, clever lad that Lord Steffon had written of never reached Storm’s End; the boy they found was someone else, broken in body and mind, hardly capable of speech, much less wit.
When Ser Harbert, the former castellan of Storm’s End, had heard of Patchface, he advised Cressen to straight up mercy-kill the boy, but Cressen had refused and was able to win that fight. But Cressen is unsure whether Patchface had taken any joy from what he’d done for him.
Flashing back to the present, Patchface continues cryptically singing about the shadows coming to dance, my lord. The white raven repeats the “Lord” refrain, and Cressen sighs that Patchface will sing what he will. He can’t control it. Maybe he’ll remember another song tomorrow.
Then Pylos comes through the door and announces that Ser Davos Seaworth arrived back from the Stormlands the night before. He’s with the king now, and Cressen gets annoyed that he was not woken to consult with Stannis. The king would have woken him back in the day. No more. Cressen excuses himself from Shireen and Patchface, but they follow him out anyways until Cressen proves slow, and they blow past him.
Castles are not friendly places for the frail, Cressen was reminded as he descended the turnpike stairs of Sea Dragon Tower.
And so it was now. Cressen thinks that Stannis would have once come to him, but now Cressen resigns himself to going to Stannis. Thankfully, Pylos was around to help Cressen out. They pass windows showing archers practicing, guardsmen walking their rounds and a three-thousand strong army camped outside the walls with cookfires adding smoke to the haze. Beyond the army was the navy. Lots and lots of ships sit in port at Dragonstone as Stannis had appropriated all ships sailing into Dragonstone and hadn’t allowed any to leave the island for a half year.
Pylos and Cressen reach the Stone Drum Tower, and Cressen asks that he be allowed to go up alone. Pylos tries to offer his assistance, but Cressen waves him off. Halfway up the tower, Cressen regrets not taking Pylos up on his offer. He takes a breather which allows the descending Ser Davos Seaworth to enter the scene and our hearts.
Davos was a slight man, his low birth written plain upon a common face. A well-worn green cloak, stained by salt and spray and faded from the sun, draped his thin shoulders, over brown doublet and breeches that matched brown eyes and hair. About his neck, a pouch of worn leather hung from a thong. His small beard was well peppered with grey, and he wore a leather glove on his maimed left hand.
Cressen greets him, asking when he returned.
“In the black of morning. My favorite time.”
Can anyone sit there and not absolutely love Father Davos already?
Well, because this chapter is doing a lot here - like introducing a POV character here to avoid having to do the introduction then, Cressen provides us with the first part of Davos’ backstory, talking about how he was the greatest smuggler in Westeros before Stannis knighted him. Cressen asks what happened in the Stormlands, and Davos says that the storm lords ain’t gonna rise for their rightful king. They don’t love Stannis.
Nor will they ever, Cressen thinks. He is strong, able, just … aye, just past the point of wisdom … yet it is not enough. It has never been enough.
Cressen asks if Davos spoke to all the lords, and Davos says, well, not exactly. Only a few of them actually heard him out. Most of them refused to treat with the Onion Knight. No, no. It’s not class discrimination and social snobbery. It’s, um, yeah, it’s exactly that. All the same, Davos shared a meal with Lords Swann and Penrose. Lord Selwyn Tarth met with Davos at midnight in a grove. Beric Dondarrion was gone, missing. Maybe dead? Yeah, maybe. Lord Caron is with Renly, and his son is in the Rainbow Guard -- Renly’s brand new Kingsguard that wear rainbow colored cloaks. Loras Tyrell is the Elsie.
It was just the sort of notion that would appeal to Renly Baratheon; a splendid new order of knighthood with gorgeous new raiment to proclaim it.
As a young terrorist, Renly loved his bright colors and rich fabrics, running around Storm’s End yelling “Look at me! I’m a dragon. I’m a wizard. I’m the rain god.” Guys, what Cressen is saying here is that Renly is vain, always has been, always will be -- but not for long.
The bold little boy with wild black hair and laughing eyes was a man grown now, one and twenty and still he played his games. Look at me, I’m a king. Oh Renly, Renly, dear sweet child, do you know what you are doing? And would you care if you did? Is there anyone who cares for him but me?
Cressen asks why the lords refused Stannis, and Davos responds by saying that some of them refused softly, some bluntly, others made excuses, others just lied. In the end words are just wind. What an interesting phrase, George. Wonder if that one will get repeated ever again?
