Episode 148: A CLASH OF KINGS, TYRION XV: "King of Ashes" SHOW NOTES!

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.

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

Welcome to the one hundred and forty-eighth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “King of Ashes: An Analysis of ACOK, Tyrion XV,” in which Tyrion has some good dreams, some bad dreams, and then wakes up in his shitty, shitty reality.

This episode is brought to you by our NotASmallCouncil:

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack
• Grandmaester Timbob, troubleshooter of systems and designer of circuit boards
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N.
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
• Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
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• Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
• Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
• Lord Micah, the Quilled Lion, Warden of the West, Herald of the Golden Tooth, Master of the Banefort and the Kraken’s Bane
• Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen's Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
• Laurence, Prince of Dorne
• Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs
• Steven the Steadfast, Master of Hounds
• The Blue Winter Rose Knight of Highgarden
• Lady Stephanie
• Lord Carlos
• Lord Andrew the Restless, a Priest of the Drowned God
• Ser Sourcedelica
• Sugar Tits Dent the Troglodyte Warrior, formerly known as Low Energy Dent, True Master of the Banefort and True Master of Coin
• Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
• Queer Alex, Beyonce's Favorite Stan and Bastard of Chromatica, Rainbow Commander of the Theydes and Gentlethems
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• Lord Adam T
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• Ser Kristoph Logas, Bloody Scorpion of the Red Field, Defender of the Letter of Kin, and the Wolverine of house Qorgyle
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• Ser Josh Snow Bastard Bounty Hunter of the North
• Ser Veyor, Chief of Parties in the Frozen Wastes
• Lord Peter
• The Dead Sheppard Reborn, Preacher of the Poor Fellows
• Marshall Harrison—Absent, shipwrecked in the Jade Sea
• Grave-Robb Stark, the Cadaver King and Horror of Harrenhal
• Olaf, proponent of establishing a feudal, pseudodemocratic system of Great Councils, wherein every count votes
• Ser Tim: The Knight Who Was Guided By Voices
• Lord Nick
• Thucydides, Lord of Plagues
• Ser Jack, Lord of Ser Arthur Dayne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen’s Sad Prophecy Boys Club
• Lady Anna, The Lovely Castellan
• Pat Yronwood, the bloodroyal and guardian of the Boneway
• Lord Charles Tyrell of Highgarden, Lord Paramount of the Mander, Defender of the Marches, High Marshal of the Reach, Warden of the South, and The Heir of House Tyrell
• Luke, Lord of Lone Leaf & The Pillar of Autumn
• Master of Zorse
• Joe Snow “King of the Metro North and protector of the Tri-State”
• Squire Matt S, future Ser Matt S, the one who will bring balance to the Kingdoms
• BWord, Queen Beyond the Wall
• Lord Kyle
• Lord Samuel Seaworth
• Ser Max, Lord Commander of the Constitutional Guard
• Blackberry the Bold, Champion of Feel Good Times
• Lady Ivory Dayne, aspiring noble author in the seven kingdoms, lady of Starfall, wardeness of the south, and patron of freewheeling bisexuals
• Lady Jemisa, She Who Suggests That Coconuts Migrate
• Lord Kristoff of Arendelle, official ice master and deliverer, the valiant pungent reindeer king, keeper of feisty pants, and prince consort to his ginger sweet love Queen Anna (Pronounced Ah-nuh)
• Lord Sir Septon Ruthers

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

Question

Ser Pat D, a High Lord patron, asks:

I love the story being retold in different ways. What do you think about the Loras/Margaery & Jamie/Cersei parallels?

So, thank you Pat for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher level patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get show notes, free merch, access to the NotASlack at our two highest tiers and bonus episodes like our most recent episode analyzing Zack Snyder’s 2013 film Man of Steel!

Yes indeed. That episode, titled “Already Dead” is out now for all of our Poor Fellow and above patrons. So, check that out! Anyway, enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Tyrion Lannister, he had narrowly avoided immediate death from Mandon Moore’s blade. Let’s see if he makes it through this chapter in this synopsis of ACOK, Tyrrion XV!

