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Episode 99: A CLASH OF KINGS, DAENERYS II: "City of a Hundred Colors" SHOW NOTES!
🕑 Added 2020-02-10 15:00:03 +0000 UTCHello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.
And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.
Welcome to the ninety-ninth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “City of a Hundred Colors: An Analysis of ACOK, Daenerys II,” in which Dany arrives at our VERY FAVORITE SETTING in ASOIAF, the city of Qarth. Did Emmett say Harrenhal was his favorite setting last week? Yeah, forget that. We’re all about Qarth here on the NotACast, right? Right?
This episode is brought to you by our Small Council:
- Hand of the King WolfmanZack
- Grand Maester Timbob
- Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N.
- Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
- Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
- Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
- Lord Gene, Master of Coin
- Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
- Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
- Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
- Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
- Lord Micah: Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
- Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
- The High Bearded Priest
- Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
- Lady Xena Valyrian
- Hedrigal, Captain of the Air Ship Arrogance
- His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
- Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
- Laurence, Prince of Dorne
- Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs
- Steven the Steadfast, Master of Hounds
- The Blue Winter Rose Knight of Highgarden
- Lady Stephanie
- Lord Anonymous
- Lord Carlos
- Lord Andrew the Restless, a Priest of the Drowned God
- The King's Cook, Nolly (No-lee) Olly (Oh-lee), Master of Cannoli
- Ser Sourcedelica
- Prince Matthew of House Targaryen - Proud Soy Boy of Summerhall, Defender of the 5th Book and Swing Dancer with Dragons
- Ser K.W. Dent, Elsie of the Blackwood Guard, and Batman of the Seven Kingdoms
- Lord Penchant for Nostalgia
- Queer Alex, Rainbow Commander of the They-des and Gentle-thems
- Lord Clint, Esq., Master of Absolutely, Positively NOT Serving As A Spy for Several Unnamed High Lords and Ladies In Order to Further the Secret Blackfyre-Style Conspiracy to Overthrow The Oppressive Small Council
- Haldivar, The Waiter for TWOW
- A-a-ron Damphair Prophet of the Forsaken and High Priest of Euron Crows Eye
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- Vanerys of the House Colgaryen, the First of Her Name, Princess of Dragonstone, Mistress of Art, The Overworked, Queen of the Pencils, the Eraser and the First Draft, Queen of Monochrome, Devotee of the Great GOT, Portraitist of the Realm, Lady Realist of the Seven Kingdoms, Blender of Paints and Maker of Drawings
- Seanwell the Slayer
- And our two newest members of the small council:
- Lord Adam T
- Tibs the Great of House Catnaps
- Thank you folks very much!
Spoiler warning: All published books, 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!
Question
Dean, one of our high lords, asks:
Hello Gents,
With the likely imminent release of The Winds of Winter (tomorrow? next week? next month perhaps?) I was wondering about the storylines that have been scrapped from the series (eg Tyrion’s encounter with the Shrouded Lord, or Arya’s Braavosi adventures), do you think we’ll ever get to see these? Examples of what could have been, or events that were dropped for brevity as part of the editing process?
As budding authors yourselves, is this something that a writer would reveal? Or is the idea that once it’s gone it’s gone?
Regards
Dean
So, thank you Lord Dean for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions that we’ll answer here on the NotACast podcast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword patron at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can also get 24 bonus episodes ASOIAF episodes, 5 Fevre Dream episodes, show notes, access to our exclusive slack and more! And as we’ve talked about on patreon itself and wanted to announce here, we’ve revised our current patreon stretch goal. So, if we get 900 total patrons, we’ll do a full-out chapter analysis on The Forsaken from The Winds of Winter. So, if you like Jeff’s synopses and battle analysis/theorizing, or love Euron, eldritch apocalypses and psychedelic, drug-induced imagery like me, head on over to patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF to sign up for as little as $1/month to get our full-out analysis of The Forsaken!
I can’t wait till we hit that goal and do The Forsaken! As of this recording, we’ve got 59 # of patrons before we hit our goal! I hope it’s sooner rather than later! But enough about patreon for now. Let’s turn our attention to Daenerys Targaryen. When we last left the dragon queen, she had wandered the red wastes, nearly starving to death before finding rest at Vaes Tolorro. But then Pyat Pree, Xaro Xhoan Daxos and the GOAT of ASOIAF characters Quaith had shown up to take her to Qarth: a setting that sucks. Let’s find out what happens to Daenerys in this synopsis of ACOK, Daenerys II.
