AGOT, Tyrion II (Show Notes)

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast, 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 BryndenBlowFish. 

And I’m your other host, Emmett better known as PoorQuentyn. 

Welcome to our fourteenth episode of the Not A Cast entitled: “My Mind is My Weapon: An Analysis of AGOT, Tyrion II,” in which Jon and Tyrion talk about how life is unfair. This episode is brought to you all by our Lords Commander Mark N, Timothy W and Hayden J. Thank you, gentlemen!

Emmett intro Aziz

• thanks/Who I am/where to find me
• Got to use my recently re-discovered very old copy of AGoT
• It contains some funny “differences”
  • The appendix is pre: GRRM deciding on Rhaenyra and Aegon II’s ages. Back then they were only a year apart in age. Officially, it’s now a decade.
  • Every spelling of Vhagar is Vhaghar

Spoiler warning: All published books - 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, and TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show, anything and everything!

Question(s) of the week. As we said last week, for those of you who contribute to our patreon, (and thank you very much to all of you that do!), those who contribute $10 or more a month get the opportunity to ask us a question.

Our first question comes from our newest Lord Commander Hayden J who asks:

I once read a theory that Rohanne Webber conceived a child by Dunk at a later time in the D&E timeline, when she's married to the Lord of Casterly Rock. This child is hidden away and becomes a kennel master to the Lannisters before saving his half-brother's live and giving rise to house Clegane.

So, aside from Hodor, Brienne and the Cleganes, does Dunk have any other living descendants in ASOIAF?

Top 5 most likely to be Dunk’s descendants:

(GRRM has confirmed they exist, but no specifics)

• Brienne - “thick as a castle wall” x2, Dunk’s shield, GRRM almost confirmed
• Hodor - Bran’s vision, timeline match
• Grenn - “thick as a castle wall”, “aurochs” nickname 
• Small Paul - “thick as a castle wall”
• Cleganes - size only?

Our final question comes from Lady Emilee A, one of our Sworn Sword patrons, and it’s a good one! 

Which scene from Season 6 or 7 are you most looking forward to reading in TWOW / ADOS and why?

Synopsis

“The North went on forever.” And so it does in Tyrion’s second chapter in AGOT. Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, Benjen Stark, Ghost and two Lannister guardsmen are on their way up to the Wall from Winterfell. As they progressed north and north of Winterfell, the air grew colder, quieter. You see, the North altogether is both the largest of the Seven Kingdoms and yet also has the lowest population density. Tyrion takes this in as he takes in all things.

He also takes a keen interest in his surroundings. The kingsroad was their guide to Castle Black, and at first it was well-trafficked with farms, holdfasts and inns along the road, but as they journeyed north and the grew into a dense wood (known as the Wolfwood) and then rising mountains, it became something a bit more. In the woods, Tyrion and the company heard wolves howling in the distance. 

One night they stayed at a holdfast in the wood and were joined by Yoren, a Night’s Watch recruiter and his quote-unquote “volunteers.” Rapers. They chose the Night’s Watch over castration. Tyrion feels sorry for Jon, knowing that the boy would soon have these less-than-stellar individuals as his sworn brothers. 

The weather grows colder and colder while the ride grows more difficult. Tyrion finds conversation with Benjen Stark difficult, but when the First Ranger offers Tyrion a warm cloak, thinking that the dwarf will decline it, Tyrion accepts it. 

The Lannisters never declined, graciously or otherwise. The Lannisters took what was offered, Tyrion thinks.

On the eighteenth day of their journey, they set camp in the wolfswood, and there Tyrion settles under his cloak with a book to read. The book is about the properties of dragon bones and their uses. Tyrion always had a fascination with dragons. He recalls a time when he visited the Red Keep and sought out the dragon skulls. He expected them to be impressive, but he didn’t expect to find them beautiful. Nineteen skulls in total remained at the Red Keep. His fascination was magnified when he saw the three largest: Vhagar, Meraxes and Balerion the Black: the dragons of Aegon the Conqueror and his sister wives who were instrumental in the Targaryens winning a kingdom for themselves. These skulls were so large that they could swallow an aurochs or hairy mammoth whole.

Tyrion then considers the history behind the dragons and the Field of Fire that ended the Gardener Kings of the Reach and forced King Loren of the Rock to abdicate his kingship. He recalls in precise detail the number of soldiers each army had, their tactics, the location of the battlefield and then finally how the Targaryens used all three of their dragons to end the battle, killing some four thousand Reach and Westermen in the battle.

And then Jon arrives, asking Tyrion why he reads so much. Tyrion asks Jon to tell him what he sees. Jon is suspicious, but then Tyrion tells Jon that he’s a bastard -- a fortunate bastard to be born the son of Lord Tywin Lannister of Casterly Rock. He then tells Jon why he reads so much:

My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind … and a mind needs books a sworn needs a whetstone, if it’s to keep its edge.