Synopsis

He dreamed of a cracked stone ceiling and the smells of blood and shit and burnt flesh. The air was full of acrid smoke. Men were groaning and whimpering all around him, and from time to time a scream would pierce the air, thick with pain. When he tried to move, he found that he had fouled his own bedding. The smoke in the air made his eyes water. Am I crying? He must not let his father see. He was a Lannister of Casterly Rock. A lion, I must be a lion, live a lion, die a lion. He hurt so much, though. Too weak to groan, he lay in his own filth and shut his eyes. Nearby someone was cursing the gods in a heavy, monotonous voice. He listened to the blasphemies and wondered if he was dying. After a time the room faded.

In the dream or real world, Tyrion finds himself outside of King’s Landing with ravens circling and crows and maggots eating the dead. Silent Sisters strip the bodies of their clothes and toss the dead onto funeral pyres.

My work, thought Tyrion Lannister. They died at my command.

At first there was no sound in the world, but after a time he began to hear the voices of the dead, soft and terrible. They wept and moaned, they begged for an end to pain, they cried for help and wanted their mothers. Tyrion had never known his mother. He wanted Shae, but she was not there. He walked alone amidst grey shadows, trying to remember . . .

The silent sisters continue to strip dead men of all their beautiful, colorful armor and surcoats and replace it with white and gray with black blood bleeding through the bleached colors. And then the bodies of the slain are tossed into funeral pyres. There were so many dead - they had black hearts, gray lions, dead flowers and ghostly stags sewn onto them. Their armor was beaten up, and Tyrion knew why he killed them, but now he’s forgotten.

Tyrion tries to ask one of the silent sisters, but he has no mouth to speak. Skin covers his teeth, and he’s terrified that he won’t have a mouth. He runs towards the city to escape the dead, but when he reaches the city gates, they are locked. He wakes up in the dark, unable to see anything. Tyrion realizes he’s in bed, his own bed of sorts. But he feels feverish and weak. He feels pain when he tries to move his arm, but he can’t really feel the rest of his body. Tyrion tries to remember how he ended up here, and he remembers flashes of the Battle of the Blackwater, and then he remembers someone at the battle:

Ser Mandon. He saw the dead empty eyes, the reaching hand, the green fire shining against the white enamel plate. Fear swept over him in a cold rush; beneath the sheets he could feel his bladder letting go. He would have cried out, if he'd had a mouth. No, that was the dream, he thought, his head pounding. Help me, someone help me. Jaime, Shae, Mother, someone . . . Tysha . . .

But no one hears or comes. He falls back to sleep in his bed of piss. He dreams of Cersei and Lord Tywin standing over the bed. This was definitely a dream, because Tywin was far away. Varys and Littlefinger show up, and he can hear their voices but not the words. He realizes that the Lannisters won the battle as his head isn’t on a spike, and he gets nearly-giddy that his wits are still present. The next time he wakes up, he finds Podrick Payne standing over him. Pod sees Tyrion’s eyes open and runs away. Tyrion tries to call after the boy, but he can’t as he has no mouth, or more accurately, his mouth is bandaged over.

Pod returns with a maester who tells Tyrion to stay still. But would Tyrion like a nice little drink? Tyrion nods, and the maester inserts a funnel through a hole in the bandage. Too late, Tyrion realizes this is milk of the poppy, and he passes out.

This time he dreamed he was at a feast, a victory feast in some great hall. He had a high seat on the dais, and men were lifting their goblets and hailing him as hero. Marillion was there, the singer who'd journeyed with them through the Mountains of the Moon. He played his woodharp and sang of the Imp's daring deeds. Even his father was smiling with approval. When the song was over, Jaime rose from his place, commanded Tyrion to kneel, and touched him first on one shoulder and then on the other with his golden sword, and he rose up a knight. Shae was waiting to embrace him. She took him by the hand, laughing and teasing, calling him her giant of Lannister.

Tyrion wakes in darkness again, and he knows that something is wrong. He tries to sit up in his lonely room, but it was too much pain to do so. So, he slumps back down. He realizes his entire right side is in agonizing pain, and he thinks that he’s more hurt than he remembered. Was that Mandon Moore’s fault? The thought of Mandon Moore makes Tyrion afraid, but he refuses to push the memory aside. Mandon Moore had tried to kill Tyrion. But Pod saved him. P.S. where’s Pod?

