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Episode 36: A GAME OF THRONES, DAENERYS IV: "The Holy Mountain" SHOW NOTES!
🕑 Added 2018-10-22 14:01:00 +0000 UTC Hello 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 our thirty-sixth episode of the Not A Cast entitled: “The Holy Mountain: An Analysis of AGOT, Daenerys IV,” in which Dany and the gang arrive at the “ancient, arrogant, and empty” city of Vaes Dothrak, where in a shocking turn of events, Viserys is an asshole. This episode is brought to you all by our Lords Commander Mark N, Timothy W, Hayden J, WolfmanZack and! We’re pleased to announce our first Lady Commander Jancy O. Thank you, gentlemen and lady!
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!
With this chapter, we are officially past the halfway point of AGOT! Our thanks and love to everyone who’s listened and supported us so far, and we’re super excited to dig into the second half of the book, where shit really gets real.
Question
Lady Sharla B asks:
After rereading Feast prologue and Analyzing the Alchemist again I thought of the passage in Feast Arya II where Arya sees a vault of old strange armor and weapons. Do you think that since Euron had no problems with Kinslaying and he thinks he can take Dany's dragons, that he could have gotten the Valyrian steel suit in addition to having Balon killed by the FM?
Reminder that Stump the Chumps, Part 2: Story questions and ASOIAF Predictions comes out in just two days for our $5 and above subscribers and a few days before that for some of our higher tier patrons. Patreon-only episodes come out monthly and next month is our full-out analysis of Fire and Blood, Volume One!
Synopsis
Daenerys Targaryen passes under a gate fashioned by two giant bronze stallions and enters Vaes Dothrak. The gate is odd, because the damn city doesn’t have walls or buildings so far. Dany, Jorah and Viserys ride down a long road into the city. Wait, Viserys? Yes, Viserys. He’s there too riding. Odd, right given that we last saw him sitting his whiny ass on the great grass sea, right? Well, he’s there only after walking a bit of the way to Vaes Dothrak and then given a cart. Viserys had thought Drogo was apologizing. He wasn’t. He and the rest of the Dothraki had called him Khal Rhae Mhar “The Sorefoot King” when he walked and then Khal Rhaggat, the Cart King, when he rode in the cart. In Dothraki culture, walking and carts are It was only after Dany used all her bed tricks on Drogo that the Khal consented to Viserys riding a real horse again like a real boy.
Dany looks ahead and wonders where the city is. Jorah tells her that it’s under the great mountain looming in the distance. The party passes by statues of gods and heroes that the Dothraki had “liberated” from their vanquished enemies. Stone kings, black dragons, griffins, manticores and some beasts that were so misshapen and terrible that Dany can’t bear to look at them. Those ones are from Asshai. Sounds like a lovely place.
Viserys doesn’t think much of the statues. The trash of dead cities. He says this in the common tongue, because he’s a cock, but he’s not a 100% stupid cock. When Viserys goes on and on about how the Dothraki are savages and thieves, Dany finally tells him to cut that shit out. The Dothraki aren’t savages. They’re her people now. Viserys retorts that he’s a very brave dragon, and he can say whatever the fuck he wants … y’know so long as it’s in a language that only he, Dany and Jorah can understand. But anyways, when does Drogo give me my army?
The princess must be presented to the dosh khaleen, Jorah replies.
You see, before there’s any invasion of Westeros, Daenerys Targaryen will be presented to the widows of dead khals and a prophecy will be spoken about her unborn child. More on that in Daenerys V!
But Viserys is tired of eating all this goddamn horse meat and smelling bad. Give the boy his milk and some nice clothes, for God’s sake! Jorah tells him to get over to the market to get his milk and cookies. When Viserys spots a statue with six boobs and a ferret’s head, he finally gets off-page.
With Viserys gone, Dany tells Jorah she hopes Drogo doesn’t keep him long. Jorah says that Viserys should have stayed put in Pentos like Illyrio offered. The Dothraki do things in their own time and that the concept of trading is foreign to the Dothraki. They do gifts. Daenerys was Viserys’ gift to Drogo, and Drogo will give a gift of a golden crown back to Viserys. Mmm-hm. Yes he will.
