Author Note: I have never hated the task of writing a new chapter for any of my stories. This isn't where that changed, but I did
dislike the experience of writing this chapter a fair bit. The conversation it's based on is one I still recall with very mixed feelings, and not just because it ended because of unwarranted outside interference. Still, I hope you find it as informative as I found it cathartic. It
is plot-relevant - in fact, it's a big part of the set-up for the third volume - but it's still mostly an exploration of existing world-building. I dare say it works to set up Jon's characterisation though, as it will emerge in the next update, finally.
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“-. 278 AC .-“
“An old legend told in Pentos claims that the Andals slew the swan maidens who lured travellers to their deaths in the Velvet Hills that lie to the east of the city. A man whom the Pentoshi singers call Hukko led the Andals at that time, and it is said that he slew the seven maids not for their crimes but instead as sacrifice to his gods. There are some maesters who have noted that Hukko may well be a rendering of the name of Hugor. Let’s defer disagreement for disagreement’s sake in favour of allowing that the Faith strives to make seven of everything. Chances are there weren’t really seven swan maidens. Knowing this, what are the odds that Hukko is in fact a variation of Hugor as the maesters suggest, and he slew just one very special ‘swan maiden’? The Seven-Pointed Star, Unveiling 3:6-7. ‘The Maid brought him forth a girl as supple as a willow with eyes like deep blue pools, and Hugor declared that he would have her for his bride. So the Mother made her fertile, and the Crone foretold that she would bear the king four-and-forty mighty sons. The Warrior gave strength to their arms, whilst the Smith wrought for each a suit of iron plates.’ Hugor Hill is ultimately another adaption of the Azor Ahai monomyth. And he’s not even the only one. Ser Galladon of Morne is one of many others – it’s said he was a champion of such valor that the Maiden herself lost her heart to him. She gave him an enchanted sword as a token of her love. The Just Maid, it was called. ‘No common sword could check her, nor any shield withstand her kiss.’ So this time, instead of the Maid bringing her forth, the merling wife is instead the Maiden herself. Ignoring for now the drowning symbolism that this Andal legend gives the Azor Ahai figure – very Ironborn of them – answer me why there are no traces of these stories in any of these places if they were really history? Answer me why I should believe these stories weren’t stolen and passed as their own from the people they butchered everywhere there is a carving of an axe in stone.”
As he carefully lifted his dumbbells left and right so he wouldn’t miss his step on the treadmill, Robert Baratheon mused that Eddard Stark should be called the Quiet Wolf for all the stuff he kept quiet on. Praise, chastisement, good news, bad news, insults, he could swallow almost anything without losing his composure, even if he internally seethed and swore vows of eternal vengeance in private later. But then he went and did things like this. Got into a spat that lasted hours and only didn’t devolve into split bellies because every sword and mace and what have you was several walls away.
“For someone who so decries my use of the Holy Book in these quaint arguments of ours, you certainly have no issues calling on it when it suits you, Lord Eddard.”
“I wanted it to be banned from these talks but you refused. If you wanted to have sole claim to its content, you shouldn’t have gone around spreading its worship at swordpoint. Now don’t dodge the subject. Either meet my challenge or concede the point.”
“There is no point to concede on. You try to argue the credibility of legends based on other legends. For someone who started this debate ostensibly on
history, I expected better.”
“Resorting to personal attacks already, Septon?”
Robert switched arms. Urizen lost his temper a lot in the beginning, which allowed Ned to comment on how that
obviously meant he didn’t have good enough counter-arguments. Repeatedly. Which was fair. People tended to resort to emotional attacks when logic and facts failed them.
“Is that what I am doing? Are you sure you are not casting stones? You just implied the Prophet himself was a liar, murderer and butcher. If anyone is being personally attacked, it is I and every last one of my brothers and sisters in the Faith. I’d call it unchivalrous, but I already know you don’t hold to such ideals.”
“As unchivalrous as forcing the Seven-Pointed-Star to be accepted at sword-point while calling it the one truth, instead of a bunch of legends as you just admitted to me right now.”
“I did no such thing.”
“’You try to argue the credibility of legends based on other legends’ is what you just told me. When I cited straight out of the Seven Pointed Star. I’ll grant you that you
might have been referring to Galladon alone, but it’s telling you didn’t try to dispute the real point, isn’t it?”
“You’re trying to circle back to our old argument. You believe faith is as downstream from culture while I hold to the opposite. We’ve debated this point before to no avail, despite the fact that the culture of a full six of the seven kingdoms were shaped by the Seven into what they are today. If this is a line you still wish to pursue, I’m afraid I cannot help you.”
“You don’t say,” Ned said with an odd shade to his voice. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with your so-called culture having anything objectionable to it.”
“You mock me, as if my stance on this point was ever in question. In respect of your young age, I’ll allow that the Stranger needn’t be on your mind. But to dismiss the crucial values of the other Seven is, quite frankly, ludicrous. The Father’s Justice, the Mother’s mercy, the Maiden’s innocence, the Smith’s craftsmanship, the Crone’s wisdom and, of course, the Warrior’s valor by which all others are preserved and carried forth, making reality out of the chivalric ideal. Tell me, are those not the most noble of virtues?”
“You see, this is the part that outright infuriates me.” Robert carefully didn’t falter in his barbell side bends on seeing Ned glare at the Septon. He did not expect Ned’s angry incredulity so soon. “You say men are born sinners and bound to hell, and that we’re expected to take ownership of that sin even when we’re small and mindless and helpless as a fish out of water. But when we do something
good, suddenly our actions don’t belong to us. You teach people to think themselves soiled from birth, and to believe they have no capacity for wisdom or justice or vim of their own. You teach that service is the highest honor, and obedience the highest virtue. But if I lead a righteous life, it doesn’t matter because the only innocence is of the Maiden. If I work hard to secure a place in the world for me and mine, it was only at the whim of the Smith who’s the only one capable of creating anything. If I show mercy, it’s because the Mother decided the one in front of me deserves it regardless of my opinion on it, so she’s mind-controlling me, is that it? If I do the right thing, it’s because I was possessed by the miasma of some splinter of a god I’ve never seen or felt or heard or known. Never mind my
actual parents for teaching me how to live, they’re as filthy and worthless as I am. Never mind my teachers for passing down their knowledge and skills, they have no claim to them either, isn’t that right? Don’t honour my forebears for carving a place for me in this world, it’s only because the Warrior was in a good enough mood that they managed it. Does that mean the Warrior favored Theon the Hungry Wolf when he slaughtered Argos Sevenstars and everyone else in Andalos that struck his fancy? And chivalry, don’t make me laugh. You expect me to think the Andals came slaughtering their way into the Vale while preaching to protect women and children? They wouldn’t have made it past the Fingers before their men revolted! Chivalry does not and has never belonged to you. John the Oak established it thousands of years before the Andals even came into existence. But it’s just like you and yours to come and lay claim to things that you had no hand in. Chivalry, pah!”
