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Episode 12: A GAME OF THRONES, DAENERYS II: "Forgetting to be Afraid" SHOW NOTES

Added 2018-04-16 14:01:01 +0000 UTC

Hello and welcome to the Not A Cast, 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 our twelfth episode of the Not A Cast entitled: “Forgetting To Be Afraid: An Analysis of AGOT, Daenerys II” where Daenerys Targaryen marries Khal Drogo in barbaric splendor, receives gifts and meets a supporting a cast member and her dragons (in egg form).

And today, we are joined by a very special guest: Eliana, better known as glass_table_girl

Eliana Introduces herself

Thanks for joining us Eliana, etc, etc!

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

Question(s) of the week. As we said last week, for those of you who contribute to our patreon, (and thank you very much to all of you that do!), those who contribute $10 or more a month get the opportunity to ask us a question. 

In that light, our first question this week comes from Ser Alex, one of our Sworn Sword patreons, he asks:

What do you guys think about Varys and Illyrio poisoning the honeyed locusts to rid of Dany and better fAegons claim to the Throne? So far their plan to bring Dany and fAegon has not gone as planned. Here are a few passages that have leaned me towards this idea:
ADWD – Tyrion I 
"What one king does, another may undo. In Pentos we have a prince, my friend. He presides at ball and feast and rides about the city in a palanquin of ivory and gold. Three heralds go before him with the golden scales of trade, the iron sword of war, and the silver scourge of justice. On the first day of each new year he must deflower the maid of the fields and the maid of the seas." Illyrio leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Yet should a crop fail or a war be lost, we cut his throat to appease the gods and choose a new prince from amongst the forty families." 
ADWD – Epilogue 
"I thought the crossbow fitting. You shared so much with Lord Tywin, why not that? Your niece will think the Tyrells had you murdered, mayhaps with the connivance of the Imp. The Tyrells will suspect her. Someone somewhere will find a way to blame the Dornishmen. Doubt, division, and mistrust will eat the very ground beneath your boy king, whilst Aegon raises his banner above Storm's End and the lords of the realm gather round him."

u/indianthane95’s comment—Source link

Our second question comes from Ser? My Lady? Emilee who asks:

[Serious] Which came first, the dragon or the egg?

[Opinion] Which came first, the Dragon or the Aeg? #boatsex ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

TWOIAF

The Valyrians themselves claimed that dragons sprang forth as the children of the Fourteen Flames, while in Qarth the tales state that there was once a second moon in the sky. One day this moon was scalded by the sun and cracked like an egg, and a million dragons poured forth. In Asshai, the tales are many and confused, but certain texts—all impossibly ancient—claim that dragons first came from the Shadow, a place where all of our learning fails us. These Asshai'i histories say that a people so ancient they had no name first tamed dragons in the Shadow and brought them to Valyria, teaching the Valyrians their arts before departing from the annals. - TWOIAF, Ancient History, The Rise of the Valyrians

So, thank you for the questions, Alex and Emilee, and again, if you so wish, come on over to our patreon at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF to explore ways you can get exclusive episodes -- like the Barristan throwdown that Emmett and I will be doing later this month

Jeff Synopsis

“Daenerys Targaryen wed Khal Drogo with fear and barbaric splendor in a field beyond the walls of Pentos, for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man’s life must be done beneath the open sky.” This spectacular (and problematic - we’ll get to that) opening to Dany’s second chapter in A Game of Thrones thrusts readers back into the world of Essos. Gone are the walls, trees and towers of Winterfell, replaced by something alien, something foreign.

Daenerys had been warned about the marriage and what it would entail. Magister Illyrio and Ser Jorah Mormont, a not-at-all-suspicious newcomer had briefed Daenerys  and Viserys on what to expect. Viserys was nonplussed. When would Khal Drogo pay the bride-price for Daenerys. When would he get his crown? 

When the khal chooses, after they progress back to Vaes Dothrak, when the omens favor war,  Illyrio replies.

Viserys stupidly replies that he pisses on Dothraki omens which causes Ser Jorah to offer a gentle reproach which then causes Viserys to issue a fiery threat to have Jorah’s tongue if he doesn’t guard it.