Dany finds herself defending Viserys. It’s not right to make him wait. Besides, Viserys claims he can sweep the Seven Kingdoms with just 10,000 Dothraki. Jorah calls bullshit on that. And then Daenerys says something interesting:
What if it were not Viserys? If it were someone else who led them? Someone stronger? Could the Dothraki truly conquer the Seven Kingdoms?
Jorah grows thoughtful. Someone else? Yeah. Maybe. On the question of whether the Dothraki could conquer Westeros, Jorah’s first impression was that the knights of Westeros would beat the Dothraki like a red-headed stepchild, but now? Now he thinks that the Dothraki could take on Westeros. Drogo has 40,000 warriors: the same number Rhaegar had at the Trident. But unlike Rhaegar, they’re all mounted and highly-experience warriors. But the Dothraki would struggle in siege warfare. Good thing for the Dothraki that Robert is ruling. He’s not about to hide inside his castle. But the other high lords - Stannis, Tywin and Eddard Stark would caution a different course.
What about this Ned Stark? Dany asks. Why do you hate him? Well, he took everything that Jorah loved and only because he practiced slavery. Just that!
But before Jorah can say more, he points up ahead to Vaes Dothrak. It’s a vast yet small city. It’s 10 times larger than Pentos, but the buildings were all strange, deserted. Pavilions, grass manses, wooden towers, pyramids made of marble, log halls open to the sky. No rhyme or reason behind their construction. And why the haphazard construction? Well, Viserys wasn’t all the way wrong when he spoke of Vaes Dothrak as the trash of dead cities. This city was built by slaves of the conquered peoples that Dothraki brought here. So, everyone built buildings after their own cultural fashion. And as to the deserted buildings, the only permanent residents in Vaes Dothrak are the dosh khaleen. But not to fear, this city can house the entirety of the all the Dothraki should they ever gather together. Wonder if that’s foreshadowing …
Anyways, they arrive at the Eastern Market with the Mother of Mountains over them. They’re led to a “palace” (in reality a wooden feasting hall), and there all the Dothraki hand over weapons to the slaves. No weapons were allowed in Vaes Dothrak. This was the place for all Dothraki. Irri and Jhiqui help Dany down from her silver, and Cohollo, Drogo’s oldest bloodrider, comes to Daenerys. We get a little more backstory about who Bloodriders are and what they do. They are the khal’s closest companions and serve a sort-of kingsguard role to the khal, but unlike the kingsguard, they only serve to the end of the khal’s life, and then they joined their khal in the night lands. And if their khal died in battle, they would only live long enough to avenge their dead khal.
Dany likes the sound of that - especially given the treachery of the kingsguard in Westeros. She’d have bloodriders watching over her son instead of some traitorous Jaime Lannister or turncloakin’ Barristan Selmy. But Cohollo is only here to tell Dany that Drogo is heading up to the Mother of Mountains to sacrifice to the gods.
Dany says thanks and orders a bath for herself. The bath water is scalding - just the way Dany lies it - and Dany says that she’d like to give gifts to Viserys to atone for what happened on the Dothraki Sea. Besides, Viserys is still the king, right? Right!? Wrong. That’s Stannis. Checkmark.
Daenerys dispatches Doreah to invite that asshole over for dinner. Meanwhile, Irri is to head over to the market to buy food that Viserys likes. Anything but horsemeat. Also, Dany has had some brand-new clothes sewn for Viserys as his silk clothes were ruined on the road to Vaes Dothrak.
Irri arrives back with the food, and Daenerys wonders whether maybe these gifts will serve as an olive branch to Viserys. Maybe not.
Viserys storms into the room after punching Doreah in the face, enraged that Doreah commanded Viserys to come to dinner. When Dany asks Doreah what she told Viserys, her handmaid replies that she did command him to come to dinner. She doesn’t know what she did wrong though.
No one commands the dragon. I am your king! I should have sent you back her head!
Simmer down, asshole, Dany tries to say. She presents the clothing gifts to Viserys, but Viserys ain’t about that. Dothraki rags. Next you’ll want to braid my hair like a damn savage too, right? Nope.
You have no right to a braid, you have won no victories yet.
Dany knows it’s the wrong thing to say, but she’s past caring. Viserys is furious. And Dany is upset. She had Doreah sew a khal’s clothing for Viserys. The Cart King snaps that he’s the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Dany’s pregnancy won’t protect her if his dragon is woke. He grabs her arm, and for a moment Dany feels the same way she did in her first chapter … until she grabs the belt she was going to give him and hits that son of a bitch asshole square in the goddamn face. HELL. YES.
