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Episode 26: A GAME OF THRONES, JON IV: "Best Friends for Life" SHOW NOTES!
🕑 Added 2018-08-14 02:00:01 +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 our twenty-sixth episode of the Not A Cast entitled: “Best Friends Forever: An Analysis of AGOT, Jon IV,” in which Jon Snow heroically defends Samwell Tarly from Alliser Thorne’s bullying, makes a friend for life in Sam and takes another step forward towards becoming the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. This episode is brought to you all by our Lords Commander Mark N, Timothy W, Hayden J, WolfmanZack and our newest Lord Commander Ser Joe L. Thank you, gentlemen!
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!
Questions
Ser James RW asks:
My question is - what is your favorite question and favorite set of answers from the Long running Nerd Stream Era blogs “Supreme Court of Westeros” series? (Which I miss terribly)
Jeff: My personal favorite is Ruling 131 which talks about whether Robert wanted to fight Mance Rayder, what’s up with the Isle of Faces and my own wheelhouse: who the Golden Company’s friends in the Reach might be. I believe both Emmett and I believe that Randyll Tarly will turn on Tommen, and it’s likely IMO that Mathis Rowan will turn too. But I like them fingering Orton and Taena Merryweather too. That would make sense if the Merryweathers are agents of Varys -- something I suspect anyways.
Emmett: Mine is ruling 104, in which they cover some juicy topics, especially going forward--does Melisandre actually need king’s blood, what’s up with Willas and Garlan, and whether or not jon made the right call about Hardhome.
Synopsis
Jon Snow is training his friends in the Castle Black courtyard when a new boy arrives. Nothing worth noting, except this boy is unlike any that have ever come to Castle Black before. Obese and nobly-dressed, Samwell Tarly comes striding into the courtyard and into our hearts.
Samwell introduces himself in stuttering ellipses. Pyp, another newly-introduced NW recruit, puts Sam’s accent as Reachmen and higborn. Well-spotted, Pyp. Samwell is a Reachman, the firstborn son of Lord Randyll Tarly, sworn to Lord Mace Tyrell of Highgarden.
All of the commotion around Samwell stirs the Ser Alliser Thorne into motion. It would seem they have run short of poachers and thieves down south. Now they send us pigs to man the Wall. He catches sight of Samwell’s expensive southron clothing. Is fur and velvet your notion of armor, my Lord of Ham?
Well, it’s fucking on after that. Samwell gets dressed down after Alliser insists he get standard issue instead of his specialized gear. Donal Noye spends a lot of time taking apart other sets of armor to try to make one fit the boy. But even when Donal cobbles something together for Samwell to wear and has him wear his new gear, he looks like an overcooked sausage and can’t barely move.
But this doesn’t prevent Alliser from wanting to inflict harm on Samwell like the fucking psychopath he is. He throws Samwell into the practice yard - without training, you goddamn dick, Ser Alliser - to fight his strongest boy: Halder. You see, Halder was an apprentice stonemason before he came to the Wall, and he was strong and tall. Alliser orders Halder to attack Sam. After a minute of getting the dogpiss beaten out of him, Sam falls to the ground, yielding. But Ser Alliser isn’t done with him.
He orders Halder to hit him until he gets up. When Halder gives Sam a half-hearted smack, Alliser tells him to hit hard, and Halder hits with all his strength -- so hard that it splits the leather and causes Sam to yelp in pain. When Sam can’t rise quickly enough for Alliser’s liking, he orders Halder to hit him again. But then Jon steps up to the plate.
Halder, enough.
Halder looks to Ser Alliser who retorts The Bastard speaks, and the peasants tremble. Ser Alliser is the one who gives commands here, not you, Jon. Yeah, except the people actually listen to Lord Snow. Jon repeats that Samwell yielded and Halder agrees, lowering his sword.
All well and good, except that Ser Alliser has words. It would seem our Bastard is in love. Show me your steel, Lord Snow. Jon draws his sword, knowing that he’s already pushing the line and not wanting to defy Ser Alliser any more. Ser Alliser orders Rat, Pimple and Halder to fight their way through Jon and attack Samwell. Well, that ain’t good.