Tyrion reaches up and rips the drapes down, but he finds that effort dizzying. He realizes that he’s not in the Tower of the Hand. He’s been moved, and he thinks they’ve brought him to this room to die. He passes out again.

In his dream, Tyrion flashes back to a cottage by the sunset sea where Tysha teases Tyrion about being a lazy servant for not feeding the fire. Tysha states that lazy servants get beaten at Casterly Rock, but Tyrion insists that lazy servants get kissed at Casterly Rock. I wonder who’s telling it true here. Real mystery. Tyrion then proceeds to kiss Tysha’s fingers, wrists, the insides of her elbows, ears, cheeks, noses hair, chins and then mouths. They would kiss for days, exploring each others’ bodies. And then they would both declare how they would love all parts of each other. Tysha loves Tyrion’s face and his cock, especially when it’s inside of her.

"It loves you too, my lady."

"I love to say your name. Tyrion Lannister. It goes with mine. Not the Lannister, t'other part. Tyrion and Tysha. Tysha and Tyrion. Tyrion. My lord Tyrion . . . "

Lies, he thought, all feigned, all for gold, she was a whore, Jaime's whore, Jaime's gift, my lady of the lie. Her face seemed to fade away, dissolving behind a veil of tears, but even after she was gone he could still hear the faint, far-off sound of her voice, calling his name. " . . . my lord, can you hear me? My lord? Tyrion? My lord? My lord?"

Tyrion wakes up to a soft pink face that was not Tysha’s over him. It’s the maester, and he wants to know if Tyrion wants his milk. The maester leans in too close, and then Tyrion grabs the chain and starts strangling the maester, telling him he wants no more milk of the poppy. The maester’s face goes purple, and then Tyrion lets go. Tyrion raises his hands to his face to indicate that he wants the bandages off, but the maester is reluctant, because the queen wouldn’t like that. He threatens to crush the maester if he doesn’t do as Tyrion bids. The maester warns against it but heads out of the room and brings a knife back to cut the bandages away.

After a few minutes of sawing, Tyrion feels cool air on his cheeks. The maester tells Tyrion that he needs to clean the wound, and it will hurt. And sure enough, it does hurt. The maester maintains that it would have been better to leave the mask on until the wound healed more, but he admits that the wound looks clean. They weren’t sure Tyrion was going to make it originally when he had been found among the dead and dying in a cellar. Plus, Tyrion had broken a rib and had an arrow wound to his arm. But the maggots and boiling wine had saved Tyrion’s life.

Tyrion demands to know a name. Not his name though. The maester’s name. He’s Maester Ballabar. Okay Maester Ballabar, get Tyrion a mirror. Ballabar recommends against that, but Tyrion demands, and the maester relents. Also, Tyrion wants something to drink: wine, not milk of the poppy.

The maester rose flush-faced and hurried off. He came back with a flagon of pale amber wine and a small silvered looking glass in an ornate golden frame. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he poured half a cup of wine and held it to Tyrion's swollen lips. The trickle went down cool, though he could hardly taste it. "More," he said when the cup was empty. Maester Ballabar poured again. By the end of the second cup, Tyrion Lannister felt strong enough to face his face.

He turned over the glass, and did not know whether he ought to laugh or cry. The gash was long and crooked, starting a hair under his left eye and ending on the right side of his jaw. Three-quarters of his nose was gone, and a chunk of his lip. Someone had sewn the torn flesh together with catgut, and their clumsy stitches were still in place across the seam of raw, red, half-healed flesh. "Pretty," he croaked, flinging the glass aside.

And now Tyrion remembers the bridge of boats, Ser Mandon Moore and the sword he tried to use against Tyrion. Mandon was the most dangerous of the Kingsguard, but Tyrion had hoped he wasn’t one of Cersei’s creatures, but Cersei must have paid him to try to kill him.

