Episode 23: A GAME OF THRONES, DAENERYS III 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 our twenty-third episode of the Not A Cast entitled: “The Grass Sea: An Analysis of AGOT, Daenerys III,” in which Daenerys Targaryen sails the Dothraki Sea, has more prophecy and world-building thrown at her and gets a bun in the oven. This episode is brought to you all by our Lords Commander Mark N, Timothy W, Hayden J, and WolfmanZack. Thank you, gentlemen!

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!

PQ intro to LML as return guest

Questions

Lady Erin asks:

Hello!

I'm Sworn Sword patron Erin. :) 

Though I was into the books before the show was a glimmer in D&D's eyes, I'm pretty new to the wider fandom...I found Emmett through his amazing S7 recaps on Deadspin and started following him on Twitter, so forgive me if this question has been talked to death in the fandom.

What do you think Cersei Lannister's story looks like going forward from ADWD? In Kevan's last chapter, I think we get the sense that Cersei might be playing the game a bit differently now after The Walk, but whenever I bring that up, most people seem to think that she's too stupid to play the game with any skill. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Thanks again and keep up the amazing work!

Ser Joseph S asks:

Well Ned can be blamed for trusting Littlefinger in his adventure in Kings Landing, I don't think we should be too hard on him overall for how everything eventually works out. Ned is coming in at the eleventh hour of three or four major, long-term plots that are all reaching their conclusions. Renly (with the Tyrells), Varys and Illyrio, Littlefinger, and Cersei's plot to kill the king. Littlefinger appears to have specifically maneuvered to get Ned to Kings Landing so he could take revenge. Ned has no allies at court other than Robert who can't be bothered. He hasn't been keeping an eye on court and doesn't know the players (which maybe you could blame him for, but he wasn't expecting to have to go and didn't want to go when asked). 

The one person who could have helped him, who should have helped him, is Stannis. I like Stannis, I think that by Dance of Dragons he is acting as a king should by protecting the kingdom to win the crown, but he could have saved Ned and his brother if he'd just done his duty and stayed in Kings Landing. He knew the secret and instead of trying to do something about it he hid in his castle, gave his brother up for dead, and sulked. He could have answered Ned's ravens, he could have left a message, he could have sent Davos to Ned, he could have told his brother, he could have done a million things other than what he did. It would have been dangerous, but for someone who expects others to do their duty, he seems to be neglecting his.  

I understand their wouldn't be a story if Stannis had just told Robert or Ned, but Stannis made a mistake here. He was selfish and it cost his brother and Ned their lives. 

Old Sadie asks:

Hello boys!

My question is (I'm hoping LML will have a mythology-based answer)....

Would you rather fight a hundred duck-sized horses *or* one horse-sized duck? And why?

Synopsis

Okay, so, I read, re-read, re-read again and did it two more times to try to fully wrap my mind around this chapter before writing the summary. So, I am one with George RR Martin and Daenerys Targaryen. In that light, this summary could be 45 minutes long, but I’m going to sample a few places on the journey and hit the plot/emotional beats as best I can. 

So, this is A Game of Thrones, Daenerys III:

Daenerys Targaryen sails the Dothraki Sea with Khal Drogo’s khalasar at her back. We open Dany’s third AGOT chapter chronologically to the middle late part of the chapter as Dany and Ser Jorah Mormont survey the vast green grassland stretching to the horizon. But it’s not always green as Ser Jorah tells Dany. It blooms with red flowers like a sea of blood in places. During the dry season, the sea turns bronze, but those are only the hranna -- one type of grass. Elsewhere there are hundreds of types of grass: lemon, indigo, blue, orange and rainbow.

But down in the Shadow Lands past Asshai, there are oceans of ghost grass that murder all other grass and glow in the dark with the spirits of the damned. Lovely.