Leave me now, before I summon my khas to drag you out. And pray that Khal Drogo does not hear of this, or he will cut open your belly and feed you your own entrails.
Viserys gets back to his feet, whimpering that when he gets his kingdom Dany will be sorry. And then he finally leaves. Jhiqui offers Dany dinner, but she’s not hungry for food. Instead, she asks that her dragon eggs be brought to her. She holds the eggs close to her, and she feels her unborn child move inside of her almost as if the eggs and her unborn child were related.
You are the dragon, Dany whispered to him, the true dragon. I know it. I know it.
She falls asleep dreaming of home.
And that is AGOT, Daenerys IV: culture shock, emotions and the penultimate step to Viserys’ downfall. I love it. You love it. And if you don’t, you’re stupid, fat, ugly and will die unmourned.
What did you think, Emmett?
Depth
Our first Dany chapter in a while! The last one, Dany III (which we discussed with LML), crossed great distances in both space and time; Dany IV largely serves to introduce us to a single location, the sacred city of Vaes Dothrak, where we’ll spend the next couple of Dany chapters. It’s a lot like Catelyn VI which we recently covered, in that it’s more connective tissue and an orgy of worldbuilding than it is an iconic story beat unto itself. The two chapters even have a huge mountain in common, though we don’t climb this one...not yet, anyway. Also as with Catelyn VI, while it’s not as beloved as the chapters that come before and after it in our POV’s story, Dany IV gives us some dazzling imagery and groundwork to chew on, as well as furthering Dany’s character arc regarding Viserys, the Dothraki, and how she feels the pressure on both sides from the worlds (and paths for her) they represent.
Agreed! That pull from her Targaryen and Dothraki identities set against the swirl of new, exotic sights is impressive storytelling. While Dany adapts Dothraki customs, wears Dothraki garments and has even learned a few Dothraki words, she’s not gone “full native.” She is still a dragon seen in both her questions to Jorah about Westeros and symbolized by her desire to have her dragon eggs brought to her at the end of the chapter. Dany ain’t in Pentos anymore, a powerless exiled princess. She’s becoming a khaleesi. A Targaryen khaleesi.
- The education of Daenerys as Khaleesi
- Dany III was an immersive deep dive for both Dany and the reader into life in a khalasar; Dany IV shows both how far she’s come and how far she has yet to go
- First, her growth in understanding and agency within Dothraki culture:
- Dany followed on her silver, escorted by Ser Jorah Mormont and her brother Viserys, mounted once more. After the day in the grass when she had left him to walk back to the khalasar, the Dothraki had laughingly called him Khal Rhae Mhar, the Sorefoot King. Khal Drogo had offered him a place in a cart the next day, and Viserys had accepted. In his stubborn ignorance, he had not even known he was being mocked; the carts were for eunuchs, cripples, women giving birth, the very young and the very old. That won him yet another name: Khal Rhaggat, the Cart King. Her brother had thought it was the khal's way of apologizing for the wrong Dany had done him. She had begged Ser Jorah not to tell him the truth, lest he be shamed. The knight had replied that the king could well do with a bit of shame … yet he had done as she bid. It had taken much pleading, and all the pillow tricks Doreah had taught her, before Dany had been able to make Drogo relent and allow Viserys to rejoin them at the head of the column.
- Viserys thinks he’s being given his proper due: the option of not working that comes with sitting atop the feudal pyramid
- Dany understands better the network of identity within a khalasar: everything is public, and judgment and shame are intertwined with the ability to ride
- Her avenues to alter Drogo’s policies are limited, of course; when it comes to Dothraki women and political power, the dosh khaleen outrank a mere khaleesi
- Right away, this establishes Dany’s relationship with Viserys as emblematic of the tension between her Westerosi/Valyrian identity and her Dothraki identity
- All this as they ride through the Horse Gate, literally passing through a portal into the center of Dothraki culture, wherein lies the crucible as we’ll see in Dany V
- Along with evolution, however, comes the discovery of new blind spots
- Dany can’t really wrap her head around what Vaes Dothrak is, exactly
- Dany could not have said why the city needed a gate when it had no walls...and no buildings that she could see.
