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Episode 68: A GAME OF THRONES, DAENERYS IX: "The Meaning of Life" with Special Guest Eliana AKA Glass Table Girl SHOW NOTES!
🕑 Added 2019-06-24 14:00:04 +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 sixty-eighth episode of the Not A Cast, entitled: “The Meaning of Life: An Analysis of AGOT, Daenerys IX,” in which Dany wakes up from trippy nightmares of fire and blood and death to find...a reality full of fire and blood and death. Extremely cheerful stuff.
Eliana intro
Eliana says hi
DON’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO
-we are ggc
-we are starting a second reread
-it’s literature
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
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!
Question
Ser Shamik C, a Sworn Sword asks:
So GRRM has established that coming back from the dead fundamentally changes you - as seen in Beric and Stoneheart. So, would it not make sense that in the books that Jon would be a much different person with a different personality than before unlike as on the show following his likely resurrection? I don’t imagine that resurrected Jon gets off so easy that he comes back with his whole personality intact. “New” Jon likely would not have the same motivations as the OG Jon Snow, the highly moral/honorable character. Mayhaps he’s more pragmatic and ruthless and that’s why Dany connects so well to him - a sense of kindred spirits, and vice-versa? It would make the whole Jon slays Dany more meaningful that this act is what truly restores Jon to being that honorable/moral character that he once was.
“Whitewashed: Dany, Jon and Tyrion in GoT” our next patreon-only episode will be out soon! (Tomorrow if you’re listening on our general-release day) Our schedule:
- Tuesday, June 25: out for our Small Council patrons
- Wednesday, June 26: out for our Kingsguard patrons
- Thursday, June 27: out for our Poor Fellow and Sworn Sword patrons
Synopsis
Wings unprophetically shadow Dany’s fevre dream: which BTW is GRRM’s 1982 vampire novel that we will be doing a future patreon-podcast on.
You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?
Bear this phrase in mind, because it’s going to be unprophetically repeated a lot in this chapter.
Dany walks down the long hall of the House of the Undying- scratch that, the long hall of her dream, unable and unwilling to look behind her, because if she looks back, she is lost. Ahead, the red door looms, and Dany walks fast towards it, her feet leaving bloody footprints on the stone below.
You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?
Dany’s vision focuses on sunlight spreading over the Dothraki Sea as wind and the smells of earth and death envelope her. Drogo holds her, then engages in some finger action down south as stars smile down on them. Then Drogo and Dany bone under the stars, but then the stars are gone, and great wings sweep across the sky, turning the world to flame.
… Don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?
Then Jorah, who I hate, shows up talking about Rhaegar as the last dragon. His “translucent” hands warm over a glowing brazier, and Dany’s dragon eggs turn red as coals. Then he fades (thankfully), his flesh going colorless. Jorah whispers about the last dragon again, and the red door seems far away.
… don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?
Viserys is there next, calling Dany a slut and referring to himself as a very brave dragon who will be crowned. And then the molten gold melts down Viserys’ face, burning into his skin, blackening his cheeks.
… don’t want to wake the dragon.
And now the red door is far away, and an icy breath blows up from behind her. She knows she’ll die if it catches her. So, Dany runs .
… don’t want to wake the dragon …
A heat burns inside her, and she sees Rhaego as an adult, copper skinned with Targaryen silver-gold hair and violet eyes. Her son smiles at her, lifting his hands towards her, but then fire pours from his mouth and chest, and he’s gone. Dany weeps for Rhaego, but her tears turn to steam when they fell on her hot skin.
… want to wake the dragon ...
Get it, guys? Because dragons are fire made flesh.
Then there’s a shitload of ghosts in a hallway -- silver and gold hair, platinum white with opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade eyes. They tell her to go faster. A spasm of pain rips down Dany’s back, and she smells burning blood and sees more shadowed wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew.