Dany doesn’t want to hear about death though. She wants to enjoy the beauty of the land. Unfortunately, her enjoyment is tempered by the omnipresence of her brother Viserys -- whose voice Dany can hear behind her. You see, Viserys Targaryen had decided to come along with Dany and the Dothraki to Vaes Dothrak to ensure that the price Khal Drogo was promised was paid -- and all this despite Illyrio’s offer to Viserys that he can crash at his manse back in Pentos. Hm, lotta questions there.

Anyways, Dany is done with listening to Viserys complain. So, she rides forward and orders Jorah to inform the khalasar to rein up for a time. She descends a ridgeline atop her silver, thinking about how she never felt like a princess until she had that awesome horse, and this leads her down memory lane.

Daenerys remembers how miserable the first few weeks of the journey were. How all that riding had chafed her raw during the day, how Drogo would ignore her until he came into their tent before sunrise to rape her. She was in such awful pain that she couldn’t sleep and she finally resolved to commit suicide rather than endure the agony any longer.

Only then Daenerys has her second dragon dream. Dany and a black dragon, slick with her blood  with eyes like pools of molten magma breathed fire flame at her which burned her and made her blood boil and turn to steam. But in the end, the dragon fire cleansed her, scoured her. Made her clean. Fascinating stuff.

That dream helped Dany to feel better. She found riding easier after that. Her legs were stronger, the blisters burst and her hands calloused, and the her soft thighs turned hard as leather. With her pain easing, she began to take in the scenery more, and she began to love the beauty of it all. They crossed the rolling hills of Norvos, passed by dead cities, raced down Valyrian roads, rode through the Forest of Qohor. And though there was always an ache at the end of each day’s ride, there was a sweetness to the pain, and she even began to find sexual pleasure with Khal Drogo.

Zooming back to the present, Dany rides her silver through the tall grass loving every minute of it -- so much so that she dismounts her horse and takes her boots off -- the better to feel the ground beneath her. And then Viserys arrives.

You dare! You give commands to me? To me!? Have you forgotten who you are? Look at you! Look at you!

Dany looks and smells like a Dothraki whereas, Viserys The Mad King’s son is wearing his rage and soiled city silks and ringmail. Not a good look, Viserys. 

He keeps screaming about how no one commands him as he’s the Lord of Westeros, and he does that sexual assault shit again by reaching under Dany’s shirt and digging his fingers into her breasts. In response, Dany shoves him away. Viserys is incredulous, stunned and then even more angry. Dany knows that he’ll hurt him now, but then the whip comes.

Crack! Jhogo, one of Dany’s bloodriders, snaps his whip, and it coils around Viserys’ neck. Irri and Ser Jorah arrive on scene. Do you want him dead, Jhogo asks and Irri translates. “No,” Dany replies. How about an ear? Can we take one his ears? No you cannot, Jhogo. Dany doesn’t want Viserys harmed. The whip uncoils from Viserys’ neck, leaving a line of blood across Viserys’ neck. 

Dany orders that Jorah takes Viserys’ horse. No! Viserys cries. Hit her, Mormont. Hurt her. Kill these dothraki dogs and teach her! But Mormont doesn’t. After a moment of consideration, he takes Viserys’ horse, forcing him to walk the rest of the way -- something the Dothraki consider to be shameful. Everyone leaves a humiliated, angry, horseless Viserys sitting in the grass. Dany wonders if he’ll be okay, if he’ll follow them. Jorah informs Dany that he’ll make do and walk the rest of the way. Or barring that, the Dothraki will come and grab him. It’s hard to drown in the Dothraki Sea.

But Dany realizes what she did. She hit him, and now she woke the dragon, right? Well, no. Rhaegar was the last dragon in Jorah’s opinion. Weird, Jorah, didn’t you fight against Rhaegar on the Trident? Sigh. And Viserys is less than a shadow of a snake, and what does that make Viserys’ servants? But he’s the king, Dany replies. Jorah asks a simple and vital question: Do you want to see Viserys sit the Iron Throne?

He wouldn’t be a very good king, Dany replies. But the people are praying for his return. That’s what Illyrio says. No, Jorah says.

The common people pray for rain, healthy children and a summer that never ends. It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones so long as they are left in peace. They never are.

