Episode 98: A CLASH OF KINGS, ARYA IV: "Death March" 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 ninety-eighth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Death March: An Analysis of ACOK, Arya VI,” in which Arya bears witness to war crimes before being enslaved and force-marched to Harrenhal, a castle even Dracula would call over the top. Gonna be a fun episode! 

This episode is brought to you by our Small Council: 

• Hand of the King WolfmanZack 
• Grand Maester Timbob
• Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N. 
• Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
• Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
• Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
• Lord Gene, Master of Coin
• Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
• Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
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• Lord Micah: Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
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• The High Bearded Priest
• Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
• Lady Xena Valyrian
• Hedrigal, Captain of the Air Ship Arrogance
• His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
• Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
• 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 Anonymous
• Lord Carlos
• Lord Andrew the Restless, a Priest of the Drowned God
• The King's Cook, Nolly (No-lee) Olly (Oh-lee), Master of Cannoli
• Ser Sourcedelica 
• Prince Matthew of House Targaryen - Proud Soy Boy of Summerhall, Defender of the 5th Book and Swing Dancer with Dragons
• Ser K.W. Dent, Elsie of the Blackwood Guard, and Batman of the Seven Kingdoms
• Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
• Queer Alex, Rainbow Commander of the They-des and Gentle-thems
• Lord Clint, Esq., Master of Absolutely, Positively NOT Serving As A Spy for Several Unnamed High Lords and Ladies In Order to Further the Secret Blackfyre-Style Conspiracy to Overthrow The Oppressive Small Council
• Haldivar, The Waiter for TWOW
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• Vanerys of the House Colgaryen, the First of Her Name, Princess of Dragonstone, Mistress of Art, The Overworked, Queen of the Pencils, the Eraser and the First Draft, Queen of Monochrome, Devotee of the Great GOT, Portraitist of the Realm, Lady Realist of the Seven Kingdoms, Blender of Paints and Maker of Drawings
• And our newest member of the small council: Seanwell the Slayer!
• Thank you folks very much!

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 Nicholas B, a brand new Sworn Sword (welcome!), asks:

Hey, guys. I'm very proud to be a supporter. I only started listening to you recently but have caught up with your episodes. I thought I might, as a sworn sword, ask you a non ASOIAF question. Honestly, I just want to know- what is your favorite hilariously terrible movie? I’m currently cringing my way through Mortal Engines and love it. What's your pick? Also, all the happiness in the world to Emmett! I wish you two the best.

So, thank you Ser Nicholas for the question. If you’d like to ask us a question on the NotACast podcast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can get show notes, early access to every episode, Q&A and bonus episodes!

Speaking of those bonus episodes, our latest patreon-only episode “Flag Day”: our analysis of all the sigils and heraldry in ASOIAF and history, GRRM’s love for them and use of them in fantasy and how George uses them to do both storytelling and foreshadowing of future events is out now for all Poor Fellow and above patrons again at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF.

But enough about patreon. When we last left Arya Stark, she, Hot Pie and Gendry had just been taken captive by Gregor Clegane at lake town. Let’s see what befalls Arya in this synopsis of ACOK, Arya VI.

Synopsis

Fear cuts deeper than swords, Arya would tell herself, but that did not make the fear go away. 

Welcome to the happiest chapter in A Clash of Kings, everyone. Okay. It’s actually one of the most horrible chapters in ASOIAF. So, in all seriousness, please be aware that this chapter and my synopsis will include depictions of rape, violence against children and mental/physical torture. So, if you need to step away from this chapter, you’ll receive no shame from us.

Arya had learned fear on the road to Harrenhal, but before they even departed from the village she was taken prisoner in, she had learned the true nature of fear.

Eight days she had lingered there before the Mountain gave the command to march, and every day she had seen someone die. 

The Mountain would daily come into the storehouse and pick someone new to “interrogate.” The smallfolk wouldn’t look him in the eye, perhaps hoping that this would result in them not being picked. But it didn’t matter. They got picked too. A girl who had “shared a soldier’s bed for three days” was picked on the fourth day. The soldier said nothing. Another old man claimed that he was all-for-Joffrey, and that his son was serving in King’s Landing. He got picked on the fifth day. A mom revealed everything to the Mountain in exchange for them sparing her daughter. But then Gregor picked her daughter the next day to ensure that the woman held nothing back.

The ones chosen were questioned in full view of the other captives, so they could see the fate of rebels and traitors. A man the others called the Tickler asked the questions. His face was so ordinary and his garb so plain that Arya might have thought him one of the villagers before she had seen him at his work. “Tickler makes them howl so hard they piss themselves,” old stoop-shoulder Chiswyck told them. He was the man she’d tried to bite, who’d called her a fierce little thing and smashed her head with a mailed fist. Sometimes he helped the Tickler. Sometimes others did that. Ser Gregor Clegane himself would stand motionless, watching and listening, until the victim died. 