Ballabar says that Tyrion will most likely have a scar, which duh. Tyrion would have a scar and only half a nose. Where is Tyrion BTW? Maegor’s Holdfast above Cersei’s Ballroom. Cersei wanted Tyrion close to so-totally watch over him. Yeah. Tyrion is quite sure she did. But now he wants to go back to his chambers in the Tower of the Hand. Well, that’s not quite possible. The King’s Hand is there.

"I. Am. King's Hand." He was growing exhausted by the effort of speaking, and confused by what he was hearing.

Maester Ballabar looked distressed. "No, my lord, I . . . you were wounded, near death. Your lord father has taken up those duties now. Lord Tywin, he . . . "

"Here?"

"Since the night of the battle. Lord Tywin saved us all. The smallfolk say it was King Renly's ghost, but wiser men know better. It was your father and Lord Tyrell, with the Knight of Flowers and Lord Littlefinger. They rode through the ashes and took the usurper Stannis in the rear. It was a great victory, and now Lord Tywin has settled into the Tower of the Hand to help His Grace set the realm to rights, gods be praised."

"Gods be praised," Tyrion repeated hollowly.

So, Tywin was truly here at King’s Landing. So, who does Tyrion want? Not Shae, Varys, Bronn or Ser Jacelyn. He wants Podrick Payne who saved his life. Ballabar heads off to find Pod as Tyrion feels weakness flowing back into him. But he can’t sleep, or Cersei will get him for good.

Podrick shows up, apologizing for not staying by Tyrion’s side, but the maester sent him away. Tyrion wants Ballabar sent away now. He wants Frenken here, and he wants his guard to include Bronn.

"They made him a knight."

Even frowning hurt. "Find him. Bring him."

"As you say. My lord. Bronn."

Tyrion asks after Ser Mandon, and Pod starts sputtering that he never meant to you know, k-k-k. But Tyrion just wants to know if he’s dead. Yes. He drowned.

"Good. Say nothing. Of him. Of me. Any of it. Nothing."

By the time his squire left, the last of Tyrion's strength was gone as well. He lay back and closed his eyes. Perhaps he would dream of Tysha again. I wonder how she'd like my face now, he thought bitterly.

And that is the synopsis for ACOK, Tyrion XV. Among these POV conclusions for ACOK, Tyrion’s is the one that feels the most like a chapter where George simply broke the Tyrion chapters he had already written and chose this one as his conclusions for ACOK. What did you think, ser?

Depth

Tyrion’s storyline in ACOK parallels Ned’s story in AGOT. Both of them Hands of the King, protagonist of their respective books, each with fifteen chapters tracing their rise and fall. Ned’s ninth chapter featured an action scene in the streets (Jaime’s ambush); so did Tyrion’s ninth chapter in this book (the bread riots). In Ned’s twelfth chapter, he has a one-on-one showdown with Cersei; so does Tyrion in his twelfth chapter. Now we arrive at the end to find one more parallel. Ned’s fifteenth and final chapter, as we covered back in the day with our friend Lauren aka ShakesOfThrones, is a bittersweet epilogue. Our hero is wounded and alone in the dark, hallucinating confrontations with the events and people that have shaped him. Lo and behold, Tyrion’s fifteenth and final chapter works the same way! It’s a fevre dream. Between the battle and the milk of the poppy, Tyrion is left unstuck in time and space, wandering through the past, the present, and the projected future. Ned, of course, was winding down the clock to death. At the end of Tyrion’s storyline, he has to literally face himself, and prepare to live once more.

Love that strain of parallel-storytelling that George does between Ned and Tyrion and AGOT and ACOK. It’s wonderful stuff that you’ve been pointing out throughout our journey with Tyrion in ACOK. The early parts of the chapter with Tyrion having skin sewn over his teeth and the bleached colors from the battle work as metaphorical storytelling similar to what we see in Dany’s penultimate chapter in AGOT with her visions after entering MMD’s tent.