Synopsis
Daenerys Targaryen approaches Qarth to men beating gongs, horns blowing and an honor guard of camels coming out to greet her.
“Qarth is the greatest city that ever was or ever will be,” Pyat Pree had told her, back amongst the bones of Vaes Tolorro. “It is the center of the world, the gate between north and south, the bridge between east and west, ancient beyond memory of man so magnificent that Saathos the Wise put out his eyes after gazing upon Qarth for the first time, because he knew that all he saw thereafter should look squalid and ugly by comparison.”
Dany knows that Pyat is probably full of shit, but the city does look quite splendid. There were three walls that encircled Qarth. The curtain wall was red sandstone, thirty feet high with animals decorating it. The second wall forty feet high with lovely scenes of war and slaughter, including infants of course, adorning it. The final inner wall, AKA the porno wall, was decorated with erotic carvings that Dany tries to force herself not to blush at.
The three walls of Qarth are copper, iron and the third has gold eyes. Children throw flowers and wear colorful clothing. Dany thinks that the colors missing from Vaes Tolorro are all here in Qarth. As for the Qartheen themselves, Dany describes them this way:
The Qartheen lined the streets and watched from delicate balconies that looked too frail to support their weight. They were tall pale folk in linen and samite and tiger fur, every one a lord or lady to her eyes. The women wore gowns that left on breast bare while the men favored beaded silk skirts.
Dany feels barbaric in contrast wearing her lionskin cloak that Drogo gave her. She also knows that the Dothraki call these people “Milk Men” and remembers how Drogo wanted to sack the great cities of the east. Dany assumes that the Qartheen assume her Dothraki are barbarous, and she #problematically agrees with this assessment of how barbaric they must seem to them.
Pyat Pree ushers her khalasar into the city, and they pass a great bazaar with trees and flowers blooming in the terraced walls above the market stalls while the free market reigns supreme below. Xaro Xhoan Daxos rides up to her then, proclaiming that if Dany wants anything, it’s hers. But Pyat loudly states that the entire city is Dany’s. BTW, come hang out at the warlocks’ haunted house known as the House of the Undying. It’ll be fun! But Dany only desires the Red Keep at King’s Landing. P.S. she doesn’t want gifts. She wants swords and ships to retake the Seven Kingdoms.
Pyat’s blue lips curled upward in a gracious smile. “It shall be as you command, Khaleesi.”
It’s that easy? Really? Qarth is just going to give her ships and swords to re-take Westeros? Oh … okay. Sure.
Pyat Pree then fucks off to do whatever it is he does when he’s not acting like a fucking weirdo, and Xaro warns Dany that Pyat is lying. But Dany asks why people seem kind of on-edge when talking with the warlocks. As to that, Xaro replies that the warlocks once had power, but now they’re a bunch of navel-gazers, obsessed with their old image. And then Xaro fucks off.
With Xaro and Pyat gone, Jorah tells Dany that she should avoid these guys, but Dany says they’ll help her win her crown. Okay. Sure. And Jorah, for once, isn’t wrong.
“Xaro has vast wealth, and Pyat Pree pretends to power. I would not linger here long, my queen. I mislike the very smell of this place.”
Sadly for Dany, for us, Dany will linger here for the rest of this book. Sighhhhhhhhhh
Dany jokes around, saying maybe it’s the camels that Jorah smells, because the Qartheen smell quite nice. But no. Jorah knows that sweet smells cover up foul smells. Interestingly, Dany realizes that Jorah is treating her like a “bear cub”, and she wishes she could love him better.
But for now, Dany has access to Xaro Xhoan Daxos’ manse. She had no idea how big Xaro’s house would be until she beholds it, and boy, is it big. Hm. Maybe rephrase? Nope! She notes that Illyrio’s manse in Pentos was super small and squalid by comparison. And Xaro’s POV (for now) is Su casa, mi casa. Everything that’s Xaro’s is Dany’s -- including his slaves. And it’s all because Dany is the mother of dragons. Everyone is going to want to see those dragons and feast her.
And that’s how it goes. Pyat Pree returns, kissing her feet with his blue lips, gifting her with some totally-not-drugs or “a jar of ointment that he swore would let her see the spirits of the air.” Disgusting. Moving on. And then, yes, at long last. Quaithe shows back up. We’ve all been waiting.
“Beware,” the woman in the red lacquer mask said.
“Of whom?” Dany asked.
“Of all. They shall come day and night to see the wonder that has been born again into the world, and when they see, they shall lust. For dragons are fire made flesh, and fire is power.”
You wanna clarify any of that, Quaithe? No? Okay. Great. Thanks for that.