Before the wedding, Daenerys Targaryen has her very first dragon dream. Viserys is physically abusing her, but then the ground cracks around Viserys and he vanishes, replaced by great columns of flame with a dragon in the middle of them. When the dragon’s molten eyes find her, she woke and was afraid. 

She had never been so afraid, until the day of her wedding came.

The ceremony went from dawn to dusk. Everyone drank and feasted with Daenerys seated next to Khal Drogo at the “high table” (a earthen ramp that had been raised). Dany observes the customs and attire of the Dothraki and listened to their voices. Viserys, Illyrio and Ser Jorah sit below the highest point of the earthen ramp. Viserys is angry; angry because he was served second. In contrast to Viserys’ anger is her own rising fear. Daenerys is terrified of what she sees: strange sexual rituals, people dying in front of her and her warrior-husband sitting silent next to her, barely looking at her.

In the end a dozen men die at her wedding.

Wedding gifts are brought forward. Viserys gifts her three handmaids (that Illyrio bought), Ser Jorah brings her books on the songs and histories of the Seven Kingdoms in the Common Tongue and finally Illyrio Mopatis brings her three eggs - green, cream and black. What types of eggs are they? Illyrio answers:

Dragon’s eggs, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai. The eons have turned them to stone, yet still they burn bright with beauty.

Finally, Drogo brings his own bride-gift to Daenerys: a magnificent white horse with a silver mane. 

Tell Khal Drogo he has given me the wind.

Drogo smiles in response, and Dany feels jubiliant. Unfortunately, her jubiliance is replaced by fear again when Viserys tells Dany to please Drogo or that “the dragon will be woke as it has never woken before.”

Dany and Drogo depart for the Dothraki bedding with Dany whispering “I am the dragon” over and over again to give herself strength for what’s to come. When they arrive at a grassy place beside a small stream, Drogo carries her off her horse. And it’s in this moment that Dany begins to cry.

Drogo says, “No.” But it seems like it’s the only word in the common tongue that he knows. Drogo strokes her hair and then carries her to a rounded rock. He takes the bells out of his hair, and then he began to undress her. He touches her with some affection and finally, Drogo and Dany are ready.

“No?” he asks as a question.
“Yes,” Dany says as she puts his finger inside of her.

And that’s a not-so-brief summary of AGOT, Daenerys II.

So, did we like this chapter or not?

Eliana Depth

Dany I set up her character and situation, but it's Dany II that really delves into the themes that will drive Dany’s story: cultural assimilation (or lack thereof), the price paid for power, how one can be powerful and powerless at the same time. Dany’s first wedding is a major event and is written that way, GRRM emptying the bag--sex and death, fear and desire, gifts ranging from books to horses to dragon eggs. 

Dichotomy 

Fear is really the central topic here from the opening line forward. As Dany will later ask Barristan: do you know what it is like to feel sold? Much like Sansa, all she can do is try and read the world around her, trying to pick up on what Drogo and his people might be like. Unlike Sansa, though, she immediately gets an outlet with her silver, and forgets to be afraid.

Unknown 

Fear - isolation (a big part of Dany’s arc)

Exchange 

Emmett Structure

Two intertwined structures in this chapter: assimilation and intimacy, for both Dany and the reader.

Assimilation

Intimacy

How successful are these structures?

Groundwork/Foreshadowing

Dragon eggs not originally in the original chapter.

The books that Jorah gives Dany will play a role in TWOW:

Martin is good at keeping secrets, but he does offer up one tidbit—a reminder that the royal Daenerys Targaryen was given the histories of her world as a wedding gift but neglected to read them. “But you know who does know a lot of that?” he says coyly. “Tyrion.” – Vulture Magazine, 801 Minutes with George RR Martin. 11/4/2014

House of the Undying

This chapter later pops up as an image in the House of the Undying:

Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars.

It’s part of the “bride of fire” section, which emphasizes how important this chapter is for both Dany’s dynamic with her suitors/husbands and her identity as Mother of Dragons--even more than Dany I, Dany II is her origin story.