The questions were always the same. Was there gold hidden in the village? Silver, gems? Was there more food? Where was Lord Beric Dondarrion? Which of the village folk had aided him? When he rode off, where did he go? How many men were with them? How many knights, how many bowmen, how many men-at-arms? How were they armed? How many were horsed? How many were wounded? What other enemy had they seen? How many? When? What banners did they fly? Where did they go? Was there gold hidden in the village? Silver, gems? Where was Lord Beric Dondarrion? How many men were with him?

The questions brought a little gold, a little silver, a sack of copper pennies and a goblet. And the information gleaned about Lord Beric Dondarrion was contradictory. Yet no one survived the Tickler. Man, woman or child. 

Arya hates herself for not doing anything about the evil occurring. But worse, she hates herself for not being brave like a water dancer, like Syrio Forel. She was nearly as sheep-like as the villagers. Worse, the secret she’d been guarding since the end of A Game of Thrones had come out. She was not, in fact, a boy. She was a girl. That had come out on the road to Harrenhal to Hot Pie’s astonishment.

Meanwhile, the Lannister goons allow no one to talk. Arya got punched in the face to remind her of that. But she had it lucky. A three year old boy wouldn’t stop calling for his dad; so, they smashed his face in with a spiked mace and then murdered the screaming mother. 

Arya watched them die and did nothing. What good did it do you to be brave? One of the women picked for questioning had tried to be brave, but she had died screaming like all the rest. There were no brave people on that march, only scared and hungry ones.

Those brutalized were mostly women, children and very young or very old men. The rest had been left hanging on the gibbet to be savaged by wolves. Gendry only survived because he was too valuable as a smith. 

In a speech just prior to departing the lake town, Gregor Clegane had told the villagers that they were being given a second chance from committing their treasons. They would serve Lord Tywin Lannister at Harrenhal. The smallfolk had whispered the night after that they hadn’t done treason. The Brotherhood without Banners just took what they wanted and moved on. And sure. They didn’t hurt anyone, but their “payment” was a laughable scrap of paper. An old man declares that none of this would have happened if the old king was around. When Arya asks if he means Robert, the old man replies no, no. Aerys. He got his last two teeth punched out for that.

Before departing the lake town, Gregor and his boys had packed lots of forage to bring to Harrenhal, i.e. food they stole from the smallfolk. Then they left for Harrenhal, but the horrors didn’t end at the village. Every night, the women were raped by Gregor’s soldiers. Arya observes that the women all expected this. One pretty girl was raped over and over again each night by four or five separate guardsmen. Finally, she took a rock to one of Gregor’s men, and the Mountain beheaded her for it and left the rest of her body for the wolves.

Arya had gotten to know all of the Mountain’s Men in the time they’d been together. It was necessary for her survival. She had to know who was lazy, cruel, smart, stupid. She learned that one soldier named Shitmouth cursed something crazy, but he gave another piece of bread if you asked. Others like the quieter Raff and the jolly Chiswyck would backhand the peasants. 

Arya nourishes the hate she has for all of Mountain’s men, but she extends that hate to all the people who’ve done her and her family evil in the past, encapsulating everything into her famous prayer:

Every night Arya would say their names. “Ser Gregor,” she’d whisper to her stone pillow.

“Dunsen, Polliver, Chiswyck, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.” Back in Winterfell, Arya had prayed with her mother in the sept and with her father in the godswood, but there were no gods on the road to Harrenhal, and her names were the only prayer she cared to remember. 

Every day the party marches, but then the forest thinned, and they came into a land of rolling hills, streams, fields and of course “husks of burnt holdfasts”. The massive towers of Harrenhal then appear in the distance. The smallfolk try to reassure each other that it’ll be better in Harrenhal, but Arya isn’t so sure. She’s heard all the stories that Old Nan used to tell about Harrenhal.

Arya thinks they’ll make Harrenhal shortly, but it ends up taking nearly two full days to reach the castle. Before they even get to the castle, the stink of the shitty Lannister army encamped outside hits Arya’s nose. When they finally arrive at the camp, Arya sees that the latrines are all overflowing. Lovely. 

Harrenhal’s gatehouse, itself as large as Winterfell’s Great Keep, was as scarred as it was massive, its stones fissured and discolored. From outside, only the tops of five immense towers could be seen beyond the walls. The shortest of them was half again as tall as the highest tower in Winterfell, but they did not soar the way a proper tower did. Arya thought they looked like some old man’s gnarled, knuckly fingers groping after a passing cloud. She remembered Nan telling how the stone had melted and flowed like candlewax down the steps and in the windows, glowing a sullen searing red as it sought out Harren where he hid. Arya could believe every word; each tower was more grotesque and misshapen than the last, lumpy and runneled and cracked. 

