I love when Preston attempts to explain something using grrm and real life references and Carmine just refutes it with some random lil detail he's remembered
I think that word on this island of Rhoyne might be 'sunstone.' Which may have been an early version of Sunspear, Starfall, or what eventually became the Stepstones (either in concept or just in name)
Yeah I'm pretty sure it says Sunstone, which is an island in the stepstones now. But is that supposed to be a little wall going through the Red mountains, or just the border between Dorn and the rest of Westeros?
Location of Sunspear being named Ironport (presumably under House Yronwood) makes the capital of the Island of Rhoyne being named Sunstone likelier as the place House Martell would be based in.
That dotted line between Dorne and the Reach suggests that Dorne is a separate country at the time, so maybe the Dornish and the Rhoynar were two separate ideas that he combined lated
@@tierfreund780 Fallstar ... the early version of Starfall (and House Dayne and Dawn and all the stuff that comes with it). That would make a lot of sense.
Seems like Sunstone to me. Probably a prototypical version of Sunspear. He was probably going to put the positive aspects of Dorne (more rights to bastards, gender equality, sexual liberation etc) in the Rhoyne island while Dorne, ruled from Ironport (presumably by House Yronwood) would be the guerilla fighter, poisoner kingdom that resisted the Targaryens.
OK, as for Ned's life in Eerie, there is this small story about the food fight Robert and Ned had when they were squires. It's only a paragraph from GOT, but it gives you the impression of innocence and happiness. Ned and Robert experienced there. Also, Robert mentions being a brat, and how Jon Arryn was worried about him growing unruly.
@@streblaverba1343 well there are, or atleast were, people who refered to themselves as Rhenish in germany. These days it's not common to call oneself after such local ethnicities, there aren't many germans that call themselves Frisians anymore either. Back in the day it was not uncommon to call oneself or others "people of the river" if they lived by a large river. And the name of most rivers is just the word "river" in the local languange. So it does kinda make sense that the Rhoynar called the Rhoyn just "river" in old "rhoynish" and called themselves or were called by others "people of the rhoyn (river)" or just "Rhoyn(river) people".
@@jonttopia This relates to the historical problem where rivers and mountains are often used as borders, but peoples usually straddle rivers and live within mountain valleys….leading to so many disputes and separatist movements.
I thought so as well but it could be that it was going to be called the Rhoyne ocean instead of river and it still makes just as much sense for water sorcerers to live on an island surrounded by water then it does for them to live along a long river.....
My interpretation of why the Rhoyne was the island is this: Grrm probably hardly thought about Essos in the early drafts. He has to have thought about the locations Daenerys is, but besides that, he might not have devoted any time to thinking about Essos. Therefore, whatever he had in mind for these 'Water Magic people' he just had them be a little island off westeros. Essos was left in-determined. In his original draft, Daenerys coming back to Westeros seems to have been planned MUCH sooner. So Grrm seems to have thought that Essos didnt need fleshing, because Dany was coming back by book 2 (since it was originally a triology). But the tale grew in the telling, and he needed things to put in Essos, and decided the Rhoyne would work better there and take up alot of space on Essos.
dany begins in pentos and marches through most of essos, but we don't hear of the flatlands which she passed by , or the rhoyne river. the massive, like missipi like river that is impressive, or any of the abandoned rhoyne cities which are so creepy . if grrm had considered essos early on we would have dany being like oh yeah the mega cool river. or being like that cool abandoned city we passed through
It's possible the Targaryen kings didn't call themselves "king of the valyrians" because there are "valyrians" in Essos that aren't part of the kingdom. Maybe they didn't want beef with Volantis or something like that.
On the question of titles, Aegon's conquest is obviously a parallell to William the Conqueror. And historically, there was also this somewhat confused duality of Norman elitism vs emphasising continuity with previous Anglo Saxon kings. Even though William is known as a Conqueror, the whole deathbed heir swap story to give the conquest a sense of legitimacy was essential. But on the flipside, when William 1 died, the eldest son Richard inherited Normandy, not England which went to the second in line William II, because it was seen as more important. In terms of titles the King of England, and the Duke of Normandy + other minor titles in north France were often kept seperate. There's a lot of reasons for William doing that which dont apply to Aegon (eg it was important to establish the king of France had no power over England despite William being the Duke Normandy in theory being his feudal vassell)... but details aside, omitting Valyrianness from official titles in Westerosi context, whilst also maintaining the foreign-ancestry supremacy mindset, does fit with the high-level history its based off.
Valyria also being a Rome parallel probably also plays a role, since they didn't have kings. Also Aegon calling himself the king of Valyria probably wouldn't have gone over well with Volantis and the other free cities.
Actually it makes no sense. He should have used an emperor title or in invented one for himself like how qin Chinese dynasty did. Much better than stripping kings of there kingly titles
People are always big on the grayscale idea, but I've always been opposed to grayscale being a major factor. I've always felt that it's only there to give JonCon a sense of urgency, to make him make more hasty decisions. I'm opposed to it being a big part of the story not because of the show, but because it just doesn't spread that quickly. JonCon caught it early on in ADWD, and he's only finally getting light symptoms. How can it possibly be a major factor for the rest of the series? How could he possibly spread it to many different people unless he goes about wiping his hand on everyone intentionally? I'm just not convinced that it fits in the time span of the remainder of the series unless there's a major time skip.
The only thing that makes me question whether it's going to be important is the fact that Greyscale seems to be a very weird disease. And by weird, I mean Weir as in “weirwood”. It's said that the decease causes madness on those who get it. And the few people that we know they have it (Shireen) seem to get prophetic dreams (which can be madness-inducing) Maybe JonCon starts getting full crazy and stuff and makes very stupid decisions.
@@johncribbin95 ah, right. That could make sense as a warning about Dany I guess? Or a warning about greyscale? I always just read it as her not being comfortable on dragonstone, so it's literally just a nightmare. But I hadn't thought about if someone was visiting Shireen's mind, probably the same person that messes with patchface's mind.
I think that Targaryens didn't included "King of Valyrians" in their title simply because they didn't rule over valyrians. All of Free Cities are well... Free. Same with Tolos, Mantarys and Elyria.
Looking at the map, something interesting that I see is there seems to be two rivers making the entrance to doren small in the mountains. Between where those rivers end there’s a series of dotted lines. Kinda seems like a series of forts like exist at the wall… idk they aren’t named but it’s one of the only spots there is a dotted line other than the kings road and the wall.
In cannon, the Targs may have added the title of "King of the Rhoynar" the same way they called their domain "the Seven Kingdoms" even though they only ruled six, to assert their claim over Dorn.
On "Why not King of Valyrians?" - I assumed it's because most (if not all) of the Rhoynar emigrated to Westeros, same as most Andals, while the Valyrians are still widespread all over Essos, and the King on the Iron Throne naming himself "King of Valyrians" would cause worry if not outright hostility in other post-Valyria realms like Volantis, Lys, Pentos, Mantarys etc.
I bet money starfall was going to be on the rhoyne island along with Oldtown as you suggest and possibly the Hightower’s though it would still make sense for the Hightower’s to be on the mainland as well. But if I was going to have an island full of water sorcerers and have all my cool stuff on the island then I would probably have my cool sword dawn on the island as well and might as well make the island extra special by having it be the place where the “star fell” idk thought but it is fun to speculate on what could have been so thank you for the videos!!
Anyone else wondering about those straight dotted lines running through the Dornish mountains? They run west to east between the rivers where Blackmont and Skyreach are located on the current maps.
Rhoyne is clearly in the place of the Arbor. It might be that the thought process is that he had the name and the island there, but decided to switch it around. Tolkien did this a lot with names, I think Finrod was originally just named Felagund and his father was Finrod. Orodreth was his son, not his brother and so on. Anyway, I think the Rhoynar are a reference that multiple parts of Westeros were inhabited at different times, the Rhoynar being the latest to make Westeros their home. There isn't really a clear divide, as First men and Andal cultures mixed when the Andals invaded, it wasn't that the First men fled North. Multiple First men houses or at least houses who follow their customs have lingered in the South. Raventree hall is a prime example. It is kind of a parallel to how the Nordics and the Sami came to Fennoscandia. The narrative is that the Sami came first and were driven North by the Nordic and Finnic peoples. But modern research suggests that the peoples arrived at around the same time but inhabited different parts so that there was no overlap. The Sami were not expelled and driven to the North, but rather spread to the North because it was suitable for their way of life.
