Daenerys – Fire, Silver Coin, and Lilith

The Fattest Leech

*A quick update: something happened over the last few weeks with my site. Updates that were noted to have happened, actually did not. That left some weird information breaks on various pages and odd duplicated information. I am in the process of cleaning this up, but feel free to ask me as many questions as you want in the meantime. Thanks, Leech

This is a character review of Daenerys Targaryen. The purpose of this reevaluation is to take a look at the author’s intent when he created this character. GRRM is clearly drawing on his own preferred styling, while mixing them in with real world figures to create something that is unique to his own work.

Why does Martin do this? Why does he repeat his themes so often? It seems he has a particular story in his gut, in his soul, that he needs to get out and on page for readers to witness.

Readers will notice that the theme of “dragons” is a loose allegory for either Corporate-Capitalism, or for over-reaching governmental rule… and they often wrap intimately hand in hand with each other. Blue or red, a dragon is still a dragon, and Daenerys is the red dragon of government while the Others are the blue ice dragon of the corportate world.

Part of the purpose of this particular reevaluation is to use the author’s own works to show the repeated themes, as opposed to using various sources that have little to nothing to do with the author’s objective in order to “prove” a point. There is a lot of information to share, therefore, quotes will be kept short. I will update this essay as needed with links and information, but feel free to ask me anything in the meantime.

GRRM: Too often a fantasy story or a fairy tale might begin with a king on the throne, without us knowing what made him the way he is. “If he’s a noble king, why is he noble? If he’s a selfish king, why is he selfish?” Martin asked. “So you go back to his parents, and their parents, and their parents. Everything leads to everything else.” GRRM

***

A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys X

“It is such a long way,” she complained. “I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl.”

No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words.

“Fire and Blood,” Daenerys told the swaying grass.

***

GRRM: “Well, Tyrion and Dany will intersect, in a way, but for much of the book they’re still apart,” he says. “They both have quite large roles to play here. Tyrion has decided that he actually would like to live, for one thing, which he wasn’t entirely sure of during the last book, and he’s now working toward that end—if he can survive the battle that’s breaking out all around him. And Dany has embraced her heritage as a Targaryen and embraced the Targaryen words. So they’re both coming home.”

I feel it is important to analyze both sides of each grey character George creates, which is to say that all of the main characters have two sides to be evaluated if you want to develop the big picture. To only focus on one side, while handwaving anything else, does not do the character any justice. That is only half the story. So while we have Daenerys acting out amazing feats of strength, her compasion for the sad elephant, her wanting to grow beans to feed people, there is another side as well. Yes, just as there is for Jon, who wants to save humanity, but has a fire-some, berserker side laying below the surface.

“for Phyllis who made me put the dragons in”

Something else that I think is important to keep in mind when assessing any future with Daenerys is that the dragons weren’t planned from the beginning. It was only later that Martin was convinced by fellow author Phyllis Eisenstein to add actual dragons. The Targaryens were going to have pyrokinetic powers, which fits his storytelling style exactly. A psionic mental power casually referred to as teke, short for telekinesis, is often used in his past stories to some degree or another (and no, not just in Thousand Worlds universe).

Forewarning: there will be open spoilers from all of GRRM’s work, including the released TWOW chapters and interviews, throughout this entire site.

The Winds of Winter- Tyrion

She listened. “What is it?” she said as she was strapping a pair of mismatched greaves onto his stunted legs.

“War. On either side of us and not a league away. That’s slaughter, Penny. That’s men stumbling through the mud with their entrails hanging out. That’s severed limbs and broken bones and pools of blood. You know how the worms come out after a hard rain? I hear they do the same after a big battle if enough blood soaks into the ground. That’s the Stranger coming, Penny. The Black Goat, the Pale Child, Him of Many Faces, call him what you will. That’s death.”

Links to information that will be useful as the folk god aspect that Daenerys will be raised to is propelled by the followers of fire who believe in R’hllor (and the Black Goat, the Stallion who mounts the World, etc) which is primarily based on real world Zoroastrianism:

  • Folk god worship/religion – In sociology, folk religion is often contrasted with elite religion. Folk religion is defined as the beliefs, practices, rituals and symbols originating from sources other than the religion’s leadership.
  • Zoroastrianism – much to read in that link. Additionally the Zoroastrian concept of holy fire, sometimes described in abstract terms as “burning and unburning fire” or “visible and invisible fire”
  • R’hllorism – I do speculate that there is not real one god named R’hllor, but rather that there is a “fire power” in the world and those that chose that path, those who drink from the cup of fire, assign the name R’hllor to a “god”. I believe that name changes based on region, and fire is essentially a god of death no matter the name.

GRRM has developed archetypes of a Daenerys-type in various stories. Many of these archetypes also spurred details for secondary characters like Euron and Cersei, for example, but they are mainly Daenerys in character and her different plot arcs.

Image result for the glass flower cover george martin

The recommended story re-reads that work in conjunction with the ASOAIF story are (but not limited to):

  • The Glass Flower in his characters Cyrain born of Ash, and also comes from the planet Lilith. Much more on Lilith the character below. Cyrain also lives (inhabits) a swamp planet called Croan’dhenni (which is also a parallel to Cersei and Taena “Myrish Swamp”), and also to Asshai/Beyond the Shadow. Cyrain plays the game of moind at special table called the “artifact” where she sits in a egg cup (chair) raised above the others. The huge painted table of Westeros on Dragonstone is called the artifact and those who sit at it are in a raised chair in ASOIAF. Daenerys will go from her false dragonstone in Essos, to Dragonstone as an Aegon once did.
    • This artifact table is also shown in the story And Seven Times Never Kill Man, and in Dany’s ‘wake the dragon” dream when she sees her ancestors holding fire swords.
      1. a person, plant, or animal that is descended from a particular ancestor.
        synonyms: successor, scion; More
        • a machine, artifact, system, etc., that has developed from an earlier, more rudimentary version.
  • Only Kinds Are Afraid of the Dark in Saagael and his fire worshipers.
  • Sandkings as Simon Kress, with lightbringer and folk god worship.
  • And Seven Times Never Kill Man as Bakkalon the Pale Child in conjunction with the Steel Angels.
  • Fevre Dream. The antagonist (Daemon) Damon Julian, “Blood Master”, slavery dialogue included.
  • Nightflyers with the Mother and the dragon-ship combo.
  • Starlady as Golden Boy, a pale, silver-haired, pointed-eared young man who gets mixed in with prostitution and treated as a special gift, and whom the reader realizes by the end of the story causes those around him to commit acts of chaos. This is very closely resembles the way the pyramids in And Seven Times… have a strange way of mental influence jst by being close to them.
  • Armageddon Rag as the fire side of that story. Now, the main fire person, Ananda, is a near exact prototype of Melisandra with a small dash of Quaithe. Despite that, the same fiery undercurrent runs in both stories around a “chosen one”, prophecy, and literally the same acts of blood and fire to wake the dead.

This page is simply an introduction page to the different ideas. Full essays and quotes explain much more detail on the various subsequent pages:

Chains of Slavery

Let’s start with the greatest issue Daenerys is trying to tackle on page as of A Dance with Dragons; the issue of slavery. Damon Julian from Fevre Dream. Damon is a main character, as well as the antagonist, and he is clearly against slavery (the way humans “own” and control each other). However, Damon is not above using mind control on his own subservient group of vampires in his clan- he enthralls them as, “blood of my blood,” and they worship him as godlike. This tale of GRRM’s shows that just because someone is against slavery, and frees certain slaves, that does not mean they are the savior of the story. It means they are not one-dimensional characters. This Damon goes against, and even makes a thrall of the main protagonist Joshua York. The amount of pre-ASOAIF archetype themes in this story is staggering. Well worth its own thread because I won’t be able to cover all of it here. For instance, Damon Julian is the clan “Bloodmaster”, and Danaerys is the Khaleesi leader and her followers are “blood of her blood.” Daenerys will bind the people to her as this bloodmaster does, and she will burn those who are against her with her “dragon steel” Drogon:

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys IV

A small army of slaves had gone ahead to prepare for Khal Drogo’s arrival. As each rider swung down from his saddle, he unbelted his arakh and handed it to a waiting slave, and any other weapons he carried as well. Even Khal Drogo himself was not exempt. Ser Jorah had explained that it was forbidden to carry a blade in Vaes Dothrak, or to shed a free man’s blood. Even warring khalasars put aside their feuds and shared meat and mead together when they were in sight of the Mother of Mountains. In this place, the crones of the dosh khaleen had decreed, all Dothraki were one blood, one khalasar, one herd.

A bit of the same with Cyrain of Ash. Although she was never a slave, she is in a relationship with her slaver, Khar Dorian (Daario). Khar provides Cyrain with new heads and bodies with whom Cyrain plays “the game of mind”, which allows her to steal the bodies she wants to extend her own life. However, as for being a mind game master, Cyrain is in denial about her new profession and she twists the meaning to excuse the practice of slavery. Cyrain most definitely has a god complex.

  • The Glass Flower

Khar Dorian calls himself a slaver, and points out to me that we do, indeed, deal in human flesh. He can call himself what he likes. I am no slaver; the charge offends me. A slaver sells his clients into bondage and servitude, deprives them of freedom, mobility, and time, all precious commodities. I do no such thing. I am only a thief. Khar and his underlings bring them to me from the swollen cities of Lilith, from the harsh mountains and cold wastes of Dam Tullian, from the rotting tenements along the canals of Vess, from spaceport bars on Fellanora and Cymeranth and Shrike, from wherever he can find them, he takes them and brings them to me, and I steal from them and set them free.

A lot of them refuse to go. (sidenote: folk god/Meereen)

They cluster outside my castle walls in the city they have built, toss gifts to me as I pass, call out my name, beg favors of me. I have left them freedom, mobility, and time, and they squander it all in futility, hoping to win back the one thing I have stolen.