“I had hoped it would not come to this, Lord Eddard, but since you seem so determined to make murderers, cheats and liars of my ancestors against all common sense, as well as Lord Arryn’s own forebears and all of this country’s founders, I can only hope abundance of evidence will prevail where brevity failed.”
“By all means, enlighten me.”
Unfortunately, Ned didn’t seem to have adapted so well to the Septon’s topic-shifting stratagems. He still let himself be swept up in a completely different point when Urizen made himself out to be sufficiently hung up about it. Ned really needed to learn how to hold a proper grudge. Unfortunately, it looked like it would be the work of years to train him up. Why, most of the time it was still a miracle to make him acknowledge that there was a reason to hold a grudge in the first place! The man was so oblivious that Robert still had to literally point them out to him. Dirty fighting, kill stealing, prey stealing, skirt stealing, the utter waste of good fruit inflicted upon the world by the bloodline of man from the Summer Sea to the Wall and beyond. Beneath the lid of every jar of jam was the tragedy of plums that could have become booze, there wasn’t a bite that didn’t make Robert want to cry!
True story.
“First off, there is nothing to suggest that history was written or rewritten with a pro-Andal slant, for three simple and good reasons. To begin, the Andals had hostile rivals who would have every reason to keep this memory alive and well, your own House chief among them, who could use it as a means to rile up the population for war against the Vale of Arryn. This would put history outside of Andal control, but we have nothing to say that they did. The Starks would have been able to keep such a knowledge alive well up to the present – as it would have lived long enough for the Citadel – and certainly at the very least up to Aegon's Conquest, where even then, it could have been kept alive by the Citadel, who would have reason to write everything down. Just look at Sisterton for example – the Sistermen still remember the attack of the Northmen thousands of years later.”
Now this was a clever way to start. Make broad, sweeping claims about Ned’s homeland that are guaranteed to piss him off, but which he can’t discount under his own rules of debating, because he was either too young or two much of a security risk to be given that information when he was just nine. It lets Urizen pretend he didn’t share the Faith’s general habit of preaching that the North is a land of uneducated barbarians, but it also guarantees to shake Ned’s balance no matter his view on the matter. Enough that Ned could even be too slow to make obvious retorts, like how the Faith Militant has been destroying keeps, killing dissenters, burning books, and allowing only new ones written in their tongue to leave the walls of the Citadel since they outright overthrew house Hightower way back when. But never you mind that, it means nothing that they needed Rickard Stark to come down there and cut the muzzle off everyone who didn’t agree with the Conclave. To say nothing of being able to run a child-buggering side-business straight out of the Scribe’s Hearth. Robert dropped the barbell rather more abruptly than usual and ignored the starts of everyone else in favor of adding more weights.
The Septon composed himself quickly. “Secondly, nations outside of Westeros would have knowledge of such a thing, including the Free Cities as a number of them were assuredly founded by the time that the Andals actually made their way to Westeros – they were generally displaced by later Valyrian expansion after the destruction of the Rhoynar principalities, which would actually have a written account of the era. Even if the Starks somehow abandoned them and the Citadel forgot, Essos would still have records of the time, much as we Septons and, indeed, the maesters themselves in the time since the Andal coming have documented events happening in distant lands, providing a physical reserve to allow the idea to be revisited as desired.”
I’ve clearly been there and checked their libraries to know this for certain, and let’s dismiss the talk about Hukko and Hugor that we just had, it’s so old and fanciful that it must be legends, and we all know that there’s not a grain of truth in myth and legends. Let’s also dismiss all the records on both sides of the Sea about all the other tribes that existed in the supposed Andal homeland until the Andals made it their homeland, but Robert was getting ahead of himself.
“Secondly, the Citadel was most likely born of the First Men – according to what we know, the Citadel was built by Peremore Hightower, which would do very little to date the place were it not that we know that his father was supposed to have commissioned Brandon the Builder to create the Hightower in stone. That puts the two figures in the same era, and that means that the Citadel was founded before the Andals arrived in Westeros - that means that the maesters were an organization of the First Men, which in turn means that they would have had every reason to record Andal atrocities of the kind that you go back to again and again, and yet we have no such content.”
That was a big, fat lie ten times over and then some, even disregarding the dark tidings coming out of the Citadel now, about how people used to find poison in their porridge if they disagreed with the Conclave, especially if they mentioned prophecy and dragons. Robert hurried to resume his lifts before the big ole’ dark cloud broke into thunder ahead of time.
“You mock me,” Ned rumbled. His voice had deepened more than Robert’s own and no he wasn’t jealous at all, you piss off! “Or you think I came so unprepared to my own battle that I wouldn’t be able to call out lies when I hear them. Next you’ll try to claim the Vale of Arryn didn’t start out as a country of slavers and warmongers. You should be
glad that culture trumps religion. Otherwise your forebears that you like to paint in bright colours would have been counter-struck out of existence once the Andals overreached. If the Andals had still been genocidal slavers by the time the Lannisters and Durrandons humbled them, I supremely doubt peace would have followed.”
“Genocide? Slavery?” For the life of him, Robert couldn’t find any sign that the Septon’s outrage was fake. “Those are very strong claims that you're making there, ones that go against a massive amount of written material and indeed the very nature of Westeros as it is today. I trust you have a concrete source for them?”