Hot Pie isn’t about to go in as he’s heard about ghosts being in Harrenhal, but Chiswyck smiles and says that Hot Pie will have to join with the ghosts or become one. Hot Pie goes in.

Two old women known as “goodwives” supervise the bathing and scrubbing of the smallfolk before assigning the smallfolk to taskmasters for work or more accurately slavemasters for Tywin Lannister’s slave labor. When Arya is presented to them, they (wrongly) determine that the blisters on Arya’s hands are from churning butter rather than from practicing with Needle. They ask her name, and Arya thinks for a moment before stating her name as Weasel. They decide to put Arya to work in the kitchens, but Arya, thinking of a spot where she might escape, says she can work in the stables. Goodwife Harra slaps Arya and tells her to shut up or lose her tongue. They’re not interested in her views. 

But now that Arya has demonstrated how willful she is, they’re not going to send her to the kitchens after all. They’re going to send her along with six others to Weese who turns out to be the understeward for the Wailing Tower. Arriving, Arya encounters a squat man with a “fleshy carbuncle of a nose and a nest of angry red boils near one corner of his plump lips” who turns out to be the aforementioned understeward Weese. He informs them that if they work hard, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, the Lannisters will reward them generously. But if they presume on Tywin’s kindness, Weese will be waiting for them.

So, they’re never to look the highborn in the eye, nor speak unless spoken to, nor apparently get in the way of Tywin or his crony war criminals.

“My nose never lies,” he boasted. “I can smell defiance, I can smell pride, I can smell disobedience. I catch a whiff of any such stinks, you’ll answer for it. When I sniff you, all I want to smell is fear.” 

And that is, thankfully, the end of the synopsis of ACOK, Arya VI. This chapter is … difficult to get through. It’s on par AGOT, Dany VII with its frank depictions of war crimes. But here, there’s no hope for salvation, no Dany to save a few of the smallfolk here. There’s only sheepishness and trying not to get picked. 

Can’t we go back to doing Tyrion chapters, Emmett? They’re so much more fun than this chapter. Hey … wait. You think that might be the point George is making here?

Depth

Like an open wound from which rot spreads, Arya VI infects the whole of ACOK. This chapter was waiting for us all along, lurking behind the wheeling and dealing in the King’s Landing chapters, the messianic proclamations in the Dragonstone chapters, all the negotiations worked out comfortably in both North and South amidst food and wine and song. Arya VI strips it all away. This is what the War of Five Kings really looks like for the people in its way, and for both Arya and the audience, there is no turning back. It’s one of the most effective horror chapters in the series, and in my opinion, it’s the heart of the anti-war themes in ASOIAF.

You’re exactly right that the pleasantries, pageantry, wine and “I believe that’s what they call war” at the ivory towers of power obscures what’s occurring in the actual war. The shitty conduct of Lannister army (which, in this chapter, gets nicely symbolized by overflowing latrines outside of Harrenhal) is both an issue of war time practice but also a critique of the class structure of Westeros (and our own society) via the scale of the atrocities.

War is giving already evil people (Chiswyck’s story from Arya VII) the opportunity to do evil on an industrial scale. As horrible as the rape of the innkeeper’s daughter and murder of his son are and as disquieting as Ned finds the reported atrocities of Gregor Clegane back in AGOT to be, Gregor’s crimes are isolated with the great lords of Westeros unaware of the crimes or IMO, more likely turning a blind eye to them. But now war is here, and instead of an inn or the keep of an anointed knight, the rapes, murders, tortures that were once isolated are now common-practice by Lannister goons and sanctioned by one of the most powerful lords in Westeros: Tywin Lannister.