- "Where is the city?" she asked as they passed beneath the bronze arch. There were no buildings to be seen, no people, only the grass and the road, lined with ancient monuments from all the lands the Dothraki had sacked over the centuries.
- She can’t reconcile it with the cities she’s known
- Khal Drogo and his bloodriders led them through the great bazaar of the Western Market, down the broad ways beyond. Dany followed close on her silver, staring at the strangeness about her. Vaes Dothrak was at once the largest city and the smallest that she had ever known. She thought it must be ten times as large as Pentos, a vastness without walls or limits, its broad windswept streets paved in grass and mud and carpeted with wildflowers. In the Free Cities of the west, towers and manses and hovels and bridges and shops and halls all crowded in on one another, but Vaes Dothrak sprawled languorously, baking in the warm sun, ancient, arrogant, and empty.
- Its spiritual aspirational purpose makes it different from those others
- Most of the halls, even the largest, seemed deserted. "Where are the people who live here?" Dany asked. The bazaar had been full of running children and men shouting, but elsewhere she had seen only a few eunuchs going about their business.
"Only the crones of the dosh khaleen dwell permanently in the sacred city, them and their slaves and servants," Ser Jorah replied, "yet Vaes Dothrak is large enough to house every man of every khalasar, should all the khals return to the Mother at once. The crones have prophesied that one day that will come to pass, and so Vaes Dothrak must be ready to embrace all its children."
- Most of the halls, even the largest, seemed deserted. "Where are the people who live here?" Dany asked. The bazaar had been full of running children and men shouting, but elsewhere she had seen only a few eunuchs going about their business.
- Dany can’t really wrap her head around what Vaes Dothrak is, exactly
- The display of fallen heroes and conquered gods knits all this together
- It’s a multiplicity of cultures under the shadow of imperialism, something any descendant of Valyria must wrestle with
- Viserys dismisses it as trash, as if his entire worldview and plans for the future aren’t rooted in obsession over totems of conquest (especially the Iron Throne)
- Like the poem “Ozymandias,” GRRM is emphasizing how futile this conquest is--the statues don’t serve the Dothraki in any practical sense
- Dany has to do better than both Viserys and the Dothraki
- This also resonates with the Many-Faced God and Euron’s introductory monologue…
- ...and of course overblown ‘70s prog and psychedelia, always an influence on ASOIAF, hence the title of this episode
- As such, Dany is deeply conflicted in this chapter, caught between selves
- She feels the need to defend the Dothraki from Viserys’ racist criticism of their culture…
- Viserys was less impressed. "The trash of dead cities," he sneered. He was careful to speak in the Common Tongue, which few Dothraki could understand, yet even so Dany found herself glancing back at the men of her khas, to make certain he had not been overheard. He went on blithely. "All these savages know how to do is steal the things better men have built … and kill." He laughed. "They do know how to kill. Otherwise I'd have no use for them at all."
“They are my people now,” Dany said. “You should not call them savages, brother.”
- Viserys was less impressed. "The trash of dead cities," he sneered. He was careful to speak in the Common Tongue, which few Dothraki could understand, yet even so Dany found herself glancing back at the men of her khas, to make certain he had not been overheard. He went on blithely. "All these savages know how to do is steal the things better men have built … and kill." He laughed. "They do know how to kill. Otherwise I'd have no use for them at all."
- ...but also Viserys from Jorah’s criticism of his failure to understand Dothraki culture
- “Yes, Khaleesi, but...the Dothraki look on these things differently than we do in the west. I have told him as much, as Illyrio told him, but your brother does not listen. The horselords are no traders. Viserys thinks he sold you, and now he wants his price. Yet Khal Drogo would say he had you as a gift. He will give Viserys a gift in return, yes … in his own time. You do not demand a gift, not of a khal. You do not demand anything of a khal."
- “Yes, Khaleesi, but...the Dothraki look on these things differently than we do in the west. I have told him as much, as Illyrio told him, but your brother does not listen. The horselords are no traders. Viserys thinks he sold you, and now he wants his price. Yet Khal Drogo would say he had you as a gift. He will give Viserys a gift in return, yes … in his own time. You do not demand a gift, not of a khal. You do not demand anything of a khal."
