TyrantTriumphant
Well-known member
That's fair.
The Logistics of Good Living (ASOIAF, Brandon Stark SI)
- Thread starter Karmic Acumen
- Start date
That.But theology speak was not totally unrelated - it seems,that at least that one septon decided to become protestant - only Faith etc.If all others follow,that nothing change,but if not - we would have cyvil war between protestants and old Faith.
P.S - great chapter.
Tachikoma's Aunt
Verified Crazy Lady
@Karmic Acumen, this is easily the best ASoIaF fic we have ever read. Keep up the good work.
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
Thanks! Not to tout my own horn, but I do feel vindicated whenever someone expresses such viewpoints!
I'm only surprised sch a split didn't happen in the backstory - once the Faith Militant was gone, the ability of the Faith to maintain a unified power base should have broken down within two generations.
That aside, anyone here have links to anything resemblign in-depth analysis of Jon Arryn? I've been looking online for stuff on him, as you do when you have to figure out unseen characters that were only ever talked about second-hand. It turns out that there is surprising division on him - some people think he was a standard honor before reason type, some think he was a manipulative bastard, some think he was content in the Vale, others say he'd been planning to depose the Targaryens since before the war of the Ninepenny kings, some people even believe he deliberately installed Baelish and was stealing from the crown for the entirety of Robert's rule. I've been having trouble finding the original sources for these various viewpoints though.
My opinion - solid feudal Lord who belived in honour,but do everything what must be done for family.His plans was always to heep Arryns safe and powerfull.
Which was fucked when his heir died in war.After that he tried and failed,becouse Baelish tricked and killed him.
But - i do not think that he had some great plan from the start,or that he was suicidally honorable,like Ned.
No,he have good plans to deal with what come to him,which worked till it not.
Chapter II.2: Grinding Teeth Do Not a Gay Storm Make (V)
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
“-. 278 AC .-“
Today was the day.
Not the whole day though. Ned had finally finished the latest chapter in ‘A Game of Thrones’ and there was no victory to be had there for anybody. It made him guiltily relieved, not that he’d tell anyone that. Robert’s favorite character had gotten himself murdered by a pig half-way through the book, so it was a nice change to see everyone else getting kicked in the teeth, if not quite in the same way. He still cursed himself, though, for getting invested in a story he couldn’t skim all the way to the end first to see how it ended (who ever heard of publishing a book chapter by chapter? Madness!). He should’ve known not to expect anything good out of someone with such a stupid name too. What kind of name even was Bastian Cornpile anyway? And he had the balls to claim he was just ‘editing’ what all was written by some lout named Raymond something. Why would whatshisname try to distance himself from his own handiwork? Even he knew the story was shit, that’s why!
Curse Ned for getting him invested, he was the worst friend ever!
Though considering his own favorite character got crippled, imprisoned and then unlawfully executed by an incest-born bastard pretender, and because it only happened because his wife browbeat him into taking a post he didn’t want, and because said wife then went behind his back to confide in their worst enemy – thus forcing him into the worst and dumbest collaboration ever – AND because she then went against all his orders and started a five-way war to the knife that got her husband killed for the high crime of trying to keep the peace, Robert was going to forgive him.
Still, he sometimes wished he’d never heard of this ‘newspaper’ thing, at least on those days when it didn’t make the Septon or Maester burst a blood vessel. It was a pipedream of course, now that the North was selling it all over the place.
The Winds of Winter.
Ha! It sure went and broke some mighty stinking winds, he’d give it that.
“Well this is a fine mess to end a dynasty on, isn’t it?” Jon said blandly as he leaned back in his chair at the game table. “What have we learned from this?”
Denys scoffed as he knocked over his cyvasse pieces. “Don’t listen to your crazy wife when she tells you to hand the treasury over to her even crazier childhood sweetheart?”
“Quite.” Jon said dryly, looking around the table. “Anyone else?”
As if you won’t put all of us through the wringer anyway, Robert thought with a grunt as he finished his last squat and put the barbell back onto its rack.
“What’s the point?” Elbert groused. He was still grumpy over the second of the king’s brothers bravely running away like the first. “The good guys lost.”
“I suppose you could look at it that way.”
“We need a timeline,” Elys said.
“Here you go.” Ned produced and unfolded a large sheet of paper, because of course he did.
Robert finished wiping himself of sweat, let his towel hang over his neck and took a seat opposite Alyssa. She wrinkled her nose at him despite being the farthest away from him out of everyone. She always did pretend to hate the smell of man when he was there. She’d never forgiven him for getting her spirited away to Old Anchor, even though she came out of it with some of her best life experiences, a whole bunch of connections, and a lifelong friend. Robert waited for her to meet his eyes, smirked at her, and then dismissed her as insolently as he could in favour of the ‘timeline.’ Her glare soothed the dark pit of spite gnawing at his soul that he was still an hour or two from finally filling with vindication.
And then some.
A Game of Thrones, by Raymond Richard
edited by Bastien Cornpile
"-. Timeline of Major Events .-"
(compiled by Eddard Stark)
edited by Bastien Cornpile
"-. Timeline of Major Events .-"
(compiled by Eddard Stark)
- John Griffin is murdered by his wife Eloise Mudd at the bidding of Peter Shell, Lord of the Fingers, and he also directs her to send a raven to her sister, Cathryn Stark, suggesting that the Casterlys did it;
- Brandon Stark (Bran the Younger) is pushed out a window (by Semaj Casterly);
- A catspaw attempts to kill Bran after his fall leads to a severe head injury and long sleep;
- Cathryn Mudd Stark travels to Highgarden with the dagger the catspaw used in the attack on Bran, to find out who was behind the attempt on her son’s life;
- Peter Shell convinces her that the dagger belongs to Lann Casterly;
- Cathryn seizes Lann with the help of Riverlands men praying at High Heart on her way back north, and takes him to the Griffin King’s palace in the Vale of the Moon, where her widowed sister now sat the Crescent Chair on behalf of her young son;
- In response to a Casterly being seized, Corlos Casterly sends Reigo Giantskin and his army of Skinchngers to raid the Trident, to draw Brandon Stark out of the Reach. At the same time, Semaj Casterly has a fight with Brandon Stark in Highgarden, which results in Brandon’s leg breaking due to mysterious outside interference – he can’t go out to war where he can be killed in battle or assassinated out of sight of the Oakenseat. Brandon sends Brice Dondarrion and his men out to battle Reigo Giantskin instead;
- Word comes from across the sea that Garth Greenhand has died in the Corpse City of Stygai beneath the Shadow. Prince Garth II ascends to the Throne of the First Men, but dies days later in a hunt against the legendary golden boar whose tusks he wanted to carve into bands for his wife’s crown. Lann the Younger takes the Oakenseat. Brandon is arrested and imprisoned on orders of the new Queen Regent, Serice Casterly.
- Durran Godsgrief, Garth Greenhand’s goodson, rebels and declares himself Storm King, denouncing Lann the Younger and his siblings as illegitimate bastards. John the Oak, Garth Greenhand’s son, also declares himself King, believing he is the only one that can restore honor and chivalry to the realm after such a disgrace;
- Lann the Elder denies the accusations Cathryn makes about sending a catspaw after Bran. He challenges anyone to make him eat his words, but there is no one brave enough to do so. The sisters sentence him to death anyway, by banishment into the Mountains of the Moon to die as prey to the direbears, griffins and other beasts that nest there. He survives, impresses a skinchanger by leveraging his giant size and strength to wrestle his bear skin into submission, recruits all the clans who reject the right of a foreigner to sit the Griffin Throne, and leaves the Vale.
- Cregan Stark, Brandon’s eldest son, calls his armies and comes south to fight the Casterlys as a result of Brandon’s arrest.
- Urras Greyiron returns to the Iron Islands as an envoy of Cregan, just in time to witness his father, the Grey King, walk back into the sea to return to the right hand of his Father. Urras is elected High King of the Iron Islands and begins making plans to reclaim supremacy of the Five Seas, starting with the entire west coast of Westeros;
- The Splintering of the First Men begins.
“-. .-“
“So…” Jon said after everyone had time to digest the utter butchery that whatshisname dared make of the Age of Heroes. Ned’s inexplicable indulgence towards the book and its mysterious author notwithstanding. “At which point did the war actually start?”
Robert scowled when Jon’s eyes lingered more on him than everyone else. Jon always made a big lesson every time a new chapter was added to this travesty. It was like he didn’t think Robert was well enough read on any other stories or something. Did he miss all the reading aloud Ned had done over the years? The Maester must have been speaking calumny against him again. Vengeance would be his! With eggs soaked in vinegar!
Thank you Elbert for that particular trick.
Or Jon was just hounding Robert because Ned had long since gone in the other extreme of debating things.