I steal their bodies, but they lose their souls themselves.

And perhaps I am unduly harsh to call myself a thief. These victims Khar brings me are unwilling players in the game of mind, but no less players for all that.

  • A Storm of Swords – Daenerys VI

    Dany broke her fast under the persimmon tree that grew in the terrace garden, watching her dragons chase each other about the apex of the Great Pyramid where the huge bronze harpy once stood. Meereen had a score of lesser pyramids, but none stood even half as tall. From here she could see the whole city: the narrow twisty alleys and wide brick streets, the temples and granaries, hovels and palaces, brothels and baths, gardens and fountains, the great red circles of the fighting pits. And beyond the walls was the pewter sea, the winding Skahazadhan, the dry brown hills, burnt orchards, and blackened fields. Up here in her garden Dany sometimes felt like a god, living atop the highest mountain in the world.

    Do all gods feel so lonely? Some must, surely. Missandei had told her of the Lord of Harmony, worshiped by the Peaceful People of Naath; he was the only true god, her little scribe said, the god who always was and always would be, who made the moon and stars and earth, and all the creatures that dwelt upon them. Poor Lord of Harmony. Dany pitied him. It must be terrible to be alone for all time, attended by hordes of butterfly women you could make or unmake at a word. Westeros had seven gods at least, though Viserys had told her that some septons said the seven were only aspects of a single god, seven facets of a single crystal. That was just confusing. The red priests believed in two gods, she had heard, but two who were eternally at war. Dany liked that even less. She would not want to be eternally at war.

More here:

Artifactually Accurate

There is an article of importance that GRRM has carried over from his past stories into A Song of Ice and Fire; the artifact. This object is sometimes a table, sometimes an art object, but always from this artifact a game of strategy is played. The artifact is always associated with the fire side of the story.

In the story And Seven Times Neve Kill Man, the militant religious group called the Steel Angels are the ASOIAF equivalent to the Targaryens with the full backing of the Faith of the Seven. Also detailed at length here. They even use “dragons” to pave roads and overtake the indigenous as being “above” the soulless natives (Children of the Forest/first men). There are several mentions of an artifact in this story, but here we see the beginning signs that the artifacts have a type of mind control over those who are close to it, and by the end of the story the Steel Angels are start worshiping the pyramids and the artifacts…

  • And Seven Times Never Kill Man

She paused a minute, and rubbed a thoughtful finger up against the side of her nose. “As I told the Proctor, it was all very odd from that point forward. Last summer, I twice led squads against the Jaenshi clans. The first time, having no idea of our intentions, none of the soulless were there; we simply destroyed the artifact and left. The second time, a crowd of the creatures milled around,hampering us with their bodies while not being actively hostile. They did not disperse until I had one of them screeched down. And, of course, I studied the reports of Squadfather Allor’s difficulties at the ring-of-stone.

And the story Sandkings is another Dany-protoype story, also discussed here, and this includes artifacts as well. Simon Kress wants worship. He wants mental control over the Sandkings, and he gets it. Better be careful what you wish for…

  • Sandkings

The windows were full of mist; now a pale red, now the gray of true fog, now sparkling and golden. The mist swirled and eddied and glowed faintly from within. Kress glimpsed objects in the window—machines, pieces of art, other things he could not recognize—but he could not get a good look at any of them. The mists flowed sensuously around them, displaying a bit of first one thing and then another, then cloaking all. It was intriguing. As he watched, the mist began to form letters. One word at a time. Kress stood and read:

WO. AND. SHADE. IMPORTERS. ARTIFACTS. ART. LIFEFORMS. AND. MISC. The letters stopped. Through the fog, Kress saw something moving. That was enough for him, that and the word “Lifeforms” in their advertisement. He swept his walking cloak over his shoulder and entered the store.

The artifact in The Glass Flower is very, incredibly similar to the one from ASOIAF. It is a large table housed in a giant round “brazier” made of light-drinking obsidian, and bleeds fire and blood. Croan’dhenni is currently a dark, swampy planet that is similar to Ashai or Stygai in ASOIAF:

  • The Glass Flower

“You look like a child, like a girl close to puberty, no more.”

“I am older than my body,” I said. [Cyrain of Ash and Lilith]

“As am I,” he said. “The curse of the cyborg, Wisdom, is that parts can be replaced.”

“Then you’re immortal?” I challenged him.

“In one crude sense, yes.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Contradictory. You come here to me, to Croan’dhenni and its Artifact, to the game of mind. Why? This is a place where the dying come, cyborg, in hopes of winning life. We don’t get many immortals.”

“I seek a different prize,” the cyborg said. “Yes?” I prompted.

“Death,” he told me. “Life. Death. Life.”

“Two different things,” I said. “Opposites. Enemies.”

“No,” said the cyborg. “They are the same.”

[and then]

The White was like me in that. It was a frog from a pond beyond ours, a place lost in the grey where our little lights have not yet shone on the dark waters. Whatever sort of creature it might have been, whatever burdens of history and evolution it carried in its genes, it was nonetheless my kin. Both of us were angry mayflies, moving restlessly from star to star because we, alone among our fellows, knew how short our day. Both of us found a destiny of sorts in these swamps of Croan’dhenni.

The White came utterly alone to this place, set down its little starship (I have seen the remains: a toy, that ship, a trinket, but with lines that are utterly alien to me, and deliciously chilling), and, exploring, found something.

Something older than itself, and stranger. The Artifact.

Whatever strange instruments it had, whatever secret alien knowledge it possessed, whatever instinct bid it enter; all lost now, and none of it matters. The White knew, knew something the native sentients had never guessed, knew the purpose of the Artifact, knew how it might be activated. For the first time in – a thousand years? A million? For the first time in a long while, the game of mind was played. And The White changed, emerged from the Artifact as something else, as the first. The first mindlord. The first master of life and death. The first painlord. The first lifelord. The titles are born, worn, discarded, forgotten, and none of them matter.

Whatever I am, The White was the first.

[and then]

Inside my castle are rooms on rooms, some paneled over with fragrant native woods and covered with furs and thick carpets, some left bare and black ceremonial chambers where dark reflections move through glass walls and footsteps click brittle against glass floors. In the center, at the very apex, rises an onion-shaped obsidian tower, braced by steel. Within the dome, a single chamber.

I ordered the castle built, replacing an older and much shabbier structure, and to that single tower chamber, I caused the Artifact to be moved.

It is there that the game of mind is played.

My own suite is at the base of the tower. The reasons for that were symbolic as well. None achieve rebirth without first passing through me.

[and then]

One by one they ascended unto me; through Wisdom to rebirth, or so they hoped.

High above the swamps, locked within my tower, I prepared for them in the changing chamber, hard by my unimpressive throne. The Artifact is not prepossessing; a rudely shaped bowl of some soft alien alloy, charcoal grey in color and faintly warm to the touch, with six niches spaced evenly around the rim. They are seats; cramped, hard, uncomfortable seats, designed for obviously nonhuman physiognomies, but seats nonetheless. From the floor of the bowl rises a slender column that blossoms into another seat, the awkward cup that enthrones … choose the title you like best. Painlord, mindlord, lifelord, giver and taker, operator, trigger, master. All of them are me. And others before me, the chain rattling back to The White and perhaps earlier, to the makers, the unknowns who fashioned this machine in the dimness of distant eons.

If the chamber has its drama, that is my doing. The walls and ceiling are curved, and fashioned laboriously of a thousand individual pieces of polished obsidian. Some shards are cut very thin, so the grey light of the Croan’dhic sun can force its way through. Some shards are so thick as to be almost opaque. The room is one color, but a thousand shades, and for those who have the wit to see it, it forms a great mosaic of life and death, dreams and nightmares, pain and ecstasy, excess and emptiness, everything and nothing, blending one into the other, around and around unending, a circle, a cycle, the worm that eats its own tail forever, each piece individual and fragile and razor-edged and each part of a greater picture that is vast and black and brittle.

I stripped and handed my clothing to Rannar, who folded each garment neatly. The cup is topless and egg-shaped I climbed inside and folded my legs beneath me in a lotus, the best possible compromise between the lines of the Artifact and the human physique. The interior walls of the machine began to bleed; glistening red-black fluid beading on the grey metal of the egg, each globule swelling fatter and heavier until it burst. Streams trickled down the smooth, curved walls, and the moisture began to collect at the bottom. My bare skin burned where the fluid touched me. The flow came faster and heavier, the fire creeping up my body, until I was half immersed.

And then the painted table “artifact” of the Targaryen fire family:

  • A Storm of Swords – Davos IV

Castles are not friendly places for the frail, Cressen was reminded as he descended the turnpike stairs of Sea Dragon Tower. Lord Stannis would be found in the Chamber of the Painted Table, atop the Stone Drum, Dragonstone’s central keep, so named for the way its ancient walls boomed and rumbled during storms. To reach him they must cross the gallery, pass through the middle and inner walls with their guardian gargoyles and black iron gates, and ascend more steps than Cressen cared to contemplate.

[and then]

Lord Stannis Baratheon’s refuge was a great round room with walls of bare black stone and four tall narrow windows that looked out to the four points of the compass. In the center of the chamber was the great table from which it took its name, a massive slab of carved wood fashioned at the command of Aegon Targaryen in the days before the Conquest. The Painted Table was more than fifty feet long, perhaps half that wide at its widest point, but less than four feet across at its narrowest. Aegon’s carpenters had shaped it after the land of Westeros, sawing out each bay and peninsula until the table nowhere ran straight. On its surface, darkened by near three hundred years of varnish, were painted the Seven Kingdoms as they had been in Aegon’s day; rivers and mountains, castles and cities, lakes and forests.

