Waking the last dragon

“Aerion the Monstrous?” Jon knew that name. “The Prince Who Thought He Was a Dragon” was one of Old Nan’s more gruesome tales. His little brother Bran had loved it.

“The very one, though he named himself Aerion Brightflame. One night, in his cups, he drank a jar of wildfire, after telling his friends it would transform him into a dragon, but the gods were kind and it transformed him into a corpse. Not quite a year after, King Maekar died in battle against an outlaw lord.”

Jon was not entirely innocent of the history of the realm; his own maester had seen to that. “That was the year of the Great Council,” he said. “The lords passed over Prince Aerion’s infant son and Prince Daeron’s daughter and gave the crown to Aegon.”

–A Clash of Kings – Jon I

“Aye, m’lord,” said Edd, “but all she knows is that she ran off during the battle and hid in the woods after. We filled her full of porridge, sent her to the pens, and burned the babe.”

Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter. Two kings to wake the dragon. The father first and then the son, so both die kings. The words had been murmured by one of the queen’s men as Maester Aemon had cleaned his wounds. Jon had tried to dismiss them as his fever talking. Aemon had demurred. “There is power in a king’s blood,” the old maester had warned, “and better men than Stannis have done worse things than this.” The king can be harsh and unforgiving, aye, but a babe still on the breast? Only a monster would give a living child to the flames.

A Dance with Dragons – Jon I

GRMM stories to read for this section are, but not limited to:

1. Nightflyers
2. Sandkings
3. Fevre Dream
4. …And Seven Times Never Kill Man – this shows how Martin has been using fiery people (and pyramid god worship) have been burning/consuming children for a long time.
5. A Song for Lya – as Lya second-life’s herself inside the fire “mother” Greeshka.
6. The Ice Dragon– Mainly because it shows how very much a little girl is affected by the elements within her body. Adara is the cold just as Danerys is the fire, just reversed for the ASOIAF setting, or there is a representation of both the ice dragon and red fire dragon both in this child. That and how GRRM has written about a transformation within the womb, which we witness Dany do with Rhaego and the green dragon egg (detailed further below).
   • They talked about other things as well. They said it was the chill of that terrible freeze that had killed her mother, stealing in during her long night of labor past the great fire that Adara’s father had built, and creeping under the layers of blankets that covered the birthing bed. And they said that the cold had entered Adara in the womb, that her skin had been pale blue and icy to the touch when she came forth, and that she had never warmed in all the years since. The winter had touched her, left its mark upon her, and made her its own. It was true that Adara was always a child apart.

Sections here that crossover into many other essays are:

• The Armageddon Rag song of Dragons in ASOIAF

With knowledge bestowed upon Daenerys by some force, possibly the cult of Starry Wisdom, in addition to the other death religions, as the fiery people of the story (Daenerys, Quaithe, Melisandre, etc) all have connections to Asshai, and in turn, the stars could be a source of fiery “satellite” information, as the moon possibly serves back over in the Tree side of the story. The end of the “wake the dragon” section below shows a very clear link to this idea. The sensations Daenerys experiences are extremely similar to those that Melisandre shares in her only  A Dance with Dragons chapter.

[Dragonslayer movie] It’s surprisingly dark, and delivers some nice twists and turns along the way. Vermithrax Perjorative is the best dragon ever put on film (the dragons in Reign of Fire are a close second) and has the coolest dragon name as well.

—George R.R. Martin

Vermithrax Pejorative is the main antagonist of the Disney/Paramount film Dragonslayer. Vermithrax Pejorative is a 400 year old androgynous dragon that has threatened the post-Roman kingdom of Urland for years. Translated from Latin, her name means “The Wyrm of Thrace that makes things Worse”. This movie also gave GRRM the names Tyrian and Valerian, the use of an Arya-type young female that has to hide as male, seeing visions in the fire, “waking dragons from stone”/earthquakes, and so much more.

So Say Stars

I think there is a chance that Marwyn the Mage is a member of the Cult of Starry wisdom. This is a direct refrence to the Lovecraft mythos, something George draws heavily on when it comes to developing the Greyjoys, Euron especially in Nyarlathotep and the Cult of the Bloody Tongue, Asshai, R’lyeh being a name inspiration to R’hllor, Daenerys and her dragons. The way Marwyn is described here is near exactly the same way the Deep Ones and the town are described in the Lovecraft story The Shadow over Innsmouth.

The Church of Starry Wisdom, also known as the Cult of Starry Wisdom, is a sinister religion that persists in many port cities throughout the known world.

• A Feast for Crows – Prologue

Leo yawned. “The sea is wet, the sun is warm, and the menagerie hates the mastiff.”

He has a mocking name for everyone, thought Pate, but he could not deny that Marwyn looked more a mastiff than a maester. As if he wants to bite you. The Mage was not like other maesters. People said that he kept company with whores and hedge wizards, talked with hairy Ibbenese and pitch-black Summer Islanders in their own tongues, and sacrificed to queer gods at the little sailors’ temples down by the wharves. Men spoke of seeing him down in the undercity, in rat pits and black brothels, consorting with mummers, singers, sellswords, even beggars. Some even whispered that once he had killed a man with his fists.

When Marwyn had returned to Oldtown, after spending eight years in the east mapping distant lands, searching for lost books, and studying with warlocks and shadowbinders, Vinegar Vaellyn had dubbed him “Marwyn the Mage.” The name was soon all over Oldtown, to Vaellyn’s vast annoyance. “Leave spells and prayers to priests and septons and bend your wits to learning truths a man can trust in,” Archmaester Ryam had once counseled Pate, but Ryam’s ring and rod and mask were yellow gold, and his maester’s chain had no link of Valyrian steel.

Mirri Maz Duur – Mirror Maze Door

Mirri the bloodmage. This is an important experience for Daenerys as it allows Dany to learn the other half of what she needs to do to birth her undead dragons from stone. Martin has established in this series that the birthing bed is a bloody bed. Life, death, life; but from whom to whom is always tricky in Martinworld.

• More ‘door people’ discussion here in The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr where a discarded knight is the keeper of a girl who moves between worls via gates and doors. The basis for GRRM’s later story come to televison (almost), Doorways.
• Dragons in Martinworld always enter through a portal/door. The Others in the AGOT prologue enter that way, but GRRM has been using this concept since his early story Only Kids are Afraid of the Dark.
• I also recommend reading GRRM’s story The Skin Trade because as an important part to this ‘door’ maze riddle. Not only is it a precursor to the ice dragon Others coming through the Wall (the largest mirror-portal in Westeros), it gives clues to what how Daenerys has brought dragons back into this ASOIAF for the first time in hundreds of years via the magic fire she made with Drogo’s fire. That is why Dany didn’t burn in Drogo’s pyre, not because Dany  is immune to fire, but because the fire itself was magic, just as the ice dragon Others can make things out of their own elemental magic.
  • Some of the mirrors reflected true; the others were distorting mirrors, funhouse mirrors. When you looked over your shoulder in the Funhouse, you could never tell what you’d find looking back.— Shell Games by GRRM
    
  • It was black, blacker than black, a black that drank all light forever, and it was all shining silver too. It was a nightmare that lived in a funhouse mirror, the thing that hunts the hunters. He could feel the evil throbbing through the glass. “Skinner,” Steven called. The surface of the mirrors seemed to ripple and bulge, like a wave cresting on some quicksilver sea. The fog was thinning, Willie realized with sudden terror; he could see it clearer now, and he knew it could see him. And suddenly Willie Flambeaux knew what was happening, knew that when the fog cleared the mirrors wouldn’t be mirrors anymore; they’d be doors, doors, and the skinner would come …– The Skin Trade by GRRM
    

Dany takes her time learning from Mirri Maz Duur as she watched Mirri take Khal Drogo into the church, put him on an altar and begin the healing process of his torn nipple. Dany later uses these methods for the Drogo funeral pyre, which is her wedding to the flames. Dany also pays attention to the birthing songs, and asks Mirri to “attend” her during the arrival of when “he” comes. Which “he” actually arrives? Hint: Not Rhaego., but whatever the firegod R’hllor presents as during her fire wedding.