Ned reached for the top-most sheet of paper on the stack next to him and began to read. “’Such is the tale of the Battle of the Seven Stars as it is told by the singers and the septons. A stirring story to be sure, but the scholar must ask, how much of it is true? We shall never know. All that is certain is that King Robar II of House Royce met Ser Artys Arryn in a great battle at the foot of the Giant’s Lance, where the king died and the Falcon Knight dealt the First Men a blow from which they never recovered. The Arryns would rule the Vale as kings until the coming of Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters, and thereafter served as the Lords of the Eyrie, Protectors of the Vale, and Wardens of the East. And from that day forth, the Vale itself has been known as the Vale of Arryn.’” Ned’s voice turned cold then. “
The fate of the defeated was far crueler. As word of the victory spread across the narrow sea, more and more longships set sail from Andalos, and more and more Andals poured into the Vale and the surrounding mountains. All of them required land – land the Andal lords were pleased to give them. Wherever the First Men sought to resist,
they were ground underfoot, reduced to thralls, or driven out.’” Ned lifted his eyes with a glare and pushed the paper across the table for the Septon to take. “In short, genocide first, enslave if you're tired, or let them run into the Mountain of the Moon to starve.”
Septon Urizen read it – or at least seemed to – then put it down and made to reply, but Ned had more to say.
“’Regardless, the few children remaining fled or died, and the First Men found themselves losing war after war, and kingdom after kingdom, to the Andal invaders. The battles and wars were endless, but eventually all the southron kingdoms fell. As with the Valemen, some submitted to the Andals, even taking up the faith of the Seven. In many cases, the Andals took the wives and daughters of the defeated kings to wife, as a means of solidifying their right to rule. For, despite everything, the First Men were far more numerous than the Andals and
could not simply be forced aside. The fact that many southron castles still have godswoods with carved weirwoods at their hearts is said to be thanks to the early Andal kings, who shifted from conquest to consolidation, thus avoiding any conflict based on differing faiths.’ For all the control the Faith has held on Oldtown since Septon Robeson mysteriously ended up regent of a newborn Hightower lordling – and stayed regent for years
after Triston reached the age of majority – maesters still managed to slip these nuggets of truth past their good and wise masters.” Ned spoke as plainly as ever, as if he’d not just called the Septons and the Citadel Conclave by the same titles as the Good and Wise Masters of Slaver’s Bay. “I’ve underlined the bit that is most important – from the beginning and until they conquered a bunch of places, the Andals had been trying – with varying degrees of success and then failure, per the bit I quoted above – to ‘sweep us entirely aside.’ Do also keep in mind that the Andals had no war cause other than manifest destiny in all this. Is this enough records and attestation, Septon? Or would you like to talk about where exactly it says when and how the Andals betrayed their Rhoynar patrons when they accepted the secret of steel, only to immediately abandon them to the Valyrians they were supposed to be at odds with?” Ned pushed that paper forward too. “What I find most poignant is that the failed state of the First Men of the Vale might have become the first nation in Westeros ruled by a council of equals, if not for the invasion. I'm not sure what it says about the rest of us that the Mountain Clans of the Vale have more freedom of word and equal representation in the halls of power that the rest of us.”
The Septon busied himself with reading the quotations Ned had provided and referenced (a least three times over knowing him). The man’s brow furrowed the more he read. Robert began to work on his legs as he waited, though inside he was already wondering about something completely different.
“Alright,” Septon Urizen finally huffed. “There is a lot to unpack here. I’ll apologise for my verbosity in advance, but I’m afraid it can’t be helped.” The man took a bunch of that fancy vellum from his own stack. “Fortunately, I expected you to take this line of argument so I’ve prepared my own rebuttals ahead of time. Many of the passages you quoted even overlap with mine. I’ve placed my own emphasis on certain sections that need to be remembered. The important ones I’ve done in red.”
Somehow, Ned didn’t roll his eyes or huff or otherwise emote as he accepted the vellum.
“There's three major things that need to be remembered here,” the septon began (again). “First, brutal repression of conquered peoples does not mean genocide even if it does result in a bloodbath. Two, thralldom is not necessarily slavery, or we’d have to denounce all the houses that practice serfdom, down to people captured in war being able to be forced into it. There are clear distinctions from it. And last but not least, three: the passages you cited aren’t actually the entirety of the quote block, which removes it of much needed context. I've added the full transcripts, but for the sake of expediency I will only read out the parts that are relevant.
“’No fewer than fourteen of the oldest and noblest houses of the Vale ended that day. Those whose lines endured—the Redforts, the Hunters, the Coldwaters, the Belmores, and the Royces themselves amongst them—did so only by the dint of yielding up gold and land and hostages to their conquerors and bending their knees to swear fealty to Artys Arryn, the First of His Name, new-crowned King of Mountain and Vale.’ And additionally… ‘In time some of these fallen houses would regain much of the pride and wealth and power lost on the battlefield that day, but that would require the passage of centuries. Some of the First Men surely survived by joining their own blood with that of the Andals, but many more fled westward to the high valleys and stony passes of the Mountains of the Moon.’ The descendants of this once-proud people you know well – they dwell there to this very day, leading short, savage, brutal lives amongst the peaks as bandits and outlaws, preying upon any man fool enough to enter their mountains without a strong escort. Little better than the free folk beyond the Wall, these mountain clans, too, are called wildlings by the civilized.
“As you can see, this tells a far more complete story of what actually happened, and what happened was that the houses of the First Men got crushed by the Andals – those that weren't destroyed outright in battle bent the knee and were accepted as vassals by the Arryn king, and would eventually return to their normal power as vassals of the Andals. What happened then was not so much a massacre by the ruling Andal classes, but the result of a massive influx of what would have been the Andalosi version of the commonfolk, who poured into Westeros and started settling, displacing the locals in some places, who would then flee into the mountains to continue the fight after their lords surrendered, fighting to reclaim their farms and villages and whatnot. Essentially, the victors seized the property of the native people and then set up their own homes and livelihoods in their place, whilst those that existed there already end up as the new lower class and were gradually assimilated over time until both groups were one and the same. The idea that the Andals could have shipped enough people across the Narrow Sea to outright replace the entire population of the Vale is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
“I admit it was not all rainbows and sunshine, but there is a clear distinction between the typical thing that happens to conquered people, and outright genocide. In fact, it is on a whole different level entirely, so much so that I would say that the only power in history we could actually call genocidal would have been the Valyrian Freehold, whose actions against the Rhoynar are outright genocide of a scale that beggars belief, either slaughtering a quarter of a million men or working them to death in the mines, and that was just in the first conflict. There is a vast gulf of difference between people being turned into peasants because their lords got killed, and what happened to the Rhoynar or, say, the Children of the Forest at the hands of your own forebears.