There was a single chair in the room, carefully positioned in the precise place that Dragonstone occupied off the coast of Westeros, and raised up to give a good view of the tabletop. Seated in the chair was a man in a tight-laced leather jerkin and breeches of roughspun brown wool. When Maester Cressen entered, he glanced up. “I knew you would come, old man, whether I summoned you or no.” There was no hint of warmth in his voice; there seldom was.

[and then]

At the very top of Stone Drum, within the great round room called the Chamber of the Painted Table, they found Stannis Baratheon standing behind the artifact that gave the hall its name, a massive slab of wood carved and painted in the shape of Westeros as it had been in the time of Aegon the Conqueror. An iron brazier stood beside the king, its coals glowing a ruddy orange. Four tall pointed windows looked out to north, south, east, and west. Beyond was the night and the starry sky. Davos could hear the wind moving, and fainter, the sounds of the sea.

“Your Grace,” Ser Axell said, “as it please you, I have brought the onion knight.”

Author Intentions?

“Before you can fight the war between good and evil, you need to determine which is which, and that’s not always as easy as some Fantasists would have you believe.”

The body that we meet Cyrain wearing is her fifth in the story (pictured above)… and she looks just like Daenerys. This is the only time that GRRM uses these physical characteristics in a character outside of ASOAIF, and it turns out they are, basically, a bad guy type. Ack! This does not bode well for Daenerys. This is the current body of Cyrain; silver hair, purple eyes, pretty face, child’s body, and the genetic tailoring that in ASOIAF is the multi-generational Targaryen incest:

  • The Glass Flower

She is perhaps eleven years old, perhaps twelve. Her body is gaunt and awkward, but the beauty is there, locked inside, just beginning to blossom. Her breasts are budding now, and her blood first came less than half a year ago. Her hair is silver-gold, long and straight, a glittering cascade that falls nearly to her heels. Her eyes are lame in her small face, and they are the deepest, purest violet. Her face is something sculpted. She was bred to be thus, no doubt of that; genetic tailoring has made the Shrikan trade-lords and the wealthy of Lilith and Fellanora a breathtakingly beautiful folk.

Corlos and Gates

Another repeating theme across Martinworld is the relation to the name, or varient of, Corlos (Corlyss, Corlass, etc) and that name always being associated with fire and gates. I do believe this is an idea borrowed from Roger Zelazny and his Chronicles of Amber series. In that story, the main character is named Corwin and he travels between worlds of shadow via magical gates.

Saagael and his fire worshipers are from the planet Corlos, the same planet were the Steel Angels later develop, and he is, among other things, a “great shadow” that can fly across the land and it sits on an ebony bench. His worshipers (try to) sacrifice a young child just to force his prophesied return because they are tired of waiting for him. And there is a sub-plot with rubies that sorta summons this Saagael character, who is a replacement of the last deity that dies out, just as Daenerys is the “last dragon” that replaces Rhaegar (not Viserys). You can read this short story transcribed here.

In ASOIAF, George has the repeating theme of the fire people being connected to gates. One example of many is below, the other is Melisandre and her flames.

  • Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark

The servants of Saagael ruled supreme on earth, and their dark lord hunted for men’s souls. The gates of Corlos were opened, and a great shadow descended over the land. Not in a thousand generations would it be lifted.

  • A Dance with Dragons – Jon III

“Westeros has but one king,” said Stannis. His voice rang harsh, with none of Melisandre’s music. “With this sword I defend my subjects and destroy those who menace them. Bend the knee, and I promise you food, land, and justice. Kneel and live. Or go and die. The choice is yours.” He slipped Lightbringer into its scabbard, and the world darkened once again, as if the sun had gone behind a cloud. “Open the gates.”

“OPEN THE GATES,” bellowed Ser Clayton Suggs, in a voice as deep as a warhorn. “OPEN THE GATES,” echoed Ser Corliss Penny, commanding the guards. “OPEN THE GATES,” cried the serjeants. Men scrambled to obey. Sharpened stakes were wrenched from the ground, planks were dropped across deep ditches, and the stockade gates were thrown wide. Jon Snow raised his hand and lowered it, and his black ranks parted right and left, clearing a path to the Wall, where Dolorous Edd Tollett pushed open the iron gate.

  • A Clash of Kings – Daenerys IV

“Long have we awaited you,” said a woman beside him, clad in rose and silver. The breast she had left bare in the Qartheen fashion was as perfect as a breast could be.

“We knew you were to come to us,” the wizard king said. “A thousand years ago we knew, and have been waiting all this time. We sent the comet to show you the way.”

“We have knowledge to share with you,” said a warrior in shining emerald armor, “and magic weapons to arm you with. You have passed every trial. Now come and sit with us, and all your questions shall be answered.”

THE SILVER QUEEN-COIN

  • A Storm of Swords – Daenerys VI“Taint?” Dany bristled.”I am no maester to quote history at you, Your Grace. Swords have been my life, not books. But every child knows that the Targaryens have always danced too close to madness. Your father was not the first. King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.”

Daenerys = Denerius, a silver coin (faceless god/god of many faces?) was the standard Roman silver coin from its introduction in the Second Punic War. You will see this two-sidedness duality play in to Daenerys’ arc over and over. The lessons Daenerys learns are the result of her choices, her flipping that coin and making decision based on dragon heads, or dragon tails. More coin talk here.

  • A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys VIAs Daario Naharis took a knee before her, Dany’s heart gave a lurch. His hair was matted with dried blood, and on his temple a deep cut glistened red and raw. His right sleeve was bloody almost to the elbow. “You’re hurt,” she gasped.”This?” Daario touched his temple. “A crossbowman tried to put a quarrel through my eye, but I outrode it. I was hurrying home to my queen, to bask in the warmth of her smile.” He shook his sleeve, spattering red droplets. “This blood is not mine. One of my serjeants said we should go over to the Yunkai’i, so I reached down his throat and pulled his heart out. I meant to bring it to you as a gift for my silver queen, but four of the Cats cut me off and came snarling and spitting after me. One almost caught me, so I threw the heart into his face.”
  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys IIShe was a young filly, spirited and splendid. Dany knew just enough about horses to know that this was no ordinary animal. There was something about her that took the breath away. She was grey as the winter sea, with a mane like silver smoke.Hesitantly she reached out and stroked the horse’s neck, ran her fingers through the silver of her mane. Khal Drogo said something in Dothraki and Magister Illyrio translated. “Silver for the silver of your hair, the khal says.”
  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VIIDany could see the muscles in his chest where the skin had been cut away. A trickle of blood ran from the arrow that pierced his arm. “It is not for Khal Drogo to wait,” she proclaimed. “Jhogo, seek out these eunuchs and bring them here at once.””Silver Lady,” a woman’s voice said behind her, “I can help the Great Rider with his hurts.”Dany turned her head. The speaker was one of the slaves she had claimed, the heavy, flat-nosed woman who had blessed her.A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VII”Before,” Dany said to the ugly Lhazareen woman, “I heard you speak of birthing songs …””I know every secret of the bloody bed, Silver Lady, nor have I ever lost a babe,” Mirri Maz Duur replied.”My time is near,” Dany said. “I would have you attend me when he comes, if you would.”
  • A Clash of Kings – Daenerys VShe was breaking her fast on a bowl of cold shrimp-and-persimmon soup when Irri brought her a Qartheen gown, an airy confection of ivory samite patterned with seed pearls. “Take it away,” Dany said. “The docks are no place for lady’s finery.”If the Milk Men thought her such a savage, she would dress the part for them. When she went to the stables, she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandals. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest, and a curved dagger hung from her medallion belt. Jhiqui had braided her hair Dothraki fashion, and fastened a silver bell to the end of the braid. “I have won no victories,” she tried telling her handmaid when the bell tinkled softly.Jhiqui disagreed. “You burned the maegi in their house of dust and sent their souls to hell.”

The ringing of bells in ASOIAF and other GRRM stories means death. Dany is now, literally, galloping death.

  • Cyrain of Ash from The Glass Flower

She is perhaps eleven years old, perhaps twelve. Her body is gaunt and awkward, but the beauty is there, locked inside, just beginning to blossom. Her breasts are budding now, and her blood first came less than half a year ago. Her hair is silver-gold, long and straight, a glittering cascade that falls nearly to her heels. Her eyes are lame in her small face, and they are the deepest, purest violet. Her face is something sculpted. She was bred to be thus, no doubt of that; genetic tailoring has made the Shrikan trade-lords and the wealthy of Lilith and Fellanora a breathtakingly beautiful folk.

And Daenerys will have her own army of thrall-type others called the Unsullied fight for her. The Unsullied, whose training includes death of babies (like Lilith) and is paid for with a silver coin.

  • A Storm of Swords – Daenerys II

“To win his spiked cap, an Unsullied must go to the slave marts with a silver mark, find some wailing newborn, and kill it before its mother’s eyes. In this way, we make certain that there is no weakness left in them.”

She was feeling faint. The heat, she tried to tell herself. “You take a babe from its mother’s arms, kill it as she watches, and pay for her pain with a silver coin?”

When the translation was made for him, Kraznys mo Nakloz laughed aloud. “What a soft mewling fool this one is. Tell the whore of Westeros that the mark is for the child’s owner, not the mother. The Unsullied are not permitted to steal.” He tapped his whip against his leg. “Tell her that few ever fail that test. The dogs are harder for them, it must be said. We give each boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs. It makes for a good strong lesson, we find.”

BAKKALON THE PALE CHILD and FLAMES

Bakkalon the Pale Child as described by GRRM in And Seven Times Never Kill Man.

Lyon and DaHan both nodded, among others. “Speak wisdom to us,” Fieldbishop Dhallis said then.

Proctor Wyatt agreed. One of the lesser-ranking squadmothers brought him the Book, and he opened it to the Chapter of Teachings.