“I can’t even decide at this point,” said Alyssa with a huff that she really didn’t need to put so much effort into seeming dainty. It’s not like people could look past those plump breasts to appreciate it any. “Eloise is a complete nutter, but nobody actually found out what she did. Cathryn, though, somehow decided that arresting Lann the Clever in the middle of a crowded inn was a good idea.”
On the one hand, that sounded like it made sense, especially if her theory about that particular Lann being the Lann ended up being true. Eventually. Years from now. Maybe. Would be a good twist to the obvious giant heritage that couldn’t have come from either of his Casterly parents. On the other hand, it went to show that even the most earnest interest in ‘the talk of you menfolk’ wasn’t substitute for ability. And Alyssa’s interest had never actually been earnest, so much as a spiteful demand from her father to ‘make it up to her’ for going along with Robert’s ‘evil’ plan.
“Robert?” Shit, Jon noticed! “Any thoughts on that?”
“Plenty,” Robert grunted, stretching his arms over his head until his bones popped. Alyssa pretended not to stare, that randy lassie. “But I’d not want to rob anyone else of the chance to shine.”
“Your glibness does you no credit.”
No, but it did maintain his image as scatter-brained oaf until the proper time, which would be soon so Jon would just have to keep his breeches on.
Jon sighed. “Ned?”
Ned started. He was always distracted these days. Not for much longer though, Robert vowed all over again. “… The high lords have the rights of pit and gallows and are responsible for enforcing the law. Cathryn was acting as Lady of the Barrows and the daughter and envoy of the Lord of the Trident. Seizing Lann on suspicion of having arranged the assassination of Bran was within her authority and not an act of war.”
No, it was just foolish and treasonous to her husband and his holdings because it went in direct opposition to the orders he gave her to go back to Barrow Hall, man Moat Cailin, and tell their son to call the banners from the very start. She also didn’t tell their son to keep Greyiron close until after her many bad decisions destroyed his trust in her and he refused on principle.
“Brandon sending Brice Dondarrion and his men to police the violence along the Trident wasn’t an act of war either.” Elbert said. Unprompted. Jumping to defend Ned’s chosen favorite so he wouldn’t look biased while doing it himself, the loyal lad. Good boy! “He expressly charged Brice and the other men with the mission to protect the smallfolk, stop the violence and bring the Rivers and Hills to order. This is simply policing the King’s Peace once it has been broken.”
Jon smiled and nodded. Elbert tried and failed not to preen. Silly boy, if he deserved to feel proud, he should feel proud!
“It has to do with the offense of Breach of the Peace,” Jon lectured. “Or more precisely, its origin. Breach of the Peace is one of the oldest offences in Westerosi law. As Maester Frederick has detailed in his book 'The King’s Peace’, it can be traced back to the regard in First Man law for the sanctity of the homestead. Every man was entitled to peace in his own house. If his peace was disturbed – by brawling, fighting, or even name-calling and other incivilities – the offender would owe him special amends. If the peace of the King’s home was breached, this was of course more serious than for the common man, and the offender risked being slain. The King’s peace was eventually extended from his home and roads to the whole kingdom. Whosoever breached the peace breached the King’s peace and risked doom. So, considering this, at which point did the war actually start?”
“So we blame it all on Casterly after all?” Alyssa frowned. “And here I thought that was too easy.”
Aly tended to overthink things until she got tired and decided with her heart instead of her head. It was why she’d taken it as a personal insult that Robert ‘beat’ her in ‘her’ area of expertise and decided she wanted to return the favour in his. So far, she hadn’t come close. Not that Robert was going to say so, the faces she made every time he ‘got his own back’ were too funny.
A tumble would probably solve the whole thing right and proper, but Jon would be upset even if Elys wasn’t, and Aly still hadn't earned that honor. Besides, she was betrothed.
“So it was Casterly then,” Alyssa muttered. “He deliberately breached the king’s peace to draw out Brandon Stark and pressure him through military force into releasing Lann. Corlos assumed that Cathryn acted on Brandon’s orders, because of course she couldn’t have an idea of her own.”
“And Brandon gave the same lie to Semaj in their confrontation to protect Cathryn – and her father, in whose name she also acted – from further repercussions if Casterly’s words got to either Garth’s ears,” Elbert mused, emboldened. “But the method Corlos used was far over and above the reasonable options open to him. He could have sued for Lann’s return in front the Prince during court, embarrassing Brandon and undermining his authority as Hand, while forcing Garth to choose between his brother and the law.”
“But he didn’t,” Elbert continued after a glance to Ned showed him what Robert had already seen – Ned was distracted. Or, rather, he was thinking deeply about other things to come now that he’d made his contribution to the discussion. “He went straight to war. He decided, again, that Corlos Casterly was above the law and could do as he pleased. So he did. News trickled into Highgarden as representatives of attacked areas came to tell the Prince – or his Hand, as the Prince was off hunting and drinking – what is happening.”
And then Stark was stuck trying to figure out how to retaliate against Corlos Casterly without looking like it was a Stark/Mudd versus Casterly fight. Then there was the First Men’s way where the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword, which Brandon couldn’t do because of his shattered leg. So he sent out Brice and his men. And that was the start of the Shattering of the First Men into different kingdoms.
“There is one critical factor I want you all to take from this,” Jon continued. “For all the atrocities committed by and against such ones as the Vulture Kings or the Wyl of Wyl, we men of Westeros are not the Dothraki savages, or whatever slaving scum rules Essos this year or what have you. We hold ourselves apart by dint of honour, if nothing else. We have rules for war. How else could you make peace with enemies, if not at least some barebone rules of engagement? That is what guest right grew to be. That is how chivalry came to be.” And wasn’t that a wildfire keg just waiting to blow up and drive Ned to another late night of muttering terrible curses and condemnations from that mysterious notebook of mystery. “And the idea of the Rules of War is to try and make war less awful than it is, while recognising that it is still a barbarity. That means limitations: there must be distinction between military and non-military personnel and infrastructure. There must be proportionality in attacks. Attacks should only be made for military necessity. And the attacks must not cause unnecessary suffering.”
Tell that to the Dornish and Tywin Lannister. And a lot of people in certain people’s history that Robert would have a grand old time throwing in certain faces before long.
“That’s not even all he did to break the rules of armed conflict really,” Denys said. “The Bloody Mummers led by Reigo Giantskin were not raiding under Casterly banners. They passed themselves as rogue brigands bringing misery. This was a tactic of Corlos – a dirty one. Soldiers don’t wear identifiable uniforms just so they can tell their allies from the enemy, they’re also there so that their enemies know who to target – this is the principle of distinction. If you commit acts of war without an identifiable uniform or emblem that marks you as a member of an armed force in the armed conflict, you are not entitled to protected status as a member of an armed force. Only soldiers get to go home after stealing cattle, raiding villages and sacking a city after a siege and claim asset denial. If you’re not a soldier, you’re just a brigand and deserve to be treated with the entire weight of the law.”
“But…” Elbert frowned. “That sounds like…”
Denys looked at Elbert sympathetically and gave voice to what he couldn’t. “It means the Rules of War aren’t just a way to make war less monstrous. They’re also a scaffolding that permits actions that would otherwise be unlawful.”
“… That sounds backwards.”
“That is the nature of war,” Jon said.
Denys nodded. “On the flip side, though, if you don’t play by the rules, you don’t get to ask the rules to apply to you later.”
That made Robert wonder about spies. The rules of War didn’t sound like they forbid them. Which made sense because they were used in peace time all the time too. On the other hand, spies broke the principle of distinction, so did that mean they weren’t protected like civilians or prisoners? Priests? Camp followers?
The thought didn’t linger long because the steward knocked to let Jon know they’d reached the end of their family time.
Talk about spies would probably have started a tangent lasting hours, Robert decided, but fortunately there was still a while until Ned and the Septon’s great debate. The last one, because Jon had reached the end of his patience after how badly the last dozen had gone. Robert was only surprised Jon was still up for playing arbiter after the first and last time he tried, but he supposed the man was serious when he said this would be the last one or else.
Robert honestly couldn’t blame him, seeing as even the Maester had finally given up and refused to arbitrate anymore last month. When even the most learned man in the castle – and possibly the kingdom – can’t find references for even a third of your arguments without a day’s research, it’s probably a sign you’ve gone too far and are never going to agree anyway. Robert lost count of how many times he daydreamed about punching faces and knocking heads together. He didn’t know how Jon handled it, but the man barely had to slam his hand on the tabletop to make sure they waited for the other to have his turn speaking.
And Robert once thought he and the Maester were at odds. Ha! Now the man was all smiles with him because Robert saw to his own books and reading without bothering him. It never occurred to the man that Robert had an ulterior motive. Which hey, rude, but that was what Robert wanted all along. He wasn’t about to bemoan his own success!