“In reality, the Andal invasion of the Vale reached resulted in, one, the regular nobility being smashed into submission and forced to swear fealty, with some houses destroyed but eventually able to regain most of their power. Or two, the property of many peasants was seized to make way for Andal peasants, and some peasants were made into serfs but eventually married into the Andal families enough that they all become a mix of Andal and First Men. To this you add the First Men that did not want to become serfs and fled into the mountains to fight on. All in all, none of that is really outside the scope of warfare.”
Septon Urizen then went on a long, involved spiel about the various definitions of genocide, how the only acceptable definition involved both intent and action; how that action had to involve at least four atrocities (killing, torture, destruction of livelihood, preventing procreation and/or taking their children away), and how Ned was totally wrong to accuse the Andals of pursuing genocide because he can’t prove they meant it.
“No one but the Valyrian Freehold meets those requirements in their actions,” the Septon finally concluded that part of his spiel. “The conquest of the Vale was bloody, let none say otherwise. But it was no greater crime than every other war in the world, even those from living memory. To constitute genocide, there must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy another people. Destroying their culture does not suffice, nor does an intention to simply disperse a people. It is this special intent that makes the crime of genocide so unique. This is the requirement for the intention to utterly destroy a given people. Not subdue them, not conquer them with fire and sword, destroy them, root and stem, babe and mother. That was not the Andal's intention - if it was, the Royces and the other houses of the First Men would never have survived the Battle of Seven Stars. They would have been put to the sword, their castles breached and their kin massacred to the last, and it wouldn't just be the lords that are slaughtered, but the peasantry, too. That is the point where you cross from war to genocide. It is the question of intent, and without the specific intent to actually destroy the First Men as a people, it just does not qualify, and I will defend this judgment against anyone who tried to say it was false with a week’s worth of sermons that will make this small talk look like a playward argument.”
So the Andals tried and tried for decades and centuries to ‘grind underfoot’ all the ones in their path, but because the First Men were too many and powerful that the Andals
failed their holy genocide, this somehow means they never wanted genocide despite all their own claims and efforts to the contrary. Disregard the fact they
succeeded in killing, torturing, destroying the livelihood, and preventing the procreation of entire clans and
kingdoms by killing the men and enslaving the women and children there. After all, they were all First Men, and any distinction at a level lower than continent-wide doesn’t matter. Also ignore the ruinous cost in life and strength that Robar inflicted on the Andals, because that certainly had no effect on their ability to continue their war of extermination. Also ignore the fact that the Andals were
nomads, so they travelled whole clans at a time and didn’t
have a commoner or serf class to import from abroad. Now here’s a veiled warning that he’ll subject you to his oh so thoroughly mastered talent of rambling so much that he makes you think he has a point just because he had a lot to say, even if all the had to say was complete dogshit. Robert put the weights back in their rack and began a round of pushups, just so he was properly occupied while he pondered how much it helped you look smart if you could talk so much that people couldn’t remember half of what you just said, let alone retain anything long-term.
“In any case, the Andals could not have simply suppressed all the people with violence, force them to their knees and then convert them at the tip of the sword.” Never mind all those clans and kingdoms I just mentioned, or how that’s all they did in Essos for hundreds or thousands of years prior, depending on who you asked. “Instead, they had to do what I underlined there: they consolidated their realms to keep themselves at the top of the power structure. The examples we have from the Coming only serve to support this line of thinking all the more and the histories show it plain as day.”
Septon Urizen then followed this with another, even longer spiel about how Ned’s citations were all just ‘questionable wording’ (but his own weren’t despite being sourced from the same places), that the worst the Andals did was smash the nobility and take their place, marrying into their dynasties if possible, and then letting things basically continue as business as usual without interfering with local practices (bullshit), and that, clearly, it was all because of the good and righteous and merciful nature of the Andals that the Reach and Westerlands and the Stormlands and Dorne didn’t go the way of the Vale or Riverlands. It couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with all those places and people having something to say on the matter. Like Tristifer Mudd bringing their holy conquest to a stop single-handedly for a whole generation. Or Casterly Rock finally forcing the Andals to abide by First Man guest right and honor by taking Andal heirs hostage. Or the Andals losing and being forced to bend the knee by the Durrandon kings. Why, House Durrandon converted to the Seven
despite winning, everything else that happened there has absolutely zero importance at all! And please, don’t bring up Theon Stark and the War across the Water, that
thousand years of sea war was
only about three tiny islands and his raids of Andalos were completely unrelated, as was landing his troops in the Fingers. Archmaester Perestan himself said so just before his head became an Oldtown spike ornament!
Ahem.
Timing, Robert told himself. It’s all in the timing.
“You need only look at the Seven kingdoms themselves to see that the vast majority of the First Men dynastic structure has survived the Andal Invasion,” the septon was still talking. “This is so indisputable that I won’t even bother looking for attestations. A mere glance shows houses all over Westeros that are of the First Men in every region of the South, even those that the Andals did conquer their way through - the Royces are an obvious and easy example.” No they weren’t, Runestone was way way out of the way! “And I really don't think I need to go on because there are so, so many. But this is something that is immensely important, because it actually shows the real nature of how the invasion unfolded - the Andals didn't rip up every lord they defeated, else the Royces and the like would never have made it to the present day, but subjugated them. They conquered and installed themselves either atop of the hierarchy, such as House Arryn, or replaced those that had been destroyed, like the Corbrays. But more often than not integrated into the structure of the First Men directly and even swore to serve them, as happened with the Reach and other regions. This gives a massive insight into the nature of the Coming of the Andals, because it shows that it wasn't nearly as bloody an affair as you might imagine.”