… wake the dragon …
The Red Door was close now, the hall blurring around her, the cold breath of death falling back. And Dany was flying high across the Dothraki Sea. She smells home, and just beyond the Dothraki Sea was the House with the Red Door. She arrives at the red door, throw it open, and …
… the dragon …
She sees Rhaegar mounted on a black stallion with black armor. Fire licks out from the eye slit of his armor. Jorah shows back up (Get lost, Jorah) whispering about Rhaegar being “the last, the last, the last dragon”. Dany throws back the visor of Rhaegar’s black armor, and in a scene ripped straight from The Empire Strikes Back, she finds her own face inside the armor.
After that it was only pain, fire inside and “the whisperings of stars.”
Dany wakes to the taste of ashes, a tent and Jhiqui. She remembers flying in her dream, but now she’s exhausted and barely conscious. She asks Jhiqui to bring her something, but she can’t remember what that thing is. They find Dany crawling towards her dragon eggs. Jorah picks her up and puts her back into her sleeping silks, and Mirri Maz Duur brings her some drugs to help her sleep. Her sleep is dreamless, and she floats peaceful on a “black sea that knew no shore.”
When Dany wakes again, she’s unsure of how much time has passed. She calls for her handmaids and asks for water, saying that she’s been sick. She also inquires how long she’s been out. It’s been a minute, Dany. And she still wants to hold the, uh, um, the … thing. You know the thing, you guys. The … DRAGON EGGS. Yes, she wants to hold the dragon eggs. But then she passes out again.
She wakes again, holding the cream-colored egg (of future Viserion fame), and Dany sweats, calling it “dragondew” which is lol, okay, George. But as Dany traces her fingers across the egg, she feels something twist and stretch inside the dragon egg. And she ain’t scared of it. She asks for the coldest water her handmaids can find and for some dates too -- the fruit kind. And then, sigh, she asks for Ser Jorah, Mirri Maz Duur and a warm bath.
Oh, and one small, minor matter: how’s Khal Drogo doing? He alive or something? Uh, yes, um, yeah, sure. Kind-of. We should chit-chat about that one Dany. But not us handmaids. Oh no. That’s a task for Ser Jorah. But just before Jhiqui can duck out, Dany catches her hand and asks what’s up with Drogo and her child. Rhaego. What’s up with them. Dany wants Rhaego.
Her handmaid lowered her eyes. “The boy … he did not live, Khaleesi.”
Dany releases Jhiqui’s wrist. My son is dead. But somehow Dany knew. She knew when she woke the first time. Hell, she knew before that when she saw Rhaego burst into flame in her dream.
She should weep, she knew, yet her eyes were dry as ash. She had wept in her dream, and the tears had turned to steam on her cheeks. All the grief has been burned out of me. She felt sad, and yet … she could feel Rhaego receding from her as if he had never been.
Well, we are all very sad now. RIP Rhaego.
Jorah and Mirri Maz Duur arrive in the tent to find Dany standing over her two other dragon eggs. Dany thinks the dragon eggs feel hot which, hm, it’s such a mystery what’s going to happen with those dragon eggs. She asks Jorah to feel the eggs and tell her if he feels any heat. He doesn’t. But, uh, hey Dany, are you, y’know, feeling alright? Maybe you should take an aspirin and lie back down. But no, Dany is strong now, not weak. She props herself up on her cushions to demonstrate her strength and asks Jorah how Rhaego died.
He never lived, my princess.
Dany wants to know more, but Jorah is reluctant, talking about how the child was, he was … uh … Monstrous, Mirri Maz Duur says. She ain’t reluctant.
The knight was a powerful man, yet Dany understood in that moment that the maegi was stronger, and crueler, and infinitely more dangerous.
Mirri adopts a further bedside manner and tells Dany that Rhaego was twisted, scaled like a lizard, blind and had a stub of a tail. Also, his flesh sloughed off the bone when you touched it, and he was full of grave worms.
He had been dead for years.
Y’know, Mirri, I think your bedside manner needs a little work, because it suuuuuuuuucks.