Not that Ned or the Septon even cared about that anymore, it seemed like. It was why Robert was going behind both their backs – he’d reached the end of his patience too. He was tired of Ned never doing anything besides read and take notes and mutter darkly next to the candle every night. He wanted Ned to stop having to stop himself from punching Robert in the face for ragging on him for being obsessed, like he did when Robert went through his things that one time. He wanted Ned to stop begging off and forgetting about their plans together and having to apologise later. And he wanted Ned to stop always looking so angry and so freaking resigned!
He wanted his friend back. He’d get him back if it’s the last thing he did!
And nothing and nobody was gonna stop him. Not maesters, not priests, not Jon, not the entirety of written history, not even you bunch, you hear that gods?
Alright then.
But first, some time to himself! His foe may be worn down by years of skirmishes with his only declared foe in the Vale, but he was still determined, and his ability to ramble on and on until you forgot the original point you were making remained undiminished. Robert couldn’t go in there half-cocked, he had to rally the little hammer men that lived in his head and kept his brain in tip-top shape. Fortunately, the Eyrie made that easy. Nothing like climbing to the top of the Moon Tower to make you feel like you were on top of the world. So that’s what he did – climbed up from Jon’s solar instead of down like the rest. He had to pass through Jon’s chambers to reach the highest balcony, but Jon didn’t mind so the guards on his door didn’t either.
Robert emerged on top of the world just as the sun slipped behind the sharp roof behind him, allowing him to enjoy the wind and the view without problems. They were closer to the solstice than the equinox now, so the days were getting shorter. The falcons were still flying high near the castle though. His fingers itched for his bow, but they weren’t why he was there today no matter how tasty they looked.
The Eyrie was the smallest of the great castles in Westeros, made of a cluster of seven slim, white towers bunched tightly together. That was about how much space the builders could eke out of the top of the Giant’s Lance where it was built. For all that, though, the Eyrie also had barracks and stables carved directly into the mountain, a massively oversized granary – comparable to the one in Winterfell according to Ned, if you didn’t count the People’s Store – and stood several thousand feet above the valley below, making it capable of comfortably surviving extended sieges and remain practically impregnable. If you didn’t have dragons anyway. Or those giant falcons that Artys Arryn (the first one) supposedly used that didn’t seem to exist anywhere else in history or myth. Neither before nor after the story about him overthrowing the Griffin King way back when.
It was a very pretty place too, even if Robert thought Roland Arryn could have survived without whatever vanity crisis made him import stone all the way from Tarth. From the lowest slab of the sept’s floor to the top of the tallest tower, the castle was made of white marble with blue veins in the stone walls, the same hue as the sky-blue cloaks of the household guard. The Maester said people still debated which came first to this day (the stone, obviously).
Robert leaned over the railing and breathed slowly in and out like Ned taught him, just watching everything below. Listening too. The cries of the hawks. The whistling of the winds. When his belly was full and his breath stalled, he could even hear the echoes of Alyssa’s Tears, the waterfall on the western side of the Giant's Lance, whose water never reached the floor of the valley below. Legend said it got its name from an ancient She-Arryn who saw her family butchered before her and never shed a tear. Which Alyssa and which House Arryn, Robert didn’t know. The place had made for some nice japes at Aly’s expense though, when they finally met again after she ‘suffered’ the ‘torment’ of Robert’s ‘evil’ plan. Complete nonsense of course, almost as big as the legend itself. There was no way that water was made of tears.
Not enough salt.
Not even after Aly tried to get into his pants after he pretended obliviousness one too many times. The tearful sobs she wailed at him for refusing were only outmatched by the tearful admonitions she spat in his face when he caught her wrist instead of letting her slap him like some ninny. Honestly, just because he wouldn’t tumble with her didn’t automatically mean he thought she was lower than the whores!
Elys had pretended relief after, Jon had been proud of his restraint, and Ned was to this day atrociously mistaken that Robert had at any point thought about so and so’s outrageous impeachment that Robert couldn’t keep it in his pants, but fuck Brandon Stark anyway.
Robert decided it was time to distract himself before he misaimed his, er, enthusiasm in the upcoming war.
Looking down, he spied the doors to the Crescent Chamber, the Eyrie's reception hall where guests were given refreshments and warmed by the fire after making the climb up the Giant's Lance. The memory of Septon Urizen eating bread and salt while Ned counted his bites still made Robert smile, even if it had taken Robert days to understand why Ned had been so upset.
Going back inside, he descended back to Jon’s solar, smiled winningly at the maids that paused in cleaning the Myrish carpet to swoon back, helped them move the trestle table on the way out – those oak-and-leather chairs were heavy – and exited onto the ramparts instead of continuing on down. Took the flight of steep marble stairs down to the Crescent Chamber, past the Eyrie's undercrofts and dungeons, so-called. He’d have to leave word with the head maid that the murder holes were collecting mold again. The portcullis atop the stairs could do with some oiling too. It creaked as he passed into the arcade.
The arcade itself was freshly dusted though, and the tapestries as vibrant as ever. Robert scowled at them. Almost half of them were gifts from the Faith that Urizen had presented to Jon. Or to his nearby knights so they could then gift them to Jon. They were fancy things that depicted glorious scenes from House Arryn’s past. There had been one of the Seven too, in the style of the stained glass that all but the poorest septs had along the top. But Jon had ‘graciously’ gifted it back to the Septon to hang inside the parsonage instead, because ‘he’d never dare to make first claim on the Seven when that right is exclusive to their earthly representatives.’ Robert remembered it being fancier than all the others, but what he really wanted to know was why the Father had a weirwood in the background. Robert still hadn’t gotten an answer. Even Ned didn’t have one despite sleeping on it for a week, though he believed it had something to do with how Ronald Arryn and all the others who worked on the Eyrie spent decades trying to grow a weirwood up there. Despite the Faith of the Seven preaching an even more genocidal persuasion towards the Children of the Forest and the Old Gods than the First Men ever did.
The weirwood never took. Even after all the soil brought up again and again from the valley below. They ended up turning the planned godswood into a garden instead. Robert passed through it on the way to the High Hall, glancing up to Jon’s apartments when he heard noises – maids shaking out the carpets. There were some nice shrubs though. He grabbed some currants as he passed by, though what he was really looking forward was the gooseberries, since they at least had some meat on them. Soon, my pretties, soon.
He ignored the statue of the weeping woman at the center. Whoever figured it made for a good time out in the sun was an idiot. Robert couldn’t think of many things that were more un-arousing. He’d tried.
He bypassed the Lower Hall too. That would come later, when he and Elbert would corral Ned there for food and wine. Had Ned even broken his fast that day? Robert didn’t see him go in or out of the Morning Hall, and Elbert had another one of his early cravings and he swore up and down Ned hadn’t been to the kitchens either.
He stopped briefly before entering the High Hall, doing the northern breathing again. The sentries had been amused at first, but now they took it as a cue to do it too. Nothing like becoming impervious to the high chill to turn people around. That it helped pass the time and soothed aching feet helped too. Robert grinned knowingly at them both before going in. His good mood soured as quickly as always though. Not because of the room itself, that was fine. The High Hall was long and sober, made of the same blue-veined white marble, with the weirwood throne of the Arryns at the far end, flanked on both sides by arched narrow windows and torches held in sconces made of silver and iron. The issue was the other thing.
The Moon Door. A narrow weirwood door that stood between two slender pillars in the High Hall. A crescent moon was carved into the door, which opened inward, and was barred by heavy bronze. The door opened into the sky. Robert had witnessed many an execution done through that door. They always screamed as they fell the six hundred foot drop to the stones of the valley below. A lot.
The Eyrie was conceived as a pleasure palace, and nowhere was that more obvious than in the issues an acting Lord presided over during court. Or rather, the issues he didn’t. One thing Robert hadn’t considered properly until it smacked him in the face was that the Eyrie was built on top of a mountain. The very hazardous, steep and tallest peak of the mountain. Where only the foolish, crazy or desperate climbed even on their best day. Even without accounting for the raids by the mountain clans, which were always a matter of when. Even the people with valid grievances didn’t make the journey. Too difficult, too dangerous, too much time to go up and down, the reasons were as many as they were good.
It made for exceedingly few petitioners even on crowded days, especially compared to court days at the Gates of the Moon. Besides forcing Jon to travel down to the Gates of the Moon every two weeks (at least, and he was an exception), it meant that the majority of issues presided over in the High Hall were by people who were forced to be there. Or dragged there. In chains.
Robert had very few memories of the place where he didn’t have to watch an execution. Not for the first time, he wondered what Ned thought about it. Probably nothing good. The most he could ever get out of him was, well, the one big point that ever stressed the relationship between Ned and Jon.
“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.”
The High Hall was Robert’s least favorite place.