Jon understands and then asks Tyrion what he’s reading about. “Dragons,” Tyrion replies. “What good is that?” Jon asks. “The dragons are all dead.” “So they say. Sad isn’t it. When I was your age, I used to dream of having a dragon of my own.”

Jon remains suspicious, and then Tyrion proceeds to tell Jon that he used to start fires in the bowels of Casterly Rock and stare at the flames for hours, pretending they were dragonfire. Sometimes, he’d imagine his father Tywin burning (Foreshadowing alert!) and sometimes his sister Cersei.

Jon is horrified. Tyrion begins taunting Jon, telling Jon that he’s sure the boy has had similar dreams. “No! I wouldn’t” Jon exclaims. Tyrion then twists the knife, telling Jon about how Catelyn’s treatment of him was like her treatment of one of her own. And Robb. Robb liked Jon, because the heir to Winterfell would get Winterfell while Jon headed off to the Night’s Watch. 

Jon grows angry. The Night’s Watch is a noble calling, he yells. But Tyrion tells Jon he’s too smart to believe that. All those rapers that are now a part of the Night’s Watch. They’re your brothers, Jon. But it’s okay, you’ll freeze your balls off, and that’s fine. You can’t breed anyways: the Night’s Watch way.

Jon is now screaming at Tyrion to stop. Tyrion realizes he might have taken his teasing too far, and steps towards Jon, but then Ghost appears out of nowhere and jumps him. Tyrion falls to the ground, and is genuinely afraid of what the direwolf will do. He asks Jon to help him. Jon tells him to ask nicely. Tyrion swallows his pride and asks Jon for help. And Jon tells Ghost to get down. 

Why did he attack me? Tyrion asks

Maybe he thought you were a grumpkin.

Tyrion bursts into laughter, and Tyrion shares his skin of wine with Jon. The bastard boy comes to realize that Tyrion is right about the Night’s Watch and the type of brothers he’ll have there, and Tyrion compliments Jon’s perceptive abilities. 

Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.

They return to camp, enjoy a bowl of squirrel stew, black bread and cheese. Tyrion shares his wineskin with everyone there, and then settles in to rest in the shelter his men made for him. The last thing he sees is Jon Snow staring deep into the flames of the campfire. Tyrion smiles sadly and goes to sleep.

Depth

Another character-centric roadtrip chapter, but in many respects it’s the opposite of Eddard II

• North rather than south, back to the world of the Prologue
  • The north went on forever. Tyrion Lannister knew the maps as well as anyone, but a fortnight on the wild track that passed for the kingsroad up here had brought home the lesson that the map was one thing and the land quite another.
    
    
• Away from the intrigue and hustle-bustle of court rather than toward 
  • They had left Winterfell on the same day as the king, amidst all the commotion of the royal departure, riding out to the sound of men shouting and horses snorting, to the rattle of wagons and the groaning of the queen’s huge wheelhouse, as a light snow flurried about them. The kingsroad was just beyond the sprawl of castle and town. There the banners and the wagons and the columns of knights and freeriders turned south, taking the tumult with them, while Tyrion turned north with Benjen Stark and his nephew.
    
    It had grown colder after that, and far more quiet.
  • This perhaps sets up Winterfell as a narrative center, everyone is leaving the castle, but major climactic moments will come at Winterfell, ones we’ve already seen in later books, and ones yet to come in unpublished books.
• Tolkienesque nature (“curious fellowship,” nine of them counting Ghost) rather than “affairs of state"
  • West of the road were flint hills, grey and rugged, with tall watchtowers on their stony summits. To the east the land was lower, the ground flattening to a rolling plain that stretched away as far as the eye could see. Stone bridges spanned swift, narrow rivers, while small farms spread in rings around  holdfasts walled in wood and stone. The road was well trafficked, and at night for their comfort there were rude inns to be found.
    
    Three days ride from Winterfell, however, the farmland gave way to dense wood, and the kingsroad grew lonely. The flint hills rose higher and wilder with each passing mile, until by the fifth day they had turned into mountains, cold blue-grey giants with jagged promontories and snow on their shoulders. When the wind blew from the north, long plumes of ice crystals flew from the high peaks like banners.  [In contrast to the king’s banners--this is ice’s royal domain]
  • There’s always a bit of doubt when a human calls the banners. But winter’s vassals always obey.

With the mountains a wall to the west, the road veered north by northeast through the wood, a forest of oak and evergreen and black brier that seemed older and darker than any Tyrion had ever seen. “The wolfswood,” Benjen Stark called it, and indeed their nights came alive with the howls of distant packs, and some not so distant.