Dany thinks back to the darkness that was trying to eat her in her dreams, and then she points out that Rhaego was alive and kicking quite literally when Jorah brought Dany into MMD’s tent. But Mirri’s all like yeah, whatever. The child was dead. There was death in the tent. Mirri had said as much. But Jorah puts in that he only saw shadows in the tent and Mirri dancing alone. But Dany hears the doubt in Jorah’s voice.
“The grave casts long shadows,” Iron Lord, Mirri said. “Long and dark, and in the end no light can hold them back.”
Again with the bedside manner. But Dany knows now why Jorah’s been having a hard time saying what happened. He killed Rhaego. He brought Dany and Rhaego into Mirri Maz Duur’s tent. The shadows have touched Jorah too. Dany turns to MMD:
“You warned me that only death could pay for life. I thought you meant the horse.”
Nope. That was a lie that Dany had told herself or something. And look, MMD, I’m not wholly unsympathetic to your viewpoint, but the deed is done at this point. You’re basically spiking the football and doing a touchdown dance on the graves of dead men and a child. Dany is mystified by it all anyways:
Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. “The price was paid. The horse, my child, Quaro and Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid and paid and paid.” Dany rose from her cushions. “Where is Khal Drogo? Show him to me, godswife, maegi, bloodmage, whatever you are. Show me Khal Drogo. Show me what I bought with my son’s life.”
Dany is HOT, and she has every right to be. MMD says she’ll take Dany to Drogo, but Jorah tries to caution her against moving, but Dany is determined.
The sun blinds her, searing the land. Dany’s handmaids and Jorah help her get across the desert and onto Drogo. Around her everyone is gone, with only the old, lame, sick and very young left behind. That’s the Dothraki way of life. Dany asks after Eroeh: the Lhzarene girl she saved from the Dothraki.
Ah, about her. Mago who is now Jhaqo’s Bloodrider seized her, raped her and gave her to six other blooriders. Then they cut her throat at the end of it. Aggo unhelpfully puts in that it was her fate.
If I look back I am lost. “It was a cruel fate,” Dany said, “yet not so cruel as Mago’s will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god, and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh.”
Dany’s handmaids look at her perplexed and tell her that Jhaqo is a khal. And Dany says, Oh yeah, well, I’m a motherfuckin’ Targaryen who descends from Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyia. I am the daughter of dragons. And those fools are gonna die like chumps if I say so.
They proceed onto Khal Drogo and find him alive … in a way. Bloodflies crawl all over him, and Dany realizes after trying to talk to him that he’s blind and deaf. He just likes being out in the warm sun. And he’ll walk and eat and drink a bit, but it ain’t gonna be like it used to be.
“Your spells are costly, maegi,” Dany says.
Well, to MMD, it ain’t exactly her fault that Dany failed to read the fine print. Dany asked for life. She got it. What more could she want. Well, MMD, maybe, like, y’know not being a blind, deaf, husk for one. When will Drogo return as he actually was? MMD’s got a hell of an answer to that question:
“When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.”
Dany tells Jorah and the rest to GTFO. She needs to talk with MMD alone. Alone now, Dany turns to MMD
“You knew. You knew what I was buying, and you knew the price, and yet you let me pay it.”
"It was wrong of them to burn my temple," the heavy, flat-nosed woman said placidly. “That angered the Great Shepherd.”
Well, to Dany, this isn’t the work of the divine. It’s Mirri’s work. She cheated. She murdered.
“The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now. His khalasar shall trample no nations to dust.” MMD retorts.
But Dany spoke for MMD. She saved her. Oh, but did Dany actually do that? The reality as MMD points out was that she was raped four times before Dnay chanced to pass by. And the Dothraki? They burned MMD’s home, her temple. They murdered a kid she had saved from fever just 3 months before. And then there was the pile of heads on the street.
“Tell me again what you saved.”
“Your life,” Dany replies.
Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly, “Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone.”
I love how George points out that MMD laughs cruelly at Daenerys. Again, it’s not that I’m unsympathetic, but what’s the damn point of being a jerk about it all? Stop touchdown-dancing/bat-flipping, MMD!