Also while Mirri “attends” Dany on the funeral pyre, she sings, and these are probably the songs of a different type of birth. This is Martinworld speak for getting blood on the mirrors that calls the ‘Skinner’, or dragon.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VII

  Dany ignored the bloodrider’s outburst. This old, homely, thick-bodied woman did not look like a maegi to her. “Where did you learn your healing, Mirri Maz Duur?”

  “My mother was godswife before me, and taught me all the songs and spells most pleasing to the Great Shepherd, and how to make the sacred smokes and ointments from leaf and root and berry. When I was younger and more fair, I went in caravan to Asshai by the Shadow, to learn from their mages. Ships from many lands come to Asshai, so I lingered long to study the healing ways of distant peoples. A moonsinger of the Jogos Nhai gifted me with her birthing songs, a woman of your own riding people taught me the magics of grass and corn and horse, and a maester from the Sunset Lands opened a body for me and showed me all the secrets that hide beneath the skin.”

  Ser Jorah Mormont spoke up. “A maester?”

  [and then…]

  “I am khal,” Drogo said. “I spit on pain and drink what I like. Cohollo, bring my vest.” The older man hastened off.

  “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.”

  Khal Drogo laughed. “Moon of my life, you do not ask a slave, you tell her. She will do as you command.” He jumped down from the altar. “Come, my blood. The stallions call, this place is ashes. It is time to ride.”

And then when we get to the hatching of the three dragon eggs on the funeral pyre, we see how Daenerys has cleverly collected all of her innate genetic memory together to produce this fire and blood necromancy; power in a king’s blood (a fiery concept) is the sacrifice of Rhaego and with kingsblood via being Daenerys’ bloodline. A very smart, intuitive young dragon, indeed, as Mirri sings her dragon birthing songs.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys X

  Jhogo spied it first. “There,” he said in a hushed voice. Dany looked and saw it, low in the east. The first star was a comet, burning red. Bloodred; fire red; the dragon’s tail. She could not have asked for a stronger sign.

  Dany took the torch from Aggo’s hand and thrust it between the logs. The oil took the fire at once, the brush and dried grass a heartbeat later. Tiny flames went darting up the wood like swift red mice, skating over the oil and leaping from bark to branch to leaf. 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.

[and then…]

The heat beat at the air with great red wings, driving the Dothraki back, driving off even Mormont, but Dany stood her ground. She was the blood of the dragon, and the fire was in her.

She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she took a step closer to the conflagration, but the brazier had not been hot enough. The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. This is a wedding, too, she thought. Mirri Maz Duur had fallen silent. The godswife thought her a child, but children grow, and children learn.

But Mirri Maz the bloodmage isn’t the first song that ushers Daenerys into this ASOIAF. Her first marriage to Khal Drogo (his funeral pyre was her second marriage, as Dany herself states) is filled with prophetic signals, songs by a eunuch (foreshadowing her own future of no human chidren), fire priests of R’hllor are singing, old Valyrian blood (slavers), all of which Daenerys claims as her identity by her last chapter in A Game of Thrones.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys I

  Her brother smiled. “Good.” He touched her hair, almost with affection. “When they write the history of my reign, sweet sister, they will say that it began tonight.”

  When he was gone, Dany went to her window and looked out wistfully on the waters of the bay. The square brick towers of Pentos were black silhouettes outlined against the setting sun. Dany could hear the singing of the red priests as they lit their night fires and the shouts of ragged children playing games beyond the walls of the estate. For a moment she wished she could be out there with them, barefoot and breathless and dressed in tatters, with no past and no future and no feast to attend at Khal Drogo’s manse. [and then…]

  The palanquin slowed and stopped. The curtains were thrown back, and a slave offered a hand to help Daenerys out. His collar, she noted, was ordinary bronze. Her brother followed, one hand still clenched hard around his sword hilt. It took two strong men to get Magister Illyrio back on his feet.

  Inside the manse, the air was heavy with the scent of spices, pinchfire and sweet lemon and cinnamon. They were escorted across the entry hall, where a mosaic of colored glass depicted the Doom of Valyria. Oil burned in black iron lanterns all along the walls. Beneath an arch of twining stone leaves, a eunuch sang their coming. “Viserys of the House Targaryen, the Third of his Name,” he called in a high, sweet voice, “King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. His sister, Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of Dragonstone. His honorable host, Illyrio Mopatis, Magister of the Free City of Pentos.”

•  A Game of Thrones – Daenerys IX

  The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. “Khaleesi,” the handmaid Irri explained, as if to a child, “Jhaqo is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back.”

  She lifted her head. “And I am Daenerys Stormborn, Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I am the dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die screaming. Now bring me to Khal Drogo.”

  He was lying on the bare red earth, staring up at the sun.

• The Skin Trade

Steven giggled. “You’ll get it now,” he said. “You called it. You got blood on the mirrors. You called it back again.”

The room seemed to spin. Moonlight ran from mirror to mirror to mirror, dizzyingly. Or maybe it wasn’t moonlight.

Willie looked into the mirrors.

The reflections were gone. Willie, Steven, the moon, all gone. There was blood on the mirrors and they were full of fog, a silvery pale fog that shimmered as it moved.

Something was moving through the fog, sliding from mirror to mirror to mirror, around and around. Something hungry that wanted to get out.

He saw it, lost it, saw it again. It was in front of him, behind him, off to the side. It was a hound, gaunt and terrible; it was a snake, scaled and foul; it was a man, with eyes like pits and knives for its fingers. It wouldn’t hold still, every time he looked its shape seemed to change, and each shape was worse than the last, more twisted and obscene. Everything about it was lean and cruel. Its fingers were sharp, so sharp, and he looked at them and felt their caress sliding beneath his skin, tingling along the nerves, pain and blood and fire trailing behind them. It was black, blacker than black, a black that drank all light forever, and it was all shining silver too. It was a nightmare that lived in a funhouse mirror, the thing that hunts the hunters.

He could feel the evil throbbing through the glass.

“Skinner,” Steven called.

The surface of the mirrors seemed to ripple and bulge, like a wave cresting on some quicksilver sea. The fog was thinning, Willie realized with sudden terror; he could see it clearer now, and he knew it could see him. And suddenly Willie Flambeaux knew what was happening, knew that when the fog cleared the mirrors wouldn’t be mirrors anymore; they’d be doors, doors, and the skinner would come …

The Armageddon Rag song of Dragons in ASOIAF

The title of the series, A Song of Ice and Fire, translates in Martinworld to A Battle of Ice and then Fire. There are going to be the two big baddies to defeat, first the icey Other dragons, and then the red-fire Targaryen Dragon that is Daenerys. Martin describes the meaning of the series title in this video as he explains that Daenerys and the Others are the, “greater and more dangerous threats.”

Question by Adam Pasick of Vulture.com: When civilizations clash in your books, instead of Guns, Germs, and Steel, maybe it’s more like Dragons, Magic, and Steel (and also Germs).

GRRM: There is magic in my universe, but it’s pretty low magic compared to other fantasies. 

Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only Dany has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world. 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. Source.

***

“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 R.R. Martin, November 21, 2018. Source.