• Torture as routine
  • Above all, this chapter is about the psychological impact of torture: the strategies people use to escape it, what happens inside you when those strategies fail, and how that psychological impact fits within a larger political and military landscape
  • It is not, for the most part, about the physical impact of torture, which is something George dwells on elsewhere: Stoney Sept, Meereen, etc.
  • He cuts away from that here, in part because he knows how much more effective our imagination will be if left to its own devices, but also because he wants us to linger in the more psychologically devastating pockets of this chapter
  • Torture changes the human brain--for the victims, for the perpetrators, for the witnesses--in ways we are still barely coming to terms with in real life
  • In some respects, there is no coming back from what happens to Arya in this chapter, and she suffers less than many of those around her do
  • Death is truly a mercy for those who undergo torture at the hands of the Tickler, and while that feeds perfectly into the themes of Arya’s story RE Beric, Sandor, and the Faceless Men, it also speaks to the true horror of these atrocities that the person left at the other end would have death as a preferable option
  • Gregor is deliberately trying to break down the defenses of his prisoners. He does so with a lethal mixture of randomness and routine, the mark of an experienced tormentor (we also see it with Ramsay and Euron)
  • On the one hand, he dictates every hour of their lives, ensuring that if they so much as talk too loud, they get horribly punished
  • Rape is consistent and seems expected. The torture questions are always the same, repeated again and again, grinding the mind into an established pattern
  • Getting intelligence doesn’t even seem to be the point, as it quickly becomes clear that no one has reliable information on Beric (Gregor’s true foe, more than the Starks). Nor can these peasants offer up all that much in the way of treasure
  • Plus, the point that became crystallized by certain recent events is that torture doesn’t work as a means of extracting intelligence.
  • People will say anything to make the pain stop -- including lies.
  • It’s also “hm-worthy’ that in this chapter, the smallfolk secretly do have an idea of Beric’s actions and where he was going -- yet all they offer to their oppressors is contradiction and misinformation
  • Instead, what Gregor seems to be after is attacking the idea of resistance at its psychological root, preventing peasants from even conceiving of revolution
  • That’s where the randomness comes in. While he enforces a punishing routine on his victims, Gregor works to prevent them from finding refuge in routine
  • Each of them tries to find strategies that will allow them to carve out a space in which they can survive, weather Gregor’s storm, and he will not let them
  • He specifically targets those who seem to be finding strategies: sex with a soldier, loyalty to Joffrey, giving up information voluntarily
  • By torturing and killing those employing these strategies, he is saying that these things do not matter to him, and will not save your life
  • You have no strategies, because you are not people. You are sheep to be shorn. Per Schindler’s List: Gregor has set no rules that you can live by. 
  • It should be said that the war did not make Gregor this way. As we will see in Arya’s next chapter, he and his boys were behaving this way before the war. 
  • Nor is it the case that all soldiers at war behave this way
  • The point is that the war has provided more opportunities for atrocities like this, on a larger scale, and consequences for the perpetrators are even less likely now 
  • The war blasts down the walls of society, and men like this come swarming in
  • We will see this with the Bloody Mummers later on in the Riverlands, with men like Axell Florent and Clayton Suggs in Stannis’ camp, etc. 
  • But none strike so vividly as this presentation of irresponsible authority, killers and torturers with no humanity given the full weight of the state behind them
  • This is the war machine that a young George RR Martin wanted no part in, and the feeling he wishes to instill in us is that the only reason to pick up a sword is to do as the Brotherhood does: defend the people from these monsters to the end
  • And this is where the concept that ASOIAF and George as strictly anti-war falls flat.
  • Something I think about a lot is how when the government (in this case the Lannisters) become lawless brigands, the only recourse is picking up a sword.
  • This is a point we talked about in episode 75 ACOK, Arya I-III when the Night’s Watch recruits stood up to the gold cloaks, picking up weapons to resist “my sword is the LAW”
  • The problem for the smallfolk and Arya in this chapter is that they don’t have any means to resist. 
• Arya’s breakdown
  • But Arya’s not in a position to do that right now. Arya VI is about powerlessness.
  • From the opening words of Arya VI, our attention is drawn to how this theater of cruelty is breaking down Arya’s defenses, leaving her vulnerable in the void:
    • Fear cuts deeper than swords, Arya would tell herself, but that did not make the fear go away. 
  • The Mentor can’t help you now. All those mantras that were supposed to guide her through her coming of age, allowing for her heroic self-actualization in a hostile world? They’ve crumbled in the face of just how hostile that world can be.
  • Arya never imagined anything like this. Mycah’s death, Syrio’s, the stableboy’s, the attack on the Tower of the Hand, her starvation and fear of assault on the streets of King’s Landing, even the execution of her father...nothing came close.
  • She reacts in a multitude of ways, as with the other prisoners cycling desperately through strategies to survive, Arya’s psyche is torn loose and fluttering through options, places she can try and deposit her anger and pain and fear
  • In part, she blames herself. She’s not a wolf. She’s not a water dancer. She couldn’t even keep the “stupid secret” of her gender, now rendered moot
  • The defenses Arya surrounded herself with have all been stripped from her
  • The Lannisters had taken everything: father, friends, home, hope, courage. One had taken Needle, while another had broken her wooden stick sword over his knee. 
  • Ned, Syrio and Yoren had protected Arya, and they were all dead.