“On the contrary, it shows that the Andals, in those places where they did fight directly and win, were more interested in subjugation than destruction. They wanted to take over Westeros and the Westerosi realms, not slaughter them all and use the few who survived as slaves. Indeed, if the Andals really were running from the threat of being the next on the Freehold's dinner plate – and they most likely were – then the reality of the situation would be that they don't really hate the First Men enough to want them dead in the first place, they're trying to find a place to live where they won't get slaughtered and enslaved by the Valyrians, a place where their loved ones can live in safety. If that means they have to swear fealty to kings of the First Men and fight their battles for them, then that's a fair bargain, and it would explain very well why they came to places like the Reach and were so quick to bend the knee rather than actually try and conquer the place despite the warm reception.”
Listen to me contradict myself on everything I pretended not to admit to just five minutes ago, in the hopes you won’t notice so that you can’t use these facts to destroy my argument as would otherwise be demanded by common sense.
“Hells, I'd even say it is easier to make that as an argument than do the inverse. Think Nymeria's invasion, but on a much larger scale and not bereft of the cornerstone of the Faith that proved so mighty. That said, I don’t hold it against you that you were so easily seduced by these slanted words and allusions. It is certainly easier to say that the Andals came to Westeros to get away from the Valyrians whether through war or peace, than to say that they came because they desired lands and castles when they already had them in the east.”
Never mind that the most impressive thing the Andals ever built was a wooden keep in Lorath. Never mind that Braavos and Pentos and everywhere else the Andals roamed have square towers at best. Never mind that the first and only attestation of Andal-Valyrian conflict has the Andals as the aggressors, when Qarlon the Would-be-Great King of all Andals attacked Norvos, and the Valyrians intervened to protect their colony, burning his army and all Andal lands up to the wooden keep in Lorath aforementioned. And certainly don’t you mind that the only reason the Eyrie exists is because the big, round castles and towers of the First Men made Roland Arryn’s cock feel small.
“For your notion, Lord Eddard, that the First men of the Vale might have created some odd realm of equals, this I absolutely do not buy in the slightest. Just because the clans themselves have that kind of equality does not mean that the First Men did. The Mountain Clans are as much a product of the Andal invasion as the Arryns themselves are, the peasantry of the realms of the First Men stripped of their nobles after Andal migrants seized their lands and properties, not some separate world of the original culture of the Vale.” But he’d just finished talking about all those noble houses and clans that did survive and flee there. “When your people are living on the fringes and fighting for their lives in the countryside, it isn't surprising that they'd start to veer away from any kind of governmental structure. If the mountain clans were to fight against the Vale, they had to develop such a thing, else the Arryns would have a list of targets that they could pick off to cripple their resistance and cut the clans off at the head.” They did have the list though. They’re called
chieftains. “Considering that the realms of the First Men are always shown as kingdoms and the like by historians, it is safe to say that this is how it was before as ell. As such, I completely dismiss the idea that the First Men in the Vale had a council of equals at all. That is at most just a development to keep their resistance when the Valemen hold practically every other advantage.”
Never mind that little thing called a
moot, those never happened, right Ned? Right?
“Finally, to your preposterous notions that the Andals took slaves, let me remind you that the Andals fled Essos to escape slavery.” Because it’s not like Valyria and Ghis were both slavers while they were bashing faces. “And ultimately, by your own choice of attestation, the worst the Andals ever did was not slavery but thraldom, and thraldom is actually a practice with a history that far precedes the arrival of the Andals to Westeros. It has been in Westeros for as long as men have been there to call it Westeros. This is not just where it comes from for the Ironborn, who are a distinct culture unto themselves, but also belonged to the First Men.
Further, thralldom should not be conflated with chattel slavery as it exists in certain of the Free Cities and lands farther east. Unlike slaves, thralls retain certain important rights. A thrall belongs to his captor, and owes him service and obedience, but he is still a man, not property. Thralls cannot be bought or sold. They may own property, marry as they wish, have children. The children of slaves are born into bondage, but the children of thralls are born free; any babe born on one of the islands is considered ironborn, even when both his parents are thralls. Nor may such children be taken from their parents until the age of seven, when most begin an apprenticeship or join a ship's crew.”
So let’s not mention the Ironborn because they’re not real First Men, but let me describe thraldom as it’s practiced by the Ironborn anyway.
Here, Ned finally broke silence. “If you’re planning to paint the First Men as slavers, we’re going to have a big problem, you and I.”
“Not at all. What worshippers of the Old Gods I have talked to all say that the Old Gods hold slavery to be an abomination. What I am trying to show you, Lord Eddard, is the simple reality of it. Neither the Andals nor the First Men practiced slavery.”
Now this surprised Robert so much it almost messed up his groove. He himself had found two different mentions of First Men kings making thralls of their rivals and their people. Could the man really not be aware of them? Then again, the other First Men kings around them destroyed the offenders pretty much immediately for it. But Urizen had pretended arguments weren’t arguments for
far more solid arguments than that, so why?
That aside, was the man arguing ancient history based on how things are like now? What?
“So while they may have both practiced the concept of thralldom at one time or another, but thralldom is not the same thing as slavery.” Oh, that’s why. “In fact, it is just a different way of referring to the serfdom practiced in the Stormlands and the Reach, which is the concept with which it shares the most. At most, it is indentured servitude, and even that has effectively died out in both the North and the South by the present era, with all the commonborn peoples of the land being just called smallfolk or peasants or what have you.” But the present era isn’t what you’re talking about, so how is that an argument? “That's the only way to square the circle – either the First Men and the Andals both engaged in it, in which case both of them are guilty of slavery, or thraldom is not slavery and thus neither of them did it, but practiced serfdom for a time together that ended before canon. But to say that the Andals practiced Essosi-style slavery is, in my honest opinion, beyond preposterous.”
Here are the two choices I’m giving you, because there can’t be others and you’re not allowed to have an opinion I didn’t feed you myself. Robert made a show of jumping to his feet, twisting and stretching so that nobody paid attention to him biting his own fist. Jon saw, but since the man had chosen not to interfere even once so far, Robert was fine ignoring him with the same ease he ignored his role as arbitrator.
“So, to sum everything up. The Andals weren’t monsters. The Andals weren’t slavers. And the Andals certainly perpetrated no genocide. And if all I’ve told you is somehow still not enough proof, there is one simple fact that proves it: people remember. You saw this for yourself soon after your initial arrival here. I trust I needn’t remind you of Lord Borrell of Sisterton, and what occurred when asked for a meeting with him after the events of the Spring Festivities?”