***

Q: That seems to apply as well to your fantasy or magic elements: If there’s a God of Light, he seems awful. Are the walking dead out of the north beyond any reclaim? And then there’s Daenerys’s dragons: They seem kind of promising, like they could be a force of justice or good.
GRRM: Yes, that’s the way they seem. I hope. [Laughs] I don’t necessarily want to tell you what I’m thinking but to return to what I pointed at earlier, I like people that ask these questions, not necessarily provide them with the answers. So as the books unfold, there will be more and more to think about in these regards. George R.R. Martin, 2014. Source.

A Dragon is the Red Door

Waking the last dragon will take Daenerys home to the the place with the red door. The thing is, that place with the red door is probably not a building/house, but is a second life inside a dragon. Second-lifing for a “mother” inside the belly of the dragon beast seems to have been with GRRM for a long time… Nightflyers was written and rewritten in 1980 & 1981. The Nightlfyers ship is essentially a dragon and the “mad” mother is essentially our most current Targaryen, Daenerys. Seeing as Daenerys is the “mother” and “mhysa”, both terms for a figure to worship, this will be a final religious experience for Daenerys as if she were going to church.

• Nightflyers

It loomed ahead, three small eggs side-by-side, two larger spheres beneath and at right angles, the cylinder of the driveroom between, lengths of tube connecting it all.

…

Around the mouth of the driveroom, the ring of nuclear engines took on a faint glow. Melantha Jhirl heard Royd suck in his breath sharply. She gave the thruster controls of her sled a violent twist. “Hurry,” she said loudly. “The Nightflyer is preparing to move.”

• A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys IX

  “No” was all that she had time to say. No, not me, don’t you know me? The black teeth closed inches from her face. He meant to tear my head off. The sand was in her eyes. She stumbled over the pitmaster’s corpse and fell on her backside.
  Drogon roared. The sound filled the pit. A furnace wind engulfed her. The dragon’s long scaled neck stretched toward her. When his mouth opened, she could see bits of broken bone and charred flesh between his black teeth. His eyes were molten. I am looking into hell, but I dare not look away… Drogon roared full in her face, his breath hot enough to blister skin. Off to her right Dany heard Barristan Selmy shouting, “Me! Try me. Over here. Me!”
  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.
• Nightflyers

The Nightflyer was a distant star sparked by its nuclear engines. Blackness and cold enveloped them, and below was the unending emptiness of the Tempter’s Veil, but Karoly d’Branin did not feel afraid. He felt strangely transformed.

The change continues…

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys III

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.

• Nightflyers

“I will begin the tale with my mother,” Royd replied. “The Nightflyer was her ship originally, custom-built to her design in the Newholme spaceyards. My mother was a freetrader, a notably successful one. She was born trash on a world called Vess, which is a very long way from here, although perhaps some of you have heard of it. She worked her way up, position by position, until she won her own command. She soon made a fortune through a willingness to accept the unusual consignment, fly off the major trade routes, take her cargo a month or a year or two years beyond where it was customarily transferred. Such practices are riskier but more profitable than flying the mail runs. My mother did not worry about how often she and her crews returned home. Her ships were her home. She forgot about Vess as soon as she left it, and seldom visited the same world twice if she could avoid it.”

• A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys X

Keep walking. If I look back I am lost.

• Sandkings

At least he hoped it was east. He was not that good at directions, and he wasn’t certain which way he had run in his initial panic, but since then he had made an effort to bear due east, as Wo had suggested.

When he had been running for several hours, with no sign of rescue, Kress began to grow certain that he had miscalculated his direction.

When several more hours passed, he began to grow afraid. What if Wo and Shade could not find him? He would die out here. He hadn’t eaten in two days, he was weak and frightened, his throat was raw for want of water. He couldn’t keep going. The sun was sinking now, and he’d be completely lost in the dark. What was wrong? Had the sandkings eaten Wo and Shade? The fear was on him again, filling him, and with it a great thirst and a terrible hunger. But Kress kept going. He stumbled now when he tried to run, and twice he fell. The second time he scraped his hand on a rock, and it came away bloody. He sucked at it as he walked, and he worried about infection.

The sun was on the horizon behind him. The ground grew a little cooler, for which Kress was grateful. He decided to walk until last light and settle down for the night. Surely he was far enough from the sandkings to be safe, and Wo and Shade would find him come morning.

When he topped the next rise, he saw the outline of a house in front of him.

It wasn’t as big as his own house, but it was big enough. It was habitation, safety. Kress shouted and began to run toward it. Food and drink, he had to have nourishment, he could taste the meal already. He was aching with hunger. He ran down the hill toward the house, waving his arms and shouting to the inhabitants. The light was almost gone now, but he could still make out a half-dozen children playing in the twilight. “Hey there,” he shouted. “Help, help.”

They came running toward him.

Kress stopped suddenly. “No,” he said, “oh, no. Oh, no.” He backpedaled, slipping on the sand, got up, and tried to run again. They caught him easily. They were ghastly little things with bulging eyes and dusky orange skin. He struggled, but it was useless. Small as they were, each of them had four arms, and Kress had only two.

They carried him toward the house. It was a sad, shabby house, built of crumbling sand, but the door was quite large, and dark, and it breathed. That was terrible, but it was not the thing that set Simon Kress to screaming. He screamed because of the others, the little orange children who came crawling out of the castle, and watched impassively as he passed. All of them had his face. [The End]

• A Song for Lya

“And Union, well, it’s wrong to compare it to human sacrifice, just wrong. The Old Earth religions sacrificed one or two unwilling victims to appease their gods. Killed a handful to get mercy for the millions. And the handful generally protested. The Shkeen don’t work it that way. The Greeshka takes everyone. And they go willingly. Like lemmings they march off to the caves to be eaten alive by those parasites. Every Shkeen is Joined at forty, and goes to Final Union before he’s fifty.”

[and then]

Well, Phil was administrator here longer than anybody else. People liked him, and when he went over, a lot of his friends followed. The rate’s way up now.”

“Not quite one percent, and rising,” Valcarenghi said. “That seems low, but remember what it means. One percent of the people in my settlement are choosing a religion that includes a very unpleasant form of suicide.”

Parallels to the other side…

As an icy counterpoint, in A Storm of Swords – Jon III, fire-woman Ygritte lures Jon in to the caves and urges him to live forever with her down there. I have detailed this encounter in the Jon the Bear page here. This is the same place where tales of cannibalism were supposed to have happened. Jon, thankfully, refuses fire consumption and emerges from the cave in A Storm of Swords – Jon IV and allows himself to hope, just like Robb in A Song for Lya does after he mourns the loss of Lyanna.

Waking that Dragon

“You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” Viserys asks Daenerys over and over again in the book A Game of Thrones. Well, yes, yes Daenerys does want to “wake the dragon”, only the dragon is her, not Viserys, nor one of her eggs.” The concept and belief that ‘only death pays for life‘, while seeming a normal part of the natural cycle of all things elemental, this belief is an extreme zealot idea that actually means taking (stealing) a life for your own selfish purposes. Fire consumes for the self. This belief is only ever expressed in-story by the fire-dragon people. The eight mentions in the series can be read here.

Throughout her A Game of Thrones IX chapter, she has this realization in her mind about waking the dragon. However, in the very first few scenes of Danerys’ story we readers are introduced to the idea of “waking a dragon”, and that it ain’t Viserys. I detailed a little more in the nursing dragons with venom, not milk page. Here we see dragon Viserys, later honored as the actual dragon Veserion, and he is having a go at Dany’s nipples.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys I

Dany said nothing. Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spices, gemstones, dragonbone, and other, less savory things. He had friends in all of the Nine Free Cities, it was said, and even beyond, in Vaes Dothrak and the fabled lands beside the Jade Sea. It was also said that he’d never had a friend he wouldn’t cheerfully sell for the right price. Dany listened to the talk in the streets, and she heard these things, but she knew better than to question her brother when he wove his webs of dream. His anger was a terrible thing when roused. Viserys called it “waking the dragon.”