Well that’s something, Jorah. But hey wait, didn’t you enslave some smallfolk that one time? More on that later. Anyways, Dany asks what Jorah prays for. “Home,” he replies. Dany prays for that too. Jorah tells her to look around her, and Dany sees something beyond the Dothraki Sea with her mind’s eye. She sees Dragonstone, the Red Keep, King’s Landing.

In her mind’s eye, they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind’s eye, all doors were red.

Well, now. We’ll delve into that, don’t you worry. 

Anyways, Dany says that Viserys will never take back the Seven Kingdoms, calling into account that he’s a poor and that everyone hates him out here -- even his one knight who swore him service. Even if Drogo gave him an army, he couldn’t do it. Jorah calls her a wise child for thinking this. Dany says she’s no child and darts away on her horse.

That night, Dany enters her tent and sees a finger of dusty red light reach out for her dragon eggs. When the light touches the dragon eggs, it bursts into a thousand droplets of scarlet flame to her eyes. But when she blinks, they’re gone. Stone. They are only stone. The Dragons are all dead. But the eggs feel hot when Dany touches them. It’s just the sun warming them on the journey. Or so Dany thinks.

She orders a bath for herself. Her handmaids wash her and talk with her. She wants to talk about dragons. Dragons are gone, Khaleesi, Irri says. Her second handmaid Jhiqui agrees. The last dragons died in Westeros during the reign of Aegon III Targaryen, but maybe there are dragons still in the east where magic still exists. Nope. Brave men killed the dragons in the east. 

But then Doreah, the third handmaid and former prostitute, pipes up:

A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons come from the moon. He told me the moon was an egg. Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack, and the dragons will return. 

The other handmaids dismiss Doreah’s claim as foolish. The Moon is god, woman wife of sun. It is known, Irri says. It is known, Jhiqui agrees.

Later, Dany eats and asks Doreah to stay and eat with her. They sit talking for a long while. Later still, Khal Drogo enters Dany’s tent, and Daenerys drops her clothes and tells him that they must go outside for the Dothraki believe that all things of importance in a man’s life must be done beneath the open sky. 

So, they go outside, and Daenerys Targaryen refuses to be taken from behind. She rides Drogo cowgirl style, and Khal Drogo calls out her name when he cums. 

A month or so later, her handmaid Jhiqui tells her that she’s with child.

Dany knows. It was her fourteenth nameday.

And that is A Game of Thrones, Daenerys III: to paraphrase Rick McCallum, one of the producers of the Star Wars prequels: “It’s so dense. Every single scene, every single memory. It all is heavy with meaning, symbolism and emotion.”

What did you guys think?

Depth

I hesitate to agree with Rick McCallum, but yeah. Great as the first two Daenerys chapters are, they were really paving the way for this one, which expands on that great moment in Dany II in which she rode her silver and forgot to be afraid. “Maturation” and “coming of age” don’t really cut it here, because the way GRRM writes Dany and how she interacts with her environment goes deeper--it’s cosmic apotheosis, a grand transformation reflected back at her by the movements of nature, from the grass of many colors to the legends of moons and eggs and dragons. We already knew she was the main character of this storyline simply from her being the POV, but this is really where the author communicates the sense of Dany’s significance. The rebirth of dragons which serves as the climax of said storyline only hits home as hard as it does because of the buildup in these early chapters. Not just direct foreshadowing (we’ll get into that later) but the sense of becoming that hums through every word of Dany III.