- She feels the need to defend the Dothraki from Viserys’ racist criticism of their culture…
"It is not right to make him wait." Dany did not know why she was defending her brother, yet she was.
- Viserys comes to stand in for Westerosi ignorance of the Dothraki, a blind spot Jorah has dispelled; Dany must do so to lead on both sides of the Narrow Sea
- Ser Jorah's face grew thoughtful as their horses trod together down the godsway. "When I first went into exile, I looked at the Dothraki and saw half-naked barbarians, as wild as their horses. If you had asked me then, Princess, I should have told you that a thousand good knights would have no trouble putting to flight a hundred times as many Dothraki."
"But if I asked you now?"
“Now," the knight said, "I am less certain. They are better riders than any knight, utterly fearless, and their bows outrange ours. In the Seven Kingdoms, most archers fight on foot, from behind a shieldwall or a barricade of sharpened stakes. The Dothraki fire from horseback, charging or retreating, it makes no matter, they are full as deadly…and there are so many of them, my lady. Your lord husband alone counts forty thousand mounted warriors in his khalasar."
"Is that truly so many?"
"Your brother Rhaegar brought as many men to the Trident," Ser Jorah admitted, "but of that number, no more than a tenth were knights. The rest were archers, freeriders, and foot soldiers armed with spears and pikes. When Rhaegar fell, many threw down their weapons and fled the field. How long do you imagine such a rabble would stand against the charge of forty thousand screamers howling for blood? How well would boiled leather jerkins and mailed shirts protect them when the arrows fall like rain?"
"Not long," she said, "not well."
He nodded. "Mind you, Princess, if the lords of the Seven Kingdoms have the wit the gods gave a goose, it will never come to that. The riders have no taste for siegecraft. I doubt they could take even the weakest castle in the Seven Kingdoms, but if Robert Baratheon were fool enough to give them battle…"
"Is he?" Dany asked. "A fool, I mean?"
Ser Jorah considered that for a moment. "Robert should have been born Dothraki," he said at last. "Your khal would tell you that only a coward hides behind stone walls instead of facing his enemy with a blade in hand. The Usurper would agree. He is a strong man, brave…and rash enough to meet a Dothraki horde in the open field. But the men around him, well, their pipers play a different tune. His brother Stannis, Lord Tywin Lannister, Eddard Stark…"
- Ser Jorah's face grew thoughtful as their horses trod together down the godsway. "When I first went into exile, I looked at the Dothraki and saw half-naked barbarians, as wild as their horses. If you had asked me then, Princess, I should have told you that a thousand good knights would have no trouble putting to flight a hundred times as many Dothraki."
- When Dany arrives at Drogo’s “palace,” she sets out to bridge this gap
- She frames her son’s future reign on the Iron Throne as a blending of Westerosi and Dothraki models of leadership:
- Yet [bloodriders] were bound to Drogo for life and death, so Daenerys had no choice but to accept them. And sometimes she found herself wishing her father had been protected by such men. In the songs, the white knights of the Kingsguard were ever noble, valiant, and true, and yet King Aerys had been murdered by one of them, the handsome boy they now called the Kingslayer, and a second, Ser Barristan the Bold, had gone over to the Usurper. She wondered if all men were as false in the Seven Kingdoms. When her son sat the Iron Throne, she would see that he had bloodriders of his own to protect him against treachery in his Kingsguard.
- She has also had Dothraki-style clothing made for Viserys, a reconciliation to match Vaes Dothrak itself with its Western and Eastern markets:
- While her handmaids prepared the meal, Dany laid out the clothing she'd had made to her brother's measure: a tunic and leggings of crisp white linen, leather sandals that laced up to the knee, a bronze medallion belt, a leather vest painted with fire-breathing dragons. The Dothraki would respect him more if he looked less a beggar, she hoped, and perhaps he would forgive her for shaming him that day in the grass. He was still her king, after all, and her brother. They were both blood of the dragon.
- And of course, it goes wrong immediately, because of how difficult it is to negotiate power between these two worlds:
- She was arranging the last of his gifts—a sandsilk cloak, green as grass, with a pale grey border that would bring out the silver in his hair—when Viserys arrived, dragging Doreah by the arm. Her eye was red where he'd hit her. "How dare you send this whore to give me commands," he said. He shoved the handmaid roughly to the carpet.