Her brother hung the gown beside the door. “Illyrio will send the slaves to bathe you. Be sure you wash off the stink of the stables. Khal Drogo has a thousand horses, tonight he looks for a different sort of mount.” He studied her critically. “You still slouch. Straighten yourself.” He pushed back her shoulders with his hands. “Let them see that you have a woman’s shape now.” His fingers brushed lightly over her budding breasts and tightened on a nipple. “You will not fail me tonight. If you do, it will go hard for you. You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” His fingers twisted her, the pinch cruelly hard through the rough fabric of her tunic. “Do you?” he repeated.

“No,” Dany said meekly.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys II

  It seemed as if hours passed before his hands finally went to her breasts. He stroked the soft skin underneath until it tingled. He [Drogo] circled her nipples with his thumbs, pinched them between thumb and forefinger, then began to pull at her, very lightly at first, then more insistently, until her nipples stiffened and began to ache.

So we have the two men in the story who prodded and pulled at Daenerys’ nipples in the past, now in dragon form nursing on her. But yeah, dragon Drogon was named for Drogo… except, we know Drogon is described as Balerion the Black Dread come again.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys X

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.

Daenerys is the last dragon as Bran is the last greenseer, both taking the helm (Bran a greenseeing tree “ship”, Dany a war helmet) from the one before. I speculate that these two will go head-to-head, with Bran using Jon as his knight in black ice armour, that this will lead to the second Dance of Dragons GRRM says he has planned.

George R. R. Martin: Yeah, I think he’s accurate. Yes, that is something that I’m going for. You know, the fight between good and evil—which has been a hallmark of so much fantasy over the years, ever since Tolkien, and Tolkien did it brilliantly! But in the hands—

Ashbrook: And long before.

Martin: —in the hands of his imitators, it’s become kind of a cliché where you have the dark lord, and he has his evil minions. And his evil minions are very evil—you know they’re evil: they dress in black, they’re very ugly, they have no redeeming qualities.

I prefer gray characters. I prefer the philosophy that, you know, the hero is the villain of the other side. You know, there’s—yes, things like the fight between Gandalf and the witch king of Angmar is a great moment, but the fight between Achilles and Hector also, you know, resonates for me and is something that I wanted to draw upon where you have two heroes fighting. I also liked the idea of the story not being predictable. Too much of fantasy is too predictable, you know? — GRRM

We can read here the connection between Rhaegar mentioned as “the last dragon”, as Daenerys contemplates how she has a certain wisdom to start the fire and blood dragon hatching process. If we think back to her ‘waking the dragon’ dreams, it is possible that her ancestors point to a genetic memory of sorts. It is possible these are her ancestors she sees in her dreams who are guiding her, “Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade.”:

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys III

“I hit him,” she said, wonder in her voice. Now that it was over, it seemed like some strange dream that she had dreamed. “Ser Jorah, do you think … he’ll be so angry when he gets back …” She shivered. “I woke the dragon, didn’t I?”

Ser Jorah snorted. “Can you wake the dead, girl? Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, and he died on the Trident. Viserys is less than the shadow of a snake.”

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VI

“No. He cannot have my son.” She would not weep, she decided. She would not shiver with fear. The Usurper has woken the dragon now, she told herself … and her eyes went to the dragon’s eggs resting in their nest of dark velvet. The shifting lamplight limned their stony scales, and shimmering motes of jade and scarlet and gold swam in the air around them, like courtiers around a king.

Was it madness that seized her then, born of fear? Or some strange wisdom buried in her blood? Dany could not have said. She heard her own voice saying, “Ser Jorah, light the brazier.”

“Khaleesi?” The knight looked at her strangely. “It is so hot. Are you certain?”

She had never been so certain. “Yes. I … I have a chill. Light the brazier.”

[and then a few paragraphs later]

She watched until the coals had turned to ashes. Drifting sparks floated up and out of the smokehole. Heat shimmered in waves around the dragon’s eggs. And that was all.

Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, Ser Jorah had said. Dany gazed at her eggs sadly. What had she expected? A thousand thousand years ago they had been alive, but now they were only pretty rocks. They could not make a dragon. A dragon was air and fire. Living flesh, not dead stone.

• A Storm of Swords – Daenerys I

Whitebeard bowed his head. “It is not my place to question the words of Prince Viserys.”

“King,” Dany corrected. “He was a king, though he never reigned. Viserys, the Third of His Name. But what do you mean?” His answer had not been one that she’d expected. “Ser Jorah named Rhaegar the last dragon once. He had to have been a peerless warrior to be called that, surely?”

“Your Grace,” said Whitebeard, “the Prince of Dragonstone was a most puissant warrior, but . . .”

These are her internal thoughts, her realizations all happen while she is dreaming. Notice how in the dream, the “wake the dragon” transition goes from being the scared little girl thought and transforms into a personal command. The last paragraph shows Daenerys taking the battle helm from Rhaegar as the last dragon:

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys IX

Wings shadowed her fever dreams.

“You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?”

She was walking down a long hall beneath high stone arches. She could not look behind her, must not look behind her. There was a door ahead of her, tiny with distance, but even from afar, she saw that it was painted red. She walked faster, and her bare feet left bloody footprints on the stone.

“You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?”

She saw sunlight on the Dothraki sea, the living plain, rich with the smells of earth and death. Wind stirred the grasses, and they rippled like water. Drogo held her in strong arms, and his hand stroked her sex and opened her and woke that sweet wetness that was his alone, and the stars smiled down on them, stars in a daylight sky. “Home,” she whispered as he entered her and filled her with his seed, but suddenly the stars were gone, and across the blue sky swept the great wings, and the world took flame.

[Continuing on a few lines later as Daenerys goes in and out of sleep, she at one point calls for her dragon’s eggs, then food and water, then Jorah, and then finally she realized Rhaego was only a dissipating concern for her]

“Bring me … egg … dragon’s egg … please …” Her lashes turned to lead, and she was too weary to hold them up.

[and then still a bit later]

Jhiqui would have run as well, but Dany caught her by the wrist and held her captive. “What is it? I must know. Drogo … and my child.” Why had she not remembered the child until now? “My son … Rhaego … where is he? I want him.”

• A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys X

She dreamed. All her cares fell away from her, and all her pains as well, and she seemed to float upward into the sky. She was flying once again, spinning, laughing, dancing, as the stars wheeled around her and whispered secrets in her ear. “To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward, you must go back. To touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”

“Quaithe?” Dany called. “Where are you, Quaithe?”

Then she saw. Her mask is made of starlight.

“Remember who you are, Daenerys,” the stars whispered in a woman’s voice. “The dragons know. Do you?”

[and then Daenerys wakes to a very foreshadowy inflamed “battle” with ants]

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VI

  The day was warm and cloudless, the sky a deep blue. When the wind blew, she could smell the rich scents of grass and earth. As her litter passed beneath the stolen monuments, she went from sunlight to shadow and back again. Dany swayed along, studying the faces of dead heroes and forgotten kings. She wondered if the gods of burned cities could still answer prayers.

  If I were not the blood of the dragon, she thought wistfully, this could be my home. She was khaleesi, she had a strong man and a swift horse, handmaids to serve her, warriors to keep her safe, an honored place in the dosh khaleen awaiting her when she grew old … and in her womb grew a son who would one day bestride the world. That should be enough for any woman … but not for the dragon. With Viserys gone, Daenerys was the last, the very last. She was the seed of kings and conquerors, and so too the child inside her. She must not forget.