“In those days much evil had come upon the seed of Earth,” the Proctor read, “for the children of Bakkalon had abandoned Him to bow to softer gods. So their skies grew dark and upon them from above came the Sons of Hranga with red eyes and demon teeth, and upon them from below came the vast Horde of Fyndii like a cloud of locusts that blotted out the stars. And the worlds flamed, and the children cried out, ‘Save us! Save us!’

“And the pale child came and stood before them, with His great sword in His hand, and in a voice like thunder He rebuked them. ‘You have been weak children,’ He told them, ‘for you have disobeyed. Where are your swords? Did I not set swords in your hands?’

“And the children cried out, ‘We have beaten them into plowshares, oh Bakkalon!’

“And He was sore angry. ‘With plowshares, then, shall you face the Sons of Hranga! With plowshares shall you slay the Horde of Fyndii!’ And He left them, and heard no more their weeping, for the Heart of Bakkalon is a Heart of Fire.

“But then one among the seed of Earth dried his tears, for the skies did burn so bright that they ran scalding on his cheeks. And the bloodlust rose in him and he beat his plowshare back into a sword, and charged the Sons of Hranga, slaying as he went. Then others saw, and followed, and a great battle-cry rang across the worlds.

“And the pale child heard, and came again, for the sound of battle is more pleasing to his ears than the sound of wails. And when He saw, He smiled. ‘Now you are my children again,’ He said to the seed of Earth. ‘For you had turned against me to worship a god who calls himself a lamb, but did you not know that lambs go only to the slaughter? Yet now your eyes have cleared, and again you are the Wolves of God!’ [sidenote: this is the shadow of a wolf in the tent with Mirri who pregnant Daenerys is brought in to “meet”].

“And Bakkalon gave them all swords again, all His children and all the seed of Earth, and He lifted his great black blade, the Demon-Reaver that slays the soulless, and swung it. And the Sons of Hranga fell before His might, and the great Horde that was the Fyndii burned beneath His gaze. And the children of Bakkalon swept across the worlds.”

The Proctor lifted his eyes. “Go, my brothers-in-arms, and think on the Teachings of Bakkalon as you sleep. May the pale child grant you visions!”

Pyramid with flames on top, Citadel beacon with flames on top. An ancient real world Ziggurat, pyramids that were for places like special marriages and had temples on the very top. The Pale Child Bakkalon with her flaming sword/reaver. Bakkalon sits stop a pyramid like a “god”, just as we see Daenerys sit atop her pyramids and compares herself to a god (quoted above). This is also reflected in Baelor the Blessed, who is playing his part as Proctor Wyatt, pale child worshiper, even down to the Baelor statue in the Sept.

Sidenote: there are a few times in the series where a zealous person whose name is Baelor is often given the humorous epithet of “Baelor Breakwind“, or, “Baelor Butthole”

  • A Storm of Swords – Daenerys VI She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon. But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood . . .Dany put the glass aside, frowning. It was just. It was. I did it for the children.
  • A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys V “We were all unblooded once, Your Grace. The Unsullied will help stiffen them. If I had five hundred knights …””Or five. And if I give you the Unsullied, I will have no one but the Brazen Beasts to hold Meereen.” When Ser Barristan did not dispute her, Dany closed her eyes. Gods, she prayed, you took Khal Drogo, who was my sun-and-stars. You took our valiant son before he drew a breath. You have had your blood of me. Help me now, I pray you. Give me the wisdom to see the path ahead and the strength to do what I must to keep my children safe.
  • A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys VIII He will give us these castrati, Dany thought, and then he will march home and make some more. The world is full of boys.The tumblers who came next failed to move her either, even when they formed a human pyramid nine levels high, with a naked little girl on top. Is that meant to represent my pyramid? the queen wondered. Is the girl on top meant to be me?[Note: Dany is going to be a red god folk saint, because of fire worship.]

And this SteelAngel/R’Hollor/Bakkalon-fire god parallel carries over with Daeron 1 and his statue with his sword pointed toward Dorne. There are plenty enough reasons to speculate that in The Winds of Winter- The Foresaken chapter, Aeron has visions of Daenerys paired with Euron. How this will come to happen, I do have some ideas, but it wouldn’t occur until A Dream of Spring (at minimum).

  • The Foresaken (Aeron)

“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he [Euron] said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.” Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.”

“Never. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!”

“Why would I want that hard black rock? Brother, look again and see where I am seated.”

Aeron Damphair looked. The mound of skulls was gone. Now it was metal underneath the Crow’s Eye: a great, tall, twisted seat of razor sharp iron, barbs and blades and broken swords, all dripping blood.

Impaled upon the longer spikes were the bodies of the gods. The Maiden was there and the Father and the Mother, the Warrior and Crone and Smith … even the Stranger. They hung side by side with all manner of queer foreign gods: the Great Shepherd and the Black Goat, three-headed Trios and the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Lord of Light and the butterfly god of Naath.

[and then]

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea. He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed …

Even Illyrio Mopatis’s manse has a Bakkalon style figurehead at his manse. There is a marble pool with a statue of a naked boy in its center. The statue is lithe and handsome, made of painted marble so that the hair is blond and shoulder-length. It is poised to duel with a bravo’s blade in hand. The pool is surrounded by six cherry trees. Fruit/fruit trees in ASOIAF tends to represent children or family. Young Aegon (Young Griff) would be Aegon the sixth of his name.

  • A Feast for Crows – Brienne VI…We are blessed here. Where the river meets the bay, the currents and the tides wrestle one against the other, and many strange and wondrous things are pushed toward us, to wash up on our shores. Driftwood is the least of it. We have found silver cups and iron pots, sacks of wool and bolts of silk, rusted helms and shining swords . . . aye, and rubies.”That interested Ser Hyle. “Rhaegar’s rubies?””It may be. Who can say? The battle was long leagues from here, but the river is tireless and patient. Six have been found. We are all waiting for the seventh.”
  • A Dance with Dragons – Tyrion IIIllyrio brushed away the objection as if it were a fly. “Black or red, a dragon is still a dragon. When Maelys the Monstrous died upon the Stepstones, it was the end of the male line of House Blackfyre.” The cheesemonger smiled through his forked beard. “And Daenerys will give the exiles what Bittersteel and the Blackfyres never could. She will take them home.”With fire and sword. It was the kind of homecoming that Tyrion wished for as well. “Ten thousand swords makes for a princely gift, I grant you. Her Grace should be most pleased.”The magister gave a modest bob of his head, chins jiggling. “I would never presume to say what might please Her Grace.”

This is the biggest, most current hint that Daenerys will be the new Blackfyre in the GRRM scheduled Dance of Dragons. History repeats, but with a twist. Dany will come with her black-fire Drogon, and she will slay the mummer’s dragon Aegon, she will take the sword Blackfyre from him as her own. The chest that Illyrio sends with Tyrion most likely has Blackfyre the sword in it. Aegon will bring it back to Westeros and Dany will retrieve it then.

  • A Dance with Dragons – Tyrion III“Your ploy was a success,” said Haldon. “I laughed myself.””There is a gift for the boy in one of the chests. Some candied ginger. He was always fond of it.” Illyrio sounded oddly sad. “I thought I might continue on to Ghoyan Drohe with you. A farewell feast before you start downriver …”

-and then-

Tyrion found the plain fare a pleasant change from all the rich food he had eaten with Illyrio. “Those chests we brought you,” he said as they were chewing. “Gold for the Golden Company, I thought at first, until I saw Ser Rolly hoist a chest onto one shoulder. If it were full of coin, he could never have lifted it so easily.”

“It’s just armor,” said Duck, with a shrug.

-and then-

  • A Dance with Dragons – Tyrion IV

“Swords?” Young Griff grinned. “Swords will be sweet.”

Tyrion helped him dress for the bout, in heavy breeches, padded doublet, and a dinted suit of old steel plate. Ser Rolly shrugged into his mail and boiled leather. Both set helms upon their heads and chose blunted longswords from the bundle in the weapons chest. They set to on the afterdeck, having at each other lustily whilst the rest of the morning company looked on.

Much more on Bakkalon and other topics here:

It starts with the ploughshare, and advances from there.

House Darry SigilThe House Darry sigil shows a type of cart king- a man with a ploughshare working his field. King of his castle. This implies that Willem Darry intended to raise Viserys and Daenerys as a peaceful, reasonable people. However it did not work because as noted in the story, Viserys was showing his father’s cruelty at a young age, and later Dany sits complicit as her husband kills her brother and rightful king and “dragons plant no trees.”

  • A Feast for Crows – Jaime IV

The fields outside the walls of Darry were being tilled once more. The burned crops had been plowed under, and Ser Addam’s scouts reported seeing women in the furrows pulling weeds, whilst a team of oxen broke new ground on the edge of a nearby wood. A dozen bearded men with axes stood guard over them as they worked.

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys V

Dany followed on her silver, escorted by Ser Jorah Mormont and her brother Viserys, mounted once more. After the day in the grass when she had left him to walk back to the khalasar, the Dothraki had laughingly called him Khal Rhae Mhar, the Sorefoot King. Khal Drogo had offered him a place in a cart the next day, and Viserys had accepted. In his stubborn ignorance, he had not even known he was being mocked; the carts were for eunuchs, cripples, women giving birth, the very young and the very old. That won him yet another name: Khal Rhaggat, the Cart King. Her brother had thought it was the khal’s way of apologizing for the wrong Dany had done him. She had begged Ser Jorah not to tell him the truth, lest he be shamed. The knight had replied that the king could well do with a bit of shame … yet he had done as she bid. It had taken much pleading, and all the pillow tricks Doreah had taught her, before Dany had been able to make Drogo relent and allow Viserys to rejoin them at the head of the column.

“Is place,” Khal Drogo answered, in the Common Tongue that Dany had taught him, “for Sorefoot King.” He clapped his hands together. “A cart! Bring cart for Khal Rhaggat!”