Regardless, Davos ain’t about to bring Stannis false hope. He’ll give Stannis the truth. Always. This leads to Cressen recounting some of the backstory of Davos and how he sailed into Storm’s End while it was under siege, breaking through the Redwyne cordon and delivering onions and salt fish enough to keep the garrison alive until Ned Stark came down on Storm’s End to relieve the siege. And Stannis had rewarded Davos with lands, a knighthood, but those were the rewards. And this is Stannis. So …
He also decreed that he lose a joint of each finger on his left hand to pay for all his years of smuggling. Davos had submitted on the condition that he would accept no punishment from lesser hands. Stannis had used a butcher’s cleaver, the better to cut clean and true.
Davos chose the surname “Seaworth” thereafter with a black ship on a pale grey field with an onion on its sails as his sigil and banner. And he thanked Stannis for giving him four fewer fingernails to clean. This guy wouldn’t give Stannis false hope. So, Cressen says that Stannis can’t hope to march on King’s Landing despite his dream of doing so. And Davos agrees. If they go to King’s Landing, they’re all going to die. But you know his pride. Cressen sighs and says he’s off to try to aid Davos’ initial foray to convince Stannis of the rightful course of action and begins climbing the stairs again.
And that is part 1 of the A Clash of Kings Prologue!
Even without he-who-shall-be-named-and-bent-the-knee-to, this is a magical chapter. It’s absurdly good.
What did you think, Emmett?
Depth
Let me start with a bold statement: Cressen’s Prologue stands head and shoulders above all the other prologues and every chapter in AGOT.
It’s better in terms of structure, and emotional character work, and imagery and dialogue and the sheer hellfirey atmosphere of it all...it’s a chapter in which you can feel the author’s growing confidence and excitement in his expanding story come through in every paragraph. George has to both set up an enormous amount of important threads going forward and tell the self-contained story of a sad old man trying to do right by his alienated son before the end, and he pulls off both at once better than most authors could do one at a time. We could make a list of all the things he does right here, put them on a wheel, spin it, and just talk about whatever topic it lands on for three straight hours. Three hours on Cressen! Three hours on Dragonstone! Three hours on Patchface!!
Obviously, the main attraction is the king himself, but even pushing him to next week, there’s still so much to love and discuss here. That’s just how good this chapter is.
When George got to the end of AGOT, I think he made a conscious decision to have two separate endings: the political one (King in the North) and the magical one (The music of dragons). What I love here is that GRRM opens Clash by refusing to separate the two. He fuses realpolitik and magic in the Prologue. The Iron Throne, the raw military numbers, political theory and alliance occupy the same space as R’hllor, magic, prophecy and red priestess. And that’s really ambitious. Because broadly, what George is doing here is ambitious. He’s gotta do 4 major things:
- Introduce a character we’ve not been properly introduced to: Stannis
- Set up a brand new political A-plot in the narrative
- Introduce Melisandre and R’hllor
- Set up a brand new form of magic through Melisandre
So, how does George accomplish this? Well, first, he makes this a really long chapter! It’s the second longest chapter in ASOIAF with only AFFC, Alayne II as three pages longer. The Prologue is roughly 3% of the entire page-space of A Clash of Kings. Secondly, George is doing what I’m coining as the Bayeux Tapestry effect. What I mean by that is that while one plot or character action is established, we have other plot and character actions in the background. Think the red comet hovering over Cressen as he talks with Shireen about dragons with Patchface uttering fucked-up shit around them. Think the introduction of Davos and word of what the stormlords are doing set against Cressen’s long climb to the stone drum tower (symbolizing Stannis’ long odds to take the Iron Throne). Third, it’s our POV. In contrast to Will, Chett, Pate and Varamyr, Cressen has “major supporting character” written all over him. He could have been the Catelyn Stark archetype to Robb. Instead, he dies, and Davos (and much later, Melisandre) fulfill the role.
But to put my earlier stat geekery aside, did anyone who read the Prologue ever get bored at any point in it? Did things drag? Or was this chapter, despite being the 2nd longest chapter in ASOIAF, feel crisp, constantly hurtling the plot forward to new and interesting ways. I know I’m speaking in generalities, but I feel that the only way to discuss this chapter is to start at the 10,000 foot view and then slowly work our way down until we’re at the heart level -- the flaming heart level of course!