Compare to Melisandre as she stares in to her fires, and a description from Jon Snow:

• A Dance with Dragons – Jon VI

Jon let out a white breath. “He is not always so …”

“… warm? Warmth calls to warmth, Jon Snow.” Her eyes were two red stars, shining in the dark. At her throat, her ruby gleamed, a third eye glowing brighter than the others. Jon had seen Ghost’s eyes blazing red the same way, when they caught the light just right.

• A Feast for Crows – Jaime I

We Must Look Back

After reading the “wake the dragon” scene, and think back to Daenerys in her AGOT IV chapter where she starts the process of the necromancy to wake the old stone dragons from their eggs. Blood and fire. Mirri Maz Duur is of many learnings including birthing songs and being bloodmage. We know that the “bed of blood” is the woman’s delivery bed, so these two ideas already are linked within the books. Daenerys is a natural firemage. It is the process of fire and blood together that revitalizes these dead stone eggs back to life.

Additionally, readers are repeatedly given the information over and over that dragon eggs are put in the cradle of Targaryen babies for some sort of bond/hatching ritual. A soul sharing no matter what it is called. Except in Daenerys’ case, the eggs were dead and the soul of baby Rhaego went one way in to the egg with the dead dragon soul leaving the corruption of death in it’s place. This speaks very much to the real world idea that woman are the cradle of life, as well as Daenerys manipulating the natural order of nature. There is precedent for readers to believe this, even if it is rumors as in the case with Bloodraven.

• A Dance with Dragons – Jon I

“Aye, m’lord,” said Edd, “but all she knows is that she ran off during the battle and hid in the woods after. We filled her full of porridge, sent her to the pens, and burned the babe.”

Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter. Two kings to wake the dragon. The father first and then the son, so both die kings. The words had been murmured by one of the queen’s men as Maester Aemon had cleaned his wounds. Jon had tried to dismiss them as his fever talking. Aemon had demurred. “There is power in a king’s blood,” the old maester had warned, “and better men than Stannis have done worse things than this.” The king can be harsh and unforgiving, aye, but a babe still on the breast? Only a monster would give a living child to the flames.

• 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.”

• The Mystery Knight- rumors about Bloodraven

He remembered then. He was a holy man sworn to the Seven, even if he did preach treason.

“His hands are scarlet with a brother’s blood, and the blood of his young nephews too,” the hunchback had declared to the crowd that had gathered in the market square. “A shadow came at his command to strangle brave Prince Valarr’s sons in their mother’s womb. Where is our Young Prince now?…”

• The Mystery Knight

“Your dragon’s egg.” They put it in his cradle. Dunk was so used to Egg that sometimes he forgot Aegon was a prince. Of course they’d put a dragon egg inside his cradle. “Well, see that you don’t go mentioning this egg where anyone is like to hear.”

A Moth to Flames

And this “moth to flame” idea is supposed to be about willing death. George once explained at a 2007 ComiCon that “Cersei and Daenerys are intended as parallel characters –each exploring a different approach to how a woman would rule in a male dominated, medieval-inspired fantasy world.” The moth is contained inside a lantern, an object that holds fire, such as a brazier or dragon egg. Sometimes a moth is just a moth, but when it plays the same recurring theme over and over (fire and death), then the reader should make the connections. This is not the only Daenerys-Cersei parallel by far… but that will be another post.

• A Feast for Crows – Cersei I

Playing a God

At this point readers are witnessing Daenerys interfere with the natural order of things- life, death, life; also a concept that Cyrain of Ash in The Glass Flower struggles with. However, with Daenerys she manipulates that order to bring her closer to her personal desires.

• The Glass Flower

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys IX

And then again when Cyrain [The Glass Flower], who is now living a new life within another “won” body {actually, what we read about five different bodies Cyrian uses to second-life herself in), closes the story with this observation:

• The Glass Flower

“Do?” I said, still gazing up at those secret starfields, visible to me alone. They brought to mind my obsidian mosaic. “There are worlds I’ve never been to,” I told my sister-twin, father, daughter, enemy, mirror-image, whatever she was. “There are things I don’t yet know, stars that even now I cannot see. What will I do? Everything. To begin with, everything.”

As I spoke, a fat striped insect flew through the open window on six gossamer wings that trilled the air too fast for human sight, though I could count every languid beat if I so chose. It landed briefly on my glass flower, found neither scent nor pollen, and slipped back outside. I watched it go, growing smaller and smaller, dwindling in the distance, until at last I had telescoped my vision to the maximum, and the small dying bug was lost among the swamps and stars.

We also witness Daenerys stand totally complicit when Khal Drogo takes Viserys life, as well when Daenerys herself takes Khal Drogo’s life as he says “no”. The fire and blood theme keeps repeating.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys V

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VIII

Messing with the Arts

By now we readers should be at a point in the story where we see Daenerys and her “messing around” with different medicine, spells/songs, and even the fiery dark arts blood magic. Kinda reminds a reader of Visenya Targaryen and the rumors that swirled around her.

It was not Mirri Maz Duur that put the wrong dressing on Khal Drogo’s wound. No. It was a second poultice that was administered under the direction of Daenerys without Mirri Maz Duur’s knowing. Mirri gave Drogo and Daenerys clear directions to follow.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VII

  “If you must stay, then help,” Mirri told the bloodriders. “The Great Rider is too strong for me. Hold him still while I draw the arrow from his flesh.” She let the rags of her gown fall to her waist as she opened a carved chest, and busied herself with bottles and boxes, knives and needles. When she was ready, she broke off the barbed arrowhead and pulled out the shaft, chanting in the singsong tongue of the Lhazareen. She heated a flagon of wine to boiling on the brazier, and poured it over his wounds. Khal Drogo cursed her, but he did not move. She bound the arrow wound with a plaster of wet leaves and turned to the gash on his breast, smearing it with a pale green paste before she pulled the flap of skin back in place. The khal ground his teeth together and swallowed a scream. The godswife took out a silver needle and a bobbin of silk thread and began to close the flesh. When she was done she painted the skin with red ointment, covered it with more leaves, and bound the breast in a ragged piece of lambskin. “You must say the prayers I give you and keep the lambskin in place for ten days and ten nights,” she said. “There will be fever, and itching, and a great scar when the healing is done.”

  Khal Drogo sat, bells ringing. “I sing of my scars, sheep woman.” He flexed his arm and scowled.

  “Drink neither wine nor the milk of the poppy,” she cautioned him. “Pain you will have, but you must keep your body strong to fight the poison spirits.“

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VIII

  They were as large as bees, gross, purplish, glistening. The Dothraki called them bloodflies. They lived in marshes and stagnant pools, sucked blood from man and horse alike, and laid their eggs in the dead and dying. Drogo hated them. Whenever one came near him, his hand would shoot out quick as a striking snake to close around it. She had never seen him miss. He would hold the fly inside his huge fist long enough to hear its frantic buzzing. Then his fingers would tighten, and when he opened his hand again, the fly would be only a red smear on his palm.

  Now one crept across the rump of his stallion, and the horse gave an angry flick of its tail to brush it away. The others flitted about Drogo, closer and closer. The khal did not react. His eyes were fixed on distant brown hills, the reins loose in his hands. Beneath his painted vest, a plaster of fig leaves and caked blue mud covered the wound on his breast. The herbwomen had made it for him. Mirri Maz Duur’s poultice had itched and burned, and he had torn it off six days ago, cursing her for a maegi. The mud plaster was more soothing, and the herbwomen made him poppy wine as well. He’d been drinking it heavily these past three days; when it was not poppy wine, it was fermented mare’s milk or pepper beer.

Sidenote: The wedding of Daenerys to Drogo is eerily similar to the blood sacrifice/death of Drogo and Rhaego scene with the multiple deaths, and bloodbaths, and fires. I will do a comparison reading on those two scenes soon.