Pentoshi Foreshadowing

Judging from this line…

“Best we get Princess Daenerys wedded quickly before they hand half the wealth of
Pentos away to sellswords and bravos,” Ser Jorah Mormont jested. 

...maybe the Tattered Prince taking Pentos was already on the table? Or perhaps this is one of those cases where when GRRM was coming up with new characters and plot points for AFFC/ADWD, he went rifling through the older books for inspiration and hit on this line as an endgame for Pentos. 

Recall that in Dany’s penultimate ADWD chapter, the Tattered Prince via Meris makes overtures to Daenerys to join her side, but he has a price:

"The Tattered Prince will want more than coin, Your Grace. Meris says that he wants Pentos."
"Pentos?" Her eyes narrowed. "How can I give him Pentos? It is half a world away."
"He would be willing to wait, the woman Meris suggested. Until we march for Westeros."
And if I never march for Westeros? "Pentos belongs to the Pentoshi. And Magister Illyrio is in Pentos. He who arranged my marriage to Khal Drogo and gave me my dragon eggs. Who sent me you, and Belwas, and Groleo. I owe him much and more. I will not repay that debt by giving his city to some sellsword. No."

But where Dany refuses Tatters, Barristan reverses the policy to win the Windblown to his side in advance of the Battle of Fire

"Pentos," said Ser Barristan. "He promised him Pentos. Say it. No words of yours can help or harm Prince Quentyn now."
"Aye," said Ser Archibald unhappily. "It was Pentos. They made marks on a paper, the two of them."
There is a chance here. 

And then finally, in the Tyrion II TWOW sample chapter, we get:

"Gorzhak zo Eraz lies slain, cut down by Pentoshi treachery. The turncloak who names himself the Prince of Tatters shall die screaming for this infamy, the noble Morghar swears." Brown Ben scratched at his beard. "The Windblown have gone over, have they?" he said, in a tone of mild interest.

Look for Pentos to be a major setpiece come TWOW!

Dany foreshadowing as a dragonrider:

As she turned to ride back, a firepit loomed ahead, directly in her path. They were hemmed in on either side, with no room to stop. A daring she had never known filled Daenerys then, and she gave the filly her head.
The silver horse leapt the flames as if she had wings.
There are no more dragons, Dany thought, staring at her brother, though she did not dare say it aloud.
Yet that night she dreamt of one. Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She was naked, clumsy with fear. She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly. He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her.
“You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.” Her thighs were slick with blood. She closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in answer, there was a hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great head slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . .

Bad Theory

Should we talk about general depiction of the Dothraki here, or do that in the structure section and maybe do something about the dragon eggs, or how we think the books might be put to use?

“She’s too skinny,” Viserys said. His hair, the same silver-blond as hers, had been pulled back tightly behind his head and fastened with a dragonbone brooch. It was a severe look that emphasized the hard, gaunt lines of his face. He rested his hand on the hilt of the sword that Illyrio had lent him, and said, “Are you sure that Khal Drogo likes his women this young?” (AGOT, Dany I)
“Come south with me, and I’ll teach you how to laugh again,” the king promised. “You helped me win this damnable throne, now help me hold it. We were meant to rule together. If Lyanna had lived, we should have been brothers, bound by blood as well as affection. Well, it is not too late. I have a son. You have a daughter. My Joff and your Sansa shall join our houses, as Lyanna and I might once have done.” 
This offer did surprise him. “Sansa is only eleven.” 
Robert waved an impatient hand. “Old enough for betrothal. The marriage can wait a few years.” The king smiled. “Now stand up and say yes, curse you.” (AGOT, Eddard I)
“Why, do you plan to mistreat her?” His father sounded more curious than concerned. “The girl’s happiness is not my purpose, nor should it be yours. Our alliances in the south may be as solid as Casterly Rock, but there remains the north to win, and the key to the north is Sansa Stark.” 
“She is no more than a child.” 
“Your sister swears she’s flowered. If so, she is a woman, fit to be wed. You must needs take her maidenhead, so no man can say the marriage was not consummated. After that, if you prefer to wait a year or two before bedding her again, you would be within your rights as her husband.” 
Shae is all the woman I need just now, he thought, and Sansa’s a girl, no matter what you say. (ASOS, Tyrion III)