Jorah agrees with Quaithe after she’s gone, but he doesn’t trust her either. Why Jorah is the voice of reason, I just don’t know. But here we are. Dany’s a little bewildered by Quaithe’s cryptic statements given that Xaro and Pyat were promising her the moon as soon as she arrived in Qarth. Dany wonders if Quaithe is a Mirri Maaz Duur figure and decides that viewing hours for the dragons are unavailable permanently.
But now that Dany is thoroughly weirded out, she needs to get a real sense of this city. So, she dispatches Rakharo to head out with some women in her khalasar to get a good look at what’s really going on in Qarth. Meanwhile, Jorah needs to get his bear-ass down to the docks to find information from sailors about what’s going on in Westeros. Jorah protests, but Dany tells him to get moving. He knows more languages than anyone else in her party. So, Jorah fucks off.
Now finally alone, Dany strips down and goes to bathe in Xaro’s pool. She wonders if the Red Keep has a pool or gardens (Factcheck: no pool, but apparently Mycella maintains a garden that Sansa picks flowers from back in AGOT). She lets the little goldfish nibble at her in the water, liking the feel. She wonders if the Seven Kingdoms were as beautiful as Viserys told her. And that thought of home disquiets her. Maybe if Drogo lived, his khalasar would have crossed the Narrow Sea, but the Dothraki were the sack and slaughter type, not liberators.
Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts.
Oh boy. We’ll come back to that line.
Dany wants to make a beautiful kingdom where people smile at her the same way they smiled at Aerys(?) Um. Hm. Yeah. But she had to conquer before that happened. And then there was the problem of Robert the Usurper. He was always trying to kill Dany, and he was a good warrior. And he had those goddamned usurper’s dogs with him: “cold-eyed Eddard Stark with his frozen heart, and the golden Lannisters, father and son, so rich, so powerful, so treacherous.” Ugh that Ned and Tywin would be grouped together, Dany. Understandable but ugh.
Daenerys doesn’t know how she’d overthrow all these men. She has no Drogo and just a small khalasar. And her dragons were small. Sure, Viserys said that Westeros would rise for Dany, but he was an idiot. All those doubts make her shiver in the pool, and she feels irritated at the cold water and the fish nibbling at her. So, she calls for her handmaids and a towel and her clothes. But amidst the irritation, she reassures herself that Qarth means something:
The Bleeding Star led me to Qarth for a purpose. Here I will find what I need, if I have the strength to take what is offered, and the wisdom to avoid the traps and snares. If the gods mean for me to conquer, they will provide, they will send me a sign, and if not … if not …
I … is George writing a meta commentary against the narrative purpose of Qarth within the framework of writing Qarth? George RR Martin, everyone: 5-D chessmaster.
That evening, as Dany feeds her dragons, Jorah arrives back from the docks. And boy does he have news. Well, first, he’s brought someone to Dany. Quhuru Mo a Summer Islander captain who speaks in the “liquid Valyrian of the Free Cities.” And Quhuru has a gift for Dany.
“A gift of news. Dragonmother, Stormborn, I tell you true, Robert Baratheon is dead.”
Outside her walls, dusk was settling over Qarth, but a sun had risen in Dany’s heart.
Dany quickly asks the clarifying question of whether Quhuru actually means dead, and yes, that’s exactly what he means. Robert was killed by a boar while hunting. Or Ned Stark killed him. Or Cersei betrayed him. Regardless of the story, the king is dead and now his “son” was king in his place.
Dany had never looked upon the Usurper’s face, yet seldom a day had passed when she had not thought of him. His great shadow had lain across her since the hour of her birth, when she came forth amidst blood and storm into a world where she no longer had a place. And now this ebony stranger had lifted that shadow.
But now with Joffrey reigning and the Lannisters ruling in the boy’s stead, Ned Stark seized for treason, this was the time to strike at King’s Landing while everyone was fighting -- much as Drogo’s khalasar had fought each other after Drogo’s death. She asks when Quhuru plans to sail back to Westeros, and he replies that he’ll head back in a year or so. Disappointed, Dany wishes him well and thanks her for the gift.
“I have been amply repaid, great queen.”
She puzzled at that. “How so?”
His eyes gleamed. “I have seen dragons.”
Dany tells him to come see her in King’s Landing after she’s won her throne to claim a gift, and Quhuru says he will, and then he leaves. Now alone with Jorah, the knight cautions Dany not to trust every sailor’s tale. Also, she shouldn’t go around proclaiming her plans to everyone. Use some goddamn, OPSEC, Jorah says as with a keen appreciation of irony.