Monsterous Bright Flame

“Yes,” said Davos, “even me.” Unless Stannis should father a son, such a marriage would mean that Dragonstone and Storm’s End would one day pass to Tommen, which would doubtless please Lord Tywin. Meanwhile, the Lannisters would have Shireen as hostage to make certain Stannis raised no new rebellions. “And what did His Grace say when you proposed these terms to him?”

[Alester Florent] “He is always with the red woman, and . . . he is not in his right mind, I fear. This talk of a stone dragon . . . madness, I tell you, sheer madness. Did we learn nothing from Aerion Brightfire, from the nine mages, from the alchemists? Did we learn nothing from Summerhall? No good has ever come from these dreams of dragons, I told Axell as much. My way was better. Surer. And Stannis gave me his seal, he gave me leave to rule. The Hand speaks with the king’s voice.”

A Storm of Swords – Davos III

In a later book, we see this taking the helm from Rhaegar continues. Daenerys who wants to assume a banner in his honor, however, it is still not a “true” Targaryen sigil, and not one like Aegon the Conquerer. Instead, this links Daenerys more to combination of Rhaegar and Aerion Brightflame/Brightfire, also known as Aerion the Monsterous… and that ain’t so good for Rhaegar or Daenerys. Aerion was one of the most outstanding examples of the madness that can hit the members of House Targaryen. Cruel and arrogant, he thought he was a dragon in human form. One of his most notorious on-page examples of his abuse of power is when he breaks the fingers of the puppeteer Tanselle, which is a metaphorical show of “magical” dominance as he makes the wooden puppeteer bow down before the fiery red hand of R’hllor, Reportedly, Aerion was also a dabbler in the black arts. which could be an in-world parallel to the Cult of Starry Wisdom that seems to be serving Daenerys now.

Those who follow along with this blog here know how often Martin parallels Daenerys with his character Cyrain of Ash and Lilith from the story The Glass Flower. In that story Cyrain plays a “game of mind” with other players (described as prizes) out on a mindwarped astral plain. The ‘darkling mind’ to use a phrase from other GRRM stories, as well as poetry. The goal is to master the minds of the other players in order to steal their bodies. Here in The Glass Flower we see Cyrain in play during the game and this is what she changes in to; not only an object such as Rhaegar’s war helm, but also the plume of bright feathers like Aerion’s personal sigil:

• I frown, and now I wear an ornate suit of armor, overlapping plates of gilded duralloy, filigreed with forbidding runes, and beneath my arm is a matching antique helmet, festooned with a plume of bright feathers.

Speaking of puppet-masters, readers also see puppet shows happen in the other fire-women POV chapters of the series. In A Game of Thrones – Catelyn VII there is a background puppet show that depicts the struggle of her arc. Then in the A Feast for Crows – Brienne VIII chpater where she meets Lady Stoneheart, we see that Stoneheart has her men string up Ser Hyle and Podrick like puppets to control Brienne. In A Feast for Crows – Cersei V we hear of a show that Cersei calls “treason” because it depicts the lions of Lannister in a negative light, and like Aerion, Cersei’s ego is too fragile to handle that as a jape.

• A Storm of Swords – Daenerys III

I ought to have a banner sewn, she thought as she led her tattered band up along Astapor’s meandering river. She closed her eyes to imagine how it would look: all flowing black silk, and on it the red three-headed dragon of Targaryen, breathing golden flames. A banner such as Rhaegar might have borne. The river’s banks were strangely tranquil. The Worm, the Astapori called the stream. It was wide and slow and crooked, dotted with tiny wooded islands. She glimpsed children playing on one of them, darting amongst elegant marble statues. On another island two lovers kissed in the shade of tall green trees, with no more shame than Dothraki at a wedding. Without clothing, she could not tell if they were slave or free.

• A Feast for Crows – Cersei V

Seventeen and new to knighthood, Rhaegar Targaryen had worn black plate over golden ringmail when he cantered onto the lists. Long streamers of red and gold and orange silk had floated behind his helm, like flames. Two of her uncles fell before his lance, along with a dozen of her father’s finest jousters, the flower of the west. By night the prince played his silver harp and made her weep. When she had been presented to him, Cersei had almost drowned in the depths of his sad purple eyes.

And this comparison between Aerion and Daenerys and how they are the puppeteers of the situation. Tanselle, the tree-girl, gets her fingers (tree limbs) broken, while Viserys is whipped around like the broken dragon.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys III

Her brother was on his knees, his fingers digging under the leather coils, crying incoherently, struggling for breath. The whip was tight around his windpipe.

“Tell them I do not wish him harmed,” Dany said.

Irri repeated her words in Dothraki. Jhogo gave a pull on the whip, yanking Viserys around like a puppet on a string. He went sprawling again, freed from the leather embrace, a thin line of blood under his chin where the whip had cut deep.

“I warned him what would happen, my lady,” Ser Jorah Mormont said. “I told him to stay on the ridge, as you commanded.”

“I know you did,” Dany replied, watching Viserys. He lay on the ground, sucking in air noisily, red-faced and sobbing. He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been.

“Take his horse,” Dany commanded Ser Jorah. Viserys gaped at her. He could not believe what he was hearing; nor could Dany quite believe what she was saying. Yet the words came. “Let my brother walk behind us back to the khalasar.” Among the Dothraki, the man who does not ride was no man at all, the lowest of the low, without honor or pride. “Let everyone see him as he is.”

• The Hedge Knight

Aerion bore a three-headed dragon on his shield, but it was rendered in colors much more vivid than Valarr’s; one head was orange, one yellow, one red, and the flames they breathed had the sheen of gold leaf. His surcoat was a swirl of smoke and fire woven together, and his blackened helm was surmounted by a crest of red enamel flames.

[and then this is what a dragon does to mummer’s- Aegon/Young Griff]

One man-at-arms was dangling the puppets of Florian and Jonquil from his hands as another set them afire with a torch. Three more men were opening chests, spilling more puppets on the ground and stamping on them. The dragon puppet was scattered all about them, a broken wing here, its head there, its tail in three pieces. And in the midst of it all stood Prince Aerion, resplendent in a red velvet doublet with long dagged sleeves, twisting Tanselle’s arm in both hands. She was on her knees, pleading with him. Aerion ignored her. He forced open her hand and seized one of her fingers. Dunk stood there stupidly, not quite believing what he saw. Then he heard a crack, and Tanselle screamed.

[and then]

“You took me for a stableboy.”

Aerion smiled redly. “I recall. You refused to take my horse. Why did you throw your life away? For this whore?” Tanselle was curled up on the ground, cradling her maimed hand. He gave her a shove with the toe of his boot. “She’s scarcely worth it. A traitor. The dragon ought never lose.”

He is mad, thought Dunk, but he is still a prince’s son, and he means to kill me. He might have prayed then, if he had known a prayer all the way through, but there was no time. There was hardly even time to be afraid.

Daenerys has already compared herself to Maegor the Cruel which is odd because Maegor never had any children and he comes from Visenya’s line, not Rhaenys’ line like Daenerys actually does. There are some fandom theories that Visenya created Maegor using bloodmagic, which would be rather interesting in my opinion and certainly comparable in this Daenerys situation as she uses fire and blood ritual to “self-pollinate” her three dragon eggs. Other than fan theory, the only commonality between Daenerys and Maegor is Aegon the Conquerer.