16 is the age of legal majority (per an SSM)

“Maidens may be wedded and bedded... however, even there, many husbands will wait until the bride is fifteen or sixteen before sleeping with them. Very young mothers tend to have significantly higher rates of death in childbirth, which the maesters will have noted.” (http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/Age_of_Sexual_Relations_in_Westeros)

For these historical sources, props and kudos to fellow mod, /u/b4ssm4st3r for pointing me to them

Extant population surveys allow us on occasion to measure marriage ages across entire communities. At Prato in 1372, estimated age at first marriage for city girls was 16.3 years; at Florence in 1427, it was 17.6 years. Girls in the Florentine countryside were somewhat older at first marriage in 1427; their average age was 18. The average ages rise a little as the fifteenth century progresses. At florence in 1480, it was 20.8 years for women, and 21.1 at Prato in 1470. 
Contemporaries were well aware of the young ages of brides, and many disapproved. We already cited Dante, who thought that the “tempo,” the age, at which girls were marrying was unreasonable The florentine domestic chronicler Giovanni Morelli, writing in the first decade of the fifteenth century, hearkened back to olden times, presumably the twelfth century, when girls were married at 24 or 25. In his own days, he asserts, fathers were reulctant to wait until age 15, before giving their daughters in marriage. —from Medieval Households (Studies in Cultural History) by David Herlihy

Note: Other parts in the text point to the varying age throughout the Middle Ages, and also uses the terminology of young to refer to marriage at 16 and 17, which can be used to surmise that 12 and 13 would have also been considered early 

“In England a male was legally old enough to be married at the age of 14, a female at the age of 12, but teenage marriages were extremely rare. Most couples waited until their mid-to-late twenties. Canon 100 of the canons of 1604 repeated the rule that ‘no children under the age of one and twenty years complete shall contract themselves, or marry, without the consent of their parents’” 
“The mean age of first marriage varied little from around 27 or 28 for men and 25 or 26 for women. These facts are firmly established by historical demography, and should no longer be surprising or controversial.” — Source: Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England by David Cressey 

Note: apologies for any typos as this was a scanned copy, so I had to retype all of this info by hand