  • Her Stark name and status as Ned Stark’s daughter had been taken from her in the streets of King’s Landing. 
  • Arya had become a “boy” to prevent her rape and murder, and now she was revealed to be a girl and left vulnerable to rape -- something Rorge will repeatedly threaten her with after his arrival to Harrenhal in ACOK, Arya VII.
  • The neutrality of the Night’s Watch, Yoren’s calling card: gone. Amory Lorch didn’t care that the Night’s Watch took no part in the wars of the realm.
  • And finally and most significantly for Arya’s arc progressing forward, her means of self-defense and identity as a Stark: Needle and her wooden sword were stolen or broken respectively.
  • The sense I get from Arya’s ACOK/ASOS chapter is how Needle works as a stand-in to her Stark identity.
  • Now that Needle’s been stolen from her, her last connections to her Stark identity are temporarily missing 
  • Arya has been forced into becoming No One long before she tries to pass herself off as such in the House of Black and White. The irony is that in AFFC, she’s regained Needle and won’t part from it, framing it as a symbol of vengeance
  • None of these things could’ve possibly happened to a badass like Syrio Forel, or a proper Stark like her father, so she must be doing it wrong
  • Now, of course, Arya knows better than this at some level: Syrio and Ned were put to their deaths by Lannister men! They weren’t immune to any of this
  • But she can’t deal with their downfall as idealistic figures in her mind, because they’re her safety valve, connected to home, a way out of this nightmare.
  • This is especially true coming off the death of Yoren, another mentor figure
  • So she blames herself for failing to live up the image, as in ASOS when she thinks Cat and Robb might not want her back because she’s not a proper lady
  • She also blames the right people, namely the Lannisters. In doing so, she finds a coping strategy that works for her: a kill list, an itemized promise to strike back
  • We will talk more about the future of this list toward the end of the episode, and more in later Arya chapters about the effect of violence on her soul
  • But it’s important to say here, where it all begins, that this list does not speak to vengeful violence for its own sake on Arya’s part
  • Rather, it represents an acceptance that the universe is random: it will not punish the wicked nor uplift the downtrodden. It’s up to her. As Stannis puts it:
    • “In King's Landing, the High Septon would prattle at me of how all justice and goodness flowed from the Seven, but all I ever saw of either was made by men."
  • The list is an oasis, an ember of her old self, a private insistence that what has been done to her and those she cares about matters, and must be set to right
  • We can talk about the means by which she does so, but that is the emotional core of it, and it’s extremely powerful as a note of resistance within this chapter
• The people, enslaved
  • But Arya VI isn’t just about Arya; George also zooms out to take in how the people are responding to this uprooting and assault on their rights
  • In part, she also blames them for what’s happening to them: she hates them for being sheep like her, for just letting this happen
  • While that’s the take of a child frustrated by her own powerlessness and desperate to find an adult still worthy of her trust, it focuses our attention on the smallfolk as political actors even as they’re stripped of their agency
  • The start of Arya’s disassociation from her identity can be traced back to events from AGOT, but the violent ripping of Arya from being Arya really starts with Arya witnessing the tortures, rapes and murders and being unable to do anything about them. Instead of a human, she becomes a sheep to be shorn by Tywin’s creatures in the village and road
  • In Harrenhal, she’ll associate her status as a slave and her grey garb as becoming a mouse under Weese: attempting to hide in the vastness of Harrenhal
  • But come the arrival of Jaqen H’ghar and his promise of three lives, she’ll feel less a mouse and a part of the curse of Harrenhal -- becoming the Ghost of Harrenhal, wielding Jaqen against Chiswyck, Weese and later on behalf of the northmen
  • It’s only in her final ACOK chapter that Arya decides that she’s done with wooden teeth and through a combination of warging Nymeria, hearing about Roose Bolton hunting horses and her desire not to be left at a Harrenhal under the command of Vargo Hoat.
  • After all, they’re not just being tortured and killed off. They’re being marched to Harrenhal to serve as slave labor to Tywin Lannister and his occupying army
  • We get our first hint of this when Arya tells us why Gendry is still alive, despite being a physically strong man: he’s a smith, and they’re too valuable to kill
  • So the people aren’t just sheep to be shorn, they’re beasts of burden. Gregor informs them that this is their proper fate, as traitors and rebels against the crown
  • This is galling on a number of levels:
    • It was Gregor who broke the king’s peace in the first place
    • None of these peasants control which side their lords fight for
    • Moreover, none of them directly have fought in the war at all!
    • “All-for-Joffrey” is tortured and killed despite his loyalty to the Lannisters; so much for “serve, obey, and live”
    • Gregor is lying that this is a better deal than they’d get from Beric, who as we’ll see in ASOS would protect and support them
  • The people, when they get a chance to talk among themselves, know they’re being stripped of their rights and held responsible for the lords’ actions
  • George makes clear that while the the Starks and Tullys are led by more sympathetic characters on the whole than the Lannisters, a more likable raider is still a raider, and for these people, land was all they had
    • She looked about to see that no guards were near, and spat three times. "There's for the Tullys and there's for the Lannisters and there's for the Starks."
  • It’s the Lannisters who are killing, torturing, and raping them, but their own lords abandoned them at best, and some of them go farther than that: we heard about crop burnings across the Riverlands, and then there’s “They Lay With Lions”
  • The smallfolk hate all the elites who have stolen their livelihood, transforming them from people who worked their own land to people who own nothing, at the mercy of taskmasters who work them to the bone in exchange for scraps