But then, there is also the the fact that Aerion Brightflame named his only child after Maegor. Another of Aerion’s nicknames was Aerion the Monstrous and he famously dies of drinking wildfire to be changed in to a dragon. And Daenerys calls herself back to old Valyria, and they were slavers that other cultures ran from. Again, this doesn’t sound good, but does connect her once again with the character Cyrain of Ash from The Glass Flower and [mental] slavery and Legion from Wild Cards. Here we see Daenerys calling out the comparison to the only people left around her. These people are the ones loyal to her because the rest all left her while she was unconscious during her birth. Why is calling out “Maegor the Cruel” to her allies?

And the final scene of A Dance with Dragons we see Daenerys behaving like a dragon, fire and blood, as she consumes a beast of the field, a horse.

First the reader set up:

• A Clash of Kings – Daenerys I

And then the payout. Here we see how Daenerys is connected to Aerion the Monstrous. Daenerys beats death by flame in a way that Aerion failed.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VI

Was it madness that seized her then, born of fear? Or some strange wisdom buried in her blood? Dany could not have said. She heard her own voice saying, “Ser Jorah, light the brazier.”

• A Clash of Kings – Daenerys III

Dany’s wrist still tingled where Quaithe had touched her. “Where would you have me go?” she asked.

“To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow.”

• A Storm of Swords – Jaime V

  “Everything was done in the utmost secrecy by a handful of master pyromancers. They did not even trust their own acolytes to help. The queen’s eyes had been closed for years, and Rhaegar was busy marshaling an army. But Aerys’s new mace-and-dagger Hand was not utterly stupid, and with Rossart, Belis, and Garigus coming and going night and day, he became suspicious. Chelsted, that was his name, Lord Chelsted.” It had come back to him suddenly, with the telling. “I’d thought the man craven, but the day he confronted Aerys he found some courage somewhere. He did all he could to dissuade him. He reasoned, he jested, he threatened, and finally he begged. When that failed he took off his chain of office and flung it down on the floor. Aerys burnt him alive for that, and hung his chain about the neck of Rossart, his favorite pyromancer. The man who had cooked Lord Rickard Stark in his own armor. And all the time, I stood by the foot of the Iron Throne in my white plate, still as a corpse, guarding my liege and all his sweet secrets.

  “My Sworn Brothers were all away, you see, but Aerys liked to keep me close. I was my father’s son, so he did not trust me. He wanted me where Varys could watch me, day and night. So I heard it all.” He remembered how Rossart’s eyes would shine when he unrolled his maps to show where the substance must be placed. Garigus and Belis were the same. “Rhaegar met Robert on the Trident, and you know what happened there. When the word reached court, Aerys packed the queen off to Dragonstone with Prince Viserys. Princess Elia would have gone as well, but he forbade it. Somehow he had gotten it in his head that Prince Lewyn must have betrayed Rhaegar on the Trident, but he thought he could keep Dorne loyal so long as he kept Elia and Aegon by his side. The traitors want my city, I heard him tell Rossart, but I’ll give them naught but ashes. Let Robert be king over charred bones and cooked meat. The Targaryens never bury their dead, they burn them. Aerys meant to have the greatest funeral pyre of them all. Though if truth be told, I do not believe he truly expected to die. Like Aerion Brightfire before him, Aerys thought the fire would transform him . . . that he would rise again, reborn as a dragon, and turn all his enemies to ash.

If the Genes Fit, Zip them Up!

Through some genetic memory, Daenerys has maneuvered her way through the story as a blood and fire mage, and in this scene she completes the fire transformation… she becomes a hybrid probably not unlike what the Asshai mages tried to by mixing dragon blood with humans eons ago.

• 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.

Dany hit him. “No,” she screamed, swinging the lash with all the strength that she had in her. The dragon jerked his head back. “No,” she screamed again. “NO!” The barbs raked along his snout. Drogon rose, his wings covering her in shadow. Dany swung the lash at his scaled belly, back and forth until her arm began to ache. His long serpentine neck bent like an archer’s bow. With a hisssssss, he spat black fire down at her. Dany darted underneath the flames, swinging the whip and shouting, “No, no, no. Get DOWN!” His answering roar was full of fear and fury, full of pain. His wings beat once, twice …

… and folded. The dragon gave one last hiss and stretched out flat upon his belly. Black blood was flowing from the wound where the spear had pierced him, smoking where it dripped onto the scorched sands. He is fire made flesh, she thought, and so am I.

And then we get to the next chapter after the dragon-fire transformation. Here Daenerys has been starving, eating things that make her sick, and doubled over with diarrhea cramps. Remember, dragons only eat charred meat. Additionally, as readers we know that Daenerys and Drogo have a symbiotic relationship at this point in the story. They react based on what the other is thinking or feeling. Incidentally, if the story of Rhaegar and Lyanna was not a romantic one, then this scene here is probably set up as part of that later reveal to book readers.

• A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys X

A vast herd of horses appeared below them. There were riders too, a score or more, but they turned and fled at the first sight of the dragon. The horses broke and ran when the shadow fell upon them, racing through the grass until their sides were white with foam, tearing the ground with their hooves … but as swift as they were, they could not fly. Soon one horse began to lag behind the others. The dragon descended on him, roaring, and all at once the poor beast was aflame, yet somehow he kept on running, screaming with every step, until Drogon landed on him and broke his back. Dany clutched the dragon’s neck with all her strength to keep from sliding off.

The carcass was too heavy for him to bear back to his lair, so Drogon consumed his kill there, tearing at the charred flesh as the grasses burned around them, the air thick with drifting smoke and the smell of burnt horsehair. Dany, starved, slid off his back and ate with him, ripping chunks of smoking meat from the dead horse with bare, burned hands. In Meereen I was a queen in silk, nibbling on stuffed dates and honeyed lamb, she remembered. What would my noble husband think if he could see me now? Hizdahr would be horrified, no doubt. But Daario …

Daario would laugh, carve off a hunk of horsemeat with his arakh, and squat down to eat beside her.

As the western sky turned the color of a blood bruise, she heard the sound of approaching horses. Dany rose, wiped her hands on her ragged undertunic, and went to stand beside her dragon.

That was how Khal Jhaqo found her, when half a hundred mounted warriors emerged from the drifting smoke.

The Stranger Home

Work in progress section. Follow the Fattest Leech blog for updates.

WARNING: This next bit is medium-high speculation, but not without the reasoning provided.

Let us start by taking another look at a few sections already mentioned, but with a different focus. Daenerys and the red door, and Rhaegal, and the Stranger.

• A Clash of Kings – Daenerys I

“It may be as you say, blood of my blood,” Dany replied gravely, “but he shall have a new name for this new life. I would name them all for those the gods have taken. The green one shall be Rhaegal, for my valiant brother who died on the green banks of the Trident. The cream-and-gold I call Viserion. Viserys was cruel and weak and frightened, yet he was my brother still. His dragon will do what he could not.”

And here we see Daenerys discussing ships to return to Westeros, and it is Rhaegal with her, with eyes of gold in conjunction with a “stranger”. The odd thing being that this is the only time in the series that Rhaegal is described as having gold eyes instead of the normal for him bronze.

• A Clash of Kings – Daenerys II

“Then I grieve for you, Dragonmother, and for bleeding Westeros, bereft of its rightful king.”

Beneath Dany’s gentle fingers, green Rhaegal stared at the stranger with eyes of molten gold. When his mouth opened, his teeth gleamed like black needles. “When does your ship return to Westeros, Captain?”

“Not for a year or more, I fear. From here the Cinnamon Wind sails east, to make the trader’s circle round the Jade Sea.”