Along that same strand of parallel storytelling, we entered ACOK with Tyrion thinking he could do better than Ned Stark, that he wouldn’t make the same mistakes that Ned did. And yet, here Tyrion is having trusted Mandon Moore much as Ned trusted Littlefinger, and he’s alone in the dark, only saved by the quick-thinking of Podrick Payne. In terms of storytelling, Tyrion has gone on a journey in ACOK, but he started at near the top of the game of thrones. And now he’s here at the bottom, cast away in sheol. That’s the physical part of the journey. The emotional journey has paralleled the physical journey too. Tyrion is forgotten, barely mentioned in the ceremony Sansa witnessed. And soon, his role in saving King’s Landing will be airbrushed entirely by Tywin. This is a physical and emotional tragedy for Tyrion, and as we head into ASOS, this is laying a significant foundation for Tyrion’s clear villainous turn.

• Shell shocked nightmares
  • Theon VI last week ended in fire and blood. As Tyrion XV opens, it’s as if nothing has changed. The mood and imagery are the same: a nightmare half-concealed by the fog of war. North or south, it makes no difference, linking the Battle of Blackwater and the Sack of Winterfell together
  • Just as Theon plunged from prince to prisoner, his face shattered by Ramsay’s gauntlet, Tyrion’s own facial wound has stripped away his political power, right at the moment he needed it the most
  • The Hand of the King has been tossed into a cellar with the dead and dying. It smells like shit; everyone is sobbing and cursing the gods
  • This is war as hell, in absolute contrast to the finery and triumphant spirits on display in the throne room in Sansa VIII
  • The man who made that victory possible has been abandoned to fester in his own filth, while his father takes credit for everything he did
  • But only the reader is aware of that at first. Tyrion isn’t, because his wound has reduced his mental capacities; he drifts in and out of consciousness
  • As the chapter opens, he thinks he’s dreaming. Sadly, he’s not: the cracked stone ceiling and the pain all over his body are very real
  • But it feels like a dream; that’s the state he’s in. So when he slips into an actual dream, it feels like a natural progression, no real difference
  • Tyrion wonders if he’s dying. We might be wondering the same thing, given where we left him: bleeding out on the bridge of ships
  • As such, his first dream feels like a journey to the land of death. He wanders outside the city, surrounded by dead soldiers, heaped high
  • As I’ve said over and over again while covering ACOK, this is a book about color: waves of rainbow light invading the noir palette of AGOT
  • I’ve been emphasizing that because of the shock when it all gets taken away. Tyrion, the book’s protagonist, is now in “a world without color”
  • The beautiful colors that defined Qarth, Bran’s wolf dreams, and Ygritte’s story about Bael the Bard are replaced by “white maggots burrow[ing] through black corruption.” Joie de vivre gives way to memento mori
  • This is the Fall, the broken state of mankind, experienced in this story most literally by our protagonist Bran, but metaphorically by everyone else
  • In this chapter, it applies above all to the knights of summer. Of all the splashes of color in ACOK, none had more of an impact than the rainbow of Renly’s camp in the Reach, the banners blazing brightly above the young and the beautiful as they sang their way to glory. They thought they’d never die, that the songs and stories would make them immortal
  • Now look at them: corpses drained of color. The bright dyes have faded. Their armor is stripped away, and then their flesh. Their faces barely even look human. The tourney fields where Sansa watched the jousts have become a graveyard. Chivalry is dead, and this is its tomb
  • Even the ships themselves have somehow died despite never being alive, their wooden beams described as “charred bones” sinking in the river
  • Who did this? Who broke the world? “My work, thought Tyrion Lannister. They died at my command.” This is the first time George uses Tyrion’s name in the chapter, as if to emphasize that this is who Tyrion is now
  • His identity is inextricable from the bodies burning all around. Why did he kill them? He tries to remember. George tells us why in the first paragraph:
    • Am I crying? He must not let his father see. He was a Lannister of Casterly Rock. A lion, I must be a lion, live a lion, die a lion.
  • Tyrion sent thousands shrieking down to hell for the same reason Theon butchered those boys up North: to belong. To make Dad proud
  • Tyrion has spent the book trying to live up to the proud lion on their banners. But now the colors have bled from the banners, and his father will never be proud of him. It has all come to nothing. Per Ozymandias:
    • ...on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