At the last, Viserys looked at her. “Sister, please … Dany, tell them … make them … sweet sister …”

When the gold was half-melted and starting to run, Drogo reached into the flames, snatched out the pot. “Crown!” he roared. “Here. A crown for Cart King!” And upended the pot over the head of the man who had been her brother.

The sound Viserys Targaryen made when that hideous iron helmet covered his face was like nothing human. His feet hammered a frantic beat against the dirt floor, slowed, stopped. Thick globs of molten gold dripped down onto his chest, setting the scarlet silk to smoldering … yet no drop of blood was spilled.

He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon.

Bakkalon Comparisons

“I am only a young girl and know little of the ways of war,” she told Lord Ghael, “but we have heard that Astapor is starving. Let King Cleon feed his people before he leads them out to battle.” She made a gesture of dismissal. Ghael withdrew.

Her hair had burned away in Drogo’s pyre, so her handmaids garbed her in the skin of the hrakkar Drogo had slain, the white lion of the Dothraki sea. Its fearsome head made a hood to cover her naked scalp, its pelt a cloak that flowed across her shoulders and down her back. The cream-colored dragon sunk sharp black claws into the lion’s mane and coiled its tail around her arm, while Ser Jorah took his accustomed place by her side.

* * *

Blood of Valyria still runs strong in Lys, where even the smallfolk oft boast pale skin, silver-gold hair, and the purple, lilac, and pale blue eyes of the dragonlords of old.”

* * *

Bakkalon’s sword into ploughshares, turns back on human children, wants to war instead of peace. This idea is also reflected as the tiger woman/ Volantis plot develops.

The meaning and inspiration for Bakkalon comes from real life:

Isaiah http://biblehub.com/isaiah/2-4.htm

Sword into plowshares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swords_to_ploughshares

Yevgeny Vuchetich

Remember readers, be sure to beat your ploughshares back into swords:

  • A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys X

“No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words.

“Fire and Blood,” Daenerys told the swaying grass.

Much more on Bakkalon and other topics here:

DEAMON REAVER ROADS

George tends to use fire and dragon symbolism in many of his past stories, and I have yet to read a story of his where these fire religions/people/dragons are connected to anything other than false elitism, expansionism at the cost of the indigenous people and environment, or all consuming religious fanaticism. In an article from 2011, George says this of dragons:

“Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only [Daenerys Targaryen, one of the series’ heroines] has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world,” Martin said in 2011. “But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I’m trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn’t mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn’t give you the power to reform, or improve, or build.”

***

“I have tried to make it explicit in the novels that the dragons are destructive forces, and Dany (Daenerys Targaryen) has found that out as she tried to rule the city of Meereen and be queen there. She has the power to destroy, she can wipe out entire cities, and we certainly see that in Fire and Blood, we see the dragons wiping out entire armies, wiping out towns and cities, destroying them, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to rule — it just enables you to destroy.” George RR Martin, November 21, 2018. Source.

***

And here is but one use of “fire dragons” in a story of his. The dragons are interchangeable with things like wagons in the author’s writing style (as Martin mentions in Dreamsongs), depending on the sub-genre of the story. In another story he calls a constellation the “ice wagon”, but in ASOAIF it is the constellation the “ice dragon”:

“The waterfall!” the bitter speaker repeated. “Since the death of winter, they have broken more than twenty pyramids, Arik, and their powerwagons have crushed the forest and now a great dusty road scars the soil from their valley to the riverlands. (we will come back to these roads in a minute)

But then a second squad of the Angels were among them, and there was a creak of wood straining and snapping, and from behind a final grove of fruit trees, dimly, neKrol could see the black flanks of the powerwagon, its blastcannon seemingly trained right at him.

DaHan nodded. “I understand. You are truly a godless man, neKrol, to consort so with soulless animals, to teach them to ape the ways of the seed of Earth. But it does not matter.” He raised his arm in signal; behind him, among the trees, the blastcannon of the powerwagon moved slightly to the right. “You and your pet should move at once.” DaHan told neKrol. “When I lower my arm, the Jaenshi god will burn and if you stand in the way, you will never move again.”

And yeah, this does fit the “build me dragons” idea of Aegon IV:

This was far from the greatest folly of Aegon IV’s stillborn invasion of Dorne, however, for His Grace had also turned to the dubious pyromancers of the ancient Guild of Alchemists, commanding them to “build me dragons.” These wood-and-iron monstrosities, fitted with pumps that shot jets of wildfire, might perhaps have been of some use in a siege. But Aegon proposed to drag these devices up and through the Boneway, where there are places so steep that the Dornishmen have carved steps.

However, let us take another look at the “great dusty road scars the soil” mentioned in the quote above. The roads in this story are paved by force using “dragons” in the form of fire breathing powerwagons. These powerwagons, led by the Steelangels, burn their way through the indigenous lands of the native folk already living in the area. The Steelangels (another dragon reference) are following the history of the Valyrians in ASOIAF. Nearly every historic culture in Essos has fled from the Valyrians and their fire magics and the Valyrians practiced a “bow or burn” method of expansion. Aegon the Dragon (conqueror) carried on this practice with his bow or burn policies in the new land of Westeros. And when it was Aegon the Dragon himself doing the conquering, he sent his sisters out to carry his word through a “campaign”.

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys IIIThey forded three wide placid rivers and a fourth that was swift and narrow and treacherous, camped beside a high blue waterfall, skirted the tumbled ruins of a vast dead city where ghosts were said to moan among blackened marble columns. They raced down Valyrian roads a thousand years old and straight as a Dothraki arrow.
  • A Dance With Dragons – Tyrion IIThe dwarf was so stuffed that he had to undo his belt and the topmost laces on his breeches. The boy’s clothes his host had dressed him in made him feel like ten pounds of sausage in a five-pound skin. If we eat this way every day I will be the size of Illyrio before I meet this dragon queen. Outside the litter night had fallen. Inside all was dark. Tyrion listened to Illyrio’s snores, the creak of the leather straps, the slow clop clop of the team’s ironshod hooves on the hard Valyrian road, but his heart was listening for the beat of leathern wings.When he woke, dawn had come. The horses plodded on, the litter creaking and swaying between them. Tyrion pulled the curtain back an inch to peer outside, but there was little to see but ochre fields, bare brown elms, and the road itself, a broad stone highway that ran straight as a spear to the horizon. He had read about Valyrian roads, but this was the first he had seen. The Freehold’s grasp had reached as far as Dragonstone, but never to the mainland of Westeros itself. Odd, that. Dragonstone is no more than a rock. The wealth was farther west, but they had dragons. Surely they knew that it was there.The next evening they came upon a huge Valyrian sphinx crouched beside the road. It had a dragon’s body and a woman’s face.”A dragon queen,” said Tyrion. “A pleasant omen.”
  • A Dance With Dragons – Quentyn (Merchant’s Man)It was possible to go overland to Meereen, that much was true. The old Valyrian roads would take them there. Dragon roads, men called the great stone roadways of the Freehold, but the one that ran eastward from Volantis to Meereen had earned a more sinister name: the demon road.

CATCHING UP WITH LILITH

Lilith means “the night,” and she embodies the emotional and spiritual aspects of darkness: terror, sensuality, and unbridled freedom. Just like the character Cyrain of Ash, there is an enormous amount of parallels between Cyrain and Lilith with Daenerys. This is but a small portion.

A visual of Lilith, one of the wives of Satan (fire). And we know Daenerys is already a bride of fire.

314px-Lilith_(John_Collier_painting)
Lilith by artist John Collier

A few good links to expand the info of Lilith:

  1. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/lilith-lady-flying-in-darkness/
  2. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lilith
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilith
  4. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/people-in-the-bible/lilith/
  5. http://www.bitterwaters.com/the-case-for-lilith/the-biblical-case-for-lilith/3-18-leviathan-as-the-fleeing-serpent-lilith/

We need to keep in mind that the author rarely does one-to-one copies, but he chooses the broad strokes, the important parts, and he works them in to his own character or story. There are many tales of Lilith from the Middle Eastern area of the world, while not all the same in every small detail, they do share the same broad strokes betweeen stories. The question I am wanting to know the answer to is if George is turning this Lilith idea on its head to make it the opposite?

Immortality – Lilith is immortal and will live forever. Will Daenerys second life one of her dragons?

Invulnerability – Lilith cannot be harmed by Earthly means, just like Dany wasn’t hurt in the Drogo funeral pyre.

Flight – Lilith can fly through the Heavens with her demonic wings. Dany on Drogon.

Seduction – Lilith can seduce any man with her sexuality. There are many ways we see this, but mostly it is Dany playing the coy child with her, “I am but a little girl and know little of the ways of war.”

Soul Consumption – Lilith consumes the souls of men to gain strength. Daenerys takes the sould of Viserys, Drogo, and Rhaego to hatch her dragons.

Dream Walking – Lilith can invade people’s dreams. I don’t think we have seen this in ASOAIF as stated, but more that GRRM changed it so that it was Quaithe that invaded Dany’s dreams or subconsciousness.

Harm to babies

The Bible mentions Lilith only once, as a dweller in waste places (Isaiah 34:14), but the characterization of the Lilith or the lili (in the singular or plural) as a seducer or slayer of children has a long pre-history in ancient Babylonian religion.

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys V

“As swift as the wind he rides, and behind him his khalasar covers the earth, men without number, with arakhs shining in their hands like blades of razor grass. Fierce as a storm this prince will be. His enemies will tremble before him, and their wives will weep tears of blood and rend their flesh in grief. The bells in his hair will sing his coming, and the milk men in the stone tents will fear his name.” The old woman trembled and looked at Dany almost as if she were afraid. “The prince is riding, and he shall be the stallion who mounts the world.”

“The stallion who mounts the world!” the onlookers cried in echo, until the night rang to the sound of their voices.

The one-eyed crone peered at Dany. “What shall he be called, the stallion who mounts the world?”