  • As with the Liddle who offers hospitality to Bran and his companions in ASOS, the smallfolk here argue that the social contract has broken down and speak wistfully of a time when a benevolent central authority maintained the peace
  • That’s when Arya finally speaks up, because this is a topic she knows something about. She wasn’t exactly happy in her old life, but she very much understands the break between the stable past and the chaotic present, and for her, the king associated with the former era is Robert, who was king all her young life
  • But that’s not the king the other prisoners are talking about. Their old king is “King Aerys, gods grace him.” And that completely transforms the story.
  • Everything we’ve been fed about the Mad King for a book and a half has framed him as the embodiment of villainous power, a paranoid sadist rendered predatory on a continental scale by the crown on his head. He’s dead, and good riddance.
  • And we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg! We’ll continue to learn worse and worse things about Aerys as we go!! Just wait til we get to ASOS!!!
  • Aerys is the standard by which all the horrific abuses of power in ASOIAF are set, and yet here we have The People telling us that they are nostalgic for him
  • This is one of the most powerful challenges to our perspective in ASOIAF, because it forces us to consider how Aerys’ crimes, horrific as they were, were concentrated among his own class and so don’t matter much to the masses
  • While the death of a popular lord might work to rally the troops into battle lust in the moment, it rarely lingers as a political organizing principle for the smallfolk.
  • Ned Stark is a rare exception; most of these guys don’t merit public memory
  • There’s an entire world flickering by under the eyes of our POV characters; the peasants have a totally different understanding of what’s important in Westeros
  • Bear in mind, too, of who Aerys II Targaryen targeted in his reign: the highborn
    • Rickard Stark
    • Brandon Stark
    • Lord Denys Darklyn, his wife Serala of Myr and all of House Hollard (save for Dontos) after the Defiance of Duskendale
    • His mistress and her entire family
  • Of course, it should be noted that under Aerys, Tywin undid the smallfolk reforms that Aegon V instituted.
  • So, it’s not as though Aerys was looking out for the smallfolk during his reign
  • But he wasn’t actively targeting them for murder the same way he was the highborn and those within the palace walls of the Red Keep
  • This doesn’t transform Aerys into a good guy, or change the ramifications of what he did, but George is preventing us from simplifying the questions he raises here
  • What does it mean that people undergoing torture embrace a king who loved torture? It means that there are no simple solutions to the problem of power.
• Welcome to Harrenhal
  • Everything about this chapter so far, everything about the book so far, points us at our destination: Black Harren’s folly, the half-melted blood-soaked shit-stained epicenter of the war, my favorite setting in ASOIAF, Harrenhal!
  • Why do I love Harrenhal so much? In part, it’s just because I love the aesthetic of a giant crumbling haunted castle whose backstory is overflowing with horror
  • It’s Gormenghast, it’s Barad-dur, only bigger, uglier, scarier, bloodier; it’s a Gothic nightmare dropped in the middle of medieval fantasy, and I love it for that
  • But I also love the execution of it: how it feeds into the political gamesmanship, the magical backdrop, and the character arcs that play out within its walls
  • Like Winterfell and Dragonstone, Harrenhal sits at the crossroads of the political and magical history of Westeros, and traces the relationship between the two
  • That makes it the perfect big new setting for ACOK, because as I keep saying, the book is about the intertwining of the political and magical worlds
  • Yet the tone for all three is different. Winterfell is a source of strength and selfhood, even/especially when it falls apart; Dragonstone is more ambiguous, associated with righteousness and horror at different points in its history
  • Harrenhal is a straight-up horrorshow; no one’s happy here but the monsters
  • These differing tones reflect the different origins of the three castles, and the different trajectories of their owners
  • Winterfell is built on a lifesaving hot spring, whose bounty is shared with all; it’s the home of House Stark, the protagonists, the good guys who do things like that
  • Dragonstone meant life for House Targaryen after the Doom, it’s got dragonglass at its heart, but is also associated with corruption from Rhaenyra to Stannis. The gods flip a coin, you might say, and it comes down on greatness or madness
  • Harrenhal is the worst of all possible worlds, political monstrosity combined with magical calamity to produce an open sore on both planes that devours its owners
  • Black Harren was a brutal ruler who beggared the Riverlands to build a castle too big for anyone to hold properly, despite its prime location
  • And no sooner had he completed his statement of power than Aegon the Conqueror made it irrelevant; what was all that blood and turmoil for?
  • You might say the same about the War of Five Kings when we know that both the Others and Daenerys are coming…
  • But Harrenhal’s statement about the folly of power is timeless. It applies to the rise and fall of every powerful person we see in the series and the backstory alike
  • You strive for the sky, Harrenhal’s towers like so many fingers grasping at a star, but it burns you alive, your ambition rendered moot by fire and blood, by death. 
  • Harrenhal as it exists now represents what gets spat out the other side: a ghost of power that cannot be possessed without sealing your own doom
  • Aegon’s Conquest, filtered through the lens of Harrenhal, doesn’t feel like liberation so much as yet another coat of blood, like repainting after moving in
  • Aegon didn’t wipe away Black Harren’s horrors: he immortalized them, dragonfire fusing weirwood in unholy matrimony, sedimentary layers of suffering warped and transformed until they become an all-encompassing aura of obscene evil
  • After all, Harrenhal sits on the shore of the Gods Eye, in which sits the Isle of Faces; it’s like Harrenhal is an ant burnt by divine fire focused through a glass
  • Harrenhal cannot be separated from either its political or magical legacies. To do so is to miss the point, because the point is the combination