Jon orders Sam to stay behind him, knowing that he’s about to get his ass beat in a 3 to 1 match. But then Pyp steps up besides him. He’ll fight shona-bar-shona (Dari for “Side by side”) with Jon, and then Grenn steps up too. Now it’s 3 v 3, and the whole Castle Black courtyard is deathly quiet until …
Jon attacks Halder, driving him back. He knows his foe, just as Ser Rodrik once taught him to do, and he knew Halder to be strong but impatient. He hits Halder in the ribs with his blunted sword, and Halder’s sword-stroke catches Jon in the shoulder. Jon notices that Halder is unbalanced and then cuts him at the knee, driving him to the ground.
Jon turns to see Grenn standing his ground against Albett (Pimple) but Pyp pressed hard by Rast (Rat). he assist Pyp first, coming up behind Rast and ringing his noggin with his sword while Pyp slip under Rast’s guard and knocked him down. Seeing that he was now outnumbered, Albett yielded.
Alliser is angry and calls the day’s “training” to a halt. Sam and Jon formally introduce themselves to each other, and Grenn and Pyp do likewise with Sam. Grenn asks why Sam didn’t fight. Well, he wanted to, but he didn’t want to get hit anymore. Besides, he’s a coward. His father always said so.
No one has words for that, not even Pyp. Sam apologizes, says he doesn’t mean to be the way that he is before walking off. Jon calls after Sam to tell him that he’ll do better tomorrow.
No, I won’t. I never do better. Sam replies mournfully.
Jon, Grenn and Pyp confer again. They shouldn’t try to help Sam if he’s a coward. People will think they’re craven too. You’re too stupid to be craven, Pyp replies. Grenn objects, and then Pyp replies that if a bear attacked Grenn in the woods, you’d be too stupid to run away. Now Grenn strenuously objects. I would not. I’d run away faster than you. But then Grenn realizes that he’s been had as Jon walks away. (Gotta keep those lighter moments in the summaries!)
The rest of the day follows a pattern that Jon has become accustomed to: some days he spent hunting with Ghost, others he was in the armory with Donal Noye, learning how to smith, others he ran messages, stood at guard, mucked out stables, fletched arrows, assisted Bowen Marsh with inventory. Today, Jon was tasked with scattering gravel on the top of the Wall to prevent people from slipping and hurdling to their death. Tedious work, but Jon doesn’t mind it. It gives him a chance to think. And think he does.
He thinks of Sam and Tyrion, wondering what the dwarf would make of the coward. But there was some courage in admitting cowardice at some level. Jon’s shoulder still hurts from the match from earlier. Finishing his work, he watches the sun go down in the west, turning the color of blood and then gets himself lowered to the courtyard and his direwolf Ghost for supper.
But dinner is done by the time Jon arrives in the common hall. But his friends are still there. Pyp is telling stories with different voices, But Jon also notices Sam is in there too, sitting alone, away from everyone. Instead of going to Pyp and his stories, Jon opts to head on over to Sam with Ghost.
Samwell is a little afraid of Ghost as he approaches, and he asks if it’s a wolf. Yes. A Direwolf, Jon replies. His name is Ghost. It’s the Stark sigil. Sam tells Jon that his family’s sigil is the striding huntsman. Jon asks Sam if he’d likes to hunt, and Samwell begins crying. Jon tells Sam that they should go outside. And what are they going to do outside, Sam wonders. Talk, Jon replies.
Outside, Sam and Jon’s breath frosts in the air, and Sam comments that he hates the cold, and that he hadn’t seen snow until he was in the Barrowlands. At first Sam thought it was beautiful, but it kept falling, and it was oh so cold.
Anyhow, they look up at the Wall, and Sam worries that he’ll die if he has to climb the Wall, but Jon assures him that there’s a winch that can pull them up. But it’s so high. And Sam is afraid of heights. At that, Jon kind of loses it.
Are you afraid of everything? I don’t understand. If you are truly so craven, why are you here? Why would a coward want to join the Night’s Watch?
Samwell doesn’t immediately respond until he begins sobbing. His sobs are only interrupted when Ghost came over and licked the tears off of Sam’s face. Sam is startled, but his feelings turn to joy, and he laughs with Jon as Ghost continues to lick the tears from Sam’s face.