- Quick ACOK overview
- A Clash of Kings is for me one of the best examples of a highly anticipated sequel managing to outshine its landmark predecessor
- It’s the Godfather II of high fantasy: a deep dark well of power and prophecy in which everything gets sadder, scarier, and stranger
- It’s not as tight and streamlined as AGOT, but that’s due to how enthusiastically George is expanding the saga to include new characters and settings, and the rewards are well worth the occasional visible seam in the plotting
- The book’s title points to the expansion of the political plot, as the War of Five Kings unfolds. Here in Cressen’s Prologue, we are introduced at last to the court of King Stannis on Dragonstone, a storyline picked up and continued by Davos
- Soon, Sansa and Tyrion will bring us up to speed on the court of King Joffrey
- After that, we see the two courts of King Robb: Riverrun via Catelyn, strategizing at the front with her freshly crowned son, and Winterfell via Bran, keeping the home fires lit in the North
- From there, George sends Catelyn to King Renly in the Reach, Theon to King Balon on the Iron Islands, Jon on the trail of King Mance Beyond the Wall…
- ...and of course, he checks in every so often with the threadbare traveling court of the monarch in exile, Queen Daenerys Targaryen
- Meanwhile, Arya Underfoot and her smallfolk companions trudge through the dust and blood they all leave behind, winding up among the ghostly echoes of a hall too big for any man but the arrogant fools who call themselves kings
- Speaking of curses, though: in the wake of the return of Ice at the beginning of AGOT and Fire at its end, there is a magical expansion to match the political one, and their intertwining and synthesis forms the backbone of ACOK
- All the intricate games of thrones in King’s Landing give way at the climax to an eruption of alchemical flame, lent its otherworldly fury by the rebirth of dragons
- The Brothers Baratheon both return home to Storm’s End crowned for an iconic debate about the meaning of kingship, the titular clash...and then one sends a sentient shadow birthed from his seed and a sorceress’ womb to kill the other
- Arya copes with the horrors of war all around her by whispering names to a shapeshifting assassin who adds up her debt to the god of death
- The ethical struggles Jon confronts in his journey into the wild take place against a magical backdrop, from Craster sheltering the Watch while giving his sons to the Others to Qhorin Halfhand ordering Jon to turn his cloak so he can learn what “power” the wildlings sought in the Frostfangs
- Bran is a prince now, the Young Wolf’s heir and the Stark in Winterfell, presiding over territorial disputes and harvest feasts...but with Jojen Reed’s help, his third eye is opening and calling him north to the three-eyed crow
- Half a world away, the Targaryen claimant and Mother of Dragons seeks a shortcut to her father’s throne, but almost falls prey in the process to a mummy/vampire cult pulverizing her brain with pure psychedelic prophecy
- And here on Dragonstone, where her ancestors began their conquest, Stannis Baratheon declares himself the one true king even as Melisandre of Asshai declares him the one true savior, singing of the end times whilst gods burn...
- The banners are calling. The winds are rising. AGOT set the stage brilliantly, but to quote the Sword of the Morning, “now it begins.”
- The Old Man and the Sea Sky
- The dynamic between the secular and the sorcerous in ACOK is perfectly established in the book’s opening scene
- Our POV Cressen is a Maester of the Citadel, chained and sworn, an agent of rationality and skepticism
- His order killed the dragons, stamped down the alchemists, and raised generations to believe that the Children of the Forest are gone and the Others may never have existed at all; no wonder Stannis turned out an atheist!
- As Marwyn the Mage, the black sheep among the Archmaesters, puts it:
- “The world the Citadel is building has no place in it for sorcery or prophecy or glass candles, much less dragons.”
- Compare to Luwin’s role in AGOT, Bran VII
- Staring at the raven as if it were a scorpion made of feathers after spending the whole of Bran’s final chapter denying the magical
- At the end of ACOK, Luwin dies before the heart tree--a bookending image of the skeptical maester dying before an icon of the supernatural
- Although it’s an inversion in tone: Luwin dies knowing Bran and Rickon are safe, whereas Cressen dies knowing Renly is doomed
- And yet...there it is. The comet. The Red Sword, the Bleeding Star, the Dragon’s Tail. It hangs in the sky above Dragonstone, staring down, mocking him. Cressen tells himself it’s nothing, but neither he nor the gargoyles can break its gaze.