• And so Tyrion is left without a mouth: a skin-crawling nightmare image that robs Tyrion of his wit, the tool he uses to try and make his way in the world. He is literally without a voice, unable to tell his own story, and the city gates are closed against him. He is unwelcome in the land of the living
• Maybe I’m dumb, but I spent a signficant amount of time reading and re-reading this scene to try to figure out whether this was Tyrion experiencing the aftermath of the battle as it happened, or whether his subconscious mind dreaming.
• Now, I think it’s a dream, but there are a number of striking details - the silent sisters stripping the bodies, the funeral pyres, that it occurs outside of the walls of King’s Landing where Tyrion was wounded that had me wondering.
• However, by the time we get to the end of the chapter when Ballabar talks about finding Tyrion in a cellar with the dead and dying as opposed to wandering outside of the walls that makes it clear that this is Tyrion’s subconscious.
• At the same time, the draining of colors, the crows and maggots, the silent sisters -- this is the abattoir of the Blackwater.
• In that drainage of colors, we’re seeing George deliberately contrast the ceremony which Sansa witnesses: the bright colors, the crowded throne room, the high lords and ladies in their finery, Tywin Lannister and his horse in dazzling armor.
• All of that grandeur was built on the mountains of dead outside of the walls of King’s Landing, on death itself.
• It’s almost as if the victors of the Blackwater are vampires sucking the color, the blood of the slain to feed their own gaudy, self-satisfied celebration.
• Amidst all of the celebration occurring in front of the Iron Throne, Tyrion - the true architect of the delaying action in the battle - is left in the dark, uncared for and mostly unattended.
• Poppy milk dreams
  • When Tyrion wakes up next, he’s back in his bedchamber, the familiar environment reassembling itself out of dream like Proust
  • He can only interpret his foggy mental state as fever. The flashlight cannot shine upon itself; his shell-shocked mind can’t understand what happened
  • The battle comes back to him in pieces, culminating in the dreadful vision of Mandon Moore. The trauma causes Tyrion’s mind to fall away, again blurring the border between reality and dreams
  • Tyrion’s mind is his weapon; gradually, he’s able to sharpen it once more. He realizes they must have won, or he’d be dead. These are the fruits of his victory: painfully struggling back towards consciousness
  • In the process, he catches a glimpse of the people taking over his life: Cersei, Tywin, Littlefinger, the maester keeping him drugged to the gills
  • The milk of the poppy sends Tyrion back into his dreams, this time a happier one. A victory feast where everyone is cheering Tyrion’s name. Marillion is there to sing his praises, Jaime is there to knight him, Shae is there to love and fuck him. Even Tywin is there, smiling at him for once
  • George is expanding on Tyrion’s earlier desire to live and die as a lion. This is all Tyrion ever wanted: love, praise, a sense of home and self
  • It’s bittersweet, not only because this dream is being denied, but because the exact opposite is happening. The victory feast is going on without Tyrion while he lies here, comfortably numb. The song is being rewritten
  • All Tyrion wanted was for his dad to give him and tell him that he did a good job.
  • It’s oh-so-similar to Stannis as he talked about in the ACOK Prologue as he lists off all of the slights Robert gave him -- like never thanking him for holding Storm’s End and nearly starving to death.
  • Here, Tyrion’s subconscious has him wanting the affirmation of his family, his lover and Westeros as a whole.
  • I love this scene, because Tyrion obscures so much of what he really wants with sarcasm and a sardonic outlook even in his own thoughts.
  • Think back to Tyrion’s statement to Varys which closes out ACOK, Tyrion X:
    • “The good folk don't have Jaime to protect them, nor Robert nor Renly nor Rhaegar nor their precious Knight of Flowers. Only me, the one they hate." He laughed again. "The dwarf, the evil counselor, the twisted little monkey demon.”
  • Tyrion has internalized so much of the beliefs that everyone has about him that readers come away feeling like he’s just been hardened by the way that people regard him.
  • Yet here, when Tyrion’s emotional walls are down, he allows himself to want and desire what he wants: affirmation.
  • When he wakes up, he’s been moved, without his knowledge or consent, to a smaller and less comfortable room, he knows not where. Tyrion senses that he’s been politically downgraded long before it’s been confirmed to him; he howls in anger, but no one can hear
  • The effort of it exhausts him. His next dream reflects his diminishing circumstances. He’s gone from a victory feast to a dank little cottage by the sea, the walls cracked just like the one at the start of the chapter
  • And yet...despite all that...this was the happiest Tyrion has ever been, because this was the place and time he spent with Tysha
  • She loved him, as he was, for who he was; the only one who did. He loved her back. Per Cormac McCarthy, they were “each the other’s world entire”
  • Together, they managed to shrink Westeros down to the feel of each other and the sound of the waves: human nature, stripped of shame
  • Tyrion shed his self-loathing, his certainty that he was made a monster and cursed to be alone. He inherited that certainty from his father, and Tyrion only briefly found peace with Tysha by abandoning his last name
  • As Tysha says: their names go together. Not the Lannister bit. Leave that off, and we belong together, Tyrion and Tysha, Tysha and Tyrion, forever
  • Just as George held off on Tyrion’s name until he took responsibility for what he did, he holds back on Tysha’s name until this moment
  • It’s a fragile oasis in a world that takes and takes. Per Gravity’s Rainbow:
    • It is marginal, hungry, chilly—most times they're too paranoid to risk a fire—but it's something they want to keep, so much that to keep it they will take on more than propaganda has ever asked them for.
      