Ahem.
Well, Dany calls her khas to come bind Dany hand and foot, and MMD gives Dany a shit-eating grin as they bear her away “as if they shared a secret.” Dany wonders if she should order MMD beheaded, but what would she gain from that?
If life was worthless, what was death?
Khal Drogo is then led back to Dany’s tent, and Dany has him put into the tub. She bathes him, and thankfully there’s no blood, pus, shit or death that flows into the water. By the time she’s done, it’s late night, and Dany is dead tired. She thinks sleep might be a relief, but she’s slept too long.
So, Dany leads Drogo out into the night and darkness for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man’s life must be done beneath the open sky. Hold onto your butts, because we’re about to get into some sad, sad shit. Dany tries telling herself that there are things more powerful than hate and better spells than MMD knew. The night was black and moonless, but the night sky bursts into a million stars.
Unlike the Dothraki Sea, though, this ground is hard, dusty, bare and stony. There were no trees, no waters around. Dany hopes the stars will be enough.
“Remember, Drogo,” she whispered. “Remember our first ride together, the day we wed. Remember the night we made Rhaego, with the khalasar all around us and your eyes on my face. Remember how cool and clean the water was in the Womb of the World, Remember, my sun and stars. Remember, and come back to me.
Dany can’t have sex with Drogo now like she had back on the Dothraki Sea. Her body was too raw and torn. But Dany remembers what Doreah had taught her, and she tries using her hands, mouth and boobs to get Drogo to rise. And by the end, she only had her tears.
Yet Drogo did not feel, or speak or rise.
A bleak dawn rises, and Dany knew that Drogo was gone. She repeats MMD’s sarcastic reference to the sun rising in the west, and the darkness answers her:
Never, never, never, never.
Dany finds a cushion in her tent, soft and full of feathers. She holds it tight to her body and walks back out to Drogo.
If I look back, I am lost. It hurt even to walk, and she wanted to sleep, to sleep and not to dream.
Dany kneels in front of Drogo, kisses him one last time on the lips and presses the cushion down on Drogo’s face.
And that is AGOT, Daenerys IX. Well, we’ve run the full gamut of storytelling here, haven’t we? We start with magical, trippy dreams, MMD being a dick and then full-on pathos. I’m sad just re-reading this chapter and writing this synopsis now.
And it’s in this bleak ending to a dark, disturbing chapter that first-time readers would be forgiven in thinking this is the end for Dany. But again, George ain’t a nihilist. Thankfully. And yet, in George not being a nihilist, that doesn’t mean we’re about to experience one of the most absurdly mind-bending magical beats in the story so far in Dany’s final AGOT chapter. It’s all congruent, wonderful storytelling and will close AGOT out on a bang.
But in George’s world, triumph can only come after utter fucking tragedy.
What did you all think?
Depth
Even in the whirlwind rush at the end of AGOT, this chapter is something special, and it’s honestly intimidating to try and get my head around it. It’s less easily summarized than Dany VIII (the blood magic one) or Dany X (the dragon one), but it’s more philosophically ambitious than either. It’s not just that Dany IX does many things well, it’s that it does many very different things well. It starts with one of George’s most vivid dream sequences, shifts into a more grounded tone upon Dany waking while still following up on the freaky imagery with Rhaego’s birth, features some incredibly well written dialogue and internal monologue, and ends with one of the bleakest and saddest moments in the whole story. What ties it all together for me is the sense of Dany having irrevocably joined this transformative world of fire and blood. She sees so many pathways opening and closing in this chapter for her and hers. She feels these primal forces of life and death, creation and destruction, tugging her back and forth. She is becoming a mythical figure, the Mother of Dragons, and while there is definitely a divine glory to that as we’ll see at the end of her final chapter, this chapter is much more about leaving humanity behind.
Eliana opening thoughts
Absolutely regarding Dany being caught in between these primal forces, which tug at her but also I think part of what makes Daenerys so compelling is that all of these contradictions don’t always fight to exist within her: They all co-exist.