• Dany’s story is all about home, and here’s her newest one: the Dothraki Sea
  • An open-ended world of possibilities…
    • Beneath them, the plain stretched out immense and empty, a vast flat expanse that reached to the distant horizon and beyond.
  • ...and thus, she’s disturbed to imagine its fall
    • “It’s so beautiful here, I don’t want to think about everything dying.”
  • It mirrors her own evolution, which she wants to have a happy ending
  • Yet the green is only ahead--what the khalasar leaves behind is not so lovely:
    • As the riding became less an ordeal, Dany began to notice the beauties of the land around her. She rode at the head of the khalasar with Drogo and his bloodriders, so she came to each country fresh and unspoiled. Behind them the great horde might tear the earth and muddy the rivers and send up clouds of choking dust, but the fields ahead of them were always green and verdant. 
    • There were great elk in that wood, and spotted tigers, and lemurs with silver fur and huge purple eyes, but all fled before the approach of the khalasar and Dany got no glimpse of them. 
• After showing us the sword, GRRM pulls back to the tempering
  • The physical hardships of the ride…
    • The khalasar had broken camp the morning after her wedding, moving east toward Vaes Dothrak, and by the third day Dany thought she was going to die. Saddle sores opened on her bottom, hideous and bloody. Her thighs were chafed raw, her hands blistered from the reins, the muscles of her legs and back so wracked with pain that she could scarcely sit. By the time dusk fell, her handmaids would need to help her down from her mount. 
  • ...are linked to her abuse by Drogo
    • Even the nights brought no relief … She was left to sup alone, or with Ser Jorah and her brother, and afterward to cry herself to sleep. Yet every night, some time before the dawn, Drogo would come to her tent and wake her in the dark, to ride her as relentlessly as he rode his stallion. He always took her from behind, Dothraki fashion, for which Dany was grateful; that way her lord husband could not see the tears that wet her face, and she could use her pillow to muffle her cries of pain. 
  • Both are compounded by loneliness
  • They bring her to the point of suicide
• But then, the dragon dream
  • It doesn’t erase the pain…
    • Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. 
  • ...but rather transforms it into energy and identity she can use
    • She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce. 
  • And so she becomes used to both kinds of riding
• Viserys shatters the dream
  • Reassertion of violence she has tried to transcend
  • Asserts racial superiority, and that she has fallen into a lesser caste
  • This allows her to finally see through him in multiple ways
    • The Dothraki bring him down
    • His fine clothes are now torn and sweat-soaked
    • She has undergone a gauntlet, he has refused it
    • Jorah obeys her, not him
• And since Jorah’s the resident Westerosi, this allows Dany to see through Viserys’ promise:
  • She no longer takes his definition of leadership for granted
  • She starts taking responsibility for the Targaryen restoration
  • She’s now actively looking toward the future instead of being suicidal
• This opens her mind up to her metaphysical role and how it connects to her circumstances
• Thus all the strains of Dany’s growth--cultural, familial, political, metaphysical--come together on her fourteenth nameday

Likes/Dislikes

Emmett Like: This is arguably the first chapter where GRRM starts doing interesting things with time--the flashback as Dany rides down to the Dothraki Sea zooms in on moments and then leaps forward over weeks and months to explain where Dany’s head is at in the present day. It’s his first stab at the virtuosity we’ll see with telling the story of Sansa’s dress in reverse in ASOS (Jeff’s favorite chapter in the series) or telling time by the moon for Bran in ADWD.

Jeff Like: This chapter gave me a renewed respect for GRRM and his writing. Like Emmett mentioned, the time skips make for a fascinating study of Daenerys Targaryen and her different emotional states. The dreams, prophecies and visions all work to set a terrific, eerie mood. But I’m going to cite something else that I glossed over in the summary: the descriptions of Essos after Dany’s dragon dream: High blue waterfalls, blackened marble columns of dead cities, Valyrian roads straight as a Dothraki arrow, the golden canopy of the forests of Qohor. The colors burst onto the page here, and this is where GRRM’s skill as a writer comes into focus. The descriptions of the journey, the colors, the beauty, the majesty is something George has written about: “Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli.” He does a great job of it putting his words into action in this chapter! 

Emmett Dislike: Don’t get me wrong, “The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends … It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace … They never are” is one hell of a line, and absolutely vital to the themes of the series. But it’s weird that it comes from the guy who sold his people into slavery to pay the bills and doesn’t regret it, and my problem is that GRRM either isn’t aware of this irony or doesn’t communicate it meaningfully to the audience. Same goes for ADWD, when Jorah is himself enslaved but there’s no dramatic catharsis. Maybe he should’ve been a POV? 