Jon tells the story of finding the direwolves in the snow, and then he gets into some real interesting territory: a dream he has about Winterfell. He’s walking down an empty hall in Winterfell, shouting for his family - for Arya, Robb or Uncle Benjen, but no one answers. This causes Jon to think about Benjen. He’s still missing. Qhorin Halfhand had gone out from the Shadow Tower (another NW fortress) and they had tracked him north until they got to the stony highlands where Benjen’s marks stopped abruptly.
Sam asks if Jon ever finds anyone in his dream. No one. Winterfell is empty in every dream. Not even the ravens are in their rookery. And the stables are full of bones. Yikes. Getting a certain vibe on that one. We’ll talk about that later.
Anyways, in the dream, Jon runs through the halls of Winterfell, throwing open doors, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then he ends up at the door at the crypts. He doesn’t want to go down, but he knows he has to. You see, Jon’s afraid of what’s waiting for him down there. The old Kings of Winter and their direwolves might not be too fond to see Jon. And even if Jon screams that he’s not a Stark, he still has to go down. As he descends in his dreams, it grows darker and darker with no torch in hand. And then Jon screams and wakes at the same moment every time.
Jon asks if Sam dreams of Horn Hill. He doesn’t. He hated it at Horn Hill. Samwell explains the history of the Tarlys and how they are bannermen to Mace Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden. And the Tarlys have wielded a Valyrian steel sword known as Heartsbane. And then Samwell tells the story of his relationship with his father.
Lord Randyll Tarly was a man’s man who loved fightin’, huntin’, killin’, bein’ a dude. But Samwell wasn’t that way. He liked to wear soft clothes. He loved lemon cakes, books, kittens and dancing. And he hated the sight of blood. Lord Randyll tried to make Samwell “into a man” with a dozen masters at arms, different and abusive training methods and Lord Randyll even brought warlocks over from Qarth who bathed Samwell in the blood of an aurochs. Sam didn’t take to this. In fact, he even puked into the bath of auroch’s blood. The warlocks were scurged and sent away.
But finally, after Sam’s mom bore Lord Randyll three more sisters, she finally bore him another son -- Dickon who was more in the vein of Lord Randyll. After Dickon’s birth, Randyll ignored Sam, and Sam had known peace … until his 15th name day when Randyll’s men woke Samwell up and mounted him on a horse to visit his father out in the woods. There, Samwell came across Randyll skinning a deer, and Lord Fuckface had something to say.
"You are almost a man grown now, and my heir. You have given me no cause to disown you, but neither will I allow you to inherit the land and title that should be Dickon's. Heartsbane must go to a man strong enough to wield her, and you are not worthy to touch her hilt. So I have decided that you shall this day announce that you wish to take the black. You will forsake all claim to your brother's inheritance and start north before evenfall.
"If you do not, then on the morrow we shall have a hunt, and somewhere in these woods your horse will stumble, and you will be thrown from the saddle to die … or so I will tell your mother. She has a woman's heart and finds it in her to cherish even you, and I have no wish to cause her pain. Please do not imagine that it will truly be that easy, should you think to defy me. Nothing would please me more than to hunt you down like the pig you are." His arms were red to the elbow as he laid the skinning knife aside. "So. There is your choice. The Night's Watch"—he reached inside the deer, ripped out its heart, and held it in his fist, red and dripping—"or this."
And so, Sam went north to the Wall. After that story, the boys sit in silence for a moment until Jon says that they should go back in the hall to get some hot cider, mulled wine and listen to Daereon sing some. But Sam knows that Alliser Thorne is going to make him fight again, so he takes his leave.
Jon heads back into the hall and begins talking with his boys. They think Sam is craven, but Jon’s not about to let them do their thing. So, he gives them instructions on what’s going to happen tomorrow. He convinces everyone that they are going to not beat the shit out of Samwell -- everyone but Rast, one of the rapers who came up from the Fingers.
Rast is going to cut himself a slice of bacon from Ser Piggy. He then laughs in Jon’s face and stalks off. Later that night, Jon, the boys and Ghost pay Rast a visit. They hold him down while Ghost jumps on Rast’s chest. Jon holds a knife to Rast’s throat, nipping it. Remember, we know where you sleep, Jon tells Rast.