She is a mother of dragons, yes, but she is also a crone, branded for the Dosh Khaleen, and of course, “I am but a young girl.” As the mother, she brings life in terms of the dragons. She tried to buy life for the slaves and life for Khal Drogo. But she also marches them towards death: she smothers Drogo, smothering being the Jungian shadow of the Mother archetype.
And to get Freudian and weird for a moment: You discussed last episode with Michal the womb-like imagery in Sansa’s chapter. This idea, with a Mother of Dragons, is prevalent throughout Dany’s storyline as we venture into the idea of the uncanny. The Womb of the World, the earth as the original womb—from which comes forth life but to which we return when we die. And for Dany, Rhaego who had been kicking her womb just days ago had been dead for years.
And so she enters the story, having paid the toll: “You knew the price”
- Dany begins the story as the silver coin, the denarius, buying the Dothraki loyalty. And a coin is at once one thing with two sides, like Dany.
- This chapter is first half of the closing of the first story Act (if this is a 5 act story), establishing the trajectories of many stories, including Dany’s
- In your episode with Kim—who has a book coming out!—you discussed the trope of “Kill the parents first.” But it’s very much that “Exposition” Act closing for the whole story, for many of the characters introduced in AGOT as they each assume their role. And with that, the idea of sacrifice—self or otherwise—and costliness comes to the forefront of the story, setting the stage for, uh… Stannis???????
Eliana, one of the first things I ever read of yours back in 2013 was your essay. Look! You can even see in the doc that I upvoted it back in 2013!
In that essay, you talked about how one aspect that Martin explores in the coin imagery for Dany is her moral exchanges. She trades what she thinks is the life of Drogo’s horse for Drogo in Dany VIII. And in this chapter, MMD is here to point out what precisely Dany saved. What was it that MMD exchanged for her life and was that exchange worth it for her?
No doubt, MMD is cruel to Dany - end zone dancing and all - but she does have something of a point. MMD is willing to engage in a little of her own exchange: her life, her honor, her ethics -- all for the greater good of preventing the Stallion who fucks the world from being born.
It’s bleak, yeah. But this chapter is one of those chapters that makes me question morals, ethics and wonder who’s ultimately right. Remember Revenge of the Sith’s (DING) opening scrawl? “There are heroes on both sides?” Well, here in this chapter, I’m not willing to call MMD or Dany heroes -- at least yet for Dany. But to have two competing, certainly compelling sets of morality occupying page-space is brilliant. Even in 2019, who is right!?
Now, I do think that GRRM has certain sympathies though, and that can be found in the long, disturbing dream sequence which opens this chapter!
- Chasing the red door
- On this reread, this might be my favorite dream sequence in book one, even more than Bran’s flight or Ned’s Tower of Joy flashback
- Like I was saying about Dany IX as a whole, it does several very different things well
- The imagery comes in a furious montage that outdoes Bran III for abstraction, but there’s a clear rigid structure to what Dany’s undergoing
- She’s chasing the red door, the impossible ever-receding vision of home that will turn to ashes in her hands, chased by the Others and what they embody: loneliness and death and a fate worse than death, erasure
- She is urged on by the ghosts of her family: faster, faster, FASTER! But what they want from her, for her, is not home. It’s for her to become a dragon, like her father. And dragons plant no trees, have no home.
- The individual visions follow that same arc:
- Drogo and the Dothraki Sea give way to the fire
- Viserys dies while proclaiming himself the dragon
- Obvs, GRRM is over-the-top hinting at Viserys’ fate in previous visions and calling back to it here.
- But I wonder, too, whether Viserys with fire consuming him has a similar thematic/symbolic place to show Dany what she is in danger of becoming if she embraces the dragon/fire.
- And in Dany’s vision quest in her final ADWD chapter, she chooses fire and blood with Viserys making another appearance. Hm, George. Hm. I’ve seen Season 8 of the Thrones Show.