She stood to answer. “He shall be called Rhaego,” she said, using the words that Jhiqui had taught her. Her hands touched the swell beneath her breasts protectively as a roar went up from the Dothraki. “Rhaego,” they screamed. “Rhaego, Rhaego, Rhaego!”

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VIII

Khal Drogo writhed feebly as Rakharo and Quaro lowered him into the bath. “No,” he muttered, “no. Must ride.” Once in the water, all the strength seemed to leak out of him.

“Bring his horse,” Mirri Maz Duur commanded, and so it was done. Jhogo led the great red stallion into the tent. When the animal caught the scent of death, he screamed and reared, rolling his eyes. It took three men to subdue him.

“What do you mean to do?” Dany asked her.

“We need the blood,” Mirri answered. “That is the way.”

Archibald Sayce (1882) considered that Hebrew lilit (or lilith) and the earlier Akkadian līlītu are from proto-Semitic. Charles Fossey (1902) has this literally translating to “female night being/demon”, although cuneiform inscriptions from Mesopotamia exist where Līlīt and Līlītu refers to disease-bearing wind spirits. Another possibility is association not with “night”, but with “wind”, thus identifying the Akkadian Lil-itu as a loan from the Sumerian lil “air” — specifically from Ninlil, “lady air”, goddess of the south wind (and wife of Enlil) — and itud, “moon”.

  • A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys IX

In the smoldering red pits of Drogon’s eyes, Dany saw her own reflection. How small she looked, how weak and frail and scared. I cannot let him see my fear. She scrabbled in the sand, pushing against the pitmaster’s corpse, and her fingers brushed against the handle of his whip. Touching it made her feel braver. The leather was warm, alive. Drogon roared again, the sound so loud that she almost dropped the whip. His teeth snapped at her.

Drogon rose, his wings covering her in shadow.

One of the reasons Lilith was cast away as Adam’s first wife was that she refused to lie beneath him during sex. Well, we see see Dany do the same thing, only in a GRRM sorta way:

When the first man, Adam, saw that he was alone, God made for him a woman like himself, from the earth. God called her name Lilith, and brought her to Adam. They immediately began to quarrel. Adam said: “You lie beneath me.” And Lilith said: “You lie beneath me! We are both equal, for both of us are from the earth.” And they would not listen to one another.

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys III

Khal Drogo followed her out into the moonlight, the bells in his hair tinkling softly. A few yards from her tent was a bed of soft grass, and it was there that Dany drew him down. When he tried to turn her over, she put a hand on his chest. “No,” she said. “This night I would look on your face.”

There is no privacy in the heart of the khalasar. Dany felt the eyes on her as she undressed him, heard the soft voices as she did the things that Doreah had told her to do. It was nothing to her. Was she not khaleesi? His were the only eyes that mattered, and when she mounted him she saw something there that she had never seen before. She rode him as fiercely as ever she had ridden her silver, and when the moment of his pleasure came, Khal Drogo called out her name.

They were on the far side of the Dothraki sea when Jhiqui brushed the soft swell of Dany’s stomach with her fingers and said, “Khaleesi, you are with child.”

59f5b7_d4e8c3ce0e2b4281b4ed21537bcb18a2~mv2
Liltith in the Garden of Eden. Michelangelo

In the Renaissance, Michelangelo portrayed Lilith as a half-woman, half-serpent (see  picture above), coiled around the Tree of Knowledge. Later, her beauty would captivate the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. “Her enchanted hair,” he wrote, “was the first gold.” However, our Daenerys is both Lilith and a denerius silver coin:

  • “Look at her. That silver-gold hair, those purple eyes … she is the blood of old Valyria, no doubt, no doubt …

And remember Cyrain of Ash: Her hair is silver-gold, long and straight, a glittering cascade that falls nearly to her heels.

THE BEAUTIFUL LILITH

“Half of me is beautiful,

but you were never sure which half.”

— Ruth Feldman, “Lilith”

One thing George RR Martin has tried to undo in his own works are the cliché tropes of beauty=good, while ugly and dark=evil. And not all evil is born that way, but rather a sum of all of their experiences. We do see this with all of our ASOIAF characters, but none so much as the top three; Daenerys, Jon, and Bran.

Martin has Jon wearing the black, but really the black brothers of the Night’s Watch are the only good guys of the story that are sworn to save humanity (as long as the Night’s Watch remembers its true purpose). And we see Dany dressing in silks and pearls and exposing her breast. She hates her tiny slippers, though, as they restrictive to her Lilithian feet.

But don’t we read of Daenerys being “the most beautiful woman in the world” several times over? Yes, and that probably is not a good thing if you follow how Martin is undoing the cliché. This also has a parallel to the other fiery woman, Cersei Lannister, but that will be discussed in seperate post.

  • A Dance with Dragons – The Spurned Suitor

“They’re dead,” said Gerris. “They won’t care.””All dead,” Quentyn agreed. “For what? To bring me here, so I might wed the dragon queen. A grand adventure, Cletus called it. Demon roads and stormy seas, and at the end of it the most beautiful woman in the world. A tale to tell our grandchildren. But Cletus will never father a child, unless he left a bastard in the belly of that tavern wench he liked. Will will never have his wedding. Their deaths should have some meaning.”And a few more times:

“My queen,” he said, “and the bravest, sweetest, and most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Daenerys—”

The iron captain had no time to wait for laggards. Not with his bride encircled by her enemies. The most beautiful woman in the world has urgent need of my axe.

And now the most beautiful woman in the world was waiting in Meereen,…

What does George RR Martin have to say about the physical characteristics of his heroes and villains?

  • The battle between good and evil is a theme of much of fantasy. But I think the battle between good and evil is thought largely within the individual human heart, by the decisions that we make. It’s not like evil dresses up in black clothing and you know, they’re really ugly. These are some of the things that Tolkien did; he made them work fabulously, but in the hands of his imitators, they become total clichés. I mean the orc-like creatures who always do dress in black and … they’re really ugly and they’ve got facial deformities or something. You can tell that if somebody’s ugly, he must be evil. And then Tolkien’s heroes are all very attractive people and all that, of course, again this become cliché in the hands of the Tolkien imitators. http://entertainment.time.com/2011/04/18/grrm-interview-part-2-fantasy-and-history/
  • I did not want to write another version of the War Between Good and Evil, where the antagonist is called the Foul King or the Demon Lord or Prince Rotten, and his minions are slavering subhumans dressed all in black (I dressed my Night’s Watch, who are basically good guys, all in black in part to undermine that annoying convention). Before you can fight the war between good and evil, you need to determine which is which, and that’s not always as easy as some Fantasists would have you believe. http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1427
  • Thematically, power is at the center of this – the use of power, the corrupting influences of power, what people will do to get power and what power will do to them. http://collider.com/george-r-r-martin-interview-game-of-thrones/

LILITH BEGONE LULLABY CONNECTIONS

And it is said that Lilith is responsible for infant mortality and even abortion. Irish novelist James Joyce cast her as the “patron of abortions.” Yes, I am sure these are old tales that try and explain what we know now in this modern age, but we are working in myth and story here. And this makes me second guess the berries Daenerys ate while out in the dry grass sea. Dany knew the price to be paid for Drogo, and that was the life of her unborn baby Rhaego. Too many quotes to add at the moment, but maybe one day they will be added when in a thread that allows that space. Remember, the dose makes the poison in ASOIAF world, and Dragons only consume burnt, charred meat.

  • [Sansa chapter, and we see it can linger in the body] “It was too soon. My lady, you do not understand. As I’ve told the Lord Protector, a pinch of sweetsleep will prevent the shaking, but it does not leave the flesh, and in time . . .”
  • [Arya chapter] “A few grains will slow a pounding heart and stop a hand from shaking, and make a man feel calm and strong. A pinch will grant a night of deep and dreamless sleep. Three pinches will produce that sleep that does not end.

Compare to Daenerys who made her own version of the abortifcant moon tea while out in the dried up Dothraki sea. There was a lot she learned from Mirri Maz Duur, and this included snippets of blood and fire ritual aspects, and even birthing songs and “bloody beds”.

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VII

    “Before,” Dany said to the ugly Lhazareen woman, “I heard you speak of birthing songs …”

    “I know every secret of the bloody bed, Silver Lady, nor have I ever lost a babe,” Mirri Maz Duur replied.

    “My time is near,” Dany said. “I would have you attend me when he comes, if you would.”

  • A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys X

Just past midday she came upon a bush growing by the stream, its twisted limbs covered with hard green berries. Dany squinted at them suspiciously, then plucked one from a branch and nibbled at it. Its flesh was tart and chewy, with a bitter aftertaste that seemed familiar to her. “In the khalasar, they used berries like these to flavor roasts,” she decided. Saying it aloud made her more certain of it. Her belly rumbled, and Dany found herself picking berries with both hands and tossing them into her mouth.

…[and then a few paragraphs later]…

For a moment she did not realize what it was. The world had just begun to lighten, and the tall grass rustled softly in the wind. No, please, let me sleep some more. I’m so tired. She tried to burrow back beneath the pile of grass she had torn up when she went to sleep. Some of the stalks felt wet. Had it rained again? She sat up, afraid that she had soiled herself as she slept. When she brought her fingers to her face, she could smell the blood on them. Am I dying? Then she saw the pale crescent moon, floating high above the grass, and it came to her that this was no more than her moon blood.

If she had not been so sick and scared, that might have come as a relief. Instead she began to shiver violently. She rubbed her fingers through the dirt, and grabbed a handful of grass to wipe between her legs. The dragon does not weep. She was bleeding, but it was only woman’s blood. The moon is still a crescent, though. How can that be? She tried to remember the last time she had bled. The last full moon? The one before? The one before that? No, it cannot have been so long as that. “I am the blood of the dragon,” she told the grass, aloud.