‘I have no love for northmen,’ Robert remembered with all the clarity of an undying grudge.
“The maesters say the Rape of the Three Sisters was two thousand years ago, but Sisterton has clearly not forgotten. They were a free people before that, with their kings ruling over them. Afterward, we had to bend our knees to the Eyrie to get the Northmen out. The wolf and the falcon fought over us for a thousand years, till between the two of them they had gnawed all the fat and flesh off the bones of those poor islands.” Yes, the poor pirates that raided your shores and killed your men and carried off the women and children along with all the food and wealth, feel bad for them Ned! “Crimes and atrocities of this kind are not forgotten. They become all but immortal, passed down from father to son and mother to daughter, perpetuated for eternity in song and recorded in writing. You cannot erase genocide.”
Yes you can. Also, you’re not talking about genocide if there are fathers and mothers and sons left for the story to be passed on. They’d all be dead instead, and the infamous Mark wouldn’t exist anymore either. Which means that what happened in the Sisters wasn’t genocide, unlike those dozens of First Men clans and houses and their hundreds of thousands or who knew how many people that don’t matter because only the fact they were all First Men matters.
“You can keep genocide out of conversation of course, but you cannot get rid of it. If the coming of the Andals was as bloody as you might think it to be, if they slaughtered their way through Westeros and forced the rest to their knees at the threat of death, people would remember this. You can't just snuff out the tale, try as you might. It will live on and be passed on. You don't just massacre tens of thousands of people and have everyone forget in a few generations. The same holds true here. If the Andal invasion was so bloody, why are there no accounts of it? Why do we see nothing written in books or the writings of maesters? Why do we hear nothing of singers and their ageless lament for those that have died? Why do we hear nothing of it in Winterfell, which might've recoiled in horror? Why is there no collective memory of such an act, when such acts should produce one? We know that the Andals did not massacre everyone in the South, so if they did do it, there would be people across the land who would remember, and the tale would have lived well to the present, recorded in song and scripture and statue and all the arts, in the North and in the South, so if a great slaughter that killed a vast number of the First Men had unfolded in the south, where is the memory of it?”
That written memory of it is precisely what he cited that start of this entire mess of a sermnon, Robert seethed but didn’t say. Not yet time to intervene. Not yet. You had to wait for a man to exhaust himself and deliver the coup de grace at the end, otherwise you’re liable to have your opponent huff and puff and pretend that strike you gave him in the beginning of the spar was a mild graze instead of a fatal strike to the neck. If there was anything Ned needed to learn more than holding a proper grudge, it was how to take things in proper order. Bringing up the genocidal slavery of the Andals at the start of the argument instead of the end was Ned’s biggest mistake.
Bigger only than Ned’s way of keeping quiet instead of arguing back when he thought the other person was hopeless. It made it easy for Septon to believe – or pretend to believe – Ned didn’t have a counter-argument when Ned really just thought the man was wasting his time with tangents that didn’t have their place. This was why the man only grew more shameless. This was why Ned was going to lose the argument even though he was right about everything.
“Finally,” the Septon said at length. “Because I know you will latch onto it if I don’t address
all of your points, chivalry is most assuredly an Andal concept, because all of the key tenants of chivalry are found in Andal society. This one sums itself up in the statement, and I could begin by talking about the blood sacrifices that the First Men committed historically, and the mention of entrails hanging in weirwood trees, but I have a far better thing to kill this particular thought dead once and for all. That thing is none other than the tradition of First Night.”
And here, as if to put paid to the notion that ‘finally’ should herald any sort of conclusion, the Septon went on his longest spiel yet. First he read out, word for word, the entire talk between Good Queen Alyssanne and Jaehaerys the Conciliator and Septon Barth about the tradition of First Night, straight out of the first and only published volume of Archmaester Gyldayn’s
Fire & Blood, Being a History of the Targaryen Kings of Westeros. Though it was all the ‘points’ Urizen made after that almost made Robert’s brain dribble out of his ears.
“Much as I’m sure you’ll take offense to hearing, Lord Eddard, Queen Alysanne only saw this practice whilst she was in the North; she met a multitude of girls and women who had all been raped by their lords under the ‘right” to the first night. And let’s not mince words, despite the ban the good King and Queen imposed, the practice continues in the North even now despite being extinct in the south. And it is this very concept of the right of the first night that is completely opposed to the concept of knighthood and chivalry in a way that simply cannot be reconciled - the very vows of a knight say to protect all women and defend the weak and the innocent, as is mentioned in the oath itself. ‘In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent. In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women.’ I trust I don’t need to recite the rest? A society that keeps the right of the First Night cannot be considered a society that seriously considers the chivalric ideal, yet alone is capable of being declared its homeland.”
But that was bullshit! Even if you ignored the fact that knights break their oath not to rape and pillage even when there isn’t a convenient war to act out, the only ones who make that oath are
knights. Many lords don’t become knights, and even those who do still get to do whatever they want! Hells, even sworn knights break their vows all the time. Or was this Robes’ way to finally meander around in the vague direction of the whole John the Oak thing?
“You can't have both a practice that preys upon women and then turn and say to defend all women,” Robes continued – again – as if he didn’t have counter-proof in the shape of nine out of every ten knights everywhere. Duncan the Tall and Aemon the Dragonknight were one in a million, considered exceptional
because they lived up to the oaths, and even so, the latter was said to have cucked the king himself! “Even though many people might only pay lip-service to such values rather than uphold them in truth, even that lip service is enough to strike it dead and strip off the legal protections that enshrined it in law and protected a lord from being declared a rapist...and yet, despite that, despite the practice practically dying off in the south to the point that the only instance we know of it being used there was Gargon Qoherys, it is still practiced in the North, and it is still a part of the culture of the First Men, even if we were to take the high road and say we’d have to go all the way to Skagos to find it. It took Targaryen power to kill it, and even then it still lingers like a ghost in the North, where it persists all the way to this day. If the First Night was a practice born of the First Men and persisted for thousands of years until the coming of the Andals, what does that say of their chances of being the originating point of chivalry as it exists in Westeros? The form of chivalry which puts the protection of women as one of its highest virtues? I think it says it all, actually, and that all is a simple ‘low.’”