- Jorah vanishes while talking about “the last dragon”
- Come ACOK, Jorah will be telling Dany that she has more Rhaegar than Viserys in her. And then in ASOS, Dany IV, Jorah tells Dany that he views her as “Rhaegar’s sister.”
- Of course, it’s also Jorah in Dany’s vision quest that’s telling her that her war is in Westeros and to abandon Meereen.
- It’s telling that this is what is left behind for Dany in the vision. Not only do Drogo, Viserys and Jorah disappear—so, too, does Rhaego. Each of them represents some form of “family” to Daenerys, even if toxic and complex.
- Her storyline, after all, is a manifestation of “if love and hate can mate” in different ways.
- But as each one disappears, Dany is left more and more not only as a “last” dragon but a lone dragon, because is that not what being the last is?
- So too does the “wake the dragon” mantra go from warning to demand as she takes on the Last Dragon role from Aerys/Rhaegar/Viserys/Rhaego
- Her bloody footprints occur as she’s far from the Red Door, far from home, but by the time she’s near home, near the Red Door, the stone melts underneath
- Bloody pathway to get home
- But by the time she actually arrives home: the Red Keep, Dragonstone, it’s Aegon the Conqueror at Harrenhal all over again. Again, I saw S08
- Her bloody footprints occur as she’s far from the Red Door, far from home, but by the time she’s near home, near the Red Door, the stone melts underneath
- The arc is of empowerment and escape on one level, but corruption and death on another
- Her transformation is horrifying, and she leaves bloody footprints behind...
- No wings, no khalasar, no Rhaego
- “They say the child was monstrous.”
- ADWD, Dany II: I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.
- Um. that’s it. That line stood out to me, and that’s my contribution, take it away, Eggmett
- So if that’s the arc of waking the dragon, what she wakes up to is what she’s left with after that transformation is complete
- As in her visions, it’s ash and dust, her pillars fading in the morning light
- Like Bran, the dream promised her she could fly, but she wakes up to find herself alone and powerless
- The khalasar has fragmented and fled, again like Westeros post-Robert
- She senses that Rhaego is gone before being told, and reaches instead for her eggs
- They’re her true children, her lifeboat in this mess, the foundation for her future
- The eggs take her fear away; they’re the past she can make into a future
- She also senses, as she has in previous chapters in this book, that the eggs are the connection to the destiny hammering loudly in her blood
- “Green fields, stone houses, arms to keep her warm,” she has lost those
- The dragons will be the foundation for her attempt to find them once more, but she also knows at some level that they will destroy it
- “They say the child was monstrous.”
- Mirri in the spotlight
- Is MMD a hero?
- She’s the anti-Drogo, basically
- Where Drogo delivered his big Conan speech praising all the acts of conquest and war, MMD is here to embody the costs
- In her view, the forces of destiny are not designed to honor the stallions who would mount the world, but to punish them
- She acts as the in-universe avatar of every reader who’s ever looked askance at Dany’s rise to power in Essos
- If this is what being the ruler, a great historical figure, Azor Ahai Reborn looks like...maybe we shouldn’t have one of those!
- In this way, she’s the opposite of Melisandre, despite what we’ve been saying. Melisandre is all in on the messianic rise to power as the model
- She’s telling both Dany and the reader that her people shouldn’t be collateral damage
- It’s the same sentiment Davos expresses to Melisandre in ASOS:
- Were my sons no more than a lesson for a king, then?
- It also reminds me of Watchmen:
- You will remember me and my country, forever!
- This is really what makes MMD for me the most interesting supporting character in Dany’s story
- She strikes to the core of Dany’s character by taking advantage of her individually good instincts to call attention to her bad big-picture actions
- As she will recognize in ADWD, her throne is built on burned bones
- MMD argues not truly that death pays for life, but that death pays for death. What goes around comes around--for Drogo and for Dany
- Does that justify what she did?...all of this is pretty ethically complex!
- MMD seems to buy into this idea that only blood can wash out blood, and you see that as this time, when Dany has Drogo bathed as opposed to the last time, the water runs clear. The blood of his sins has already been washed out with the destruction of his khalasar.