- This lidless eye, wreathed in flame, is the organizing principle of ACOK. As the story grows in the telling well beyond the comparatively limited environs of AGOT, the red comet blazes at the center of it all like a fiery heart
- Its presence provokes in-universe analysis, interpretations, bold declarations of meaning, and just as with our own takes on ASOIAF, those reactions ultimately say more about the observers than they do the phenomenon itself
- It is through this lens, in these opening chapters of the book, that George establishes the themes and tones of each storyline. The comet binds them all together at the start, and then they flare out like rays of light from a prism
- Contrast to Biblical imagery of the star that led the wise men to Jesus. The red comet doesn’t lead to the one savior who came to redeem the world, only confusion in ASOIAF. C.f. how everyone interprets the comet as Tully red, Lannister crimson, R’hllor’s banner, dragonsbreath, etc
- Character note on Melisandre. Shireen says that Mel interprets the comet as dragonsbreath which yes, most likely. But she gets the interpretation wrong (inferring Selyse’s later statement about the comet as a regurgitation of Melisandre’s words.) This ain’t Stannis’ sign. It’s Dany’s. But more on that later!
- For now, it works to show Melisandre as not quite omniscient and not quite wrong — a repeated character beat as late as the grey girl on a dying horse in ADWD.
- Following on the intense imagery of the red comet, the expanding color palette of ACOK reflects that approach to narrative
- Look at Lightbringer, the Rainbow Guard, the “hundred different hues” of Qarth, Salladhor Saan’s ship Bird of a Thousand Colors
- Look at the range of emotional ends to which green in particular is put, from Renly’s armor to Jojen’s eyes to the wildfire on the Blackwater
- Or look at my favorite example: the bright red shock of Ygritte’s hair contrasted with the pale blue rose in the story she tells Jon
- That story, about a singer running off with a Stark girl and leaving a baby behind, is one of the hugest R+L=J hints of them all; it’s the song of ice and fire, and that hidden truth is brought to life by the icy blue rose and her red hair, kissed by fire
- And I know George is invested in that color contrast, because:
- Yet when he weighed Ygritte's red hair against the cold blue eyes of the wights, the choice was easy.
- The richness of this artistry reflects George’s increasing confidence in his story and world. The author is now painting with all the colors of the rainbow.
- Here, however, he’s painting primarily in red, because for Cressen the ominous comet is inextricably linked with his nemesis in this chapter, Melisandre of Asshai:
- The ruby at Melisandre’s throat caught the light as she turned her head, and for an instant it seemed to glow bright as the comet.
- She, too, is a force of magic come to destabilize his hard-won truths; she, too, will not be denied no matter how hard Cressen tries to will away his fears
- He senses that both the red comet and the red woman are but the tip of the iceberg, the front-facing surface of “the age of wonder and terror”
- And he’s not wrong, as we see throughout the book with characters like Jojen, Jaqen, Quaithe, and even Patchface; same goes for Beric and Thoros in ASOS
- Melisandre may operate as a lone wolf in Westeros, but she embodies a larger dialectical process that we see unfold over the course of the series
- So while Cressen develops concrete fears about what Melisandre will encourage Stannis to do, his hatred of her is rooted in the sense that she is the herald of a mortal challenge to the worldview he’s defended his whole long life
- “Long life” being key there, as Cressen’s age comes up throughout the chapter
- This makes him quite a departure from the POVs in AGOT, of whom Ned was the oldest at 35; we won’t see a perspective like this again until Barristan in ADWD:
- Where have all the years gone? Of late, whenever he knelt to drink from a still pool, he saw a stranger's face gazing up from the water's depths. When had those crow's-feet first appeared around his pale blue eyes? How long ago had his hair turned from sunlight into snow? Years ago, old man. Decades.
- George uses Cressen’s age in a number of ways: to infuse pathos…
- He waved a hand, a feeble gesture of haste from a man no longer capable of hastening. His flesh was wrinkled and spotted, the skin so papery thin that he could see the web of veins and the shape of bones beneath. And how they trembled, these hands of his that had once been so sure and deft...
- ...to give Stannis a pretext to reject his advice…
- “Once you were young. Now you are old and sick, and need your sleep.”
- “You are too ill and too confused to be of use to me, old man … I will not have you kill yourself in my service.”
- ...and to evoke a general sense of the old giving way to the new, befitting the arrival of Melisandre’s new god and the burning of the Seven in Davos I:
- In his youth, Cressen had walked briskly, but he was not far from his eightieth name day now, and his legs were frail and unsteady. Two years past, he had fallen and shattered a hip, and it had never mended properly. Last year when he took ill, the Citadel had sent Pylos out from Oldtown, mere days before Lord Stannis had closed the isle...to help him in his labors, it was said, but Cressen knew the truth. Pylos had come to replace him when he died. He did not mind. Someone must take his place, and sooner than he would like…
- Compare to Melisandre described w/o sight: He felt strong hands grasp him under the arms and lift him back to his feet. "Thank you, ser," he murmured, turning to see which knight had come to his aid . . .