Ned had long since let his head cradle in his hand, and the motion of straightening in his seat was near as painstaking as his tone. “So… your arguments can be summed up as… your interpretation of the same sources is the only correct one; the Andals were not just not
worse than the people whose land they invaded without cause, but morally superior; and this is indisputably proven by how things are
now, thousands years later, on the basis of a discussion not on chivalry but a completely different tradition, between two people that not only aren’t Andals themselves, but belong to the only family in the world that practiced first night more shamelessly than all the First men houses you can name.”
“Careful, Lord Eddard,” the Septon chided. “That’s getting rather near to treason.”
“Look, Septon. You have the gift of speaking, but you're prone to treating your own beliefs as truth instead of paying existing textual evidence its proper due. Since you decided to ever so
laboriously stop on this note, let me reiterate the
truth on the matter of chivalry. Chivalry is explicitly attributed to John the Oak, Garth Greenhand's son. By an unbroken civilisation with at least
two different lines of written records dating back before the long night, even if you discount my homeland as me being biased: House Oakheart, and the Citadel. You yourself acknowledge the importance of record keeping and whatnot in the Citadel's existence. But you still argue that somehow, because today’s so-called Andal society
currently happens to be chivalrous – never mind what knights really are like in practice – you argue that this
must mean the Andals invented chivalry. Never mind all this I have here,” Ned took several papers from his stack, though it was Jon he gave them to this time. “These are myriad attestation where the Andals only got the better of the Valemen because the latter were the honorable ones and assumed the Andals would abide by their word about alliances and whatnot. All the while, you seem to completely miss the much more likely explanation of the invaders being assimilated by the natives instead. And yes, this does include your religion.”
“Now those truly are are bold claims. I-“
“I’m not finished.” Ned growled. “I let you speak for nigh onto an hour. You will let me speak until I’m done.”
The septon pursed his lips but didn’t leave it without looking at Jon first.
Jon – Robert still couldn’t tell what he felt about this – shook his head and gestured to Ned to continue.
The Septon sat back and crossed his arms. “Fine, very well, go ahead Lord Eddard. The outcome will be the same either way.”
Promises, promises. Robert thought as he did his wind-down stretches. If he read the situation right, he should be cool and dry again by the time the storm breaks.
“By your own admission, you tell the smallfolk there are seven gods instead of one because they are too stupid to understand seven aspects.” That had been several ‘debates’ ago, Robert recalled. “If you can lie about something that fundamental, you expect me to believe you can’t be wrong about anything else, deliberately or otherwise? Religion is just a way to control the masses, and therefore subject to revision as needed. Which seems to have happened in every way that matters. ‘How did the Andals transform’ you ask, are you kidding? By your own claim – which you are infinitely proud of – the Andals switched from whatever they had before to the Faith of the Seven within a single generation!”
Whoa, Ned! What’s with the raised voice? Ned was getting pissed, since when did Ned lose his temper before Robert did? Danger, danger!
“You speak as if the survival of the First men societal structure is entirely due to Andal magnanimity,” Ned seethed, finally touching on some of Robert’s own thoughts. “As if the resistance, rivalry and ultimate triumph of the other kingdoms against you had no stake in the matter at all. Can you even stomach admitting why the Andals went for the Vale first? They weren't a proper unified kingdom, just a bunch petty kings and chieftains meeting occasionally for a moot – which I noticed you entirely left out while you made your dismissal of the Clans as they were at the time. Meanwhile, the North had already finished consolidating its half of the continent, and the Stormlands had become a unified kingdom even before then. If the Andals had invaded any of those places, they’d have been slapped down and turned into beach ornaments. In fact, they were! And those
similarities between the Andals and First Men that you only bring up when it suits you, and so much else you argued, so-called – do you not realise that looking at present circumstances and arguing on that alone, that this
must have been the nature of things and events
thousands of years past, is disingenuous to the point of insanity? You think I can’t see the implications in the apparent moral similarities between North and South despite the former being the
only one that did not change from the Old Way? Should I even bother destroying this entire notion of Andal ancestral values you profess to have, or will you just go on a tangent and pretend to have counter-argued when you never did such a thing at all?”
“No indeed,” Robes said blandly. “Though if you wish me to reiterate my points with yet more arguments, then why don’t you answer some of my questions in turn? Much of the Andal invasion proceeded via diplomatic integration of the two factions, as was the case of the Reach and other major kingdoms that the Andals could not conquer. How could this have possibly occurred if the Andals had the reputation of genocidal monsters, come from the east to slaughter and enslave?” Because you lost a few hundred wars in the meantime, and underwent several hundred years’ worth of culture shift as a result, duh. “It is even written that the founder of the Arryns married one of the Children of the Forest, who died giving birth to his child. If the Andals were brutal conquerors, why would he marry one of them, and more still, why would the conquering Andals have any interest in recording potential descent from one of them?”
“Gods below, that was an entirely
different Artys Arryn dating back to the Age of Heroes, or are you going to claim the Arryns themselves can’t tell them apart? Jon, what do you say to this?”
“… I believe I will defer for now,” Jon said at length. “Ask me again after this is over.”
Robert was stunned. How could he? How could he just do that?
Urizen nodded as if he won the point. “Why would houses of the First Men in the Reach, Westerlands and Stormlands marry into Andals ones if they knew that they had just slaughtered thousands of people just like them? Why would they have accepted such people into their homes, when their hands were still wet with the blood of so many others like them?” Because the First Men made you pay in blood for all of them and then some, duh! And there was never such an alliance that didn’t happen without an Andal hostage or five as insurance! “Another question, and this one is for you yourself, Lord Eddard: why would the Northmen have ever accepted the Andalic Manderlys into the North? Indeed, how did Andal culture propagate through Westeros if it carried the stain of a genocide?”
“The Manderlys aren’t Andals,” Ned interrupted, voice as cold as all the snows of the last winter combined. “If you expect to persuade me you
aren’t a liar or at least completely misinformed, you are failing badly.”
“Oh please. Hardly anyone in Westeros is left that is pure Andal or First Man.”
Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit, did he not realise who he was talking to? Did he not realize how many of his own arguments he was contradicting? Again? Did he not realise what a perfect opening this was for the counter-argument that this
must mean the Andals were counter-assimilated – and then some – or this would never have happened? Would Ned see the opening? Would he take it?