- And it’s not just a mirror of the political situation of Westeros: Dany is willing for the price to be paid and paid and paid again with Quaro and Qotho, Haggo, Cohollo, Rhaego—and her actions, her single-mindedness, is what divides the Khalasar, just as it will Westeros.
- The Dothraki do not recognize her power as a khaleesi, just as many in Westeros won’t. But she lays them all down as payment anyway for the promise of love and a family with Drogo
- Only in her haste, instead, she loses it all of it
- But I guess… that’s the case for Mirri, too, right? Going back to your question of “does it justify what she did,” Mirri isn’t really about “does the end justify the means” so much as seeing herself as delivering justice.
- But wait, maybe she does see herself as doing something for the greater good by preventing the birth of the Stallion Who Mounts the World and the destruction of other peoples?
- Yet, though she differs in philosophy from Melisandre, in this she is similar: Like Dany, in Mirri’s haste to meet her goals—hers being justice/revenge—she finds that perhaps she cannot change fate as Mel struggles to learn:
- Her actions lead to Dany burning her and bringing forth the dragons, who are fire made flesh, destruction and life-giving heat, all at once.
- Life, death, and Drogo
- “Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone.” … A word, and Dany could have her head off … yet then what would she have? A head? If life was worthless, what was death?
- Dany’s chapter bookends the magic introduced in the prologue with another manifestation of the undead
- The wights are void of emotion, of the laughter, tears and life as Drogo lost those aspects of himself
- Lady Stoneheart and Beric are reduced to one aspect of themselves, and of course, Catelyn/Stoneheart is another exploration of this, having lost her husband and children, as she thinks
- Daenerys explores this story in a different sense, as she searches for love and belonging and finds that the Westeros of her heart and mind never comes into the horizon, even as she stands upon it. And I love how in that line, Dany thinks she could have had Mirri’s head off… she has power. She’ll have power in Westeros — but to what end? What is life worth when all the rest is gone? When the people you love leave or die, when you are alone and no one is with you?
- It’s such a bleak echo of their first night together, Dany was scared then and is scared now but has such a different relationship to power
- You can see George working to set a foundation for Dany’s story in which power is always available to her but the costs grow darker and bloodier
- In a sense, she never stops dancing with the devil, and she herself ends up as hollowed out as Drogo
- What keeps it so sympathetic is the relatable dream: home and family and her husband, all under the stars like the night they conceived Rhaego
- But ultimately, she’s the one who delivers the killing blow
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
“When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.”
Here we get our first extended prophecy in ASOIAF, and it exemplifies how George will handle this element going forward. On the one hand, this might not even be an intentional prophecy--MMD might just be listing impossible things to be poetically cruel to Dany about how hopeless it is to bring Drogo back. On the other hand...it’s coming true! At the end of ADWD, “the sun rises in the west and sets in the east” (Quentyn Martell, “the sun’s son,” sets out on his quest in the west and then dies in the east), “the seas go dry” (the Dothraki Sea is drying up, hinting at prophetic endgame), and “mountains blow in the wind like leaves” (the pyramids of Meereen are turned to floating ash by Rhaegal and Viserion). All that’s left is Dany’s womb quickening, and you could argue that is possible as well as of the end of ADWD.
But what does Drogo “returning” really mean? Is this referring to Drogon, or to Dany joining him in the afterlife, or...?
- [this goes… somewhere]
- Technically, it isn’t given as one
- But the reason people tend to interpret it as one is how it’s written: While it may be a measure of poetry and gravitas on Mirri Maz Duur’s part, these lines are delivered in a trochaic foot (STRESS unstress), which is often used to denote witchy things
- Though, it isn’t in a meter
- DOU-ble DOU-ble TOIL and TROUble
- WHEN the SUN
- RIses IN the WEST and SETS in
- The problem is that as modern English speakers, we don't fully understand what is meant by the word "quicken."
- First, let's start with Mirri's prophecy.