- But in terms of his relationship to that eye in the sky, Cressen’s age acts to give him a sense of urgency, that he has to save Stannis from the encroaching red before it’s too late (a la Jon Connington with the grayscale)
- Welcome to Dragonstone
- A lot of the Prologue is dedicated to establishing the island fortress of Dragonstone in our mind’s eye, because it’s one of the major settings in the world of ice and fire, and also one of my favorites
- It’s a beautiful gothic nightmare, George stages so many dramatic scenes here both in ASOIAF and TWOIAF/F&B, and he does such a great job of having it stand in for Stannis--solemn, lonely, and currently spitting and steaming
- But I want to start by comparing Dragonstone to Winterfell, because I think George has deliberately paralleled these two settings
- (And Harrenhal, but much more on that later in ACOK…)
- Both castles sit at the crossroads of the political and magical histories of Westeros, and so stand in for humanity’s drive to attain both kinds of power
- As I was saying about ACOK as a whole, the politics and magic are inextricable
- Winterfell is both the political heart of the North (embodied by the winter town) and the locus of the First Men relationship to magic (embodied by the heart tree)
- Dragonstone is the cradle of Targaryen identity even more than Valyria at this point, and that identity is caught up in both the crown and the dragons
- Then there’s the fire at the heart of both castles, George’s focus on their gargoyles, and how large they loom early on in books one and two respectively...
- Yet now Dragonstone belongs not to the Targaryens, but the Baratheon who ousted them; he is king, but rules nothing beyond the island and its vassals
- Similarly, the Starks lose Winterfell in ACOK and have to go into exile, as the interloper Theon feels the walls closing in just like Stannis does here
- Like Theon near the end of ACOK, Cressen feels like he’s living in a nightmare:
- Grim places needed lightening, not solemnity, and Dragonstone was grim beyond a doubt, a lonely citadel in the wet waste surrounded by storm and salt, with the smoking shadow of the mountain at its back. A maester must go where he is sent, so Cressen had come here with his lord some twelve years past, and he had served, and served well. Yet he had never loved Dragonstone, nor ever felt truly at home here. Of late, when he woke from restless dreams in which the red woman figured disturbingly, he often did not know where he was.
- So Dragonstone is Melisandre as well as Stannis, and thus is the comet; the castle syncs perfectly with the comet’s atmosphere of portentousness and dread
- As you say, Dragonstone feels like the surface of the moon. It’s eerie, ominous, alien. It’s both over-the-top (volcano gargoyle island!!) and spare, even sparse
- On the one hand, Cressen’s description of it makes it sound very similar to Pyke: grim gray wet rocks where you’re lucky to eke out a living
- On the other hand, the castle itself is a dazzling legacy of Valyrian architecture, in which everything that can be a dragon, is a dragon!
- The overall impression is frozen fire, like the dragonglass below the castle. The dragons are restrained, unmoving...for now. But what if they awoke? Per Davos I:
- Heat rose shimmering through the chill air; behind, the gargoyles and stone dragons on the castle walls seemed blurred, as if Davos were seeing them through a veil of tears. Or as if the beasts were trembling, stirring…
- That speaks to the sense of sickening dread that Dragonstone evokes, and what makes Cressen’s prologue such a powerful followup to AGOT Dany X
- It’s telling that after ending the previous book with the miraculous rebirth of dragons, George opens the next one on stone dragons waiting to be born
- The end of book one found Dany transforming dead stone into living dragons, hatching from her metaphorical egg in the most dramatic possible fashion
- In this chapter, we’re left alone with the broken egg--the dead possibilities and broken promises, the realization that the miracle is monstrous
- “When your dragons were small they were a wonder. Grown, they are death and devastation, a flaming sword above the world."
- Here, the dragons are once again stone (hence the name), and the dream of bringing them to life both here and in ASOS is framed not with wonder, but horror
- Dany X was the exception, this is the rule. Dany grasped a star; Dragonstone is the overreach and fall, mere mortals cowering before the God’s Eye.