Canonical Bear Island exists in the Bay of Ice but some now deleted Island west of the Stony Shore is named as Bear Island instead of the one further north (this more southern location would make the backstory of Ironborn rule logistically easier).
I always thought the arbor felt more important than it ever should have and now I wonder if it was suppose to play a bigger part than it does in the books
Good pull, I've long thought it was based on Château de Coucy which had the tallest Donjon (keep) in France. It's a major theme of Barbara Tuchman's book A Distant Mirror which he said he read before working on the book.
I find it odd that there are not more cases of greyscale already on the continent with the amount of ship travel in between Westeros and Essos. I get if it’s spreading now for the plot but it should have already spread throughout the population of the planet for those who are affected by it.
I wonder if the Rhoynar were supposed to be the ones that built all those ancient, weird, smooth, oily black stone constructions. Isn't the hightower base made out of that? So there would be hints that the Rhoynar were an ancient super advanced civilization that receeded from the rest of Westeros after some catastrophe.
And perhaps also all the other weirdly advanced buildings that may preceed first men, like the wall, Storms end and those anachronistic towers that were round even though first men built square towers or something.
So Jon Arryn was original at the ToJ? Could that have anything to do with the birth of a baby who is also named Jon? So Howland was created to be the knower of the ToJ secrets.. I wonder why Grrm didn’t just add Howland to Ned and Jon A, but rather replaced Jon Arryn with Howland?
IMO it's just because it makes more sense for Jon Arryn to stay in kings landing with Robert. It is definitely the better move politically, if Jon Arryn goes with Ned that leaves Robert surrounded by Lannisters. One of them being Tywin, it would be stupid to leave him exposed literally right after successfully pulling off a rebellion.
He also likely just didn't want another prominent person who knew the full story. That would raise questions about whether Lysa (and by extension Littlefinger) also knew the truth, and it would cast shade on Arryn as a supposedly honorable and loyal man if he was keeping a Targ baby secret from the king he practically raised as a son. Maybe that tugged the narrative in a direction he didn't want, although it would be an interesting concept.
@@TheDelinear Well, Ned kept it all secret from his Tully wife, why couldnt Jon Arryn? Arryn is dead in book 1 already, so it immediatley negates the number of people who know the full story. The only reasons I can come up with is this: 1. Jon Arryn wouldnt have chosen to keep Jon Targaryen a secret, because he is anti-targaryen, and supports Robert. Arguably, the main reason Ned had to keep Jon Targ a secret is because he is Lyannas son - but that wouldnt compell Jon Arryn. 2. Or, if keeping Jon Targaryen a secret IS within Jon Arryns character, then perhaps it would have made more sense for Jon Arryn to adopt baby Jon, and raise him in the Vale. Jon Arryn is a more senior established lord who had no heirs. Where as Ned is like 20, and only newly made Lord, with no experience ruling his hold. Therefore, it wouldnt make sense to give baby Jon to Ned rather than Jon Arryn. So, Grrm needed Ned to have to be the one to adopt Jon Snow. 3. Maybe Grrm just thought its more emotional and impactful is Ned is the only one in the world to know this secret, rather than it being practical narrative reasons about how many people know. Of course, Grrm seems to think that at least one other person needs to know, so he kept Howland, but reduced the number in any other way he could, by having everyone else present at the ToJ either edited out of the narrative, or die.
The parallels between Rhoyne and Numenor are intriguing in what it could mean for the story going forward. The story of Numenor in LOTR is one of restoration, through Aragorn. Is a Rhoynish restoration coming too? Dornish Master Plan confirmed?
maybe they don't say "King of the Valyrians" because there's actually more valyrians out there we just don't know about but they do that will become relevant later. Also the percentage of valyrian blood in any modern Targ or Blackfyre has to be pretty small at this point.
If George wanted, he could just rewrite the entire series because of how much stuff and how many ideas he's cut. There's probably more Ice and Fire information in this library than there was actual information in the entirety of the Warren Commission.
I wonder if the idea of a plague was because George, at one point or another, wanted to mirror the political situation in Europe following the Black Death. It basically spelled the end of serfdom and greatly decreased the influence of the feudal system at large due to the sudden lack of workers. It also lead to a rise in religious fundamentalismas people began freaking out over everyone dying (rightly so) but also led to the rise of new anti-Catholic trains of religious thought, culminating in the Protestant Reformation. And considering George is a big anti-feudalistic writer and this whole series is a critique of that style of governance, having war and plague crush the population of Westeros is a great way to bring about reformation to the Seven Kingdoms. He does rip off European history quite a bit so it's not far fetched.
Also crackpot theory here on this Royne island like Numenor, if it was essentially the cultural focal point with the Citadel, the best wine, oldtown and maybe the hightower (a giant lighthouse would make more sense on an island than miles inland of the mainland anyway) then maybe these Roynish are a mystery race of people that are unaccounted for in the main story. Could be that originally George gave them the name of Roynar before wanting to make them more obscure and leaving then unnamed. But where battle isle came from, the suspiciously valyrian looking daynes, maybe Hightowers, and where ever the iron men came from was from this unnamed race who were themselves dragon riders. There is a bunch of evidence of people coming to westeros from the east, particularly with the iron men. Course the iron men don't look valyrian so maybe they were a separate race or themselves thralls of the unnamed race. Just a thought
Preston, William the Conqueror didn't name England Normandy, and while there may be some examples of how the elite (not the ruling dynasty, but a whole elite class) rebamed a territory (normandy, probably also the Rus in Russia, or the Magyars, the Franks, the Alamans, etc), rarely does a country change its name due to a change in ruling dynasty.
No, there are sources like the Bavarian Geographer putting Rus in Ukraine earlier than the Vikings' arrival to the land. Unless you mean the territory of old Finnic tribes around Moscow being named Russia? Better example would be Bulgaria.
@@ZoomReverseFlash Or any of the other examples I gave. Although then again, other places did not get the same treatment. While a part of Italy got renamed Lombardia, Italy itself is still called Italy (itself an example of this very phenomenon), and while the king of the Visigoths was called Rex Visigothorum, his realm was consistently called Hispania. No king of the Visigoths was ever called Rex Hispaniae, probably because there was still a vague idea that hispanoromans living under him, while firmly under his rule, were spiritually under the authority of the Emperor of the Romans back in Constantinople. Laws were emitted for Goths and Romans separately. In any case, I didn't know about the Bavarian Geographer, I'll look into it.
so in agot, dany crosses the rhoyne and we don't hear about it, right? (then again, weeks and months pass within and between chapters for dany at that point, so its maybe understandable that a river fording is not mentioned...) maybe grrm hadn't settled exactly where the rhoyne was/what it was/etc. by that point?
Love ya big P! ❤ I know I say that all the time but I really do. You are my favorite UA-camr and the only one I have ever supported on Patreon. Keep up the great work!!!
Surprised you seem to be the only one to make this connection. Most of the comments say Sunstone. But even Preston was saying “F” and then mentioned Oldtown and Hightower but didn’t seem to make the jump.
> Queen of England is still Queen of England England is her Westeros there. But Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (which is kinda her part of Valyria-Germany) isn't really mentioned in her title. P.S.: and I love how people keep forgetting Umbridge isn't around anymore, and Jimmy McNulty is now the King.
Queen of England (well, she did pass, it is King now) is not in fact "Queen of England". She was the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (plus others like Canada). "Queen of England" was not included in any of her official titles.
@@gokbay3057 Yep, they switched from "By the Grace of God, Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc." to "by the Grace of God Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc." in 1707. (Having France there is fun by the way) Still was better than the title of some Habsburg that would list every barn he owns.