The only thing that came close was the Sky Cells. Imprisoning people in shelves on the side of the mountain's sheer cliffs, left open to the cold sky, with slightly sloping floors really said something about Jon’s ancestors. How many prisoners were driven mad by the cold and howling wind and commited suicide rather than remain imprisoned? Ned said it was a very convenient way to get rid of troublesome innocents. Troublesome nobles perhaps? If you have a naysayer or ten that just happened to be accused of this or that, the lord would naturally have them detained. If they just happened to jump out, then surely it must have been their guilt catching up to them?
Ned was a real sourpuss sometimes. Obviously that happened in the past, but Jon wasn’t like that! Wasn’t that enough? If there was one thing that Robert found troublesome about Ned was how hung up northmen got about the past. Usually without getting hung up on preposterous stuff in their own past, like how Ned somehow decided that a good way to end his first week in the Eyrie was sleepwalking right into one of those cells one night. Without anyone stopping or seeing him. Somehow.
Robert’s skin crawled at the memory even now, years later. If Robert hadn’t been woken up by that blasted raven and gone looking for him, who knows what would have happened? Certainly worse than Jon bringing the Gods’ own wrath down on the watchmen. And everyone else who might have been in a place to beguile or enchant or poison him or what have you.
Robert left the High Hall the way he came, went down to the kitchens to order food sent up to Jon’s solar just in case, then went up there himself.
Today was the day.
The day he won Ned’s war.
Then maybe the moron would finally sit down and listen to him that no, Ned, ‘ravens are watching over me and my brother sent me this ‘magic’ pendant’ still isn’t reason good enough to let that go!
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The Winds of Winter
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
THE WINDS OF WINTER
Bringing the Rashomon effect right to your doorstep. Defined as every witness telling a different story so nobody knows WTF is really happening. Or, in this case, yet another story of far too many to be more than 5-10% real.
Highlights of The Winds of Winter include:
- The News - brought to you by Maester Ryben, chief editor.
- The Stark Truth - conveying the latest public address by our
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Sweet! Where do I subscribe?!
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
Your friendly neighborhood caravanserai.
caravanserai? they would wrote about 72 used virgins there.
Jokes aside - newspaper could be used to send messages to North agents.Made column with advertising for that - you could hide your message among real ones there.
Chapter II.2: Grinding Teeth Do Not a Gay Storm Make (VI)
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
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.
“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.
=======================
“-. 278 AC .-“
“-. 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.
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Abhishekm
Well-known member
Kinda conflicted about this one and the last few if I'm being honest Karmic. The conversation seems to curve way too much to modern conventions or odd values. And it could be good writing showing through but there does seem to be a fair bit of bias in Robert and Ned's though and words too. Which again is good writing in not making your liked characters perfect paragons. But yeah, can't really say these conversations have been that entertaining. Eugh, reminds me of actual politics.
To be fair, this is all commentary from a guy who refuses to remember the names of those 'debate fallacies' things just because either still my very biased personal opinion that people came up with those as one more way to dupe people who they think don't know better. But still, you don't need to be a certified master debater to post a sketch comment so there you go.
Though really what was with that whole Genocide back and forth? That even a thing people care about? Like people can stretch that buzzword to either fit nothing short of Hitler gassing half the Jess on the planet or some asshole 3000 years ago buring one hut with the residents still in it. But Robert's mental gripe about the priests 'what about ism' kind of seemed really selective about it and some other stuff. Ah well.
Well to be fair Martin made the whole faith as a bad joke about the worst bits of Christianity in the first place so it definetly fits in setting.
To be fair, this is all commentary from a guy who refuses to remember the names of those 'debate fallacies' things just because either still my very biased personal opinion that people came up with those as one more way to dupe people who they think don't know better. But still, you don't need to be a certified master debater to post a sketch comment so there you go.
Though really what was with that whole Genocide back and forth? That even a thing people care about? Like people can stretch that buzzword to either fit nothing short of Hitler gassing half the Jess on the planet or some asshole 3000 years ago buring one hut with the residents still in it. But Robert's mental gripe about the priests 'what about ism' kind of seemed really selective about it and some other stuff. Ah well.
Well to be fair Martin made the whole faith as a bad joke about the worst bits of Christianity in the first place so it definetly fits in setting.
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Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
I'm glad this part is finally behind me too, for what it's worth.
Robert's got a bit of 'Ned is my bestie forever' bias of course, it's not just your imagination.
And you're right that most people in asoiaf don't care about genocide or what else unless it suits them, like the Faith having a vested interest in denying it at every opportunity. Unfortunately, Ned's one of the few exceptions.
Abhishekm
Well-known member
Yeah, understandable. The subtle double standards Robert commented on on the priests side but didn't even think about in Ned's was a neat hint. Can kinda tell this was likely patterned off realish chiritianity versus paganaism/atheism/flavourful the week arguments. Eugh.
It being George 'Tolkien was a religious hack who didn't get the Edge in killing characters' Martins token Strawman Christianity but worse doesn't help the setting.
Which again is a bit odd. Because the easiest 'what about argument would have been the whole Andalos thing and vice versa but yeah feels like they both fell for the 'can't keep to talking about one topic' problem.
Highlighted by one of the earlier chapters with Ned's dad. The one where he explains to Brandon while the Master is in the room about the First Men converting and why 'The Targareons are just that Shitty tm'. The bit where he mentions First Men converting willingly or alteast going with assimilating the Anadal faith into their culture because the Children's oathbreaking pissed them off. Men would have some of those opinions himself unless his dad explicitly did not pass those lessons or history on.
In the end the Pristina just comes off a the regular politically minded mega church guy trying to gift off a millenia old institution he knows little to the truth off or even the basis on why a common person might be invested in it. And Ned comes off as a kid getting sick of being preached to by a guy who probably has lost what true faith or character he had a long time ago.
Also was that a suble "Even you call them Legends." dig in the beginning there?
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Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
Well yeah, but in fairness, Ned was the one who started the arguments and then wouldn't give them up as a bad job.
And that legends part, is it a reference? I don't know what you mean.
Abhishekm
Well-known member
I wait for Ned reaction.Good chapter,that septon remind me old soviets preaching about how great Stalin/Mao/Lenin was,or new soviets preaching about how great Biden is.
P.S if i undartstandt correctly,children are not good guys in this story.So,wiping them out is not something Ned would care about.
P.S if i undartstandt correctly,children are not good guys in this story.So,wiping them out is not something Ned would care about.
Chapter II.2: Grinding Teeth Do Not a Gay Storm Make (VII)
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
A/N: From here, the plot begins picking up speed again.
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“-. 278 AC .-“
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“-. 278 AC .-“
The sun was shining, the clouds were drifting, summer was ending, and a few ambles along the wall were about as long as Robert Baratheon lasted before he couldn’t take Jon’s silence anymore.
“Well?” he demanded, leaning next to the window and looking at Jon over Ned’s head, ignoring the septon completely. “Are you going to arbitrate already, Jon?”
“I am thinking,” Jon said.
“No shit. What about? What could be more important, than, oh, only one half of this mess of a debate being done in good faith?”
“I am thinking about all these things that Ned has said, about my ancestors. The things you yourself clearly believe, don’t deny it.”
Robert most certainly didn’t deny it. “What of it?”
“It’s something I’d been pondering for some time, as these disasters of make-believe rhetoric progressed. Then something occurred to me just the other week. You know what occurred to me? You're both just boys. You don't have the faintest idea the depths you still have to delve.”
Robert bit back his first instinct to cast damnations as Ned’s face twisted in frustration. In the corner of his eye, Robes sat back in his chair, looking satisfied.
“It's all right,” Jon continued. “You've never travelled more than fifty leagues away from your beds. So if I asked you about history, you'd probably give me a list of excerpts from every history and chronicle in my library. Tristifer Mudd, for example, I bet you know a lot about him. His life, his beliefs, his ninety-nine battles, wife, lovers, children, everything about his years, isn’t that right?”
Robert scowled but nodded since Ned seemed to have turned into a statue well on the way to his chair grinding a furrow in the floor with how hard his stare pushed against Robes’.
“But I'll wager you can't tell me what it smells like in the Citadel Hall of Records. You can’t describe the look of the Starry Sept as the crystal at the summit casts its rainbow light amidst the specks of candle light in that seven-pointed star of pitch darkness. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that ceiling. Seen that. If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a rundown about your personal preferences. You may even wax poetically about the demure eyes and voluptuous hips that most stand out on the list of wenches and whores you’ve lain with. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy.”
There was a great, dark cloud gathering at the back of his mind, thick and lumbering. If Robes was going to emanate any more smugness, Robert was going to change his angle of attack so it mysteriously passed right through the space he occupied, see if he doesn’t!
“And if I'd ask you about war,” Jon said, grimly now. “You'd probably boast of your prowess in the tilts and your skill with a sword or hammer, yes? Perhaps quote whoever you chose as your hero from all the chronicles and tales you’ve read for this. Once more unto the breach, my friends. Victory or death. But you've never been near one. You've never held your father’s head in your lap, and watched him gasp his last breath looking to you for reassurance.”