- Princess and Patches
- Interesting choice to introduce the two most powerless members of Team Dragonstone before Stannis (or Selyse or Davos or Melisandre, for that matter)
- Both only remind Cressen of his failure; Shireen is the “saddest child he’d ever known” and Cressen doesn’t know if Patchface is happy to have been spared
- As such, Cressen feels his defenses are low; the gains of his world are meager compared with the growing prominence of magic and the onset of autumn
- An ugly little girl and a sad fool, and maester makes three...now there is a tale to make men weep.
- Shireen, by contrast, approaches the herald of autumn with childish delight:
- Shireen gave a cry of delight … The child’s mouth gaped open. “It talks!”
- This is compared to her cynical father, who abandoned his own childhood bird
- And while Stannis’ atheism leads him to dismiss the reality of Melisandre’s god, Shireen accurately senses the dark side of the fairytales coming back to life
- “I had bad dreams,” Shireen told him. “About the dragons. They were coming to eat me.”
- “What about the thing in the sky? Dalla and Matrice were talking by the well, and Dalla said she heard the red woman tell Mother that it was dragonsbreath. If the dragons are breathing, doesn’t that mean they are coming to life?”
- In this way, Shireen forces Cressen to actively make the case for his worldview:
- “The thing in the sky is a comet, sweet child. A star with a tail, lost in the heavens. It will be gone soon enough, never to be seen again in our lifetimes. Watch and see.”
- The child had been plagued by nightmares as far back as Maester Cressen could recall. “We have talked of this before,” he said gently. “The dragons cannot come to life. They are carved of stone, child. In olden days, our island was the westernmost outpost of the great Freehold of Valyria. It was the Valyrians who raised this citadel, and they had ways of shaping stone since lost to us. A castle must have towers wherever two walls meet at an angle, for defense. The Valyrians fashioned these towers in the shape of dragons to make their fortress seem more fearsome, just as they crowned their walls with a thousand gargoyles instead of simple crenellations.” He took her small pink hand in his own frail spotted one and gave it a gentle squeeze. “So you see, there is nothing to fear.”
- In one breath, he tells her that the dragons are there to make the castle more fearsome; in the next, he tells her there’s nothing to fear
- Not that Cressen realizes that Melisandre wants to make his wistful fantasy of the gargoyles springing to life come true!
- But that slippage reflects how Cressen’s argument is beginning to fail (as with Luwin and Bran), and he’s losing his grip on multiple generations of Baratheons
- “Autumnal -- nothing to do with leaves. It is to do with a certain brownness at the edges of the day ... Brown is creeping up on us, take my word for it”
- If Shireen represents the innocence from which her father has fallen (more on that later, hoo boy), Patchface is a funhouse mirror take on Melisandre
- He, too, comes from over the narrow sea; he, too, can sing in multiple languages (as she does in Davos I); he, too, is a constant companion to his Baratheon even while giving everyone else the creeps...and of course, he too is a prophet
- We could argue about where his powers come from, but the point is that his third eye opening has not empowered him, but ruined his life
- Patchface rose from the dead to speak for the divine, a walking talking miracle, yet unlike Melisandre, there is no pretense of mastery or even interpretation
- The person who might’ve taught Stannis to smile is gone, hollowed out by the dreams dancing behind his eyes, replaced by Mel, who keeps Stannis grimacing
- Of course, Patchface is also the classic fool who speaks coded truth to power
- This bizarre combination of Shakespearean and Lovecraftian archetypes produces a singular tone that only crops up again in the series with Coldhands
- In both cases, you have unabashedly silly elements captured by their respective names, and they exist in part to puncture the pretensions around them
- Melisandre takes herself so seriously, but it’s only to avoid being a Patchface
- Similarly, Stannis projects anger and strength because he feels like Shireen
- The central characters in this storyline are all putting up a front, and they’re all constantly terrified that someone will pierce the veil and see who they really are
- Stannis projects King, Davos projects Knight, Melisandre projects...a lot of things!
- At some level, this is because they can’t deal with the reality of being stuck on this shitty island and no one caring about their years of service to Robert, or their decades of slavery to R’hllor, or the fingers they traded for a future
- Davos knows that he’s a smuggler from Flea Bottom underneath, and Stannis and Melisandre know deep down that they’re Shireen and Patchface underneath
- But like Coldhands, Patchface is also drawn from horror, and embodies the folly of Stannis and Melisandre meddling in powers they cannot understand
- They believe magic will empower them; his example demonstrates otherwise
- In other words, if the pathetic side of Patchface represents how Stannis and Melisandre secretly see themselves, the scary side of him represents how far they will go and how much they will give up in order to escape that self-image
- This happened to him, he didn’t choose it. To do so is to earn a fool’s crown.