The next morning in the castle yard, the boys danced around Samwell, ensuring that they didn’t hurt him. Ser Alliser raged and screamed at them to no avail. Jon’s boys would follow their true leader’s commands. Two weeks later, Sam finally joined with the other boys in eating with them, finally joining in the fraternity. And later Sam came to Jon’s cell one night and told him that he didn’t know exactly what Jon did, but he knew he did it. You see, Sam had never had a friend before until Jon.
We’re not friends, Jon says. We’re brothers.
And so they were. Jon would always love Robb, Bran and Rickon even if Catelyn had seen that Jon would never truly be a part of them. But his true brothers were now a Castle Black. His dreams of Winterfell would always haunt him, but he had a home here among the misfits of Westeros. Benjen had spoken truly about the bonds of brotherhood in the Night’s Watch.
Jon hopes that he would see Benjen one day to tell him.
And that’s AGOT, Jon IV: a lonnnnnnnnnng chapter, but IMO a good one, right Emm??
Depth
Welp, I started off as a drag last episode on Eddard V and I’m gonna do the same here. Welcome to the NegativeCast, apparently!
I don’t like Jon IV quite as much as I did Jon III. What I loved about that chapter, as we got into at length in our episode on it, is how it fit snugly within the structure of your classic coming-of-age fantasy story but the details were surprisingly political and emotional. It’s an example of how the themes and prose of the series can elevate what could be pedestrian, predictable material. Jon IV doesn’t have that same elevation for me. I remember reading it the first time, and as soon as Sam is introduced and described, I went “ohhhh ok, I wonder if Alliser’s gonna set the others on him and then Jon defends him and they become best friends.” And yep, that’s what happens. Doesn’t make it bad--it’s still well executed--but it feels less special to me. That outta the way, onto the good stuff!
- Jon the Leader of Men
- Clearly has internalized Donal’s speech
- Training Dareon on the sidestroke, because Alliser hasn’t bothered
- As compared to the pure sadism which Alliser employs on Sam
- Teaches Halder and then later the whole group an important lesson about mercy
- Introducing Sam
- Every word out of his mouth emphasizes his feelings of inadequacy
- “I don’t mean to be how I am.”
- Yet there’s that “queer sort of courage” that draws Jon to him--his honesty, his lack of pretense
- Jon compares him internally to Tyrion--another outcast to collect!
- Ghost, as Jon’s avatar, takes the first step in a very sweet moment that again emphasizes mercy and empathy
- Every word out of his mouth emphasizes his feelings of inadequacy
- Sam’s Story
- An important inversion of Jon III--that was about understanding class privilege, this is about understanding gendered oppression that cuts across class
- As in: sure, Sam is privileged by Donal Noye’s definition of it, but it didn’t save him because he doesn’t fit his father’s definition of a man
- What Martin emphasizes over and over in this story is that Randyll Tarly is not, in fact, a tough but fair pragmatist just looking out for the greater good of his House
- He’s just the worst! Trying to toughen Sam up for a world that will demand it of him is one thing, but the slapping, the starving, the constant humiliation--this is just sadism
- Moreover, the way Randyll treats his son ties right into the gendered insults lobbed at Sam in the training yard
- He’s forced to wear women’s clothing
- Randyll says it’s his mother’s “woman’s heart” that leads her to cherish Sam
- This femininity is connected to being a “pig,” as happens again at the Wall
- All in all, Randyll hates Sam in part because he hates women
- (Compare it to Stannis, who is a lot like Randyll in some respects including misogyny, but is a bookworm himself and makes use of Sam with no more than a neutral comment about him not exactly resembing Randyll)
- Consider what Randyll might’ve done better. He could’ve forged Sam and Dickon into a grass-and-viper team a la Doran and Oberyn. He could’ve stayed loyal to his heir despite his failure to match up to the masculine standard, a la Mace and Willas.
- To be clear, Randyll’s actions would be heinous even if they had worked. But that they don’t is GRRM emphasizing what a shallow, silly cult of masculinity this is
- Ultimately Randyll exposes himself when he says he’d enjoy hunting Sam down
- This proves it’s not about the Image of the House, because he specifically says he’d have a cover story and the hunt would be for his own pleasure
- So what makes him different from Ramsay, exactly?