      They are in love. Fuck the war.
  • Even here, Tyrion was not able to escape the outside world, the system in which he was raised. He keeps letting the fire go out, because he’s used to having servants take care of that sort of thing for him. That’s power, but it’s also helplessness. As Tywin says, no one is free; even the son of the richest family in the land is bound and caged by that responsibility
  • Tyrion loved and lost, and still doesn’t know the truth of it. The full reveal will make clear to him how his need to belong in his family cannot coexist with his need to be loved. They have made him all alone in this world
  • Of the dreams, this one feels the most like a memory rather than Tyrion externalizing his subconscious desires.
  • This also serves as the best emotional evidence that Tysha was not a sex worker that Jaime paid to be with Tyrion.
  • There is genuine warmth between Tyrion and Tysha here and an intimacy that we don’t see between Tyrion and Shae.
  • The love and warmth that Tyrion desires in his subconscious -- that was real once in his life with Tysha.
  • As you say, he doesn’t know the truth of it, and all of the ways that Tyrion has internalized how the world perceives him have blinded him to that truth.
  • That said, the reason why this particular vision is so vivid is because of something I’ve mentioned before: George had mostly written Tywin Lannister’s death before he finished ACOK.
  • What this means is that George likely knew he had to ramp up the foreshadowing for Tysha here as it’s the pivotal moment for why Tyrion kills Tywin at the end of ASOS.
  • That this vision occurs in Tyrion’s final chapter in ACOK is intended to linger in our minds until ASOS and make us wonder about who Tysha was and whether the way she was introduced as a sex worker is accurate.
  • All that meta and all that foreshadowing aside, I think George does something really interesting with this cottage by the sea for Tyrion.
  • Obviously, it’s Tyrion idealizing a time in his life, and I think that it’s close to a memory rather than an idealization.
  • However, in this re-read, I think I got a glimpse of what George did here: this is essentially Tyrion’s House with the Red Door, isn’t it?
  • It’s the place where Tyrion imagines that he was once truly happy, a place of comfort and safety for Tyrion -- same as the House represents for Daenerys.
  • George has famously said that there are future revelations in store for the House with the Red Door for Dany, and it dawned on me here that in the Tyrion/Tysha romance and the revelations that came to Tyrion, that George might be hinting at not merely the revelations in store for Dany with the House with the Red Door but the consequences flowing out from that.
  • As we’ll find out in ASOS, Jaime will tell Tyrion the truth about Tysha, and the revelation will devastate Tyrion.
  • The resulting consequence was thunderous for Tyrion, for Shae, for Tywin and for Westeros as a whole.
  • Similarly, I think the consequences of future revelations about the House with the Red Door will be similar for Dany and for Westeros as a whole.
• Waking to face reality
  • Tyrion finally retakes command of his life by resisting another dose of milk of the poppy. He’s not interested in more dreams; he’s ready to wake up
  • He threatens the maester through hand gestures and what rudimentary words he can manage. What does Tyrion want? A mirror. His dreams were about his fragmented, corrupted identity; now he needs to “face his face”
  • His horrific wound reflects the sense of alienation in those dreams: the better life denied him, the person he wanted to be, but is no longer
  • As he thinks: would Tysha like my face now? That hints at the deeper question: would she still love the person I have become?
  • “Pretty,” he croaks sarcastically, a word that speaks volumes. Tyrion has always felt rejected due to his appearance, his failure to live up to Westerosi beauty standards like his siblings. And now? Even more so