  • Before the shadowbabies, before Euron begins his conquest, before Dany’s dragons grow big enough to ride, we see the synthesis of the human will to power and the inhuman power of magical transcendence here at Harrenhal
  • It’s a sword without a hilt. A fiery ladder, your fall from which is made all the more devastating by how high power of all kinds allowed you to climb
  • Wonderfully-put! 
  • With Season 8 in mind, the backstory of Harrenhal seems like George’s trial run for the apotheosis of King’s Landing.
  • Like Harrenhal’s many rulers and houses lording over the castle, King’s Landing once had Targaryens that built the city, then the Baratheons held it for a time, then the Lannisters, soon Young Griff
  • As Catelyn put it back in Catelyn I: And when at last Harrenhal stood complete, on the very day King Harren took up residence, Aegon the Conqueror had come ashore at King's Landing.
  • In the moment of greatest triumph for Harren the Black, his doom landed on the shores of Westeros. 
  • So, too, do I imagine Young Griff’s moment of triumph in taking King’s Landing occurring the same day his and King’s Landing’s doom in the form of Dany lands on Dragonstone
  • But! All that is big picture stuff. What does any of this have to do with Arya’s story and the specific plot beats of the war unfolding in the Riverlands?
  • Harrenhal feels like a magnetic presence sucking Arya in, as if she’s unconsciously been heading there, not Winterfell, all along
  • Riverrun is also a source of family and refuge that will bob in front of her like a mirage throughout her journey in the next book
  • But while Riverrun is nominally the capital of the Riverlands, it’s small and out of the way, hardly projecting the presence of Winterfell or Storm’s End or the Rock
  • Harrenhal is the true capital of the Riverlands at war. This is the center of gravity, whether for Tywin, Roose, Gregor, Vargo Hoat--all the players in the Riverlands
  • It’s also the prize being danced for by social climbers who never even clap eyes on the place, like Janos Slynt and Littlefinger
  • The war revolves around Harrenhal, which places it center stage in the theater of horrors through which Arya has been trudging in ACOK so far
  • It’s like a giant mouth here to swallow her up, all the death and decay and disillusionment given concrete form, mocking her old life, her old self
  • Again, the contrast with Winterfell: the home of her innocent childhood is gone, replaced by one that bears the scars and horrors of the life she lives now
  • Harrenhal is a place not only in which Arya will be hurt, but a place in which she will learn how to hurt others, directly and indirectly, deliberately and otherwise
  • The castle is an assembly line of evil, designed to transform average people into heartless killers and heartless killers into even worse heartless killers
  • Exactly. The castle makes the common folk Tywin’s willing executioners, and the evil people more heinous in their acts
  • And it’s not just the Lannisters who get turned by the castle.
  • At the end of ACOK, Gendry will talk about the evil being committed in this castle -- by the Bloody Mummers and Roose Bolton’s northmen
  • "I hate this lot worse. Ser Amory was fighting for his lord, but the Mummers are sellswords and turncloaks. Half of them can't even speak the Common Tongue. Septon Utt likes little boys, Qyburn does black magic, and your friend Biter eats people."
  • Again, it’s not as though Amory Lorch, Gregor Clegane, the Bloody Mummers or Steelshanks Walton were angels prior to coming to Harrenhal.
  • Rather, that the atrocities are scaled up, sanctioned by the high command: Tywin and Roose
  • Within Arya’s story, Harrenhal takes shape as a fairytale world of temptation and punishment, fear and desire, the possibility of justice and escape corrupted by a universe bent on weaponizing her hopes and turning them inward on her
  • The sheer size of it speaks to this unreality around the edges, the sense that it’s less a man-made fortress than an accidental intrusion from the astral plane; hence the off-putting sensation wherein Arya can’t tell how close it is
  • All of this comes together like a perfect disguise around the figure of Jaqen H’ghar: Arya’s next mentor, an emissary of the rising magical tide like Jojen and Melisandre, and an overwhelming fairytale presence in her story in every respect
  • But Harrenhal is not the House of the Undying. It doesn’t float free in the abstract psychedelic clouds, it keeps one foot firmly grounded in everyday reality
  • George always draws your attention to how the mortal humans passing through this place reshape it to fit their needs even as it reshapes them in turn
  • That’s the great contrast: George zooming out like Kubrick in Barry Lyndon to frame these petty abusive tyrants against the grand scale of their inevitable doom
  • So Arya is welcomed into Harrenhal not by a ghostly whisper on the wind no one else can hear, but by the mundane smell of an army encamped here for months, and two world-weary washerwomen who don’t care about the curse, don’t care about the war, and don’t care that that this particular brat is our protagonist
  • They steer her toward the kitchen in an attempt to be helpful: it’s a warm, comfortable place with plenty of food. Hot Pie turns out to be right at home there
  • But while she borrows the name “Weasel” (fitting in with the underfoot theme and the association of smallfolk with animals), she’s Arya Stark of Winterfell inside
  • And Arya Stark of Winterfell wants to escape, and so wants to work in the stables; the washerwomen can only interpret this as backtalk and hit her
  • That’s Harrenhal: an overwrought testament to the highest of ambitions, playing host to the most thoughtless and unnecessary of cruelties
  • Human smallness inside human bigness, the worst of both worlds. That’s what Arya must confront at chapter’s end with Weese
  • His name reflects hers: Weese and Weasel. That signifies that Arya has entered his domain, the domain of the petty tyrants of Harrenhal
  • The chapter ends by circling back around to fear, because fear is the unifying thread between Weese and Gregor, Harren the Black and Aegon the Conqueror
  • Arya is learning that her world is built on “the spectacle of fearsome acts,” and will struggle to find her place in such a world, with the help of Jaqen H’ghar...