Now that was a dirty blow, to bring up his father and grandfather. Robert didn’t think Jon would ever do such a thing. No, he still didn’t think Jon would do such a thing. The fuck was all this?
“I'd ask you about love, and at least one of you would probably quote me a poem. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like the Maiden herself came down from the heavens just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of the deepest hell. And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her knight in shining armor, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through good and ill and the bed of blood slowly sapping her life away as she fades after the child she just lost, asking about her parents, siblings and everyone else that left before her. You wouldn't know about sitting up at her bedside for days, holding her hand, because the Maester could see in your eyes that the notion of sleep was foreign to you. You don't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself.”
Jon's first wife was Jeyne Royce. He had been betrothed to her from an early age and married her after his father's death. Everyone agreed they were a good match, but then she died in childbed, their daughter stillborn. Jon’s second marriage was to Rowena Arryn, a cousin, who died of a winter chill during a childless marriage. It’s why Jon had no children and was raising Elbert to succeed him instead, the son of his brother Ronnel, who’d died of a bad belly at around the same time Elbert was born. And that didn’t even begin to compare to how Elys and Alys ended up with just Alyssa despite having nine children together.
None of which explained what Jon was thinking pulling a Robes and going on a tangent that had nothing to do with anything!
“You’re clever boys, Ned, Robert. I’ll never deny that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But since you want me to intervene despite the talk having gone more or less smoothly, strong feelings aside, then let it be this: don’t presume to know everything about the one you’re talking to, let alone their ancestors, just because you read it in a book. One of you is from a seaside fortress at the edge of a land of rolling hills and forest beset by storms every other day. The other hails from a land and culture different from any of ours. Do you think I'd know the first thing about what your life has been like because I read Kin of the Stag? Do you think I know how you feel, who you are, what views of the past you treasure, because I read Winter’s Kings? Does that encapsulate you? What does it say that I can't learn anything from you I can't read in some book in my own time?”
It says that Jon went way out of his way to be so harsh while saying a whole lot of nothing about nothing Ned never even touched during the disaster of a ‘debate’ that had just finished and wait a minute… “Jon…” Robert said slowly. “You talk good, and usually you even have interesting things to say, but this time I have no idea where you’re going with any of this.”
To the side, Robes scoffed as if Jon hadn’t just talked completely around the point of his presence there and thus avoided actually endorsing him and hold on there- “He’s telling you not to go delving for things you won’t like when you find.”
If he hadn’t been watching for it, Robert would have missed the look that passed over Jon’s face. He had no idea what it was, but it sure was something. Something Robes was too busy putting on airs to catch.
“For all the talent you profess to have acquired in reading between the lines, much still escapes you.” Robes acted like he was talking to both of them like Jon had, but it was still Ned he was looking at. “Like certain implications not as palatable to sensibilities so far removed as yours. You needn’t even delve too deeply in obscure records or lore to stumble over them. It can be anything as common as the latest bard song, or, say, how wonderful it would be to come into possession of valyrian steel. That’s always a popular topic among youth, isn’t it? It’s almost like there’s no dark secret just waiting to be uncovered.”
“Blood sacrifice,” Ned said flatly. “Yes, we know.”
“Never mind that, we’re talking about history here,” Robes dismissed. “Have you never wondered about the almost total mystery about when it actually started coming to Westeros? We know that some weapons are six hundred years old. House Corbray’s Lady Forlorn is the only one that we know has been here for longer, at least a thousand years, and even then there are claims the current sword only inherited the name. Reading the histories indicates the turning point was the destruction of the Rhoynar. Two centuries passed, centuries in which the coveted Valyrian steel began to trickle into the Seven Kingdoms more swiftly than before, though not swiftly enough for all the lords and kings who desired it. For some reason, Valyrians accelerated trade in Valyrian swords after the fall of Chroyane. Those swords also couldn’t have come through regular trade, since it would have favoured wealthy Houses and the lesser Houses would have nothing. Yet it’s mostly the other way around. Secondary Houses like Corbrays and Reynes somehow procured valyrian steel weapons even though some of the great houses did not, the Arryns themselves among them.”
… Was he arguing past based on present again?
“Now, what else do we know about Valyrians? They relied heavily on slaves mining gold in their fire mountains. They even started wars to keep their mines stocked. With the destruction of Rhoynar and conquest of most neighbours, Valyria may have been running out of cheap, expendable slaves they could burn through in the mines. So it is entirely possible that Valyrian trade was not done in coin, but flesh.”
The eye of the storm settled upon the world before the thunder. Robert didn’t think it could happen.
“And so we see the other uniting characteristic of Valyrian steel-owning Houses: – though not necessarily the richest, they tend to be close to the coast. Harlaws, Mormonts, Cobrays, Reyenes, Royces, Hightowers, Lannisters, and so on. Very convenient if one is to organize illicit slave trade – in the form of ‘unexpected’ slaver raids, ‘lost’ ships and such perhaps? Valyrian Steel, this coveted symbol of prestige... wouldn’t it be just like this world for it to actually be a badge of collaboration with dragon-riding slavers, payed in blood of peasants who burned in infernal fires a continent away from home?”
The sun peeked right through the window now, which felt completely out of place because there was no end to the dark clouds at the back of Robert’s mind.
“Not all such houses would have the means, I grant you – Durrandon lands were thinly peopled and every peasant counted in the wars with the Dornish and numerically superior Reachmen. But others? Corbrays and Royces could secretly poach the mountain clans, especially the Royces who have ports of their own. Lannisters and Hightowers may be the richest already, so no questions about their trade. And then there are those who may not be nearly as rich, or even coastal themselves as opposed to their vassal lords, but rule lands where surplus people are regularly sent to die in snows or raids during winter. There’s your seedy underbelly of hist–“
CRASH.
The storm burst into the world like a hurricane and sheared the space between two points in an instant.
“Robert,” Ned growled amidst the ringing smash of the second chair he’d just sent toppling back in apoplectic rage. “What are you doing?”
“I’m hugging my friend!” Robert cried, wrapping himself around Ned as tight as he could. “My bestest friend who was just about to swear a blood feud against an arse who doesn’t believe a word he says!”
“He just called my whole family a bloodline of slavers!”
“Well what do you know, the fabled well-read moron does exist!”
“I swear I’ll-“
“No!”
“Let me go.”
“Nay!”
“Let me go, Robert.”
“I SHAN’T!”
“… I can’t just do nothing, Robert.”
“He’s just goading you, Ned! He doesn’t believe a word he says, but said them anyway because he wanted to get a rise out of you so you’d think he was mad and you’d go mad mad! Then he’d be able to put a feather in his cap that the only reason he couldn’t reach you and win your soul for you was because you were crazy! Well he’s not that crazy! He’s just pretending to maybe be oblivious enough to how his words could be taken, all so you’d lose your shit and he can remorsefully make you out as a savage later! Don’t fall for it!”
“Well I say!" Robes tsked. “Those are some strong-!”
“Not another word or I’m converting to the Old Gods right now.”
Robed Cunt shut up.
And stayed shut up.
Fucking finally.
Ned made a serious try to break out of his hold. “Robert… Sometimes I don’t understand why you bother.”
“And I can’t understand why you ever thought this would end any other way! Why even argue history and forebears? Why argue anything if you’re just going to let all your logic and common sense go to complete waste? Mentioning genocide and slavery at the start, what, are you stupid!? You don’t throw out your best tactics and weapons in the opening salvo, you MORON!” Robert had gone from holding to practically shaking Ned by the end. “What the hell is so hard to understand about war!?”
“For Gods’ sakes…” Ned wheezed dazedly. “That has literally nothing to do with anything.”
“Bullshit!” Robert spat, wrapping himself around Ned even tighter. “You said the only time you’ll ever give up on trying to reason with someone was if they’re crazy, stupid or incompetent! Well this is isn’t you trying to reason with someone crazy, stupid or incompetent! This is you arguing with the crazy, stupid and incompetent! The cultured hollowhead! The well-read moron. Well look at that, he dragged you down to his level and beat you with experience! Fucking congratulations!”
Robert paused to catch his breath while he waited for Ned to stop feeling like a stone statue about to explode in a blizzard at any moment.
“Jon,” Robert said when Ned’s breathing against his collarbone didn’t feel like it would strip the bark off trees anymore. “When the First Men crossed the Arm of Dorne and fell out with the Children of the Forest, they began a total war of extermination and eventually became the worst cunts of their time, isn’t that right?”
Jon didn’t reply for a time, but then… “I suppose it’s possible, as much as anything can be assumed when trying to talk about times so long ago.”
“When the Ghiscari raised the Harpy and proclaimed their manifest destiny for all time, they started invading everything around them, killing and enslaving everyone they could find and becoming the worst cunts of their time.”
“That is so.”