The anger took Dany utterly by surprise. "I only wanted…Doreah, what did you say?"
"Khaleesi, pardons, forgive me. I went to him, as you bid, and told him you commanded him to join you for supper."
"No one commands the dragon," Viserys snarled. "I am your king! I should have sent you back her head!"
The Lysene girl quailed, but Dany calmed her with a touch. "Don't be afraid, he won't hurt you. Sweet brother, please, forgive her, the girl misspoke herself, I told her to ask you to sup with me, if it pleases Your Grace."
- She was arranging the last of his gifts—a sandsilk cloak, green as grass, with a pale grey border that would bring out the silver in his hair—when Viserys arrived, dragging Doreah by the arm. Her eye was red where he'd hit her. "How dare you send this whore to give me commands," he said. He shoved the handmaid roughly to the carpet.
- Is she Daenerys Targaryen, subject of King Viserys III Targaryen, or is she the khaleesi to the great Drogo, with the authority to command the pitiful Cart King?
- Viserys rejects the new identity Dany is developing--the clothing, the bartering, the attempt at reconciling the Valyrians and the Dothraki--not only due to his racism, but because he cannot take charge of it (and the two are linked)
- He looked at her and sneered. “Dothraki rags. Do you presume to dress me now?”
- And she inadvertently reveals that he’s an utter failure by any cultural measure:
- "Next you'll want to braid my hair."
"I'd never…" Why was he always so cruel? She had only wanted to help. "You have no right to a braid, you have won no victories yet."
- "Next you'll want to braid my hair."
- Moreover, for all Viserys’ supremacist chest-puffing, he’s clearly terrified of the Dothraki after what happened in Dany III:
- "The dragon speaks as he likes," Viserys said…in the Common Tongue. He glanced over his shoulder at Aggo and Rakharo, riding behind them, and favored them with a mocking smile. "See, the savages lack the wit to understand the speech of civilized men."
- Fury shone from his lilac eyes, yet he dared not strike her, not with her handmaids watching and the warriors of her khas outside.
- So Dany rejects him using a very telling weapon:
- His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again, quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she'd hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her strength.
It caught him full in the face. Viserys let go of her. Blood ran down his cheek where the edge of one of the medallions had sliced it open. "You are the one who forgets himself," Dany said to him. "Didn't you learn anything that day in the grass? Leave me now, before I summon my khas to drag you out. And pray that Khal Drogo does not hear of this, or he will cut open your belly and feed you your own entrails."
- His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again, quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she'd hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her strength.
- At chapter’s end, with her attempt to harmonize her two selves in ruins, she embraces the child within her as the key to cultural and personal reconciliation:
- She was lying there, holding the egg, when she felt the child move within her...as if he were reaching out, brother to brother, blood to blood. "You are the dragon," Dany whispered to him, "the true dragon. I know it. I know it." And she smiled, and went to sleep dreaming of home.
- She frames her son’s future reign on the Iron Throne as a blending of Westerosi and Dothraki models of leadership:
Likes/Dislikes
Like: There’s one detail in the worldbuilding that I especially enjoy, because of how it relates to Dany’s earlier chapters:
Khal Drogo finally called a halt near the Eastern Market where the caravans from Yi Ti and Asshai and the Shadow Lands came to trade, with the Mother of Mountains looming overhead. Dany smiled as she recalled Magister Illyrio's slave girl and her talk of a palace with two hundred rooms and doors of solid silver. The "palace" was a cavernous wooden feasting hall, its rough-hewn timbered walls rising forty feet, its roof sewn silk, a vast billowing tent that could be raised to keep out the rare rains, or lowered to admit the endless sky. Around the hall were broad grassy horse yards fenced with high hedges, firepits, and hundreds of round earthen houses that bulged from the ground like miniature hills, covered with grass.
The stories about Drogo’s palace were true...sort of, as filtered through a culture Dany now understands better, and so this passage helps us as readers measure the gap between who Dany was at the beginning of the book and who she is now halfway through it. (I wonder if GRRM has a similar yes-but-also-no approach in mind for the image v. reality of Skagos…)
Dislike: The scene with Viserys basically has to exist in order to ramp up the Targ v. Targ tension from the initial confrontation on the Dothraki Sea to his death in Dany’s next chapter. Having said that, though, the dialogue and tone of this scene in Dany IV feels repetitive after Dany III; I have difficulty remembering what exactly was said and done in one “Viserys is just the worst” scene versus the other.