I understand not everyone can afford expensive phones or cameras so if you go to the library either remember the words in the pics and type them out when you post or take more zoomed in pics so the words are clear to go along with your zoomed out pics
1. Including Rhoynar must be some Valyrian trauma from letting the Rhoynish flee with Nymeria. 2. This map actually makes a lot of sense in pointing out Rhoynar. They make the best booze!
They still kinda do canonically. Arbor Gold is considered better than Dornish Red but Dornish Red is still the second most important/popular type of wine in Westeros.
It's super weird that the King of Westeros is also called King of the Rhoynar now that I think about it. By the time the Dornish were annexed to the other Kingdoms the Rhoynar had already been interbreeding with the Dornish for a long time. Nowadays in the story there is no one identifying themselves as "Rhoynish", not even the Orphans of the Greenblood who are the closest we have to a traditional Rhoynish society. So why not call it King of the Andals, the First Men and the Dornish?
Carinhall was the country mansion of Herman Goering and the repository of the works of art he had stolen. What relevance this has I've no idea but it's certainly odd.
I think the Rhoyne Island is in the corner of the page like that because its a callout of a different location in the globe at a different scale entirely. That would explain why its graphically distinct.
I doubt that’s what George had in mind. The island still exists on the canon maps in the exact same size and shape, only it’s the Arbor now. Could be visually distinct because George added it at some other time after working on the rest of the map.
Definitely looks like “Sunstone” to me. What if that was the original location of the Hightower? Sunstone might make sense for a giant lighthouse (or Sunspear for that matter). Alternatively the “sun stone” might be the oily black stone base of the Hightower. Maybe it was originally envisioned as a meteor (a stone from the sun), kind of like the stone in the Bloodstone emperor story.
It says Sunstone I'm 95% sure on Rhoyne. If you compare the letters to other names we know for sure what they are then it's Sunstone. Or Funstone. Edit: Upon further examination I am 99% certain it's Sunstone. Look at the first S in sisters and the UN in run. Absolutely Sunstone
I can understand why one would think that as early scalpels were often obsidian in real like, but in GoT, whatever Sam is using is pretty shiny like metal.
It's such a fun scene though :(. The whole Grey Scale surgery is dumb story-wise, but the way they shot it, the acting, the practical effects, and the final cut to pie... Chef's kiss.
Woah woah woah! Did you say that in the original draft Tyrion did not have dwarfism!? I remember hearing all about the first draft but I don’t remember that bit! Can someone confirm?
The Queen of England is German but shes not the queen of Germany. 🤣 Claiming kingship over the Valyrians would imply that they want to assert kingship over essos and the free cities, which they don't.
I always interpreted Howland Reed about being less interested in Southron Ambitions and more in magic, aka he didn't agree with Robb going south. That being said, being a bannerman should include sending some men. Are there really no Crannogmen in Robbs army? I guess not, I think I even wondered back in my first read why there were none of them around.
I mean, they protect the approach to the North, so maybe it is accepted for them to stay back. Also, who would go into the swamps and tell them to follow their kings. Like the Mountain Clans, they are more loosely associated with the North. Basically indipendent.
@@lucawasserer These two things seem very counter-intuitive. If they are a mostly disorganised group who can't be effectively commanded to go south and are basically independent of the north, why would anyone trust them as the guardians of the passage to the north? That would be like using a wild lizard-lion as a guard dog - it's just as likely to bite you as it is your enemies. What's to stop this independent group throwing in with the Lannisters and letting them easily wander in and take the north while Robb's forces are away? Either way it doesn't make sense. Either they are as staunchly loyal as we're told, in which case it's weird they don't even send a small contingent south, or they're independent, in which case it's weird to leave them in such a position of power with no guaranteed way for Robb to get back into the north. It doesn't take _that_ many people to defend the neck (a tiny group of ironborn manage it and have to be removed by trickery rather than force), so I'm sure a few crannogmen to act as skirmishers for Robb's forces should have been possible.
I feel like there may be a bit too much thought put into the things named on the map and their relevance to the story. It may well be that George had some cool name ideas and just chucked them there. He planted some seeds, a lot of them grew in major way and Bay of Ice and Three Sisters just didn’t produce anything interesting
@espalier what their ethnicity is is irrelevant. It's who they rule over. The targarians rules over none of Valyria nor any significant number of Valyrians. If she proclaimed herself king of the Germans it would be silly at best.
Casually forgetting the half century where she was also queen of Canada, Australia, India and half of the entire planet. It's actually quite normal, historically, for dynasties to declare themselves rulers over places they're not in. Calling yourself king isn't about actually ruling, its about making a claim to a land. For example, when the kingdom of England was established it was actually a duchy of France, but it was so distant that the authority of the crown was hard to enforce there. Additionally, it was powerful enough that the English Royal family intermarried with the French one. This meant that centuries later both families had a claim to both lands, and to settle which land was whose they went to war for 100 years. At the time the Kings of France considered themselves rulers of England and the Kings of England called themselves Kings of France too. Basically the same situation you described. And for most of modern history, almost every noble family in Europe would be racing to lay claim to basically every country they could, hoping to make good on at least one of them. Only after they secured their claim through war or treaty could they move to their country and entrench themselves. That's why the last ruling dynasty of Italy was French, the previous Spanish dynasty was French and the current English Royal family is German, their real name being Saxe-Coburg. Ever wondered why certain House names exist in multiple languages (Eg. Bourbon, Borbón, Borbone, Bourbons)? This is the reason.
I'm sorry, forget my previous comment. While it is correct, I'm responding to an argument you didn't make as I misinterpreted you. You are correct, Preston is bring silly about Valyrians
@@greenberry6019 proclaiming yourself despot of places you have no hold, nor a chance of having any hold in, is a bad look. England stopped claiming France after they had not owned any of France for a long time. Lol
28:30 to be fair, the English monarchs didnt start claiming the french throne until like the early 1300s. Its a bit of a complicated situation, since the earliest successors of William 1 basically treated the english throne as a bank for their ducal squabbles in France, but it just comes to show that they didnt title themselves "King of England and France" immediately after the conquest. So I can imagine the Targaryens wanting to focus on Westeros instead of Valyria, a place that is basically a nuked wasteland anyway, and also signalling to the Lords of Westeros that they are ruling as one of them and not as foreigners from a land renowned for slavery etc. would relinquish their eastern expansion ambitions and focus on governing this place instead
The fact that Howland didn't send any men *and* doesn't seem to have had any real contact with Ned or his children is likely something that will be addressed in the future. I think there was probably a falling out between Howland and Ned after the ToJ.
That might explain the lack of contact, but not sending men when the banners are called is still incredibly weird. I mean even the Boltons sent men. And okay, that didn't work out great for the Starks either, but it's not like Roose knew the RW was a possibility at the start of the war (well, unless TTB sent him some vision). He was likely just doing what was expected because he had no choice.
@@TheDelinear Yes, it's weird that Howland didn't send any men, but it's also weird how no one in the story actually finds this odd. When Robb sends Galbart Glover and Maege Mormont to Howland with his will, it's never remarked upon how Howland has "betrayed" them or anything of that sort. He's still considered a close friend and ally. So maybe Ned and Howland had some kind of agreement about this? Maybe all of the crannogmen are needed in the Neck for some purpose?
Pretty sure Carmine purposely did not read it so Preston can it explain it to him/the audience. They've done podcast episodes where that wasn't the case and the discussion came off poorly.
Arundel is also a fairly famous medieval town with a castle in southern England. Also, the Vale is analogous with Wales. So that might be another slight connection. Also for Preston's point about the Queen of England (Great Britain and Northern Ireland). It's more like them still calling themselves Kings of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which is where the 'Windsor' family came from. Or hell, Kings of Hanover. Real world titles are very complicated. William the Conqueror wasn't the King of the Franks, even though he was a vassal of the King of the Franks and himself was a Frank (Norman). Going counter to this is the fact that the Kings of England and later Great Britain did claim to be Kings of France. So it can go both ways. Titles are often as much about asserting claims as much as being accurate descriptions of what you control. And they can often be vague, especially in the ancient world. And speaking of William, he was known as King of the English or England after his conquest but never King of the Normans, which he was Duke of Normandy or the Normans.