He didn’t.
“Finally, tell me this: if the Andals really were a genocidal, slaving people on the march, how did they ever transform into the form we see now? If they had done that and achieved domination over Westeros, so much so that the Faith even assimilated its peoples, why would there be any need for what would effectively be a fundamental reconstruction of their society above and beyond any point of recognition? Clearly, it was because-”
“Stop passing off my arguments as yours, you lying serpent!” Ned howled, standing up so fast that his chair toppled back with a crash.
Robert gaped.
There was a strained silence.
Ned took a deep breath and dragged the nearby chair over to sit back down on. “The only reason there wasn’t a genocide of the First Men is because the Andals tried but
failed. The only reason your Faith still exists is because your holy war to shove it down the throats of everyone in whatever form it had starting out
failed. The only reason you can sit there and make such insolent claims that you brought the light of the Seven to Westeros is because your own religion was turned inside out and changed to suit the people of these lands. Or will you somehow claim all the records about the North rejecting Andal influence are also all wrong? How are the greatest tenets of the New and Old way so similar? Why are the highest standards the same North and South of the Neck? Oathkeeping, guest right, kinslaying, protect those under you, all of them are First men traditions dating back to the Dawn of Days. Are you going to claim the Andals were the origin of all of that too?”
“Such is the nature of myth,” Robes shrugged, and no, he couldn’t have just…? “And so we come again to the issue of chivalry.” He did, unbelievable, what did he think he still had left to- “You keep mentioning John the Oak, who is regarded as the father of chivalry within the Reach, but there is a caveat to that which needs to be said – he did not invent it, he
brought it there. And yes, I do have written proof of this as well.” Vellum rustled under Robert’s disbelieving eyes, wasn’t it Robes that just went on a rant about how wording shouldn’t be trusted, what was he- “’John the Oak, the First Knight, who
brought chivalry to Westeros. A huge man, all agree, eight feet tall in some tales, ten or twelve feet tall in others, sired by Garth Greenhand on a giantess. His own descendants became the Oakhearts of Old Oak.” Robes put the vellum down. “Now, there are actually two words that slide directly into this point, and which neutralizes this as a line of thought outright. The first is that he is referred to as a knight, which is an Andal title.” In the common tongue, that didn’t mean- “The second is that he brought it to the Reach, which implies that it does not originate in that place.” Because
nothing originates in the Reach, he may well have been already alive when Garth showed up the second time and brought the First Men along, how was this complicated? “There are now multiple ways to proceed from that realization and understanding, because we can't exactly take one half of the account and accept it and then dismiss the other as nonsense, as that's just picking and choosing what you want to accept as true or not.” Oh, he finally realised it!? “Possibility one: the text is true, and thus John the Oak was a knight, which means that he was either an Andal or visited a culture with a similar concept of knighthood and got the concept from them - as such, chivalry comes from the Andals, who are stated multiple times to be the source of knighthood; compare and contrast them to the Northmen, who don't go around calling each other knights.” But the North has had Masters for thousands of years and their own word for it in Old Tongue and- “And the second possibility: the text is false and thus John the Oak was not a knight, which means that he did not bring chivalry to the Reach. This would make him a mythological figure, someone who isn't actually real, but made up to give the Oakhearts a stronger lineal claim. That's fine, and entirely reasonable, but it means that the concept of chivalry came from elsewhere, which leads back to the only faction that actually has knights – the Andals, so once again, the Reach gets it from them.”
Ned sat back in his chair, gaping stupidly. “You’re delusional.”
“Not at all. There is simply no evidence to say that chivalry originated in Westeros other than that statement, and it is has two serious flaws in it.” But absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence, that’s one of the first thing the Maester said when he began teaching them rhetoric! And who was he to claim what evidence did or didn’t exist outside whatever stuff he read or didn’t? Sweeping claims, Jon, sweeping claims everywhere, Jon say something! “It, like the idea of Brandon the Builder being born in the Reach, cannot truly be considered to be serious statements of absolute logic. Or will you next try to claim Garth Greenhand’s myth is true as written? Keep in mind there were many of them, often conflicting in nature.”
Ned closed his mouth but still he continued to stare. “You just seriously claimed John the Oak was an Andal.” Never mind that he was Garth Greenhand’s son who dated to the beginning of the Age of Heroes, well before the Andals even existed and the Long Night itself. “You’re insane.”
“Hardly.” The Septon smiled mildly. “In fairness to you, many of the more primitive peoples of the earth worship a fertility god or goddess, and Garth Greenhand has much and more in common with these deities. It was Garth who first taught men to farm, it is said. Before him, all men were hunters and gatherers, rootless wanderers forever in search of sustenance, until Garth gave them the gift of seed and showed them how to plant and sow, how to raise crops and reap the harvest. In some tales, he tried to teach the elder races as well, but the giants roared at him and pelted him with boulders, whilst the children laughed and told him that the gods of the wood provided for all their needs. Where he walked, farms and villages and orchards sprouted up behind him. About his shoulders was slung a canvas bag, heavy with seed, which he scattered as he went along. His bag was inexhaustible; within were seeds for all the world's trees and grains and fruits and flowers. All quite befitting of a god, not a man. I'm sure that the idea that the Reach was led by a literal god king in ancient days is popular there, but I wouldn't exactly take it and the ideas revolving around it with anything less than a fistful of salt.”
Gods preserve him, if any of them were real at all, what next? Was he going to claim Bran the Builder never existed despite his being the first tomb in Winterfell’s crypt? Was Robes going to claim the Andals invented reading? Writing? Fostering? Westeros’ whole mythology? The Order of the Green Hand!? Ned, the Smith just blessed the Faithful with a ship so fine it sails against the wind, quick! Let’s find and run away on it before another one of them Greyjoys beats us to it and disappears into the sunrise! I don’t care whatshisname already has half the Iron Fleet, you think he’ll say no to one more? Don’t you judge me, look at all them old cunts that got a mermaid bride, I want one too! … Although a wolf bride wouldn’t be too bad either since we’re on the subject –
“Jon,” Ned said, his voice suddenly weary, disappointed and resigned – again with being so freakin’ resigned! “That’s it. I’m done.”
Well fine.
Robert was done with waiting too.