- Then there’s the heart imagery
- Deer heart
- Heartsbane
- “Woman’s heart”
- The overall effect is of Randyll disdaining the human heart
- (Again, compare to Stannis and the fiery heart)
- It’s a portrait of a man who cares more about his sword than his son, and Jon must be thinking of Ned and Ice now
- What stirs Jon to action is the sense that Sam’s story is repeating itself--Alliser is Randyll! He’s following the same tactics, with the inevitably same result
- As such, Jon puts his leadership into action--not on behalf of fighting, but on behalf of not fighting
- Good training for Jon as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch: Jon persuaded some, cajoled some, shamed the others, made threats where threats were required.
Likes/Dislikes
Like: Halder gets a nice little arc all to himself in this chapter. Alliser sets him on Sam because he thinks he’ll do the most damage, and he’s right at first. But then “Stone Head” proves that he doesn’t have a stone heart--he realizes Jon is right that it’s just pointlessly cruel to keep hitting someone who has yielded, he joshes with Jon after losing their fight (“For an instant, I thought I finally had you, Snow”), and then he surprises Jon by speaking up on Sam’s behalf. Gotta love GRRM’s knack for humanizing background characters.
Dislike: Already dealt with it up front, so a minor detail: “I’m fat, not blind...of course I saw it, it’s seven hundred feet tall” is a very uncharacteristic line for Samwell Tarly, especially at this point. It feels more like the sort of deflective snark employed by his HBO counterpart.
Like: I’m a sucker for stories of male bonding. And this chapter has it in spades. Jon and Halder, Jon and Pyp/Grenn and of course Jon and Sam. I get you, Emmett that you just knew that Sam and Jon would be friends by the end of the chapter. It’s not subtle at all, but I like that! I know, I know. Stupid and ugly. But in this here day and age where male friendship is still looked down on, and the independent mayun who don’t need nobody but work acquaintances and cold beer at night is sometimes seen as the ideal, I gravitate towards George writing a sweet, cool story about boys becoming friends.
Dislike: I wish there was something more to Rast than just being a big, stupid bully. As much as Joffrey and Ramsay are bullies in the story, we understand why they are the way they are: parental abuse/neglect, other horrors. But I would have preferred to get some sort of inkling of why this dude is such an asshole. Maybe Rast had an abusive parental figure, maybe he’s trying to suck up to Ser Alliser so that he won’t get the same treatment that Jon and the other boys get. Maybe he had a rage built from being ugly and being rejected by women -- sort of like Chett from the ASOS Prologue. All I’m saying is that I think it’s good to have depth in our villains -- even if it’s a minor villain like Rast.
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
The bear that the Night’s Watch runs away from: “If a bear attacked you in the woods, you’d be too stupid to run away.”
And indeed, Grenn won’t run away after that bear attacks...he’ll stubbornly stand his ground and insist that Sam keep moving, because he’s following Jon’s lead from this chapter.
“The Bastard wishes to defend his lady love, so we shall make an exercise of it. Rat, Pimple, help our Stone Head here.” Rast and Albett moved to join Halder. “Three of you ought to be sufficient to make Lady Piggy squeal. All you need do is get past the Bastard.”
This is not the last time that older Watchmen associate Sam’s unwillingness/inability to fight, as well as Jon’s insistence on defending the weak, with femininity and homosexuality in a decidedly derogatory fashion. Chett makes similar comments in his Prologue, and Lord Commander Snow thinks to himself that some senior officers assume that he’s only elevating Satin because they’re sleeping together. Christ, what assholes. They’d get along with Lord Randyll just fine.
"One time," Sam confided, his voice dropping from a whisper, "two men came to the castle, warlocks from Qarth with white skin and blue lips.”
This is the first mention in the series of both the city of Qarth and its warlocks, which will of course take center stage in Dany’s ACOK chapters and remain relevant as recently as “The Forsaken.”
“Some nights Dareon sings for us, if the mood is on him. He was a singer, before...well, not truly, but almost, an apprentice singer.”
“How did he come here?” Sam asked.
“Lord Rowan of Goldengrove found him in bed with his daughter. The girl was two years
older, and Dareon swears she helped him through her window, but under her father’s
eye she named it rape, so here he is. When Maester Aemon heard him sing, he said his voice was honey poured over thunder.”
This will all be quite significant for Sam when he becomes a POV in his own right...it only makes Dareon’s desertion all the more wretched that the old man he abandons praised his singing.