Jeff Dislike: When we talked about AGOT, Daenerys II a few months ago, we mentioned that there’s a disturbing aspect between that Dany chapter and this one. At the end of AGOT, Dany II, as actually problematic as the relationship between Drogo and Dany is, there’s a tenderness at the start of their sexual relationship. But that changes. In Dany III, George is very clearly indicating that what Drogo is doing is rape, full-stop. So, what changed between the “No/Yes” dynamic in Dany II and Drogo riding Daenerys as relentelessly as his horse in Dany III? And why? 

Meanwhile, at the end of the chapter, Daenerys takes agency in sexual relationship. But there’s something that’s missing here: what is it exactly that causes Dany to want to be in a consensual sexual relationship with Drogo? Why? Subtextually, it reads that Dany’s dragon dream works to, like Emmett said, shape her identity and transform the pain into energy. Thereafter she takes *some* pleasure in the sex. But what that doesn’t show is why Dany wants Drogo.

Foreshadowing/Groundwork

Waking the Dragon(s)

Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it

singing to her, She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

She touched one, the largest of the three, running her hand lightly over the shelf. Black-and-scarlet, she thought, like the dragon in my dream. The stone felt strangely warm beneath her fingers...or was she still dreaming? She pulled her hand back nervously.

Stone, she told herself. They are only stone, even Illyrio said so, the dragons are all dead. She put her palm against the black egg, fingers spread gently across the curve of the shell. The stone was warm. Almost hot. “The sun,” Dany whispered. “The sun warmed them as they rode.”

Winter is Coming

“Down in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, they say there are oceans of ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback with stalks as pale as milkglass. [Like the bones of the Others…] It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the damned. The Dothraki claim that someday ghost grass will cover the entire world, and then all life will end.”

That thought gave Dany the shivers. “I don’t want to talk about that now,” she said. “It’s so beautiful here, I don’t want to think about everything dying.”

A Crown for Cart King

Her brother was miserable out here. He ought never have come. Magister Illyrio had urged him to wait in Pentos, had offered him the hospitality of his manse, but Viserys would have none of it. He would stay with Drogo until the debt had been paid, until he had the crown he had been promised. “And if he tries to cheat me, he will learn to his sorrow what it means to wake the dragon,” Viserys had vowed, laying a hand on his borrowed sword. Illyrio had blinked at that and wished him good fortune.

“You do not command the dragon. Do you understand? I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, I will not hear orders from some horselord’s slut, do you hear me?” His hand went under her vest, his fingers digging painfully into her breast. “Do you hear me?”

Dany shoved him away, hard.

Viserys stared at her, his lilac eyes incredulous. She had never defied him. Never fought back. Rage twisted his features. He would hurt her now, and badly, she knew that.

Crack.

The whip made a sound like thunder. The coil took Viserys around the throat and yanked him backward. He went sprawling in the grass, stunned and choking. The

Dothraki riders hooted at him as he struggled to free himself. The one with the whip, young Jhogo, rasped a question. Dany did not understand his words, but by then Irri was there, and Ser Jorah, and the rest of her khas. “Jhogo asks if you would have him dead, Khaleesi,” Irri said.

First of my Queensguard

“No!” Viserys screamed. He turned to Ser Jorah, pleading in the Common Tongue with words the horsemen would not understand. “Hit her, Mormont. Hurt her. Your king commands it. Kill these Dothraki dogs and teach her.”

The exile knight looked from Dany to her brother; she barefoot, with dirt between her toes and oil in her hair, he with his silks and steel. Dany could see the decision on his face. “He shall walk, Khaleesi,” he said. He took her brother’s horse in hand while Dany remounted her silver.

Fire and Blood

But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King’s Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind’s eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind’s eye, all the doors were red.

Theories/Discussion 

So, obviously we’re gonna get into how central this chapter is for Mythical Astronomy as we go, but I figure we go all-in on it here, specifically with the story about the moon(s). 

Conclusion

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