Like: I like when GRRM shows us that he’s well-read. And here, we see it as Rhaego reaches out to the dragon eggs as family in similar fashion to the in-utero John the Baptist reaching out to the also in-utero cousin Jesus in Luke 1:41: And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. As much as GRRM is an agnostic or atheist, I respect that he knows his cultural references even from the Bible.
Dislike: I think we lose something in returning to Viserys as a one-note villain. Yes, I like how he’s not a complete moron in some scenes here, but his purpose is just to be obnoxious and get readers eager for his coming death. I prefer the version of Viserys as played by Harry Lloyd who gets across the crazy but also shows us a pitiable character that thinks he’s about to be betrayed by Drogo. I really like the added scene from Bastards, Cripples and Broken Things were Viserys Targaryen bathes with Doreah, and we see Viserys as a bit more human than we see here -- and the episode still retains the Daenerys/Viserys scene where he’s in full Aerys-mode, but Viserys having those human moments from that episode makes it, dare I say, a touch better than what we see in this chapter. (But to be fair to GRRM, we wouldn’t see the Doreah/Dany scene in AGOT as Viserys isn’t a POV character. Limitations of the medium and such.)
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
“What … what if it were not Viserys?" she asked. "If it were someone else who led them? Someone stronger?”
Hmm, anyone you have in mind, Dany? Speaking of which:
"Only the crones of the dosh khaleen dwell permanently in the sacred city, them and their slaves and servants," Ser Jorah replied, "yet Vaes Dothrak is large enough to house every man of every khalasar, should all the khals return to the Mother at once. The crones have prophesied that one day that will come to pass, and so Vaes Dothrak must be ready to embrace all its children."
Hmm, who will gather all the Mother’s children together...surely not Mhysa, Mother of Dragons…
Theory/Discussion
How do we think the Dothraki invasion of Westeros will go?/What will go down at Vaes Dothrak in TWOW?
“The Dothraki follow only the strong.” (AGOT, Daenerys IX)
“They took Khal Drogo’s herds, Khaleesi,” Rakharo said. “We were too few to stop them. It is the right of the strong to take from the weak. They took many slaves as well, the khal’s and yours, yet they left some few.”
“Eroeh?” asked Dany, remembering the frightened child she had saved outside the city of the Lamb Men.
“Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo’s bloodrider now,” said Jhogo. “He mounted her high and low and gave her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other bloodriders. They were six. When they were done with her, they cut her throat.” (AGOT, Daenerys IX)
“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. (AGOT, Daenerys IX)
A vast herd of horses appeared below them. There were riders too, a score or more, but they turned and fled at the first sight of the dragon. The horses broke and ran when the shadow fell upon them, racing through the grass until their sides were white with foam, tearing the ground with their hooves … but as swift as they were, they could not fly. Soon one horse began to lag behind the others. The dragon descended on him, roaring, and all at once the poor beast was aflame, yet somehow he kept on running, screaming with every step, until Drogon landed on him and broke his back (ADWD, Daenerys X)
That was how Khal Jhaqo found her, when half a hundred mounted warriors emerged from the drifting smoke. (ADWD, Daenerys X)
“So Mago is not dead in the books. And, in fact, he’s going to be a recurring character in Winds of Winter. He’s a particularly nasty bloodrider to one of the other Khals that’s broken away after Drogo dies.” – Entertainment Weekly Interview with George RR Martin, July 12, 2011
WINDS OF WINTER. Yes, I’m working on that too. At the moment, I am writing about the Dothraki. More than that, I sayeth not, you know I don’t like to talk about this stuff. – GRRM, Notablog, May 12, 2012
“To go north, you must go south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”
Beneath the Mother of Mountains, a line of naked crones crept from a great lake and knelt shivering before her, their grey heads bowed. (ACOK, Daenerys IV)
Wiser men know that it is only a matter of time until the khalasars unite again under some great khal and turn west once more in search of new conquests. (TWOIAF, The Dothraki)
One day all the khalasars shall gather together once more beneath the banners of the great khal who will conquer all, the “stallion who mounts the world.” (TWOIAF, The Dothraki)
Conclusion
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