  • With the revelation of his face comes the memory of how it got that way. Tyrion now consciously remembers Mandon Moore attacking him
  • This was the moment of impact that caused the foggy, feverish feel of this chapter, and it ties into all his dreams. Ser Mandon is one of the dead, as Podrick confirms, and Tyrion almost was one as well. He had no mouth in the dream; the linen covers his mouth in reality to heal the wound. He dreamed of love, but wakes to remember only betrayal: his lot in life
  • Tyrion learns he’s been kicked out of his rooms by Tywin and is now being overseen by Cersei. Only now does he learn how the battle ended
  • Who can Tyrion rely on to help him navigate this labyrinth, especially since he’s not at his best? Only Podrick, the one true squire who saved him
  • “The odd boy” as Maester Ballabar calls him; Tyrion notes that all his courage and swift action on the battlefield seems to have melted away
  • As I said in Sansa VIII, Podrick is not among the heroes of the Blackwater praised endlessly in public. But we saw him be a hero at risk to his life
  • Varys says it so well in the show: they won’t remember, but we will. This fragile bond saved Tyrion’s life; it’s why he keeps going where Ned didn’t
  • If only this was truly rock bottom for Tyrion! Somehow, things are just going to keep getting worse over the course of ASOS and ADWD…
  • I’ve quoted this before, but it’s well-worth bringing up here at the end of Tyrion’s story in ACOK.
  • When George was interviewed by Amazon in 1998, he was asked who his favorite character was, and he replied, “Tyrion. He’s the villain, of course.”
  • Here, we’re seeing what I think is George developing the supervillain story behind Tyrion Lannister.
  • A sympathetic character who endangered himself for King’s Landing, Westeros and his family has been constrained to darkness, forgotten and erased from historical memory.
  • Given the term supervillain here, I’m invoking the classic comic book backstory work that was instrumental in George’s literary upbringing.
  • Through comics, we found the supervillain origin stories of the Joker, Harvey Dent, Thanos, Doc Oc etc.
  • George takes some of those early influences on ASOIAF, and he uses them as building blocks for the type of character Tyrion is angling towards.
  • Tyrion has saved King’s Landing from Stannis. He was the one who did all the hard work, and now he’s isolated and uncelebrated.
  • But that is not the sole building block for Tyrion’s turn to villainy. His family’s treatment of him provides the foundation before he’s relegated to darkness.
  • And as we find out in ASOS/ADWD, Tyrion will memorably think: I saved you all. I saved this vile city and all your worthless lives.
  • And all the nobility, in turn, will condemn Tyrion as kinslayer and kingslayer, with many of them providing false testimony to implicate the man who saved all of their worthless lives.
  • That’s compelling groundwork for Tyrion to be the villain he emerges as in ADWD, and I don’t think we’ve seen the full extent of that villainy.
  • Come TWOW/ADOS, we’ll see the full denouement.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Tyrion will strangle Shae in a similar manner to how he strangles Maester Ballabar.

Tywin and Cersei do indeed visit Tyrion as Tywin will relay to Tyrion in his first chapter in ASOS: Spare me these coy reproaches, Tyrion. I visited your sickbed as often as Maester Ballabar would allow it, when you seemed like to die

Tyrion might be guilty for even more deaths in King’s Landing later via Dany.

Theory/Discussion

This chapter has Maester Ballabar telling Tyrion that Tywin has now taken residence in the Tower of the Hand, effectively ending Tyrion’s tenure as Hand of the King. Given this, what do we make, ultimately, of Tyrion Lannister as Hand of the King and was he a better or worse Hand than Ned Stark?

Conclusion

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