- The onion knight
- Ser (later Lord Hand) Davos Seaworth is, of course, one of the most compelling, relatable, and vital characters in the series
- To give the onion knight his proper due, we’re going to save the lion’s share of our thoughts on him for when he becomes a POV a little later on in the book
- But he gets one hell of an introduction here, and it’s essential to this chapter’s primary task: establishing the character of his king, Stannis Baratheon
- For me, this is the single most iconic and memorable part of ASOIAF’s backstory
- The siege of Storm’s End represents a phenomenal achievement of leadership on the part of young Stannis, the origin story of the pre-eminent military mind of his generation
- While he lacks the kind of generous, cheerful charisma that his brothers possess, he has exactly the forceful presence you need to hold a starving garrison together under siege, what Asha describes in ADWD as “power in his stare, an iron ferocity that told Asha this man would never, ever turn back from his course.”
- Asha observes further in ADWD a peculiar duality in Stannis as a commander: his officers doubt him, his men have faith in him:
- Whatever doubts his lords might nurse, the common men seemed to have faith in their king. Stannis had smashed Mance Rayder's wildlings at the Wall and cleaned Asha and her ironborn out of Deepwood Motte; he was Robert's brother, victor in a famous sea battle off Fair Isle, the man who had held Storm's End all through Robert's Rebellion. And he bore a hero's sword, the enchanted blade Lightbringer, whose glow lit up the night.
- It’s been asked why Storm’s End didn’t just toss Stannis over the battlements and surrender to the Tyrells and Redwynes, and I have a potential solution!
- Consider Asha’s statements about Stannis and how Stannis has the respect and faith in Stannis
- Also consider that Robert made it back down to Storm’s End to rally the stormlanders and then marched out of the Stormlands with a host at his back
- I think most of the nobility of the stormlands either marched with Robert or against him from Storm’s End, leaving Stannis with a bunch of common soldiers holding Storm’s End
- As Renly recounts, only Ser Gawen Wilde and three knights attempted to desert Stannis, but they were caught. So, the nobles were the ones who tried to desert, but not the common men, because Stannis is a step-up from his noble peers
- You know … come to think of it, Stannis reminds me of a certain Lord Stark who had everyone come sit at his table in the North -- from the highest lords to the smallest of smallfolk who worked for him ...
- You could almost describe Stannis as a Stark at heart, destined not for Storm’s End nor the Iron Throne but for the North. Much more on that as we go, as it’s a key plank in my overall argument about Stannis
- The point for this episode’s purposes is that far from being a sour entitled prick who just wants the crown and spits out whatever justification he needs to make that happen, Stannis has a genuine philosophy of justice that the author takes time to establish in his backstory with Davos, and it’s a complex one worthy of examination and reflection, rather than outright dismissal
- This is how you can tell that unlike the hollow suit Renly (“he knew how to dress and he knew how to smile and he knew how to bathe, and somehow this put the notion in his head that he was fit to be king”), George intends on keeping Stannis around and holding his feet to the fire to see where his beliefs lead him
- Stannis is among the more precisely executed characters in the series, in that it’s absolutely essential that every beat land exactly where it does to keep him from veering too far in any one direction
- For example, it’s important that we are told the story of Davos’ onions and fingers right before meeting Stannis, because you need this context to make sense of the one true king as something more than a drag at parties
- Like so many in his generation, Robert’s Rebellion made Stannis the person he is
- His bluntness, meritocratic ideals, fondness for hard truths, lack of material attachments, willingness to stand his ground no matter what, being “utterly without mercy”--all of it was forged in the steel crucible of the siege
- His ideology was born when he knighted Davos with one hand while calling for a cleaver with the other. Good service, for Stannis, is what makes the world work; valar dohaeris could be his personal motto
- And not only did he raise Davos up, but he keeps him in his councils and deploys him as his envoy to the nobles and smallfolk alike, damn the former’s snobbery
- Great or small, we must do our duty...and if no one else (especially Robert) is going to cut through corruption to make that a reality in this fallen world, he will
- All the great political and philosophical themes of ACOK, from the Spider’s riddle a couple chapters from now to the Halfhand sacrificing all of his men (including himself) for the greater good as the book draws to a close, build from this opening salvo shot forth from the backstory: Stannis’ declaration at the age of eighteen that like Judge Dredd before him, he is the law.