Once, the grass whispered back, until you chained your dragons in the dark.

  • A Storm of Swords – Jon II

    “No, but—”

    “You’re bastard-born yourself. And if Ygritte does not want a child, she will go to some woods witch and drink a cup o’ moon tea. You do not come into it, once the seed is planted.”

    “I will not father a bastard.”

  • A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys X

    “It is such a long way,” she complained. “I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl.”

    No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words.

    “Fire and Blood,” Daenerys told the swaying grass.

In folk Judaism, the primary myths about Lilith continue to identify her principally as a stealer of babies. Numerous amulets for pregnant women and babies from medieval through modern times use the three names of the angels mentioned in the Alphabet of Ben Sira (Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Samangelof) to ward away Lilith. Such amulets may also contain a circle with the names of Adam and Eve on the inside of the circle, and the name of Lilith on the outside: a clear warning to Lilith to stay outside the family realm. A red ribbon is also sometimes placed on a crib to ward off Lilith.

  • A Dance with Dragons – Tyrion VI

    “That’s a prophecy even I could make. Ah, supper.”

    Supper was a plate of roasted goat served on a bed of sliced onions. The meat was spiced and fragrant, charred outside and red and juicy within. Tyrion plucked at a piece. It was so hot it burned his fingers, but so good he could not help but reach for another chunk. He washed it down with the pale green Volantene liquor, the closest thing he’d had to wine for ages. “Very good,” he said, plucking up his dragon. “The most powerful piece in the game,” he announced, as he removed one of Qavo’s elephants. “And Daenerys Targaryen has three, it’s said.”

Continue reading:

Lost Lands

The lilītu (Lilith) dwells in desert lands and open country spaces and is especially dangerous to pregnant women and infants. Her breasts are filled with poison, not milk. Various historic myths surmise Lilith as: The ardat lilī is a sexually frustrated and infertile female who behaves aggressively toward young men. Noted here, and another source here. This is a myth, and as we see Martin is doing with Daenerys already, myth in the form of rumor is distorting reality. Does this make the character of Daenerys a purely evil character? No, but it will add to making her take step closer to the “very dark grey”, as Martin puts it. This is his writing style.

  • A Dance with Dragons – Tyrion VII

    “My business is in the east.”

    “And what business is that, I wonder? Not slaves, the silver queen has put an end to that. She has closed the fighting pits as well, so it cannot be a taste for blood. What else could Meereen offer to a Westerosi knight? Bricks? Olives? Dragons? Ah, there it is.” The old woman’s smile turned feral. “I have heard it said that the silver queen feeds them with the flesh of infants while she herself bathes in the blood of virgin girls and takes a different lover every night.”

I want to talk about her breasts filled with poison, not milk. Martin has his own rules in his own world, however, he was quite specific with how he wanted his dragons represented. Since it is rather clear that #1 GRRM knows who Lilith is because of how he used her as Cyrain of Ash (a near exact pre-Dany), #2 is consistently using Bible iconography in his Essosian story line, it is safe to say that GRRM knows this poison breasts detail and what we see Dany doing after her dragons hatch is not nursing with milk, but poison as a metaphor- because reptilian creatures hatched from eggs don’t nurse milk. And we know different poisons in the story are often related to being like milk.

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys XWhen the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to walk upon, Ser Jorah Mormont found her amidst the ashes, surrounded by blackened logs and bits of glowing ember and the burnt bones of man and woman and stallion. She was naked, covered with soot, her clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair all crisped away … yet she was unhurt.The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the green-and-bronze at the right. Her arms cradled them close. The black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her shoulders, its long sinuous neck coiled under her chin. When it saw Jorah, it raised its head and looked at him with eyes as red as coals.Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came up behind him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted.
  • A Feast for Crows – The Queenmaker“Watch where you set your feet,” Drey cautioned. “It has been a while since Prince Oberyn milked the local vipers.””I was weaned on venom, Dalt. Any viper takes a bite of me will rue it.” Ser Gerold vanished through a broken arch.
  • A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys VIBless me, Dany thought bitterly. Your city is gone to ash and bone, your people are dying all around you. I have no shelter for you, no medicine, no hope. Only stale bread and wormy meat, hard cheese, a little milk. Bless me, bless me. What kind of mother has no milk to feed her children?”Too many dead,” Aggo said. “They should be burned.”

And to drive it in, George has also said that Daenerys and Cersei Lannister are parallels to each other. This is quite evident as they are both walking a similar path, making similar tough decisions, struggling in a man’s world, and both fire women give birth to three dragonlettes. Actually, both of them give birth to three already dead dragonlettes, as Dany’s eggs were stone and Maggy the Frog told Cersei her children were dead. As the strongest and most aggressive, Drogon is the parallel to Joffery.

  • A Feast for Crows – Cersei III

The queen could feel the heat of those green flames. The pyromancers said that only three things burned hotter than their substance: dragonflame, the fires beneath the earth, and the summer sun. Some of the ladies gasped when the first flames appeared in the windows, licking up the outer walls like long green tongues. Others cheered, and made toasts.

It is beautiful, she thought, as beautiful as Joffrey, when they laid him in my arms. No man had ever made her feel as good as she had felt when he took her nipple in his mouth to nurse.

So throughout all of this is the idea that Lilith has an adverse relationship with the young and unborn. We have seen that with Daenerys two times now. Three if you count Drogon eating Hazzea. And again, Daenerys parallel Cersei even has her time with “eating babies”:

  • A Feast for Crows – Cersei VII

But it was no good. She could not feel it, whatever Robert felt on the nights he took her. There was no pleasure in it, not for her. For Taena, yes. Her nipples were two black diamonds, her sex slick and steamy. Robert would have loved you, for an hour. The queen slid a finger into that Myrish swamp, then another, moving them in and out, but once he spent himself inside you, he would have been hard-pressed to recall your name.

She wanted to see if it would be as easy with a woman as it had always been with Robert. Ten thousand of your children perished in my palm, Your Grace, she thought, slipping a third finger into Myr. Whilst you snored, I would lick your sons off my face and fingers one by one, all those pale sticky princes. You claimed your rights, my lord, but in the darkness I would eat your heirs. Taena gave a shudder. She gasped some words in a foreign tongue, then shuddered again and arched her back and screamed. She sounds as if she is being gored, the queen thought. For a moment she let herself imagine that her fingers were a bore’s tusks, ripping the Myrish woman apart from groin to throat.

And again, the warriors Daenerys has to defend her are the Unsullied, who kill babies in return for a silver coin.

  • A Storm of Swords – Daenerys II

    “To win his spiked cap, an Unsullied must go to the slave marts with a silver mark, find some wailing newborn, and kill it before its mother’s eyes. In this way, we make certain that there is no weakness left in them.”

    She was feeling faint. The heat, she tried to tell herself. “You take a babe from its mother’s arms, kill it as she watches, and pay for her pain with a silver coin?”

    When the translation was made for him, Kraznys mo Nakloz laughed aloud. “What a soft mewling fool this one is. Tell the whore of Westeros that the mark is for the child’s owner, not the mother. The Unsullied are not permitted to steal.” He tapped his whip against his leg. “Tell her that few ever fail that test. The dogs are harder for them, it must be said. We give each boy a puppy on the day that he is cut. At the end of the first year, he is required to strangle it. Any who cannot are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs. It makes for a good strong lesson, we find.”

So what did people do to ward off this night demon? They developed songs asking for divine protection. An old hebrew translation of “Lullaby” is “Lilith-abi”, which in turn translates to “Lilith Begone.” We see Daenerys has a connection to songs, and birth, including at the time of her dragon birth. It is possible that Mirri Maz Duur was singing a birthing song. Here we see the singing dragon transforms Daenerys in to something stronger; reborn:

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys

Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

And the next day, strangely, she did not seem to hurt quite so much. It was as if the gods had heard her and taken pity. Even her handmaids noticed the change. “Khaleesi,” Jhiqui said, “what is wrong? Are you sick?”

“I was,” she answered, standing over the dragon’s eggs that Illyrio had given her when she wed. She touched one, the largest of the three, running her hand lightly over the shell. Black-and-scarlet, she thought, like the dragon in my dream. The stone felt strangely warm beneath her fingers … or was she still dreaming? She pulled her hand back nervously.

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VII

“Before,” Dany said to the ugly Lhazareen woman, “I heard you speak of birthing songs …”

“I know every secret of the bloody bed, Silver Lady, nor have I ever lost a babe,” Mirri Maz Duur replied.

“My time is near,” Dany said. “I would have you attend me when he comes, if you would.” (sidenote: yes, MMD attends by way of song and burning)

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys X

A rising heat puffed at her face, soft and sudden as a lover’s breath, but in seconds it had grown too hot to bear. Dany stepped backward. The wood crackled, louder and louder. Mirri Maz Duur began to sing in a shrill, ululating voice. The flames whirled and writhed, racing each other up the platform. The dusk shimmered as the air itself seemed to liquefy from the heat. Dany heard logs spit and crack. The fires swept over Mirri Maz Duur. Her song grew louder, shriller … then she gasped, again and again, and her song became a shuddering wail, thin and high and full of agony.

LILITH and GARDENS

According to Bahari legend, Lilith enjoyed an extensive sequence of affairs with both Yahweh and Lucifer, who were Gods with their own gardens; the gardens is significant key here. We have in ASOIAF the gardens in Dorne that were created for a Daenerys of past. And Dany remembers the lemon tree, and the plotting Doran does to get Arianne and Quentyn to dragons happens in the Gardens.

One of the most important steps in getting Daenerys to Qarth where she meets the Undyine Ones, is her stop in Vaes Tolorro, and they eat the fruits of the “city of bones”. This is in clear contrast to Craster’s Keep, which is guarded by bones of the dead, and Jon refuses to eat the food of Craster and partake his hospitalty, therfore putting him in Craster’s debt.