In AGOT- Daenerys IV, on that first cursory read where we are so excited to take it all in for the first time, we can read right past this part where the soul of unborn Rhaego is starting his transfer to necro-wake the stone dragon, and therefore by the end of this scene, Daenerys is talking to a dragon, not human baby Rhaego. Rhaego was the coin that she used to pay for her voyage home to Westeros (where she is the Stranger), just as Daenerys was the coin in Viserys’ eyes. Daenerys may end up second-lifeing herself into Rhaegal, named after her brother Rhaegar, which will link Daenerys, Rhaegar, and possibly Rhaegal as the last dragons all together.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys IV

She was lying there, holding the egg, when she felt the child move within her … as if he were reaching out, brother to brother, blood to blood. “You are the dragon,” Dany whispered to him, “the true dragon. I know it. I know it.” And she smiled, and went to sleep dreaming of home.

And then we have this section where you can see Daenerys literally takes the helm from Rhaegar as the last dragon…

“… wake the dragon …”

The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close, the hall was a blur around her, the cold receding behind. And now the stone was gone and she flew across the Dothraki sea, high and higher, the green rippling beneath, and all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and great stone houses and arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open the door.

“… the dragon …”

And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. “The last dragon,” Ser Jorah’s voice whispered faintly. “The last, the last.” Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.

• A Game of Thrones – Daenerys VI

“The Dothraki do things in their own time, for their own reasons,” the knight answered. “Have patience, Princess. Do not make your brother’s mistake. We will go home, I promise you.”

Home? The word made her feel sad. Ser Jorah had his Bear Island, but what was home to her? A few tales, names recited as solemnly as the words of a prayer, the fading memory of a red door … was Vaes Dothrak to be her home forever? When she looked at the crones of the dosh khaleen, was she looking at her future.

The irony here is that Daenerys is actually looking at her future. She is going to visit the Dosh Khaleen and make everyone bow or burn, and then rise as her worshipers followers chase after her as her army ready to invade Westeros, which in turn leads to Daenerys taking a second life in a dragon (maybe Rhaegal).

• A Dance with Dragons – Daenerys II

Moonlight shone in the woman’s eyes. “To show you the way.”

“I remember the way. I go north to go south, east to go west, back to go forward. And to touch the light I have to pass beneath the shadow.” She squeezed the water from her silvery hair. “I am half-sick of riddling. In Qarth I was a beggar, but here I am a queen. I command you—”

“Daenerys. Remember the Undying. Remember who you are.”

Daenerys was born on Dragonstone, the seat of House Targaryen in the western hemisphere. Dragonstone was a solitary “kingdom” that was not listed or merged as part of the Seven Kingdoms. In the Faith of the Seven, the Stranger is the seventh that no one talks of or sings about in songs. In the passage below, we are reminded that Aegon/Young Griff is the sixth ruby, and we now know that Daenerys will come again as the last dragon/Rhaegar as the seventh ruby- and the Stranger.

• A Feast for Crows – Brienne VI

Meribald performed the customary courtesies before seating himself upon the settle. …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.”

Daenerys is a stranger to Westeros proper as she has never actually been there, however, just as Rhaegar was the Prince of Dragonstone, Daenerys is the Princess of Dragonstone. It is here on Dragonstone where she may go in to her stone dragon, the ouroboros dragon that eats its own tail end. We see one such example in the sigil for House Toland.

Want more GRRMspreading??

I have started a book club re-read for the older works of George R.R. Martin for purposes such as research, scholarship, and teaching. I own all copies of material that is used for this book club. If you have not yet read a story listed, please check with your local bookstore for your own reading material to purchase (Indie Bookstore Finder or Bookshop.org). The full list of GRRM stories outside of the A Song of Ice and Fire series that I have read can be found on this page here.

It takes a while to transcribe and then note each story for research purposes, even the really short ones, so this page will be quietly updated as each re-read is added. Make sure you subscribe for updates.

If there is a story in particular you would like to ask about, feel free to do so in comments below.

If you prefer to listen to a podcast that gives synopsis and analysis of stories written by George R.R. Martin, please consider the new group A Thousand Casts to accompany your ears. Twitter or Podbean.

1. Override– A betrayal between brothers. We are introduced to the rather well adjusted, pacifist main character Kabaraijian who is eventually sold out by his coworker/brother for money. A blood betrayal in #ASOIAF terms.
2. Nightflyers– Nightflyers is about a haunted ship in outerspace. This story is everything a reader would want from a GRRM story; high body count, psi-link mind control, whisperjewels, corpse handling, dragon-mother ships, the Night’s Watch ‘naval’ institution in space, and Jon and Val.
3. Sandkings– Welcome to the disturbing tale of Simon Kress and his Sandkings. Early origins of Unsullied, Dothraki, Aerea Targaryen, and Dragon who mounts the world, set among a leader with a god complex. One of the “must read” George R.R. Martin stories.
4. Bitterblooms– In the dead of deep winter, a young girl named Shawn has to find the mental courage to escape a red fiery witch. Prototyping Val, Stannis, and Arya along with the red witch Melisandre.
5. The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr – Discarded Knights guards the gates as Sharra feels the Seven while searching for lost love. Many Sansa and Ashara Dayne prototyping here as well.
6. …And Seven Times Never Kill Man– A look into a proto-Andal+Targaryen fiery world as the Jaenshi way of life is erased. But who is controlling these events? Black & Red Pyramids who merge with Bakkalon are on full display in this story.
7. The Last Super Bowl– Football meets SciFi tech with plenty of ASOIAF carryover battle elements.
8. Nobody Leaves New Pittsburg– first in the Corpse Handler trio, and sets a lot of tone for future ASOIAF thematics.
9. Closing Time– A short story that shows many precursor themes for future GRRM stories, including skinchanging, Sneaky Pete’s, catastrophic long nights…
10. The Glass Flower– a tale of how the drive for perfection creates mindlords and mental slavery.
11. Run to Starlight– A tale of coexistence and morality set to a high stakes game of football.
12. Remembering Melody– A ghost tale written by GRRM in 1981 that tells of long nights, bloodbaths, and pancakes.
13. Fast-Friend transcribed and noted. Written in December 1973, this story is a precursor to skinchanging, Bran, Euron, Daenerys, and ways to scheme to reclaim lost love.
14. The Steel Andal Invasion– A re-read of a partial section of  The World of Ice and Fire text compared to the story …And Seven Times Never Kill Man. This has to do with both fire and ice Others in ASOIAF.
15. A Song for Lya– A novella about a psi-link couple investigating a fiery ‘god’. Very much a trees vs fire motif, and one of GRRM’s best stories out there.
16. For A Single Yesterday– A short story about learning from the past to rebuild the future.
17. This Tower of Ashes– A story of how lost love, mother’s milk, and spiders don’t mix all too well.
18. A Peripheral Affair (1973)– When a Terran scout ship on a routine patrol through the Periphery suddenly disappears, a battle-hungry admiral prepares to renew the border war.
19. The Stone City– a have-not surviving while stranded on a corporate planet. Practically a GRRM autobiography in itself.
20. Slide Show– a story of putting the stars before the children.
21. Only Kids are Afraid of the Dark– rubies, fire, blood sacrifice, and Saagael- oh my!
22. A Night at the Tarn House– a magical game of life and death played at an inn at a crossroads.
23. Men of Greywater Station– Is it the trees, the fungus, or is the real danger humans?
24. The Computer Cried Charge!– what are we fighting for and is it worth it?
25. The Needle Men– the fiery hand wields itself again, only, why are we looking for men?
26. Black and White and Red All Over– a partial take on a partial story.
27. Fire & Blood excerpt; Alysanne in the north– not a full story, but transcribed and noted section of the book Fire & Blood, volume 1.

If you want to browse my own thoughts and speculations on the ASOIAF world using GRRM’s own work history, use the drop-down menu above for the most content, or click on the page that just shows recent posts -> Recent Posts Page.

Thank you for reading the jambles and jumbles of the Fattest Leech of Ice and Fire, by Gumbo!

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