Dany starts to grow annoyed with Jorah’s insistence at being a wet blanket. She’s not a child, and she won’t be treated as such. And Robert’s death changes everything. They’re all fighting a civil war; so, we have a chance. But Jorah says no. Westeros has always warred against itself. This changes nothing. They have so many needs: a fleet, gold, army, alliances. And they have none of those things. But Dany already knows this. Her internal dragon calming, she thinks:
Sometimes he thinks of me as a child he must protect, and sometimes as a woman he would like to bed, but does he ever truly see me as his queen?
Good questions. Still, she’s not scurred. And sure, she’s young, but she believes herself to have the wisdom of the old crones and feels as young as her dragons. She’s also given birth, burned Drogo and crossed the red waste and Dothraki Sea. She is the blood of the dragon.
When Jorah says that Viserys was blood of the dragon too, Dany quickly corrects him: she ain’t Viserys. Jorah quickly backpedals and says yeah, she’s not Viserys. She’s more Rhaegar. And Rhaegar died on the Trident to Robert.
“Even dragons die.”
“Dragons die.” She stood on her toes to kiss him lightly on an unshaven cheek. “But so do dragonslayers.”
And that is ACOK, Daenerys II. Well, that was a chapter, wasn’t it, Emmett? It’s a chapter that exists.
Depth
Qarth is a source of frustration for me, because with a handful of changes, it could’ve been one of my favorite parts of the story. For the space of one chapter, namely the House of the Undying chapter, it is one of my favorite parts of the story. Elsewhere, not so much. Qarth has a lot of potentially fascinating elements at play, but George doesn’t really play with them. More to the point, he doesn’t let us play with them. They just sit there, being potentially fascinating, and so it becomes my least favorite part of the story. Qarth feels like the setting of a lesser fantasy series.
Upon re-read and with Theon’s first two chapters in mind, Qarth reminds me of the Iron Islands. Dany going to Qarth and Theon taking Winterfell weren’t originally envisioned by the pitch letter. So, the plot mechanics for both locations feel stitched-on. But the character work George does with Theon more than makes up for the wonky plot mechanics. It’s different for Dany.
We talked about the meta side in ACOK, Dany I of why George invented the Qartheen and later Slaver’s Bay arcs. But here, I think the character work that George invents for Dany feels flat when compared against Dany in AGOT and even ACOK, Dany I. It struck me that there’s a small moment in the chapter when Dany dispatches Rakharo to investigate Qarth, to let her know what’s actually occurring beyond the image she’s presented, telling him: "Tell me what you find. Take good men with you—and women, to go places where men are forbidden." It feels like some good setup for Dany to find out that the beautiful sites she’s witnessing, the nice smells she’s smelling are all covering up the rot under the surface. But … either George forgot about Rakharo’s investigation, or more likely, George was kind-of going through the motions as a writer, because we never find out what Rakharo and the women discover in the forbidden places. It really feels like a check-box in that chapter. Dany is doing her due-diligence Check! Like you were saying, it’s frustrating!
Thankfully, George course-corrects come ASOS and Slaver’s Bay! But I’ve already buried Qarth before praising it. And what better way to praise Qarth than to lavish praise on the city itself!
- The imagery (or, I can say nice things)
- Where George unambiguously succeeds in Qarth is the visuals, and that’s not incidental; it’s central to what he appears to be going for with this setting
- I talked in the Prologue about how George infuses ACOK with a rainbow color palette to match the expanding story, and our intro to Qarth is a perfect example
- Qarth sparkles. Qarth shimmers. Qarth shines. This chapter is overwhelmed with kaleidoscopic details that keep opening up into even more details
- The gongs on the walls, the horns snaking around the people playing them, the camels with their carpets of a hundred colors, the trio of magnificently carved entrance gates, the other gate shaped like snakes mating, the flower children painted head to toe, the latticework bazaar, the pool with the golden fish...
- Colors explode off the page. You can practically smell the fragrances. Every element contributes to this enveloping aura of not just wealth, but beauty, sensuality, refinement, and transcendence: everything in its right place
- The walls, the imagery, the architecture, it feels like a gift from GRRM to me, because GRRM is basically describing Constantinople at its zenith (and Byzantine History was the focus of my undergrad studies).
- Seemingly between AGOT and ACOK, GRRM must have read a book or two about the city of Constantinople at the Eastern Roman Empire, commonly known as the Byzantine Empire
- Because in ACOK, GRRM starts to borrow heavily from the popular history conceptions of the city: think the wildfire/greek fire, Constantinople’s boom chain/Tyrion’s chain
- But also, parts of that historical borrowing can be found in Qarth -- especially in its gates and walls.