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Once more we see George building up the reputation of Beric Dondarrion from afar. Here, in this chapter all about the boot crashing down on your neck, he is framed as the one person outside Lannister control, the spark of hope amidst a sea of blood. Then again, while he and Thoros “pay” for what the Brotherhood takes, some of the smallfolk aren’t happy with that either. 

Arya will never get the chance to practice Weese’s command that the smallfolk must never look the highborn in the eye, nor speak until spoken to, nor get in his lordship's way, but this becomes a tension point when Roose Bolton is lord of Harrenhal and Arya his cupbearer. The one time Arya presumes to speak to his lordship without being spoken to, Roose casually threatens to cut out her tongue (though he does answer her question) 

Theory/Discussion

How do we think Arya’s list is going to play out? 

• She directly kills the Tickler in ASOS and Raff the Sweetling in “Mercy” 
• She has Jaqen kill Chiswyck and Weese in her next two ACOK chapters, and is indirectly responsible for Amory Lorch’s death in the chapter after that
• Sandor kills Polliver in front of her in ASOS
• Joffrey dies in unrelated circumstances, and she feels empty about it
• Gregor dies, but comes back; will she ever learn about this?
• She struggles with Sandor’s place on her list, and then leaves him to die at the end of ASOS; will they reunite, under what circumstances, and what will she think of him?
• That leaves Cersei, Ilyn, Meryn, and Dunsen. Will Arya play any role in their fates? She killed Meryn in the show (but that might’ve been in lieu of Raff), and set out to kill Cersei as well before Sandor stopped her (but that might be an invention of the show).
• Locations of the remaining people on Arya’s list vs. the probability that Arya will get them
  • Cersei: King’s Landing -- given the valonqar prophecy, I think it’s unlikely that Arya will get the chance to kill Cersei. That will be Jaime (in the books)
  • Ilyn: the Riverlands -- This one’s an interesting one. There’s the great theory by Adam Feldman that Ilyn will be the TWOW Prologue POV. I wonder whether Arya will get the chance to kill Ilyn via warging Nymeria: She had dreamed of wolves again, of running through some dark pine forest with a great pack at her heels, hard on the scent of prey.
  • Meryn/Dunsen: King’s Landing -- Provided they survives the war with Young Griff, and Arya makes her way down to King’s Landing (as she did in GoT, S08), I think Arya might get the opportunity
• But all of that leads to the question: Is Arya’s ultimate role in the story to be the vehicle for Stark vengeance or as the show did it somewhat inartfully, is it to turn away from vengeance at the end?

Conclusion

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• Join us next week for Daenerys II, in which we go from Emmett’s favorite setting in ASOIAF to our least favorite. That’s right, it’s Qarth time. Woohoo.