• TWOIAF tells us that House Blackwood may have originated in the North, that perhaps the Starks won an ancient conflict for primacy against them, and that the Wolfswood was once called the Blackwood. This seems very likely to be true, and this quote backs it up. Old and dark.
  
  
• Strangers getting in touch rather than old friends 
  • “Why do you read so much?”
    
    Tyrion looked up at the sound of the voice. Jon Snow was standing a few feet away, regarding him curiously. He closed the book on a finger and said, “Look at me and tell me what you see.”
    
    The boy looked at him suspiciously. “Is this some kind of trick? I see you. Tyrion Lannister.”
    
    Tyrion sighed. “You are remarkably polite for a bastard, Snow. What you see is a dwarf. You are what, twelve?”
    
    “Fourteen,” the boy said.
    
    
• Outcasts rather than insiders
  • Jon Snow was staring at him, a look equal parts horror and fascination. Tyrion guffawed. “Don’t look at me that way, bastard. I know your secret. You’ve dreamt the same kind of dreams.”
    
    “No,” Jon Snow said, horrified. “I wouldn’t . . . “
    
    “No? Never?” Tyrion raised an eyebrow. “Well, no doubt the Starks have been terribly good to you. I’m certain Lady Stark treats you as if you were one of her own. And your brother Robb, he’s always been kind, and why not? He gets Winterfell and you get the Wall. And your father . . . he must have good reasons for packing you off to the Night’s Watch . . . ”
    
    
• Joined by Yoren and his rapist charges rather than Renly and Barristan
• this friendship will likely come up huge later.
• Jon and Tyrion having so much in common is also fodder for Tyrion Targaryen.. Tyrion refers to himself as a bastard, Tyrion refers to himself staring into the flames then sees Jon do it, which hearkens to Aerys, who was obviously quite obsessed with fire. If Tyrion is Aerys’ son, then Jon is his nephew
• More likely though, as with all Tyrion and dragon related foreshadowing, Jon and Tyrion being friendly will probably be helpful if not crucial for bringing Jon and Dany’s factions together.

But there are also significant parallels between the chapters

• Fire-dragon imagery
• Family loyalties 
• Violent anger
• How one serves the family and the realm
• Ugly truths of official institutions
  
  

Importance of reading tied to metaphysical endgame

Jon getting mentored, neither for the first nor last time

Bond between Jon and Tyrion building on Jon I

Contrast with Benjen

Likes/Dislikes

Like: Tyrion’s “my mind is my weapon” monologue, the dragon-skull flashback, the range of emotions he goes through regarding Jon (the guilt, crushing out his humiliation, etc.) 

Dislike: We don’t get much time with Benjen Stark, which does somewhat limit the emotional effectiveness of his disappearance

Likes: Love that half of this chapter occurs in Tyrion’s head as he thinks through dragons, the histories, Aegon’s Conquest: it’s showing us that Tyrion is intelligent and a thinker, rather than just telling us that Tyrion is smart. Like how Tyrion consistently calls Jon to evaluate the Night’s Watch more objectively and put away his illusions about what he’s getting himself into.

Dislikes: My favorite scene from GoT is the scene between Ned and Jon on the kingsroad where Ned tells Jon, “We’ll talk about your mother. I promise.” Not a dislike from this chapter, but I love this invention by the showrunners and would have loved to see it on-page.

Likes:  A lot of chapters go a bit like this:

• Current timeline Worldbuilding
• History Worldbuilding
• Character growth/plot advancement
• And they are in that order, quite often. I really like it as a format.
• Though sometimes this pattern plays out over the span of a few chapters instead of one. A good example of this is Davos at White Harbor. It starts with teaching us about what White Harbor is like, then the history of White Harbor and the Wolf’s Den, then he leaves his cell and meets Lord Wyman in secret, and the plot takes a huge leap forward, or at least, sets up to.
• The major difference here is that he almost always relates the history to the current location. But here… there’s no Northern history, none of that stuff about the Blackwoods or any lore about the Others. Tyrion is travelling north, freezing his butt off, but he’s thinking about dragons and dragon skulls and the Field of Fire. 
• That’s Ice and Fire right there, folks.

Dislikes: Most of GRRM’s groundwork in this chapter, the history etc stood the test of time. He built it well. But he was still feeling a few things out, and a few details don’t work. The name “Aegon Dragonlord” instead of Aegon the Conqueror is used here, and it’s the only time that phrase appears. It’s a bit off, and so is the phrase “the Lannisters took what was offered.” That’s not a phrase you’d expect to be associated with the richest family in Westeros, imo.