Proto-Oldtown probably was called Flintstone or Flintstown or something. There's something special with the Flints but there isn't enough evidence yet. Preston mentions in one of his Northern videos that the Flints are in 3 locations in the north and are thus perfectly positioned to watch it. If they are a really really old, first-men house AND have some sort of conspiracy happening, it does sound fairly likely that they were involved somehow in a proto-Oldtown.
Preston, the Targs are the kings of whoever lives in Westeros. And in Westeros there are First Men, Andals and Rhoynar. England is different, because there is a LAND, not a "RACE". But, it's true George expanded too much his "races" so now it's kinda ridiculous the title itself.
Most valyrians don't live in westeros. Most of them live in Lys and Volantis, maybe myr. So to say they are kings of all valyrians isn't true and is an empty boast. They are kings of all andals roynar and first men though.
28:00 - The Targs probably didnt call themselves 'Kings of Valyria' because ... they escaped Valyria, and they clearly didnt carry forward any Valyrian culutre (apart from incest, and dragon lore, but really that is a VERY small amount of culutre. They gave up slavery, for instance, which was the basis of Valyrian society). There are theoires that the Targaryens had a hand in the destruction of Valyria, so maybe they disliked Valyria, and wanted to leave it to fade into history. The Targaryens were said to be only a minor family in Valyria, so that may lend credence to the notion that they worked against Valyria, were not loyal, and were happy to turn their back on it once it fell.
@@ZoomReverseFlash They lived on Dragonstone, because that was already an established Valyrian go-between territory. They probably needed Dragonstone because of its volcano having something to do with the reproduction of dragons. They werent 'obsessed'. Aegon replaced Dragonstone with Kings landing as his main seat pretty quick, and KL remained as the central royal seat. Aside from dragon-keeping and sister-marriages (which is probably an aspect of dragon-keeping), Aegon was not identifiably Valyrian culturally in any way I can think of. There was no reason for him not to have slaves, or enslave some of the conquered population, but he did not do so. Valyrian Magic (and even just any knowledge about Valyria) is hardly present in Aegons generation, and seems to have faded immediately. Visenya may have known some magic secrets, but the family did not preserve them. The Targs also did not use Valyrian architecture in the construction of their holds, or Kings Landing, strangely. Nor did they even preserve the straight road building custom. Finally, as the ONLY dragonriders in the world, Aegon could have claimed to be the inheritor of all Valyria - meaning he had the legitimacy and the dragon-power, to reconquer all the Essosi territories once ruled by Valyria. But he didnt, the only place he did want to rule was the one place that Valyria never tried to conquer: Westeros. He was happy to let the legacy of Valyria crumble into smaller nations. All the evidence points to the idea that the early Targs were happy for the Valyria of old to die, and for all its knowledge to die with it, apart from dragons, which they alone possess. Which makes me realise that another way the Targ culture differs from Valyrian culture is that in Valyria, multiple families (perhaps most?) produced dragonriders, and all the dragonriders worked together on the imperial project. Aegon could have recreated this establishing, or explicating the custom of marrying the younger children exogamously, to create more dragon riding clans, recreating the structure of Valyria. But he did the opposite, which was to keep dragongenes as monopolised as possible, supporting an absolute monarchical sysem, which Valyria dosent seem to have been.
So there’s a 94 and 93 manuscript and the original outline? For a ‘gardeneder’ grrm seems to have been engaged in some serious architectural reworking.
Hello, does Dany ever specify lemons growing on the lemon tree or is it not mentioned whether or not the tree actually bore lemons? from what i recall the hints GRRM drops in the Arya and Mercy chapters are about lemons not lemon trees.
About Rhoyne, are we sure they didn't just name their new home after their river and people? And later Martin scrapped that to make it an intermarriage/bloodline thing with the Martells.
So 20:27 for the veil of arryn. Can it mean that there is something hidden john arryn. Like ned's father figure was just another big game of thrones player to get his line on the throne. Like he did something sus to start off this "iteration" for bran. And bran had to kill him off at the right time as well.
What if George’s original ending was to have an extremely abrupt plot twist such as somewhat revealing it’s all post nuclear apocalyptic craziness not fantasy which is why he can’t finish it. What if he never planned for it to be this in depth?
They don't actually mention England when talking about the British monarch. It's just the UK that's mentioned (and then all the other separate monarchies with coincidentally the same person).
Crannogmen are small poison blow dart sneaks...why WHY would Ned bring his tiny friend to fight kingsguard? Did he blow dart Arthur Dayne to save Ned? What else could he do? He spent time honing his magic on Isle of Faces...
1. Howland reed is MM. 1.5 i was an og fan of HS for HR but i change my mind it makes more sense. 2. So HR as MM has something to do with Sansa's plot line in the books. 3. HR married that donish noble lady a ton of hits at that. the reeds being the house of the green her house being purple. 4. Ned remembers HR as a good friend but his ex is now his wife.
🖐️ Fan who doesn't think Greyscale will be a major thing. It seems like greyscale moves slowly, and I don't think there's enough time for it to become a big thing when it moves so slow... Especially with everything else George has to tackle. I more expect that it will kill one key character, so maybe Jon Conn?
I love when Preston attempts to explain something using grrm and real life references and Carmine just refutes it with some random lil detail he's remembered
the power of remembering useless bullshit
😂 Preston: "The banners were called, man. The banners were called."
Enjoyable and interesting chat to listen along to as always, guys!
I think that word on this island of Rhoyne might be 'sunstone.' Which may have been an early version of Sunspear, Starfall, or what eventually became the Stepstones (either in concept or just in name)
I was actually confused by this. I’m looking at it on my little phone and to me it very clearly says “Sunstone.” Course now watch me be wrong
Yeah I'm pretty sure it says Sunstone, which is an island in the stepstones now. But is that supposed to be a little wall going through the Red mountains, or just the border between Dorn and the rest of Westeros?
Considering he wrote in all caps it has to be Sunstone yeah
Location of Sunspear being named Ironport (presumably under House Yronwood) makes the capital of the Island of Rhoyne being named Sunstone likelier as the place House Martell would be based in.
@@jsull81 Feels like a wall/fortification thing. But could be the border instead.
That dotted line between Dorne and the Reach suggests that Dorne is a separate country at the time, so maybe the Dornish and the Rhoynar were two separate ideas that he combined lated
The city there looks like Fallstar to me.
@@tierfreund780 Fallstar ... the early version of Starfall (and House Dayne and Dawn and all the stuff that comes with it). That would make a lot of sense.
Seems like Sunstone to me. Probably a prototypical version of Sunspear. He was probably going to put the positive aspects of Dorne (more rights to bastards, gender equality, sexual liberation etc) in the Rhoyne island while Dorne, ruled from Ironport (presumably by House Yronwood) would be the guerilla fighter, poisoner kingdom that resisted the Targaryens.
OK, as for Ned's life in Eerie, there is this small story about the food fight Robert and Ned had when they were squires. It's only a paragraph from GOT, but it gives you the impression of innocence and happiness. Ned and Robert experienced there. Also, Robert mentions being a brat, and how Jon Arryn was worried about him growing unruly.
Rhoyne being George's version of Numenor makes a lot of grand narrative things really interesting.
That is so weird that the Rhoyne was an island... I always assumed it was named after the Rhine, and was always a river in grrm's mind.
@@streblaverba1343 most of the world calls India, well, India
and that exonym was derived from the Indus river
@@streblaverba1343 well there are, or atleast were, people who refered to themselves as Rhenish in germany. These days it's not common to call oneself after such local ethnicities, there aren't many germans that call themselves Frisians anymore either. Back in the day it was not uncommon to call oneself or others "people of the river" if they lived by a large river. And the name of most rivers is just the word "river" in the local languange. So it does kinda make sense that the Rhoynar called the Rhoyn just "river" in old "rhoynish" and called themselves or were called by others "people of the rhoyn (river)" or just "Rhoyn(river) people".