“After the Valyrians broke the Ghiscari, they took up their practices and began invading everything around them, killing and enslaving everyone they could find and becoming the worst cunts of their time.”
“Yes.”
“When the Valyrians fell to the Doom and all their protectorates fell to infighting, the Dothraki spilled out of the Essossi plains and began invading everything around them, killing and enslaving everyone they could find and becoming the worst cunts of our time.”
“Yes.”
“Are thralls slaves?”
“Yes.”
Robert ignored Robed Cunt’s sudden start at Jon’s endorsement of what Robert was actually saying, nodded into Ned’s hair, let go, checked him over to make sure he wouldn’t commit bloody murder while his back was turned, went to the wall, came back to the table with his satchel that weighed like sin, then opened it and, taking care not to displace any of the leaves of paper he’d prepared on top of each cover, dropped the first book flat on the tabletop with such force that the mahogany creaked.
SLAM. “’The Andals were ever a warlike folk, for one of the Seven they worshipped was the Warrior himself,’ So war for war’s sake, what a high virtue! I love a good fight, but Jon only just pointed out that those are as rare in war as tits on a man’s backside – my warning stands!”
Robed Cunt closed the mouth he’d just opened but his scowl was-
SLAM, the second. “’Andalos stretched from the Axe to what is now the Braavosian Coastlands, and south as far as the Flatlands and the Velvet Hills. The Andals brought iron weapons with them and suits of iron plates, against which the tribes that inhabited those lands could do little. One such tribe was the hairy men; their name is lost, but they are still remembered in certain Pentoshi histories.’”
The third.
“’Others followed the mazemakers on Lorath in the centuries that followed. For a time the isles were home to a small, dark, hairy people, akin to the men of Ib. Fisherfolk, they lived along the coasts and shunned the great mazes of their predecessors. They in turn were displaced by Andals, pushing north from Andalos to the shores of Lorath Bay and across the bay in longships. Clad in mail and wielding iron swords and axes, the Andals swept across the islands, slaughtering the hairy men in the name of their seven-faced god and taking their women and children as slaves.”
Four.
“‘Even before the coming of the Andals, the Wolf’s Den had been raised by King Jon Stark, built to defend the mouth of the White Knife against raiders and slavers from across the narrow sea. Some scholars suggest these were early Andal incursions.’”
Five, six.
“There are no Andal settlements in Andalos, and the best Quarlon the Great ever did was build a wooden keep on Lorath, an island covered in stone. Which is weird because you claim the Andals were great builders. If you could build from stone, you’d have done it. The Seven Pointed Star claims you got iron and steel from the gods because they walked among you, but even the worst of the Citadel’s worst can’t find it in them to perpetrate that lie. You denounce Pentoshi claims that you practiced human sacrifices, which means you don’t even have that excuse when you tell us Andals were incapable of coexisting with others. The Lorathi and every last tribe they ever came into contact with in that huge chunk of Essos was eradicated according to all histories, including your own.”
Seven, eight, nine.
“The Seven Pointed Star would have us believe you thrived in Andalos for thousands of years, but even the most arse-kissing history can’t account for you being there for more than a few centuries. Then you say that when the Valyrians founded Volantis on the other side of the Rhoyne, thousands of miles away, it scared you so badly that you fled Andalos all the way back to the Axe and cowered there. Somehow, this didn’t happen in the time before, when the Valyrians could just use their ships to land their army instead. It also didn’t stop Qarlon from trying to conquer Valyrian colonies despite knowing they had fucking dragons to fly in on at a moment’s notice.”
Ten, eleven, twelve, slam the thirteenth because he’d checked a lot of books in the months that Ned and Robes ‘debated’ on and off.
“Bookmarks in numbered order for proof that the supposed path of retreat of the Andal from Essos makes no fucking sense. It’s a lot. My favorite is Theon Stark’s history – he attacked you in Andalos after your first wave landed in the Vale. But according to your holy book and your favorite maesters, the Andals at this point had supposedly fled to the axe because Andalos wasn’t safe. But then you turned around and went back to Andalos, by going North and then West and only then you decided to build a fleet and invade westeros – which means you crossed the Shivering Sea on foot? That’s all there is north and west of the Axe! Where were your longships? All this because the Valyrians landed at the mouth of the Rhoyne thousands of miles to the south. That’s some mighty fast and far-reaching communication, by the way. I’d love to know what happened to it that you needed to seize Maesters and ravens after you came over here.”
Robes looked like he was a hair’s breadth away from snarling and-
Slam the fourteenth.
“’In their zeal for the Seven, the conquerors looked upon the Old Gods of the First Men and the children of the forest as little more than demons.’”
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, many a woman’s bed had passed the nights cold because Robert had been too busy to give them the attention they deserved, Ned had better be grateful! “Corroborating evidence for everything. It’s a lot, but I’ll be gracious and summarise.” The light from outside came from behind Robert now, that the table and the Robed Cunt were both in his shadow. “Low culture confirmed. Genocide confirmed. The faith says slavery is an abomination but you have a long standing tradition of being slavers. And on top of it all, you have a history of lying about all of it. But then, you already know that, don’t you? This…” Robert reached over and picked up Ned’s opening argument and dropped it on top of the last and used a bar of charcoal to underline every word he then read. “’They were ground underfoot, reduced to thralls, or driven out.’ This, from the very start, completely destroys every fucking word that came out of your mouth before and after. Now, knowing that I fully intend to go through with my previous warning, is there anything you’d like to say to any of that, good septon?”
Silence.
“That’s what I thought.” Robert rested his hands on the table and loomed forward. The shadows deepened. “There was no holy mission or moral imperative. You can’t even say Valyria scared you into crossing the sea. The Andals came to Westeros when Jon Brightstone and Dywen Shell decided to hire Andal mercenaries in their feud over kingship of the Fingers. Except they had the bad luck to unknowingly approach the same man. Then Corwyn Corbray, that oh so chivalrous knight, broke his contract, tortured Brightstone to death and took his daughter as wife, burned Shell alive inside his longhall and took his wife as a bedwarmer on top of it, and proclaimed himself King of the Fingers in their place.” Robert reached in the side pocket of his satchel and pulled out a folded letter, which he tossed across the table. “A long letter from the Corbrays, detailing everything in that particular part of their family history. It was easy to get it from them. They’re quite proud of it.” Robert pushed away from the table and beheld the quietly seething man. “You know what most gets me? A dothraki would have just killed them. And a wildling would have at least kept to one woman.”
Robert loomed there like any proper storm cloud should, with his back to the sun while waiting to see if the man would lose his composure and give him the excuse to throw that one last thing right in his face.
He didn’t.
Robert smirked. “Imagine that. Foreign invaders being the biggest cunts of their time.”
Urizen glared at him and refused to take the bait.
Oh well! Such was life!
Robert turned back to Ned. “That’s how you do it.”
Urizen stood up so abruptly that his chair almost toppled backwards. Robert put himself between him and Ned despite the table being already there, his fingers twitching while he glared in warning. For a moment, Robert actually thought Septon Urizen would break his silence and give him that final push.
Instead, the man snarled wordlessly and turned to Jon with a gaze so demanding that Robert was briefly outraged at his presumption despite everything else the man had done up to that point.
Jon, as if to send Robert into another bewilderment just for the hell of it, inclined his head slightly. “It’s alright, Septon. You may go compose yourself in peace. I’ll handle them.”
Robes looked like he might protest, but eventually he bowed his head – barely – whirled around and stalked towards the door.
“I lied, you know,” Robert called just as the man was about to turn the handle, because if he was going to see so much of the same cunt, he damn well was going to fuck it right and proper. “I wouldn’t have converted.”
Urizen turned to look at him in outrage.
Robert bared his teeth. “I don’t believe in gods.” He hoped Ned wouldn’t hold it against him too much. “And if I did, I wouldn’t worship them. Feel free to spread that as far and wide as you want.”
Urizen glared, left in a billow of robes and slammed the door behind him.
Well.
That’s that then!
Robert pat Ned on both shoulders and then took a seat next to him. Between him and Jon, just because.
There was an awkward silence.
He’d had more than enough of those. “Jon-“
Jon raised a hand, then held up a finger and tilted his head slightly towards the door, from where footsteps could still be heard. When they faded completely and another while had passed, Jon rested his chin in one hand and looked at the two of them. Just looked at them for a long time. His hair was more grey than yellow, Robert somehow noticed as if he didn’t already know that.
Robert squirmed. Don’t you judge him, Jon could do that to you just as easily, see if he doesn’t! “I’m sorry!” he blurted, because his will was still weak. “I didn’t set out to insult you, I know they’re your ancestors but he just-“
“Robert. It’s alright. Calm down. I’m not mad.”
“Oh.” Oh. “Alright then.”
Jon didn’t follow up, though. He just watched them with that same, thoughtful intensity.