- And there is an undeniable appeal to this worldview as ACOK opens. We’re coming off a book exposing the status quo in the capital as a hopelessly corrupted cesspool that devoured whole the one man within it loyal to the realm
- By the end of AGOT, the Red Keep seems desperately in need of a top-to-bottom shakeup. Hell, even the Lannister men know that, and they’re in charge now!
- Robert rotting from the inside out long before the boar tore him open, the Lannisters leading a coup from within and killing anyone who gets in their way, Littlefinger smirking his way through staggering corruption and deceit, Pycelle’s sheer infuriating venality...the list goes on and on
- Not for nothing does George have Ned increasingly think of the middle Baratheon brother (not the youngest!) as his fallback option to set things to rights, because Stannis is the one radical enough to use the power of the monarchy to tear the government up by the roots in one fell swoop and put honest men in charge
- “Would that all the lords of Westeros had but a single neck…”
- Follow that road far enough, though, and there won’t be anyone left to rule!
- The best in Stannis is that his beliefs lead him to some inspiringly forward-thinking conclusions, such as not only raising up Davos but also bringing him into his councils as a counterpoint to the born-and-bred nobility
- The worst in Stannis, however, is that humanity will never be good enough for his model of justice, himself included; if he’s not restrained, he’ll burn the world down in his zeal to set it to rights
- “There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man.”
- Robert wouldn’t have made a peasant his Hand, but then again (as Edric Storm notes in ASOS) Robert also wouldn’t have cut off Davos’ fingers
- The man who makes Davos his Hand is the same man who sets his last Hand ablaze; Stannis is made to teeter on the edge between hero and villain, true king and Mad King, the motivations of one side inextricable from those of the other
- As Melisandre describes Davos later in this book:
- “A grey man....belonging to neither dark nor light, but partaking of both.”
- And as Stannis himself says in that same chapter:
- “A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.”
- In the end, as a huge Stannis fan, I think the fact that he spends so much time staring into the abyss lends a peerless catharsis to the moments he pulls back
- That his better angels of his nature never truly die is what transforms the inevitable endpoint of his arc (more below) from wretchedness to tragedy
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
We get our first mention of Beric Dondarrion in the book from Davos as he rattles off the stormlords to Cressen. Beric does not appear in ACOK, but is a constant presence as so many are searching for him or spreading rumours about him. Not only does this lend him a mystique prior to his reappearance in ASOS, but it establishes his legend as a fearless escape artist that is then subverted by the reveal that Thoros has literally been bringing him back from the dead.
George revisits this chapter in multiple ways for AFFC’s own Prologue. It’s set at Oldtown among Citadel novices, discussing dragons and omens and the secular v. the supernatural, even a mention of Cressen in passing. This is the alternating pattern many have noted with the prologues: the odd-numbered books (AGOT, ASOS, ADWD) have prologues set north of the Wall dealing with the Watch/wildling/white walker dynamic, whereas the even-numbered books (ACOK, AFFC) have prologues set south of the Wall among maesters dealing with more eastern magical influences. Will TWOW keep this pattern going or break it? What do you think, Jeff?
In a 2012 interview with Asshai.com (Spain’s premiere ASOIAF site), Spain, GRRM revealed why Davos came to Stannis at Storm’s End:
Question: During Robert's rebellion, what brought a simple smuggler like Davos to take sides in the war by helping Stannis and the starving garrison at Storm's End?
GRRM: (George laughs) Because he had onions! And so he thought to himself: "Where can I sell these at the best price? If I take them to King's Landing they'll pay me the price of onions, but i I take them to people dying of hunger they'd certainly pay me better."
The shadows come to dance, my lord, dance my lord. The shadows come to stay, my lord. To stay, my lord…
Theory/Discussion
So what’s up with Patchface??
- In this corner: Targaryen blood
- Came from Essos--Brightflame connection?
- Connection to Shireen and her dragon dreams
- Perfect irony of Steffon failing to find a Valyrian-blooded bride for Rhaegar, but unknowingly bringing a Valyrian-blooded fool home
- Early echo of both Young Griff and Dany--the Targaryen claimant returned
- Fool’s crown
- In that corner: Voice of the Drowned God
- Lost at sea
- Somehow survived (resurrected?)
- Constantly talking about the sea
- Lovecraftian themes in common per WOIAF
- Parallel and contrast with Damphair
Conclusion
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