Emerging evidence is eroding the stereotype of medieval child marriage. Goldberg and Smith’s work on low- and lower-middle-status women has refuted Hajnal’s argument for generally early marriage for medieval women. Evan Razi’s ‘early’ age at marriage for girls in Halesowen hardly indicates child marriage, as a large proportion of his sample married between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. Smith has argued that Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber’s ‘medieval’ marriage regime in Tuscany, where girls in their late teens married men around ten years older than themselves, should be seen as Mediterranean rather than medieval. Goldberg has offered evidence from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Yorkshire showing that urban girls tended to marry in their early to mid-twenties and rural girls married in their late teens to early twenties, and both groups married men who were close to them in age. Perhaps even more useful than data on marriage age is Goldberg’s argument that service was, in England, primarily and occupation of young unmarried men and women who left home to enter service during their teens and twenties. Although recent work by Mavis Mate and Mark Bailey suggests a slightly earlier age at marriage than Goldberg does, the existence of institutions such as teenage service and apprenticeship demonstrate the existence of a distinct youthful phase in the lives of many rural and urban girls as well as boys. 
Whether the stage existed existed for women of the gentry and aristocracy is more open to question. Jennifer Ward comments that children of the nobility were usually married in their teens, and sometimes well below canonical age, yet individual instances of early marriage age may offer a misleading view of the preferred marriage age for girls. We are more likely to know about the marriages of hairesses than other girls, and heiresses are more likely to have been betrothed or married young…
Thomas Hollingsworth’s demographic study of the English peerage suggests that even within this exalted social group, child or pubescent brides were not the norm. The mean age at marriage of duke’s daughters from 1330 to 1479 was 17.1 years, but while a significant proportion of daughters had married by the age of fifteen, the rate then slowed considerably, with a number still unmarried by the age of thirty, and thereafter a handful who never married. Moreover, he finds that more duke’s daughters married between twenty and twenty-five than between fifteen and twenty, so the average of 17.1 is slightly misleading. 
Within examples of very young marriage by girls of the social elite, it is evident that early marriage took place for pure expedience rather than any sense that wedlock was suitable for pubescent girls. The celebrated example of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, provides an excellent illustration. As heiress of John Beaufort, her wardship was highly valuable and was first granted to William de la Pole, who betrothed her to his son when she was six. Within three years the contract was dissovled and the wardship transferred to Jasper Tudor. she was married at twelve to Edmund Tudor in 1455, and was pregnant within a few months. Made a widow when six months pregnant, she gave birth the future Henry VII while only thirteen years old. Both the marriage and the pregnancy were politically convenient for Edmund Tudor, and do not provide evidence of what was considered desirable for pubescent girls. Marriage and the begetting of heirs had an importance for the social elite which sometimes overrode other beliefs, including the preference to allow girls a period of growing up before marriage and sexual activity. Unease about Margaret’s youth during her experiences and childbirth shows in the words of her sixteenth-century eulogist, who commented on the difficulty of the birth due to her lack of physical development — ‘not a woman of great stature… she was so much smaller at that stage’. Her modern biographers suggest that permanent physical damage resulted from the birth and she had no more children. Her own experiences led to an antipathy to early marriage, attested later in her life when she opposed the marriage of one of her granddaughters to James Iv of Scotland, fearing James would not wait to consummate it. 
Still on the highest rung of the social ladder, John Carmi Parsons’ survey of eighty-seven marriages among the Plantagenets, Mortimers and Hollands from 1150 to 1500 finds a tendency to delay consummation of marriage where the female party was below fifteen at the wedding. Over half the daughters were not married until fifteen or older (forty-nine out of eighty-seven), and of those married under fifteen there was apparently a decision to delay consummation. Fifteen of the thirty-eight girls married under fifteen remained childless, and of the remaining twenty-three most waited three or more years for consummation. Of the seven who bore children while under fifteen, five were kings’ wives or daughters. He feels that female relatives had a good deal to do with this caution. 

A close look at the ages of the first marriage of English princesses illustrates these points further. Examining the marriages of the daughters of kings from Edward I to Henry VII, it is clear that though marriage negotiations and sometimes formal betrothals occurred when the girls were very young they were not married until much later, and usually had their first children later still. Of the twenty princesses for whom marriages were sought (others died in infancy and a small number entered nunneries), the mean age at which marriage negotiations were begun or betrothals sought was about five and a half, but those who went on to marry (three died early), the mean age at first marriage was 16.65. Of these seventeen girls, five were married between the ages of ten and fourteen, eleven between fifteen and twenty, and one — Isabella, eldest daughter of Edward III, despite marital negotiations beginning in her infancy and a failed betrothal at around fourteen — not until thirty-three. Only three of the princesses bore their first child before the age of twenty…. 
A still clearer impression is gained from individual circumstances. Of all the English princesses of the era only Blanche, eldest daughter of Henry IV, was married below canonical age. Henry had sought marriages for his infant daughters as soon as possible after becoming king, and after a proposed match between Blanche and a member of the French royal house was declined he secured Louis, son of the emperor Rupert, and the wedding took place in 1402 when Blanche was about ten. His second daughter, Philippa, was also one of the youngest English princesses to marry, wedding the king of Sweden at thirteen. The very high status of these matches and Henry’s precipitous haste in securing [early marriages] are indicative of his tentative hold on the throne and eagerness to bolster it with powerful alliances, rather than of any strong approval of early marriage… —Medieval Maidens: Young Women and Gender in England, 1270-1540 (Manchester Medieval Studies) by Kim M. Phillips

Also, some threads from the r/AskHistorians subreddit, known for their commitment to in-depth, comprehensive and academic answers—because I am going to make sure you get your money’s worth for these notes. --Eliana

Thread: When and how did child marriage start to be seen as inappropriate in Western culture?

Thread: What was the average marriage age for people living in the Middle Ages?


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