He could think here, and he found himself thinking of Samwell Tarly...and, oddly, of Tyrion Lannister. He wondered what Tyrion would have made of the fat boy.
I really hope we get to find out!! They’ve got a love of books in common, maybe that’ll prove important?
"Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones.”
This perfectly describes Winterfell in ADWD.
“And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream."
This isn’t the last time Jon dreams of the crypts. What is waiting for him down there? A harp? A ring (shoutout to Natalie)? An egg?
Also, interesting line about Jon descending into darkness with no torch to light the way. It reminds me of Old Nan’s story of the Long Night and the Last Hero and how darkness covered the land when the Others came:
"In that darkness, the Others came for the first time," she said as her needles went click click click. "They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins.”
In TWOIAF, we learn from Yandel that some of the old wives’ “tales” indicated that there was no light for a generation:
It is also from these histories that we learn of the Long Night, when a season of winter came that lasted a generation—a generation in which children were born, grew into adulthood, and in many cases died without ever seeing the spring. Indeed, some of the old wives' tales say that they never even beheld the light of day, so complete was the winter that fell on the world.
Theories/Discussion
Jon Snow’s birth name. In this chapter, we get an interesting bit of dialogue between Sam, Pyp and Jon Snow:
“I . . . if you want, you can call me Sam. My mother calls me Sam.”
“You can call him Lord Snow,” Pyp said as he came up to join them. “You don’t want to know what his mother calls him.”
Why, Pyp? What did his mother call him? Was it maybe … Aegon???
Well, in Season 7 of Game of Thrones, we find out that Jon Snow’s birth name is Aegon. And this has led to consternation in the fandom over Jon’s real name. Fans have proposed that Jon Snow’s birth name is more likely to be Jaehaerys, not Aegon in the books. This is just D&D doing their usual fan-fiction. Besides, Rhaegar already had a son named Aegon.
Not so fast, padawan. There’s some hints in the books that Jon’s birth name was actually Aegon. Let’s go into it, shall we?
First we have Maester Aemon saying:
“It takes a man to rule. An Aegon, not an Egg. Kill the boy and let the man be born.” (ADWD, Jon II)
Then in Dany’s House of the Undying Vision:
The man had her brother's hair, but he was taller, and his eyes were a dark indigo rather than lilac. "Aegon," he said to a woman nursing a newborn baby in a great wooden bed. "What better name for a king?" "Will you make a song for him?" the woman asked. "He has a song," the man replied. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." (ACOK, Daenerys IV)
The World of Ice and Fire/Dance of the Dragons
And rather than mourn her late husband, Rhaenyra at last wed her uncle, Prince Daemon. In the last days of 120 AC, she even delivered to him his first son, whom she named Aegon, after the Conqueror. (When she learned of it, Queen Alicent was said to be enraged, for her own eldest son also bore the Conqueror's name. The two Aegons came to be known as Aegon the Elder and Aegon the Younger.) (TWOIAF, The Targaryen Kings: Viserys I)
Conclusion
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Comments
Septon Eastwood of Introvert Isle
Lol! I did the same thing!
NotAPodcast
Hi Clint. Try putting this link manually into your podcast player: <a href="https://www.patreon.com/rss/NotACastASOIAF?auth=b9i-qb7ehOKAshyV5bl_2da4Am1uTPgG">https://www.patreon.com/rss/NotACastASOIAF?auth=b9i-qb7ehOKAshyV5bl_2da4Am1uTPgG</a>
Clint Page
Is this episode not showing up in anyone else's Apple Podcasts app feed?
champagnerain
Also, I just finally caught up on listening and have been dying to mention that every time Emmett says "LC Mormont," I first hear "Elsie Mormont," and now I cannot stop imagining that Mormont has a secret crossdressing habit with a female alter-ego named Elsie.
champagnerain
I don't know if the timelines would work out/how much news Lyanna might have been able to receive at the ToJ, but I always thought that it might be a possibility that Rhaegar told her that his son named Aegon would be the savior of the world, etc. etc. Then, perhaps if she got news that Aegon #1 had been murdered, she independently decided to name her baby Aegon. My other thought was that perhaps because D&D decided to scrap the Aegon plotline, using Aegon as Jon's Targ name might be a lazy way of combining plotlines/a nod to the Aegon plotline they cut.