ACOK, Daenerys I: And so they went, the bells in their hair ringing softly, while Dany settled down with her small band of survivors in the place they named Vaes Tolorro, the city of bones. Day followed night followed day. Women harvested fruit from the gardens of the dead.

ACOK, Daenerys I: Irri broke her reverie to tell her that Ser Jorah Mormont was outside, awaiting her pleasure. “Send him in,” Dany commanded, sand-scrubbed skin tingling. She wrapped herself in the lionskin. The hrakkar had been much bigger than Dany, so the pelt covered everything that wanted covering.

“I’ve brought you a peach,” Ser Jorah said, kneeling. It was so small she could almost hide it in her palm, and overripe too, but when she took the first bite, the flesh was so sweet she almost cried. She ate it slowly, savoring every mouthful, while Ser Jorah told her of the tree it had been plucked from, in a garden near the western wall.

“Fruit and water and shade,” Dany said, her cheeks sticky with peach juice. “The gods were good to bring us to this place.”

 

CLOAK of the NIGHT LION

In the story we have another “death god” called the Lion of Night. This ancient story happens again in the current story with a twist. This time the Lion of Night is a female, and the maiden-made-of-light is Sun-and-stars Khal Drogo. Their son, Rhaego, was supposed to be the Stallion that Mounts the World, instead of the God on Earth, but both ascended to the heavens.

Read about Dany as the Night Lion here.

Lucifer was said to have given Lilith the ‘cloak of night’ as a gift after she had wandered the lands outside of Eden, scorched and tortured. In ASOIAF we see this (above) when Daenerys and her people enter Vaes Tolorro. Drogo gives Dany a lion pelt that she keeps with her the whole time, even though it smells musty. And we have ASOIAF tales of the Lion of Night.

  • Her hair had burned away in Drogo’s pyre, so her handmaids garbed her in the skin of the hrakkar Drogo had slain, the white lion of the Dothraki sea. Its fearsome head made a hood to cover her naked scalp, its pelt a cloak that flowed across her shoulders and down her back. The cream-colored dragon sunk sharp black claws into the lion’s mane and coiled its tail around her arm, while Ser Jorah took his accustomed place by her side.”We follow the comet,” Dany told her khalasar. Once it was said, no word was raised against it. They had been Drogo’s people, but they were hers now. The Unburnt, they called her, and Mother of Dragons. Her word was their law.It was Drogo who had given her the pelt she wore, the head and hide of a hrakkar, the white lion of the Dothraki sea. It was too big for her and had a musty smell, but it made her feel as if her sun-and-stars was still near her.

The Lion of Night is a god in Yi Ti. The Faceless Men believe that is just another representation of the Many-Faced God. There is a statue of it in the House of Black and White which is most commonly visited by rich men. Also, there is a statue of the Pale Child Bakkalon in the HoBW as well. The Faceless Men are a death cult.

Eventually abandoned by both, Lilith met the wandering banished descendant of her ex-husband, the First Murderer (as named in the Bible) Caine. She took Caine in, tended to his injuries, fed and healed him, and taught him secret wisdom — the seeds of which blossomed into the vampiric disciplines (just like Daemon Julian mentioned above). And how does Caine repay Lilith? By abandoning her as well, to wander forever apart, mother of monsters and thief of infant breaths. Caine goes on to found Enoch and Lilith leaves the scene. We can see how an easy author remix gives us Mirri Mas Duur.

LILITH the LEVIATHAN (wip)

Amoung scholars Leviathan is widely acknowledged to be another title for the Serpent of the garden. This acknowledgment is certainly what the kabbalistic rabbis did in construing Lilith’s fate after the garden. From Leviathan many aspects of Lilith’s legend can be confirmed. Leviathan is described as a serpent fleeing from God. It dwells in the seas, and God shall crush its head in the great Day of Judgment. These facts confirm key aspects of Lilith’s legend. Namely, that she fled as a fugitive from the garden, that she came to inhabit the seas, and that in the Day of Judgment the promised seed of Eve would crush her head

The more learned scholar sees that there has to be much more to Leviathan than just a sea monster. The power ascribed to Leviathan is too great for a mere beast.

It is the king of all sons of pride (Job 41:34) = The Khal of all Khals

It breaths fire = fire breathing dragon if looked at as a “regular” animal leviathan, but also in human form could be how Dany survived Drogo’s funeral pyre. She could breathe fire. <<<— OK, this last part could be taking it too far. Fully admitted! However, passages are a tad interesting…

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys IX

“… don’t want to wake the dragon …”

She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and proud, with Drogo’s copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for her child, the promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to steam as they touched her skin.

“… want to wake the dragon …”

  • A Game of Thrones – Daenerys X

Only death can pay for life.

And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and the smoke stirred and whirled around her and the pyre shifted, the logs exploding as the fire touched their secret hearts. She heard the screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah calling her name and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don’t you see? Don’t you SEE? With a belch of flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward into the firestorm, calling to her children.

The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world.

The crushing of its head in the end-times at the hand of God is the ultimate demonstration of God’s power. According to Isaiah, its role in the end-times is as prevalent as the Serpent. God will judge with the sword all the mighty and wicked upon Leviathan.

http://www.bitterwaters.com/the-case-for-lilith/the-biblical-case-for-lilith/3-18-leviathan-as-the-fleeing-serpent-lilith/

LILITH the ASTEROID

Turns out there is, indeed, a connections to Lilith and the dragon harboring comet in ASOAIF. This page gives the teaser deatils, but you can read more on this page here:

1181 Lilith, provisional designation 1927 CQ, is a metallic asteroid from the middle region of the asteroid belt, approximately 23 kilometers in diameter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1181_Lilith

  • Though Old Nan did not think so, and she’d lived longer than any of them. “Dragons,” she said, lifting her head and sniffing. She was near blind and could not see the comet, yet she claimed she could smell it. “It be dragons, boy,” she insisted. Bran got no princes from Nan, no more than he ever had.The way she said it made him shiver, and when he asked what the comet meant, she answered, “Blood and fire, boy, and nothing sweet.”
  • The Dothraki named the comet shierak qiya, the Bleeding Star. The old men muttered that it omened ill, but Daenerys Targaryen had seen it first on the night she had burned Khal Drogo, the night her dragons had awakened. It is the herald of my coming, she told herself as she gazed up into the night sky with wonder in her heart. The gods have sent it to show me the way.
  • Rhaegar was certain the bleeding star had to be a comet. What fools we were, who thought ourselves so wise! The error crept in from the translation. Dragons are neither male nor female, Barth saw the truth of that, but now one and now the other, as changeable as flame.
  • “We follow the comet,” Dany told her khalasar. Once it was said, no word was raised against it. They had been Drogo’s people, but they were hers now. The Unburnt, they called her, and Mother of Dragons. Her word was their law.

The main difference between asteroids and comets is their composition, as in, what they are made of. Asteroids are made up of metals and rocky material, while comets are made up of ice, dust and rocky material. So while there is a technical real world difference, people on Planetos may not know this. I mean, we already have several different in-world reasons or meanings of what the comet means. The key thing to keep in mind is the in-story description of Dawn.

LILITH and COMPARISONS

This is just the tip of the fiery pyramid here, but there are numerous direct parallels between Lilith and Daenerys, and it goes way beyond the Cyrain of Ash and Lilith of The Glass Flower. The other essays lay it out:

1) Notice that Lilith flees to the Sea of Reeds: 2) the place where the Hebrews will one day go free from slavery. 3) In this version of the Lilith story, Lilith becomes what all tyrants fear: a person who is aware she is enslaved. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/lilith-lady-flying-in-darkness/

The Sea of Reeds translates in ASOIAF as the Womb of the World, which is surrounded by reeds, is considered holy, Dany eats a horse heart there, and she has sex with Drogo there.

This parallels Bran who is with the Reeds, and goes “under the sea” when he goes north of the wall, and Bran tries to psi-link touch Meera, whom he has a crush on.

This could be Dany returning (temporarily) to the Dosh Khaleen. Lilith is known for her unbridled freedom and she will not submit to the old crones. It is here where Dany will be the Khal of Khals, and she will unite the Dothraki and most likely free anyone from bondage.

Jon, who is paired with Bran as Dany’s ice opposite, goes above the wall (in to the sea) and he learns the truth of the Free Folk and how they can become enthralled wights, and he works to free them from an enslavement that is a death worse than death.

During the marriage to Drogo, she is made to wear her collar that she figures out later identifies her as a slave.

  • “Last of all came the collar, a heavy golden torc emblazoned with ancient Valyrian glyphs.” She does grow fearful of the entire situation as she realizes what is happening, “A princess, she thought, but she remembered what the girl had said, how Khal Drogo was so rich even his slaves wore golden collars. She felt a sudden chill, and gooseflesh pimpled her bare arms.”

MOLTEN GOLD (wip)

  • That made Daenerys laugh, coming from a girl so small. She relied so much on the little scribe that she oft forgot that Missandei had only turned eleven. They shared the food together on her terrace. As Dany nibbled on an olive, the Naathi girl gazed at her with eyes like molten gold and said, “It is not too late to tell them that you have decided not to wed.”
  • The sound Viserys Targaryen made when that hideous iron helmet covered his face was like nothing human. His feet hammered a frantic beat against the dirt floor, slowed, stopped. Thick globs of molten gold dripped down onto his chest, setting the scarlet silk to smoldering … yet no drop of blood was spilled.
  • The sun burned like molten gold, and the land was seared and empty.

Thanks for reading along with the Fattest Leech of Ice and Fire. Just a reminder, I cannot add every single book quote from every single book as that would make the essays ridiculously long. That said, if you want specific book quotes, just ask 🙂

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Published by The Fattest Leech

The She-Bear has begun to sing over at-> fattestleechoficeandfire.com https://fattestleech.wordpress.com

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