Also very much agree re: Benjen. And this chapter was fairly short. I don’t mind that it was short, but this would’ve been a perfect thing to expand on. 

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Benjen Stark emerged from the shelter he shared with his nephew. "There you are. Jon, damn it, don't go off like that by yourself. I thought the Others had gotten you."

• No you, Benjen.

Tyrion as dragonrider? He had not thought to find them beautiful and “When I was your age, I used to dream of having a dragon of my own.”

Whoever his mother had been, she had left little of herself in her son is a brilliantly ironic line given R+L=J.

• Rhaegar had a solemn face, but people think of Ned’s solemn face instead. Love it.

Dragon skulls watching people

Tyrion

When he had moved away, Tyrion could have sworn that the beast's empty eye sockets had watched him go.

Eddard

"Aerys was dead on the floor, drowned in his own blood. His dragon skulls stared down from the walls ... I rode the length of the hall in silence, between the long rows of dragon skulls. It felt as though they were watching me, somehow.”

Dany

The polished skulls of the last dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne room while the Kingslayer opened Father's throat with a golden sword.

HoTU: The skulls of dead dragons looked down from its walls. 

Arya

"It's dead," she said aloud. "It's just a skull, it can't hurt me." Yet somehow the monster seemed to know she was there. She could feel its empty eyes watching her through the gloom, and there was something in that dim, cavernous room that did not love her.

Barristan:

“Yet I served for a time in King's Landing in the days when King Aerys sat the Iron Throne, and walked beneath the dragonskulls that looked down from the walls of his throne room."

An interesting point is the notion that Meraxes is larger than Vhagar. Reason being, Meraxes died young, in 10 AC, at most about 90 years old, probably more like 50-60. Since dragons never stop growing, this implies that Meraxes was huge, because Vhagar lived to be 181, but never grew as large as Meraxes. Good chance, had Meraxes grown much older, that she would’ve grown larger than even Balerion, who lived to be around 200.

The dragons are named for Valryian gods, a topic we know very little about. I hope we get something in Fire and Blood. One of the skulls is said to be 3000 years old! The dragon itself may have been born 3200 years ago, if Balerion’s lifespan was typical anyway. To put that in real world terms, 3200 years ago on earth was the tail end of the Bronze age, right around the time of the Trojan War.

That makes it older than just about any other artifact or relic in Westeros, with exceptions like Dawn and many of the oldest castles. The Doom was only about 400 years ago. So the Targaryens brought the skull with them when they left Valyria (possibly some of the others were brought as well). 3000 years is long enough that the skull may predate House Targaryen itself. 

Theory

The Field of Fire: past and future

One of the many, many reasons we invited Aziz to come on today was to talk about a major event that occurs, well, doesn’t exactly “occur” in this chapter but is really expounded upon in this chapter in Tyrion’s memory of history, and that is the Field of Fire. So, I sort of skimmed over it in the summary, but now is the time for some depth. We get a pretty great summary by Tyrion here in AGOT, but TWOIAF greatly expands our understanding of the event So give us a little background to the Field of Fire, the events, the kings/commanders and the stakes

The battle itself: what were Aegon, Visenya and Rhaenys thinking? What were Lorne and Meryn thinking? What happened? What was the decisive point of the battle?

The outcome: The Lannisters become Lords of Casterly Rock/Wardens of the West, House Meryn is destroyed, up cometh Tyrell.

Will the Field of Fire be repeated when Dany comes to Westeros with her dragons in TWOW/ADOS? C.f. the Loot Train Battle from GoT, S07.

• One of the reasons I’m so fascinated by the history of ASOIAF is that I’m a big fan of history in general. But GRRM is a big proponent of history repeating itself, and of using historical events as foreshadowing for events in ASOIAF. Tolkien’s middle earth is more developed than ASOIAF is… I’ll admit that despite being a much bigger fan of GRRM. I loved the Silmarillion but TWOIAF has a lot more to do with the plot of ASOIAF than the Silmarillion does with LotR.
• So digging deep on these things isn’t just about geeking out over awesome worldbuilding, even though that’s more than enough reason. It’s about foreshadowing and thickening the plot. Especially in these early chapters! since GRRM originally planned this series to be 3 books, he was more aggressive with this approach early on. The historical topics raised early on in the story are among the most important. So beyond the idea of the event repeating itself, which is huge, the impact on the characters will probably be even huger, and more worth reading about. 
• The Field of Fire at a high level is Lannister (and Gardener) vs. Targaryen. A hidden piece of foreshadowing here is the internal struggle Tyrion will feel assuming he is fighting for Dany vs. his own family. This was a big point of discussion for us at HoW during our S7 coverage, as it’s one of those things we can be reasonably sure will happen in the books too.

Conclusion

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