- "When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," said Mirri Maz Duur. "When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before."
- Yes, Daenerys gets her period. However, that does not fulfill the prophecy yet nor mean it has been fulfilled.
- Here is what it means for one's womb to quicken (and this is the archaic definition as it is an archaic word):
- (of a woman) reach a stage in pregnancy when movements of the fetus can be felt.
- (of a fetus) begin to show signs of life.
- So, Dany can still have her period, can even get pregnant, and can be pregnant for a few weeks until she miscarries and her womb would still not quicken until she personally can feel the fetus move.
- And even then, if that happened, there is still the second part of that sentence, that Dany has to bear a living child. Again, Dany could go through all those things, have her womb quicken, and carry out a pregnancy to the full-term but it doesn't mean anything if what she births is stillborn.
- Unfortunately, as modern English speakers, we don't use the word "quicken" so much anymore when talking about pregnancy, so we end up misunderstanding it to mean that if Dany shows any sign of fertility, the curse is broken or it’s a prophecy. But as we can see from what is actually meant by the word "quicken," this is not the case.
“It was a cruel fate,” Dany said, “yet not so cruel as Mago’s will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh.”
The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. “Khaleesi, “ the handmaid Irri explained, as if to a child, “Jhaqo is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back.”
She lifted her head. “And I am Daenerys Stormborn, Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I am the dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die screaming.”
George clearly kept this in mind and wanted to pay it off, because Dany comes right back around to Khal Jhaqo at the end of ADWD, and George has said that Mago will be a recurring antagonist for Dany in TWOW.
Theory/Discussion
I was thinking we could do the bulk of essay talk here, speculating about Dany’s future in Westeros based on this chapter, especially the dream sequence
And when the bleak dawn broke over an empty horizon, Dany knew that he was truly lost to her. “When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,” she said sadly. “When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When my womb quickens again, and I bear a living child. Then you will return, my sun-and-stars, and not before.”
Never, the darkness cried, never never never.
Inside the tent Dany found a cushion, soft silk stuffed with feathers. She clutched it to her breasts as she walked back out to Drogo, to her sun-and-stars. If I look back I am lost. It hurt even to walk, and she wanted to sleep, to sleep and not to dream.
She knelt, kissed Drogo on the lips, and pressed the cushion down across his face.
May just paraphrase/wing it in regards to summarizing my essay/pulling from there rather than copy-pasting it into here
- temporary abnormal conditions of mind, such as Lear’s episode in the wilderness
- supernatural encounters that provide knowledge, such as Macbeth’s encounter with the witches or the ghost of Hamlet’s father
- Lolol ima talk about quaithe
- influential accidents, such as Romeo missing the friar’s message about Juliet’s ruse or Desdemona’s unfortunate missing handkerchief
- “human actions producing exceptional calamity and ending in the death of such a man [in high estate].”
- “There is an outward conflict of persons and groups, there is also a conflict of forces in the hero’s soul; and even in Julius Caesar and Macbeth the interest of the former can hardly be said to exceed that of the latter.
The truth is, that the type of tragedy in which the hero opposes to a hostile force an undivided soul, is not the Shakespearean type. The souls of those who contend with the hero may be thus undivided; they generally are; but, as a rule, the hero, though he pursues his fated way, is, at least at some point in the action, and sometimes at many, torn by an inward struggle;and it is frequently at such points that Shakespeare shows his most extraordinary power.” - The house with the red door - the contrasting language of temperature to represent the warmth of companionship and love versus the cold—death and loneliness, “howling alone in the darkness”
- The pursuance of the Iron Throne, high above, in isolation
Conclusion
- Thank Eliana for coming on
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Comments
Adriana Bohusova
Oh and I should have commented on the podcast itself, not the notes, but this one is tired. :-)
Adriana Bohusova
I am late, but I just want to comment on the "womb will quicken" thing. "Cwic" in Old English meant "alive". This meaning is still preserved in the phrase "the quick and the dead". So I think it has nothing to do with the child kicking, but rather a child being there. :-)