“He even lies about your hair!” Robert exploded, because his will was really weak as fuck all. “Why? Why would he do that? So what if the Andals were actually dark-haired? What’s the fucking point!?”
“Legitimacy.”
“Bullshit!” And where the fuck had all his composure gone-
“That’s right.”
“Complete bullshit, I had to read Malleon’s Lineages cover to cover and I will never forgive you, Ned – I did not need to wonder if Orys Baratheon was a Durrandon bastard on top of a Targaryen one – wait,” Robert trailed off. “Uh, Jon? What did you just say?”
“You’re right,” Jon said simply. “About it being a poor excuse for legitimacy. And everything else you told Urizen. And Ned is right about everything else he said. The Andals were the worst of people, and any claims to the contrary are revisionist history done out of jealousy. For the sake of living in a dream. It is a common wish, to believe what you want instead of what is. What the Faith wants is to believe its founders were the most accomplished of men. What is… is that the First Men society was mature and solvent by the time the Andals came with their barbaric ways. They First Men were morally superior. The First Men were societally superior. After all, the culture of the first men was already established and mature and self-improving. Really, it is obvious from the fact that the Andals were entirely assimilated, as Ned so aptly put it. The Andals were superstitious children in comparison, a stage the First Men of Westeros had long since grown out of. Resenting them for that would be like resenting my mother for not birthing me fully grown and learned.”
Robert gaped and slumped in his seat, stunned at… at Jon just…
“Now, to what is actually important here.” What. “You missed on plenty of opportunities to make your case properly iron-clad.” What? “So many questions you could have asked. Why does the Faith of the Seven claim it has coexisted peacefully with the Old Gods for many hundreds of years, pretending like the thousands of years of blood wars beforehand never happened? What does it mean that Andals have always been at odds with Valyrians and First Men? Why is it that, somehow, just after Valyria beat down and displaced Ghis as the great power, the Andals claim to have a collective panic attack and thought that they were next? Ghis had been far closer to them and had an equally atrocious practice of slavery for its entire existence. What did the Valyrians do that was so much worse? Or was that a lie too? Was it perhaps religious zealotry? Did Valyria’s religious freedom offend them? There are a number of religious zealot groups that coincidentally settled Andal territory because they found Valyria’s acceptance of all religious intolerable: Norvos and Lorath. Both wear hair shirts, causing discomfort and pain as religious penance. The Warrior’s Sons of the Faith Millitant did the same under their silver scale armor. Now isn’t that shocking? Really, Robert, you could have driven the man so much farther into the arms of apoplexy if you’d just skirted the edges of blasphemy, let alone plunged head-first to the very bottom as you are so very talented in doing.”
Robert gaped at Jon, aghast.
“Would you be surprised to know I think Harmune was right about everything he wrote on the axes carved in stones? The Warrior’s Sons branded their chests like Norvosi soldiers, except with the seven-pointed star. Eventually at least. I am tempted to go on a spiel about the Blind Priests of Boasch in Lorath, but I am honestly doubtful I can rise to the same heights as the good septon in the art of baffling people with cow manure.”
Robert was… he had no words.
“Your point about the wooden keep and the absent Andal builders was inspired. But you missed something in everything that came after. Qarlon wanted to be King of All Andals, Twenty wars and twenty years later, he controlled everything from the Braavosi Lagoon to the Axe, and as far south as Upper Rhoyne and Noyne. Does this means that the first settlers of Braavos were Andal slavers, instead of escaped Valyrian slaves? I’m personally doubtful because of the timeline of Faceless Man activity, and that little thing known as the Titan, but throwing out the bait of possible Andal construction would have been an excellent trap.”
No. No fucking way. Jon had to be fucking with him, he just had to. He just had to!
But Jon just kept going as if he wasn’t tarring his own forebears with a brush soaked in liquid shit. “Now. Ned.”
Ned straightened in his seat.
“You missed some positively ruinous opportunities to turn Urizen’s claims of Valyria against him and return the discussion on point. The only time Valyrians and Andals are known to have fought was when Qarlon attacked Norvos. The Norvosi called on the Freehold for help, and they got it – one hundred dragonlords. They burned Qarlon and his army to ashes, then continued north until they scorched the Lorathi isles. Strangely, there was no mention in those texts about the Valyrians enslaving anyone. Now, considering it was an old copy of an even older Norvosi chronicle, it was probably omitted so the Valyrian saviours seemed more heroic. But you could easily have distracted Urizen from that – if he even had the presence of mind to bring it up – by bringing up how Valyria never attacked the Andals unprovoked.”
“… The Valyrians denied the Andas the promise of the Seven on Essos,” Ned said in a tone of realisation. “So the zealous Andals that survived the burning, they carved seven-pointed stars on their bodies and swore on their blood and the seven not to rest until they had hewn their kingdoms from the sunset lands.”
“It is certainly one possible interpretation, and would have turned Urizen’s penchant for distracting tangents against him quite neatly.” Jon lectured as if the increasing pile of ambition, delusion, lies, and just plain evil in his own people’s history made no difference to him at all! “Then there was his claim that any history of Andal wrongdoing would have been exposed by the Maesters – well look at that, it was. Until the convenient extermination of every member of House Hightower except a small child that one septon took and became regent for. Robert’s contributions are enough indication of your blindspot here, I trust?”
“And then some,” Ned muttered.
“I am quite frankly surprised you didn’t make more of this yourself, Robert, considering the faces you made while Urizen was pretending to address that hole in his argument.”
“… It slipped my mind, alright!?” Robert admitted, flushing scarlet. “I-I have it written down somewhere, look-“
“It’s alright, Robert,” Jon waved it away, smiling indulgently. “I believe you. I’m not Urizen. I’ll always value your word.”
Robert shifted in his seat and hoped his ears weren’t getting pinker than they already were.
“Still, I am very surprised you didn’t at least bring up Storm’s End while you were throwing the great Andals builders in his face. It’s no small thing that the Faith and every other maester pretends every last great castle dating back to the Long Night didn’t exist before the Andals came. Then again, I can think of at least one book right now that claims Storm’s End was finished by Andals, so perhaps he’d have weasled out of it. I assume the existence of two First Men written languages and the age of the Citadel slipped your mind in between as well?”
“… I was making a point, alright!?” Robert exploded. “Get off my back, this isn’t even my business! It’s Ned’s ‘debate’ why don’t you get up his arse instead of ragging on me?”
“The same way you barged into his business uninvited.” Jon said blandly. “Not that it wasn’t a good show. Or for a good cause. Nevertheless…”
“I hate you.”
“So you keep saying.”
Robert supposed that was supposed to be an attempt at levity, but the more the talk went on, he only felt more and more disquieted. How could Jon just sit there and-?
“Still, a point is a point.” Jon switched focus to Ned again, finally. “I trust, now, that you can admit that you didn’t approach Urizen properly.”
“… I suppose he wasn’t the easiest opponent.”
“No indeed. He fairly neatly avoided the truly preposterous claims that some of the Most Devout in history and their pet maesters propagated, with varying degrees of success. The First Men couldn’t build round towers. The First Men couldn’t read. The First Men couldn’t write. The First Men were not a seafaring people. And because that’s true, then clearly the ancient First man families that raised their seats on Islands were also Andals all along of course. Tarth, Redwyne, Hightower, Dayne, why build their seats on islands if they were not a sea-faring people? Never mind Brandon the Shipwright or Theon the Hungry’s thousand-year sea war, and so on. These are the benefits of being the ones keeping hold of all the records in the Citadel, and making all the records available outside of it in the language you brought to Westeros.”
Robert stared.
“I've always found it strange that a house of knowledge would be called ‘the Citadel,’” Jon mused absently. “The name suggests the barring of knowledge rather than giving it. A citadel is a fortress, typically on high ground, that protects or dominates a city. Since we know that the Citadel wasn't built in a position to defend the city, as that is what the Hightower and the walls are for, then it must mean to dominate. So, could the institution being called ‘the Citadel’ be symbolic of how it dominates the affairs of the city, and by extension the rest of Westeros? Well, used to be.” Jon nodded in Ned’s direction. “Your father has shown us well what it means when that changes.”
The more Robert listened and watched Jon be so casual about the atrocities of his ancestors and contemporaries, the worse grew the squall inside his chest.
“And finally, since we may as well complete the circle of lunacy properly, there is the path of truly outrageous insinuations, seeing as Urizen so shamelessly went down this ghastly path at the end there.” Jon looked between Ned and Robert then. “Can any of you tell me how the Warrior’s Sons garbed themselves?”
Robert frowned, trying to remember anything beyond the hair shirts and silvered mail that Jon had mentioned just a short while ago.
“’Rainbow cloaks hung down their backs.’” Ned had looked through some papers or other and found the relevant passage while Robert was thinking. “’And the crystals that crested their greathelms glittered in the lamplight. Their armor was silver plate polished to a mirror sheen, but underneath, every man of them wore a hair shirt. Their kite shields all bore the same device: a crystal sword shining in the darkness, the ancient badge of those the smallfolk called Swords.’”