@@jonttopia This relates to the historical problem where rivers and mountains are often used as borders, but peoples usually straddle rivers and live within mountain valleys….leading to so many disputes and separatist movements.
I thought so as well but it could be that it was going to be called the Rhoyne ocean instead of river and it still makes just as much sense for water sorcerers to live on an island surrounded by water then it does for them to live along a long river.....
Congolese people after... Congo river?
My interpretation of why the Rhoyne was the island is this: Grrm probably hardly thought about Essos in the early drafts. He has to have thought about the locations Daenerys is, but besides that, he might not have devoted any time to thinking about Essos. Therefore, whatever he had in mind for these 'Water Magic people' he just had them be a little island off westeros. Essos was left in-determined. In his original draft, Daenerys coming back to Westeros seems to have been planned MUCH sooner. So Grrm seems to have thought that Essos didnt need fleshing, because Dany was coming back by book 2 (since it was originally a triology). But the tale grew in the telling, and he needed things to put in Essos, and decided the Rhoyne would work better there and take up alot of space on Essos.
dany begins in pentos and marches through most of essos, but we don't hear of the flatlands which she passed by , or the rhoyne river. the massive, like missipi like river that is impressive, or any of the abandoned rhoyne cities which are so creepy . if grrm had considered essos early on we would have dany being like oh yeah the mega cool river. or being like that cool abandoned city we passed through
It's possible the Targaryen kings didn't call themselves "king of the valyrians" because there are "valyrians" in Essos that aren't part of the kingdom. Maybe they didn't want beef with Volantis or something like that.
On the question of titles, Aegon's conquest is obviously a parallell to William the Conqueror. And historically, there was also this somewhat confused duality of Norman elitism vs emphasising continuity with previous Anglo Saxon kings. Even though William is known as a Conqueror, the whole deathbed heir swap story to give the conquest a sense of legitimacy was essential. But on the flipside, when William 1 died, the eldest son Richard inherited Normandy, not England which went to the second in line William II, because it was seen as more important.
In terms of titles the King of England, and the Duke of Normandy + other minor titles in north France were often kept seperate. There's a lot of reasons for William doing that which dont apply to Aegon (eg it was important to establish the king of France had no power over England despite William being the Duke Normandy in theory being his feudal vassell)...
but details aside, omitting Valyrianness from official titles in Westerosi context, whilst also maintaining the foreign-ancestry supremacy mindset, does fit with the high-level history its based off.
Valyria also being a Rome parallel probably also plays a role, since they didn't have kings. Also Aegon calling himself the king of Valyria probably wouldn't have gone over well with Volantis and the other free cities.
Actually it makes no sense. He should have used an emperor title or in invented one for himself like how qin Chinese dynasty did. Much better than stripping kings of there kingly titles
Much like the Prince of Wales.
People are always big on the grayscale idea, but I've always been opposed to grayscale being a major factor. I've always felt that it's only there to give JonCon a sense of urgency, to make him make more hasty decisions.
I'm opposed to it being a big part of the story not because of the show, but because it just doesn't spread that quickly. JonCon caught it early on in ADWD, and he's only finally getting light symptoms. How can it possibly be a major factor for the rest of the series? How could he possibly spread it to many different people unless he goes about wiping his hand on everyone intentionally?
I'm just not convinced that it fits in the time span of the remainder of the series unless there's a major time skip.
Good points. There is at most a year left to the timeline and with winter, there will be little travel. It probably cannot go much further than KL.
The only thing that makes me question whether it's going to be important is the fact that Greyscale seems to be a very weird disease.
And by weird, I mean Weir as in “weirwood”.
It's said that the decease causes madness on those who get it. And the few people that we know they have it (Shireen) seem to get prophetic dreams (which can be madness-inducing)
Maybe JonCon starts getting full crazy and stuff and makes very stupid decisions.
@@aguglie441 does Shireen get visions? I don't remember that being mentioned at all, when is it brought up?
Shireen has nightmares in the Clash of Kings prologue that a dragon is coming to eat her
@@johncribbin95 ah, right. That could make sense as a warning about Dany I guess? Or a warning about greyscale?
I always just read it as her not being comfortable on dragonstone, so it's literally just a nightmare. But I hadn't thought about if someone was visiting Shireen's mind, probably the same person that messes with patchface's mind.
These are always so interesting. As a writer, it’s nice to know others make drastic changes too.
I think that Targaryens didn't included "King of Valyrians" in their title simply because they didn't rule over valyrians. All of Free Cities are well... Free. Same with Tolos, Mantarys and Elyria.
Also in the first draft, Allar Deem is secretly Darrio and comet is a volcryn.
Looking at the map, something interesting that I see is there seems to be two rivers making the entrance to doren small in the mountains. Between where those rivers end there’s a series of dotted lines. Kinda seems like a series of forts like exist at the wall… idk they aren’t named but it’s one of the only spots there is a dotted line other than the kings road and the wall.
It could be a border, indicating that Dorne is independent.
In cannon, the Targs may have added the title of "King of the Rhoynar" the same way they called their domain "the Seven Kingdoms" even though they only ruled six, to assert their claim over Dorn.
Much in the same way that the Kings of England and later Great Britain claimed to be Kings of France for centuries, even into the 18th century.
On "Why not King of Valyrians?" - I assumed it's because most (if not all) of the Rhoynar emigrated to Westeros, same as most Andals, while the Valyrians are still widespread all over Essos, and the King on the Iron Throne naming himself "King of Valyrians" would cause worry if not outright hostility in other post-Valyria realms like Volantis, Lys, Pentos, Mantarys etc.
I bet money starfall was going to be on the rhoyne island along with Oldtown as you suggest and possibly the Hightower’s though it would still make sense for the Hightower’s to be on the mainland as well. But if I was going to have an island full of water sorcerers and have all my cool stuff on the island then I would probably have my cool sword dawn on the island as well and might as well make the island extra special by having it be the place where the “star fell” idk thought but it is fun to speculate on what could have been so thank you for the videos!!
Anyone else wondering about those straight dotted lines running through the Dornish mountains? They run west to east between the rivers where Blackmont and Skyreach are located on the current maps.
Perhaps showing that that area was a separate country at the time?
Five forts? Or Westerosi equivalent anyway. That would be the Wall though.
Rhoyne is clearly in the place of the Arbor. It might be that the thought process is that he had the name and the island there, but decided to switch it around. Tolkien did this a lot with names, I think Finrod was originally just named Felagund and his father was Finrod. Orodreth was his son, not his brother and so on.
Anyway, I think the Rhoynar are a reference that multiple parts of Westeros were inhabited at different times, the Rhoynar being the latest to make Westeros their home. There isn't really a clear divide, as First men and Andal cultures mixed when the Andals invaded, it wasn't that the First men fled North. Multiple First men houses or at least houses who follow their customs have lingered in the South. Raventree hall is a prime example.
It is kind of a parallel to how the Nordics and the Sami came to Fennoscandia. The narrative is that the Sami came first and were driven North by the Nordic and Finnic peoples. But modern research suggests that the peoples arrived at around the same time but inhabited different parts so that there was no overlap. The Sami were not expelled and driven to the North, but rather spread to the North because it was suitable for their way of life.
Skagos is a peninsula connected to the lands Beyond the Wall too
lmao, I didn't notice it
Canonical Bear Island exists in the Bay of Ice but some now deleted Island west of the Stony Shore is named as Bear Island instead of the one further north (this more southern location would make the backstory of Ironborn rule logistically easier).
Back are we and
Glad we be
My dyslexia….
Hopefully, another fan goes through all the manuscripts.
“The banners were called, man” 😂
I always thought the arbor felt more important than it ever should have and now I wonder if it was suppose to play a bigger part than it does in the books
When I first read AGoT, the name Harrenhall reminded me of Karinhall, Hermann Göring's grand estate in Germany.
THIS! i thought it was the name of the burial mound of Göring's wife (Karin) but its probably both
Good pull, I've long thought it was based on Château de Coucy which had the tallest Donjon (keep) in France. It's a major theme of Barbara Tuchman's book A Distant Mirror which he said he read before working on the book.
11:45 the Crannogmen defend the Neck and pick at the Ironborn
Who ordered that? Robb called his banners and ordered them to attack lannisters. All they did was mildly annoy Ironborn.
I don't remember obsidian coming up at all in regards to curing Jorah. They just straight up cut off the offending skin.
I find it odd that there are not more cases of greyscale already on the continent with the amount of ship travel in between Westeros and Essos. I get if it’s spreading now for the plot but it should have already spread throughout the population of the planet for those who are affected by it.
I wonder if the Rhoynar were supposed to be the ones that built all those ancient, weird, smooth, oily black stone constructions. Isn't the hightower base made out of that?
So there would be hints that the Rhoynar were an ancient super advanced civilization that receeded from the rest of Westeros after some catastrophe.
And perhaps also all the other weirdly advanced buildings that may preceed first men, like the wall, Storms end and those anachronistic towers that were round even though first men built square towers or something.
Arrendelle in Frozen is named after a place in Norway called Arendal. (Arrendale is also the name of a US prison, apparently)
So Jon Arryn was original at the ToJ? Could that have anything to do with the birth of a baby who is also named Jon?
So Howland was created to be the knower of the ToJ secrets.. I wonder why Grrm didn’t just add Howland to Ned and Jon A, but rather replaced Jon Arryn with Howland?
IMO it's just because it makes more sense for Jon Arryn to stay in kings landing with Robert. It is definitely the better move politically, if Jon Arryn goes with Ned that leaves Robert surrounded by Lannisters. One of them being Tywin, it would be stupid to leave him exposed literally right after successfully pulling off a rebellion.
He also likely just didn't want another prominent person who knew the full story. That would raise questions about whether Lysa (and by extension Littlefinger) also knew the truth, and it would cast shade on Arryn as a supposedly honorable and loyal man if he was keeping a Targ baby secret from the king he practically raised as a son. Maybe that tugged the narrative in a direction he didn't want, although it would be an interesting concept.
@@TheDelinear Well, Ned kept it all secret from his Tully wife, why couldnt Jon Arryn? Arryn is dead in book 1 already, so it immediatley negates the number of people who know the full story.
The only reasons I can come up with is this:
1. Jon Arryn wouldnt have chosen to keep Jon Targaryen a secret, because he is anti-targaryen, and supports Robert. Arguably, the main reason Ned had to keep Jon Targ a secret is because he is Lyannas son - but that wouldnt compell Jon Arryn.
2. Or, if keeping Jon Targaryen a secret IS within Jon Arryns character, then perhaps it would have made more sense for Jon Arryn to adopt baby Jon, and raise him in the Vale. Jon Arryn is a more senior established lord who had no heirs. Where as Ned is like 20, and only newly made Lord, with no experience ruling his hold. Therefore, it wouldnt make sense to give baby Jon to Ned rather than Jon Arryn. So, Grrm needed Ned to have to be the one to adopt Jon Snow.
3. Maybe Grrm just thought its more emotional and impactful is Ned is the only one in the world to know this secret, rather than it being practical narrative reasons about how many people know. Of course, Grrm seems to think that at least one other person needs to know, so he kept Howland, but reduced the number in any other way he could, by having everyone else present at the ToJ either edited out of the narrative, or die.
The parallels between Rhoyne and Numenor are intriguing in what it could mean for the story going forward. The story of Numenor in LOTR is one of restoration, through Aragorn. Is a Rhoynish restoration coming too? Dornish Master Plan confirmed?
maybe they don't say "King of the Valyrians" because there's actually more valyrians out there we just don't know about but they do that will become relevant later. Also the percentage of valyrian blood in any modern Targ or Blackfyre has to be pretty small at this point.
If George wanted, he could just rewrite the entire series because of how much stuff and how many ideas he's cut.
There's probably more Ice and Fire information in this library than there was actual information in the entirety of the Warren Commission.
Nope.
@@JohnTorres1987 Latinx
If I remember correctly, the ADWD manuscripts are closed to the public until WINDS comes out.
Love the fact Game of Thrones was first published the exact day I was born, 1st August 1996 🙃
That is one heck of a bill to get served.
I wonder if the idea of a plague was because George, at one point or another, wanted to mirror the political situation in Europe following the Black Death.
It basically spelled the end of serfdom and greatly decreased the influence of the feudal system at large due to the sudden lack of workers. It also lead to a rise in religious fundamentalismas people began freaking out over everyone dying (rightly so) but also led to the rise of new anti-Catholic trains of religious thought, culminating in the Protestant Reformation. And considering George is a big anti-feudalistic writer and this whole series is a critique of that style of governance, having war and plague crush the population of Westeros is a great way to bring about reformation to the Seven Kingdoms.
He does rip off European history quite a bit so it's not far fetched.
@RedTeamReview it’s probably nothing but Bear Island was changed. In aGoT it’s that bigger more north island.
Also crackpot theory here on this Royne island like Numenor, if it was essentially the cultural focal point with the Citadel, the best wine, oldtown and maybe the hightower (a giant lighthouse would make more sense on an island than miles inland of the mainland anyway) then maybe these Roynish are a mystery race of people that are unaccounted for in the main story. Could be that originally George gave them the name of Roynar before wanting to make them more obscure and leaving then unnamed. But where battle isle came from, the suspiciously valyrian looking daynes, maybe Hightowers, and where ever the iron men came from was from this unnamed race who were themselves dragon riders. There is a bunch of evidence of people coming to westeros from the east, particularly with the iron men. Course the iron men don't look valyrian so maybe they were a separate race or themselves thralls of the unnamed race. Just a thought
Preston, William the Conqueror didn't name England Normandy, and while there may be some examples of how the elite (not the ruling dynasty, but a whole elite class) rebamed a territory (normandy, probably also the Rus in Russia, or the Magyars, the Franks, the Alamans, etc), rarely does a country change its name due to a change in ruling dynasty.
No, there are sources like the Bavarian Geographer putting Rus in Ukraine earlier than the Vikings' arrival to the land. Unless you mean the territory of old Finnic tribes around Moscow being named Russia?
Better example would be Bulgaria.
@@ZoomReverseFlash Or any of the other examples I gave. Although then again, other places did not get the same treatment. While a part of Italy got renamed Lombardia, Italy itself is still called Italy (itself an example of this very phenomenon), and while the king of the Visigoths was called Rex Visigothorum, his realm was consistently called Hispania. No king of the Visigoths was ever called Rex Hispaniae, probably because there was still a vague idea that hispanoromans living under him, while firmly under his rule, were spiritually under the authority of the Emperor of the Romans back in Constantinople. Laws were emitted for Goths and Romans separately.
In any case, I didn't know about the Bavarian Geographer, I'll look into it.
Maybe he just thought "The Last River" was a cool name and he didn't want to forget it 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
Great stuff guys always happy to learn
so in agot, dany crosses the rhoyne and we don't hear about it, right? (then again, weeks and months pass within and between chapters for dany at that point, so its maybe understandable that a river fording is not mentioned...) maybe grrm hadn't settled exactly where the rhoyne was/what it was/etc. by that point?
Love ya big P! ❤ I know I say that all the time but I really do. You are my favorite UA-camr and the only one I have ever supported on Patreon. Keep up the great work!!!
Fusedstone, like the oily black stone the high tower uses as foundation
Surprised you seem to be the only one to make this connection. Most of the comments say Sunstone. But even Preston was saying “F” and then mentioned Oldtown and Hightower but didn’t seem to make the jump.
Pretty sure it says Sunstone on the island.
I love the sound of the keyboard furiously being typed. 😊
Sam healing Jorah’s grayscale was the moment when I realized the show had become a joke if its former self
my favorite part is how cutting the greyscale off with a knife is apparently esoteric knowledge
> Queen of England is still Queen of England
England is her Westeros there.
But Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (which is kinda her part of Valyria-Germany) isn't really mentioned in her title.