“Just so,” Jon leaned back in his chair and rapped his fingers on the table. “What is the only other place, in either history or myth, where there is mention of crystal swords that shine in the darkness?”
Robert blinked. He had no idea. Why was it important-?
“The hands of the Others,” Ned murmured.
Oh. That’s why.
Wait, that’s why?
What?
No. No way, what the fuck? Robert gaped at Jon, shocked. He did not just imply that-
“No, I don’t believe the Andals were black-blooded demons, no matter the Ironborn claims about House Hoare,” Jon said dryly, reading his thoughts on his face, and the Ironborn said what about the Hoare kings? “In fact, I suspect the explanation for everything is ultimately quite simple: the Andals were superstitious. A people can decide or be driven to do practically anything if you play on their superstition well enough. Even change their entire way of life within a single generation with the right leadership. It’s not entirely clear that’s what actually happened here, but considering that there doesn’t seem to be any other theory that hasn’t at least one attestation challenging it…”
… That hadn’t even occurred to him.
“I’m personally of the belief that some of the more imposing Valyrian dragonlords passed themselves as gods and aimed the bedazzled Andals away so they wouldn’t become a nuisance while they were busy invading the Rhoyne,” Jon concluded, as if this was somehow supposed to be any less outrageous than everything else he’d said since Robes left.
The quiet that followed was long, deep and not calm or easy to bear at all.
“How?” Robert whispered when he couldn’t take it anymore. “How can you just sit there and… say all this so easily? So…”
“Remorselessly?”
Robert didn’t reply, but his silence was answer enough. Jon had said that so… so mildly.
Instead of answering Robert, Jon looked instead to Ned and waited.
“… Because it no longer makes a difference.”
Robert turned in his seat, gaping in shock.
“It no longer matters.” Ned said somberly. “For better or worse, your ancestors won your place in this world.”
Robert stared. That was the last thing he expected Ned to say. No, it was nowhere among the things he expected Ned to say. It made more sense that Jon had taken after the Royce side of his family and decided to hold the First Men as his real ancestors because they saved the fucking world. And, you know, built things, instead of just break them. But no, as far as Ned was concerned it apparently had nothing to do with that, and Jon agreed with him!
The silence that followed was calm, light and somehow felt even more oppressive to Robert. This time, though, he had no idea what to say.
“Why is Urizen here, Jon?”
Robert blinked and looked to Ned
Ned didn’t pay him any mind, looking at Jon instead. “He’s neither as charming nor intelligent as he thinks he is. He insults my intelligence with every word he utters. He tried to pass off my mother’s miscarriage as a fortunate development. He tried to pass miscarriage as a fortunate development in front of you, despite you losing your own first wife and child to miscarriage, Jon. Why is he still here?”
“Because the closer he seems to the Crystal Crown, the louder and more organised the outcry becomes in the Riverlands.”
… What.
No, seriously, what?
“They’re calling themselves the Sparrows now,” John said pleasantly. “After their de facto figurehead. A wandering septon, I’m told, traversing the Riverlands one end to the next barefoot for years, so much that his feet have grown leather-brown and just as hard. He gave up his name and is only known as the Sparrow because that’s the nickname the Faithful have given him.”
“Sounds like a true believer,” Robert’s mouth ran ahead of him because he was still stuck at Urizen being… what?
“He does sound like one, doesn’t he?” Jon agreed. “Why, depending on how things would otherwise have gone, he might have developed into a true fanatic in the future, once his role consumed what’s left of his self. What a terrible blow for the true Faith that the scandal in Oldtown hit when it did, isn’t it just?”
How did he not know about this? “How did I not know about this?”
“You were focused on your research,” Jon replied. “I didn’t want to distract you.”
And they’d practically ignored everyone else in the Eyrie in their dogged pursuit of victory against what turned out to be a… a… “I WASTED SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT ON A DAMNED PATSY!?”
“A waste, you say?” Jon asked sharply. “You singlehandedly engineered a lightning war and unleashed it at the perfect moment, achieving through cunning and secrecy what your ally had been trying and failing to do through force of arms all this time. Is that not an exceptional feat of subterfuge? Should you not be proud of proving to possess such an ability for secret keeping? Discretion was something I never even intended to try instilling within you. The only one who wasted anything here is myself for not seeing in you this amazing potential.”
Oh… But… That… well shucks, what was he supposed to say now?
“And Ned, well…” Jon’s gaze was no less piercing. “You certainly learned a thing or two about honor, didn’t you?”
“It won’t always save me,” Ned said. Bitterly. So freaking resigned all over again, Robert hated the sound of it so much!
“Then you’ve learned the wrong lesson!” Jon barked.
Ned jerked in his chair.
“’As high as honor’ what do you think those words mean? I will tell you what they don’t mean: they do not mean that honor should override sense and reason! Let alone lead you around at their expense! ‘As high as honor’ means that honor should be at the very top of your priorities. It doesn’t mean your other priorities stop being priorities!”
Ned blinked and stared at Jon, wide-eyed.
“If every trait in your character is part of a pyramid, what happens when everything beneath the top is crooked? Missing parts? What if it doesn’t reach high enough at all?”
“It crumbles…”
“It crumbles. Like you crumbled just now because you decided to be honourable only towards the other man. Setting aside the arrogance of looking down on someone that’s defeating you, I truly must ask: Where is the honor in losing a debate when you’re right about everything? Honor is honor, but is it not also honor to not waste it on the honorless? Is turnabout not fair? If ‘As High as Honor’ can mean as high as my honor, can it not just as easily mean as high as yours. Or as low? If you don’t have honor, why should I sully mine by throwing it at your feet? Conversely, do you not deserve to be treated honourably by yourself as well? What exactly makes you less deserving of being treated honourably? By you?”
Robert blinked rapidly and mouthed words that wouldn’t come out. Looking to his right, Ned wasn’t much better.
“It is dishonourable to withhold honor from the honourable. It is dishonourable to waste honor on the dishonourable.” Jon beheld Ned more severely than he’d ever looked at either of them. “When it’s strangers, you’ve got the excuse of not knowing how much lower their honor hangs. You certainly don’t know if it’s so low that your high honor will trip and fall and drag you to death and ignominy. But you have no excuse when it’s you. And here? You knew full well you were dealing with a crook and a liar. How is it honourable to enable him like you did? At some point, the only honourable thing to do is to treat others the way they treat others. That’s why, when we run into slavers or pirates, we neither ask nor offer quarter. We destroy them. Root and stem.”
“… Justice and vengeance.”
“Justice alone is enough.”
Jon fell silent for a while, having ended his lesson.
Well!
Well…
Alright then?
“Ned. Robert.”
Robert sat at attention.
“You boys have a unique opportunity here, being fostered – you get a chance to experience the best and the worst consequences of your actions without them following you home when you leave. Whatever lords or priests or what have you that you offend will remain behind when you return to your realms. And so I allowed you this. I let you play, train, learn, challenge, offend, insult and seek help from whoever you wanted throughout, providing no guidance or warning of consequences you didn’t ask for first. And so you failed on your own merits. And succeeded on your own merits. Tell me, will this experience not stay with you until the end of your days?”
And then some, Robert thought sullenly.
… Jon didn’t look it most of the time anymore, but he was kind of intense, wasn’t he?
“That said, now that you do have the experience of standing and falling on your own merits, I’m ready to resume that protection and guidance. And I’m ready to make up for my own failings that allowed you to stray from the path of good sense. Which is why I’ve decided you should start having an equal say in what to do from now on.”
“… I’m an adult,” Robert groused.
“And Ned isn’t but I still expect him to show more sense than you. Am I wrong?”
“Oh I am so not dishonourable enough to deserve that!”
“But you don’t deny it.”
“… You’re the worst.”
Beside him, Ned scoffed. “I don’t know how I missed you going behind my back. You’re shit at lying.”
“You shut up.”
“If you’re done?” Jon said impatiently.
“I am.” “Right.”
“Good. Now. How up to date are you on news from the broader realm?”
Robert and Ned looked at each other.
“Not very,” Ned admitted. “Last I heard, my brother Benjen had taking to composing music?”
Which was weeks ago. Robert pretended not to feel relieved at not being the most behind on this too. “Renly’s had his first name day!”
“And did you read your parents’ ravens, or are you just saying so because you remembered his day of birth just now?”
Robert deflated.
“It was a good attempt.”
Robert groaned. “Just get to the point.”
“We have been invited to Oldtown, to attend the wedding of Baelor Hightower and Elia Martell.”
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Abhishekm
Well-known member
Neat chap, but now thats just naive Robert. Well more likely thats just him trying to get a raise out of the preacher. Part of why I hate debates, kinda antithetical to honest conversation.
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