P.S.: and I love how people keep forgetting Umbridge isn't around anymore, and Jimmy McNulty is now the King.
Queen of England (well, she did pass, it is King now) is not in fact "Queen of England". She was the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (plus others like Canada).
"Queen of England" was not included in any of her official titles.
@@gokbay3057 Yep, they switched from "By the Grace of God, Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc." to "by the Grace of God Queen of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc." in 1707.
(Having France there is fun by the way)
Still was better than the title of some Habsburg that would list every barn he owns.
I understand not everyone can afford expensive phones or cameras so if you go to the library either remember the words in the pics and type them out when you post or take more zoomed in pics so the words are clear to go along with your zoomed out pics
The city on Rhoyne looks like "Sunstone" to me.
1. Including Rhoynar must be some Valyrian trauma from letting the Rhoynish flee with Nymeria.
2. This map actually makes a lot of sense in pointing out Rhoynar. They make the best booze!
They still kinda do canonically. Arbor Gold is considered better than Dornish Red but Dornish Red is still the second most important/popular type of wine in Westeros.
It's super weird that the King of Westeros is also called King of the Rhoynar now that I think about it. By the time the Dornish were annexed to the other Kingdoms the Rhoynar had already been interbreeding with the Dornish for a long time. Nowadays in the story there is no one identifying themselves as "Rhoynish", not even the Orphans of the Greenblood who are the closest we have to a traditional Rhoynish society. So why not call it King of the Andals, the First Men and the Dornish?
Carinhall was the country mansion of Herman Goering and the repository of the works of art he had stolen.
What relevance this has I've no idea but it's certainly odd.
I think the Rhoyne Island is in the corner of the page like that because its a callout of a different location in the globe at a different scale entirely. That would explain why its graphically distinct.
I doubt that’s what George had in mind. The island still exists on the canon maps in the exact same size and shape, only it’s the Arbor now. Could be visually distinct because George added it at some other time after working on the rest of the map.
@@GodKingReiss hm yeah that's a good point and could definitely be why it's so much darker.
Definitely looks like “Sunstone” to me. What if that was the original location of the Hightower? Sunstone might make sense for a giant lighthouse (or Sunspear for that matter). Alternatively the “sun stone” might be the oily black stone base of the Hightower. Maybe it was originally envisioned as a meteor (a stone from the sun), kind of like the stone in the Bloodstone emperor story.
It says Sunstone I'm 95% sure on Rhoyne. If you compare the letters to other names we know for sure what they are then it's Sunstone. Or Funstone.
Edit: Upon further examination I am 99% certain it's Sunstone. Look at the first S in sisters and the UN in run. Absolutely Sunstone
"Funstone" is just what their marketing agency call it in their vacation advertising.
I'm pretty sure Sam cut Gray-scale off with obsidian knife.
I can understand why one would think that as early scalpels were often obsidian in real like, but in GoT, whatever Sam is using is pretty shiny like metal.
It's such a fun scene though :(. The whole Grey Scale surgery is dumb story-wise, but the way they shot it, the acting, the practical effects, and the final cut to pie... Chef's kiss.
Woah woah woah! Did you say that in the original draft Tyrion did not have dwarfism!? I remember hearing all about the first draft but I don’t remember that bit! Can someone confirm?
And we're back!
The Queen of England is German but shes not the queen of Germany. 🤣 Claiming kingship over the Valyrians would imply that they want to assert kingship over essos and the free cities, which they don't.
I always interpreted Howland Reed about being less interested in Southron Ambitions and more in magic, aka he didn't agree with Robb going south. That being said, being a bannerman should include sending some men. Are there really no Crannogmen in Robbs army? I guess not, I think I even wondered back in my first read why there were none of them around.
I mean, they protect the approach to the North, so maybe it is accepted for them to stay back. Also, who would go into the swamps and tell them to follow their kings. Like the Mountain Clans, they are more loosely associated with the North. Basically indipendent.
@@lucawasserer These two things seem very counter-intuitive. If they are a mostly disorganised group who can't be effectively commanded to go south and are basically independent of the north, why would anyone trust them as the guardians of the passage to the north? That would be like using a wild lizard-lion as a guard dog - it's just as likely to bite you as it is your enemies. What's to stop this independent group throwing in with the Lannisters and letting them easily wander in and take the north while Robb's forces are away? Either way it doesn't make sense. Either they are as staunchly loyal as we're told, in which case it's weird they don't even send a small contingent south, or they're independent, in which case it's weird to leave them in such a position of power with no guaranteed way for Robb to get back into the north. It doesn't take _that_ many people to defend the neck (a tiny group of ironborn manage it and have to be removed by trickery rather than force), so I'm sure a few crannogmen to act as skirmishers for Robb's forces should have been possible.
The worst thing about Sam “curing” Jorah of greyscale was the lack of scaring after being pretty much flayed.
I think the Rhoyne city is Sunstone. I would bet money on it.
I feel like there may be a bit too much thought put into the things named on the map and their relevance to the story.
It may well be that George had some cool name ideas and just chucked them there. He planted some seeds, a lot of them grew in major way and Bay of Ice and Three Sisters just didn’t produce anything interesting
Then again, why else are we here but to overthink anything George ever wrote.
Great analysis and discussion as always!
The queen of English is in England. If the queen of England proclaimed herself queen of Germany it would be a little weird
no, it wouldn't. the House of Windsor was pretty German.
@espalier what their ethnicity is is irrelevant. It's who they rule over. The targarians rules over none of Valyria nor any significant number of Valyrians.
If she proclaimed herself king of the Germans it would be silly at best.
Casually forgetting the half century where she was also queen of Canada, Australia, India and half of the entire planet. It's actually quite normal, historically, for dynasties to declare themselves rulers over places they're not in. Calling yourself king isn't about actually ruling, its about making a claim to a land.
For example, when the kingdom of England was established it was actually a duchy of France, but it was so distant that the authority of the crown was hard to enforce there. Additionally, it was powerful enough that the English Royal family intermarried with the French one. This meant that centuries later both families had a claim to both lands, and to settle which land was whose they went to war for 100 years. At the time the Kings of France considered themselves rulers of England and the Kings of England called themselves Kings of France too. Basically the same situation you described.
And for most of modern history, almost every noble family in Europe would be racing to lay claim to basically every country they could, hoping to make good on at least one of them. Only after they secured their claim through war or treaty could they move to their country and entrench themselves. That's why the last ruling dynasty of Italy was French, the previous Spanish dynasty was French and the current English Royal family is German, their real name being Saxe-Coburg. Ever wondered why certain House names exist in multiple languages (Eg. Bourbon, Borbón, Borbone, Bourbons)? This is the reason.
I'm sorry, forget my previous comment. While it is correct, I'm responding to an argument you didn't make as I misinterpreted you. You are correct, Preston is bring silly about Valyrians
@@greenberry6019 proclaiming yourself despot of places you have no hold, nor a chance of having any hold in, is a bad look. England stopped claiming France after they had not owned any of France for a long time. Lol
Sam reads that the cure for Greyscale is salad dressing (olive oil & vinegar) and it works.
28:30 to be fair, the English monarchs didnt start claiming the french throne until like the early 1300s. Its a bit of a complicated situation, since the earliest successors of William 1 basically treated the english throne as a bank for their ducal squabbles in France, but it just comes to show that they didnt title themselves "King of England and France" immediately after the conquest. So I can imagine the Targaryens wanting to focus on Westeros instead of Valyria, a place that is basically a nuked wasteland anyway, and also signalling to the Lords of Westeros that they are ruling as one of them and not as foreigners from a land renowned for slavery etc. would relinquish their eastern expansion ambitions and focus on governing this place instead
I've had my hands on those manuscripts. Great thing about living in tx is being so close to GRRM's collection at A&M
The fact that Howland didn't send any men *and* doesn't seem to have had any real contact with Ned or his children is likely something that will be addressed in the future. I think there was probably a falling out between Howland and Ned after the ToJ.
That might explain the lack of contact, but not sending men when the banners are called is still incredibly weird. I mean even the Boltons sent men. And okay, that didn't work out great for the Starks either, but it's not like Roose knew the RW was a possibility at the start of the war (well, unless TTB sent him some vision). He was likely just doing what was expected because he had no choice.
@@TheDelinear Yes, it's weird that Howland didn't send any men, but it's also weird how no one in the story actually finds this odd. When Robb sends Galbart Glover and Maege Mormont to Howland with his will, it's never remarked upon how Howland has "betrayed" them or anything of that sort. He's still considered a close friend and ally. So maybe Ned and Howland had some kind of agreement about this? Maybe all of the crannogmen are needed in the Neck for some purpose?
I feel like RTR’s input is 0 but thanks for hosting Preston 😀
Pretty sure Carmine purposely did not read it so Preston can it explain it to him/the audience. They've done podcast episodes where that wasn't the case and the discussion came off poorly.
@@BlackTeamReview You are correct. Also glad you noticed how he did stuff in the past and it didn't work.
Arundel is also a fairly famous medieval town with a castle in southern England.
Also, the Vale is analogous with Wales. So that might be another slight connection.
Also for Preston's point about the Queen of England (Great Britain and Northern Ireland). It's more like them still calling themselves Kings of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which is where the 'Windsor' family came from. Or hell, Kings of Hanover.
Real world titles are very complicated. William the Conqueror wasn't the King of the Franks, even though he was a vassal of the King of the Franks and himself was a Frank (Norman).
Going counter to this is the fact that the Kings of England and later Great Britain did claim to be Kings of France. So it can go both ways. Titles are often as much about asserting claims as much as being accurate descriptions of what you control. And they can often be vague, especially in the ancient world.
And speaking of William, he was known as King of the English or England after his conquest but never King of the Normans, which he was Duke of Normandy or the Normans.
Proto-Oldtown probably was called Flintstone or Flintstown or something. There's something special with the Flints but there isn't enough evidence yet. Preston mentions in one of his Northern videos that the Flints are in 3 locations in the north and are thus perfectly positioned to watch it. If they are a really really old, first-men house AND have some sort of conspiracy happening, it does sound fairly likely that they were involved somehow in a proto-Oldtown.
Preston, the Targs are the kings of whoever lives in Westeros. And in Westeros there are First Men, Andals and Rhoynar.
England is different, because there is a LAND, not a "RACE".
But, it's true George expanded too much his "races" so now it's kinda ridiculous the title itself.
Most valyrians don't live in westeros. Most of them live in Lys and Volantis, maybe myr. So to say they are kings of all valyrians isn't true and is an empty boast. They are kings of all andals roynar and first men though.
I fucking love this series.
They didnt notice a second bear island
28:00 - The Targs probably didnt call themselves 'Kings of Valyria' because ... they escaped Valyria, and they clearly didnt carry forward any Valyrian culutre (apart from incest, and dragon lore, but really that is a VERY small amount of culutre. They gave up slavery, for instance, which was the basis of Valyrian society). There are theoires that the Targaryens had a hand in the destruction of Valyria, so maybe they disliked Valyria, and wanted to leave it to fade into history. The Targaryens were said to be only a minor family in Valyria, so that may lend credence to the notion that they worked against Valyria, were not loyal, and were happy to turn their back on it once it fell.
They clearly carried over Valyrian culture and obsessed over Dragonstone. That's not it.
@@ZoomReverseFlash They lived on Dragonstone, because that was already an established Valyrian go-between territory. They probably needed Dragonstone because of its volcano having something to do with the reproduction of dragons. They werent 'obsessed'. Aegon replaced Dragonstone with Kings landing as his main seat pretty quick, and KL remained as the central royal seat. Aside from dragon-keeping and sister-marriages (which is probably an aspect of dragon-keeping), Aegon was not identifiably Valyrian culturally in any way I can think of. There was no reason for him not to have slaves, or enslave some of the conquered population, but he did not do so. Valyrian Magic (and even just any knowledge about Valyria) is hardly present in Aegons generation, and seems to have faded immediately. Visenya may have known some magic secrets, but the family did not preserve them. The Targs also did not use Valyrian architecture in the construction of their holds, or Kings Landing, strangely. Nor did they even preserve the straight road building custom. Finally, as the ONLY dragonriders in the world, Aegon could have claimed to be the inheritor of all Valyria - meaning he had the legitimacy and the dragon-power, to reconquer all the Essosi territories once ruled by Valyria. But he didnt, the only place he did want to rule was the one place that Valyria never tried to conquer: Westeros. He was happy to let the legacy of Valyria crumble into smaller nations. All the evidence points to the idea that the early Targs were happy for the Valyria of old to die, and for all its knowledge to die with it, apart from dragons, which they alone possess.
Which makes me realise that another way the Targ culture differs from Valyrian culture is that in Valyria, multiple families (perhaps most?) produced dragonriders, and all the dragonriders worked together on the imperial project. Aegon could have recreated this establishing, or explicating the custom of marrying the younger children exogamously, to create more dragon riding clans, recreating the structure of Valyria. But he did the opposite, which was to keep dragongenes as monopolised as possible, supporting an absolute monarchical sysem, which Valyria dosent seem to have been.
For the map, I didn't see dragon stone. Maybe the capital of the Rhoyne would have been "Firestone" as in volcanoes, dragons, etc
that "runestone" seems important. maybe it's the base of the hightower in old town.
It’s crazy that the first book was published at a time when there was dial up and cellphones weren’t ubiquitous.
We're closer to 2050 than we are to when GRRM started this book series D:
I think it's Fumestone but George forgot the 's'.
So there’s a 94 and 93 manuscript and the original outline? For a ‘gardeneder’ grrm seems to have been engaged in some serious architectural reworking.
Hello, does Dany ever specify lemons growing on the lemon tree or is it not mentioned whether or not the tree actually bore lemons? from what i recall the hints GRRM drops in the Arya and Mercy chapters are about lemons not lemon trees.
About Rhoyne, are we sure they didn't just name their new home after their river and people?
And later Martin scrapped that to make it an intermarriage/bloodline thing with the Martells.
It's Funstone. Where all the fun happens on the story
The Rhoyne capital says Sunstone, so maybe Ironport and Sunstone were mixed to make Sunspear?
That little one at the mouth of the Rhoyne might be the original Battle Island.
So 20:27 for the veil of arryn. Can it mean that there is something hidden john arryn. Like ned's father figure was just another big game of thrones player to get his line on the throne. Like he did something sus to start off this "iteration" for bran. And bran had to kill him off at the right time as well.
What if George’s original ending was to have an extremely abrupt plot twist such as somewhat revealing it’s all post nuclear apocalyptic craziness not fantasy which is why he can’t finish it. What if he never planned for it to be this in depth?
They don't actually mention England when talking about the British monarch. It's just the UK that's mentioned (and then all the other separate monarchies with coincidentally the same person).
I live a couple hours away from this library. If I went, what should I look for in these manuscripts?
Jorah got Greyscale and immediately cured so he could appear in Resident Evil.
Crannogmen are small poison blow dart sneaks...why WHY would Ned bring his tiny friend to fight kingsguard? Did he blow dart Arthur Dayne to save Ned? What else could he do? He spent time honing his magic on Isle of Faces...
Doesn't Ned want Howland Reed and his crannogmen to protect the Neck in case an army comes North? Does that command ever go out?
The queen of England isn't the queen of Germany despite the royals being a German line
1. Howland reed is MM. 1.5 i was an og fan of HS for HR but i change my mind it makes more sense. 2. So HR as MM has something to do with Sansa's plot line in the books. 3. HR married that donish noble lady a ton of hits at that. the reeds being the house of the green her house being purple. 4. Ned remembers HR as a good friend but his ex is now his wife.
🖐️ Fan who doesn't think Greyscale will be a major thing. It seems like greyscale moves slowly, and I don't think there's enough time for it to become a big thing when it moves so slow... Especially with everything else George has to tackle. I more expect that it will kill one key character, so maybe Jon Conn?
I've always been more concerned about the Pale Mare