- The three walls of Qarth as described by Dany is similar to the Theodosian Walls built by the Emperor Theodosius II (though possibly started during the reign of Emperor Arcadius) in the 5th century.
- The Theodosian walls consist of a low wall, outer wall and inner wall with each successive wall the farther in you get is taller than the one before
- The Theodosian Walls defended nearly one thousand years until the Siege of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks and their cannons, and even then, I’d argue like a big ass history nerd that the walls held even then for reasons that I’d love to get into with all of you history nerds offline.
- Similarly the three gates of Qarth are described as banded with copper, the middle with iron; the innermost were studded with golden eyes.
- Not a direct one-for-one, but this reads similar to the Golden Gate outside of Constantinople: the ceremonial entry point where Roman emperors would process through at the end of a successful military campaign, or in rare cases: where high foreign dignitaries or popes would enter the city
- And then we have Xaro expanding out from the ornamental gates to describe Qarth as the gate between north and south, bridge between east and west — like Constantinople which sat on Bosporus strait, occupying space in both Europe and Asia and acting as gate and bridge between the two continents.
- Most importantly for our purposes, Constantinople became the Caput Mundi (or capital of the world). as the city of Rome declined in prominence.
- It was a statement by the Eastern Romans that the center of the world was the greatest city in the world: Constantinople. All else orbited Constantinople.
- And this is similar to the Qartheen self-conception of their city.
- Pyat Pree describes Qarth as the center of the world, the city to shame all other cities, and while that’s immediately undercut by Dany’s skepticism (and will be undercut further as we go through ACOK), Dany also admits she’s impressed
- How could she not be, given the harsh and sparse environments in Dany I? She’s gone from one end of the sensual spectrum to the other. Dany is Dorothy, stepping out of black and white into colorful Oz. As George writes, it’s as if all the color bleached out of Vaes Tolorro was reborn with interest in Qarth
- That’s an interesting phrasing, because it positions Qarth as a vampire, sucking the land around it dry, its decadent magnificence only made possible by the wasteland outside. Underneath the glamor, is Qarth just a bigger City of Bones?
- That’s perfectly in line with what we’ve said about Renly’s army feasting while the people of King’s Landing starve, or Harrenhal standing in for the destruction of the Riverlands. It’s also in direct contrast to how the Starks behave per Bran III
- Pyat inadvertently gives the game away when he describes Saathos the Wise, who “put out his eyes after gazing upon Qarth for the first time, because he knew that all he saw thereafter should look squalid and ugly by comparison.”
- Qarth is so beautiful that it blinds you, like staring into the sun. It’s such a rewarding plane of existence that it saps you of your ability to live elsewhere
- We’ll get more into that with Dany III and especially Dany IV, but Dany II is about setting the trap so those later chapters can spring it
- Here, we see the face Qarth shows the world, and it strives to be a perfected mirror image like Renly RE Robert: a microcosm of the world, but better
- Their walls cover the bases from animals to violence to sex, human evolution in motion, each in turn ushering our species into Qarth, our highest achievement
- Xaro Xhoan Daxos’ palace would dwarf a town. Even Illyrio, a man seemingly composed of expensive rings, seems a pauper by comparison to the Qartheen
- As with Harrenhal, this grotesque hugeness to everything speaks to the outsized ambition and self-regard of the people who run this town
- Also like Harrenhal, there is a distinct fairytale edge to Qarth: the way it emerges shimmering from the sands like a mirage, the bizarre otherworldly details around every corner, the false promises that hide cunning traps for the unwary mortal…
- “Everything the gods had put into the world was for sale.” That speaks to the worldliness of Qarth, the sense that it’s the center around which Planetos orbits, but George is also working in a subtle hint that everyone in Qarth is also for sale
- It’s also hinting that all of the lavish gifts that Xaro and Pyat give or promise Dany are intended as tender for her dragons
- And as Jorah will relate in Dany III, even the marriage ceremony involves the sale:
- “The Qartheen have a curious wedding custom, my queen. On the day of their union, a wife may ask a token of love from her husband. Whatsoever she desires of his worldly goods, he must grant. And he may ask the same of her. One thing only may be asked, but whatever is named may not be denied."
- As Dany will find in Slaver’s Bay, no one truly gives a fuck about her claim to the Iron Throne.
- They only care for the dragons as in they only care about gaining the dragons.
- As Dany puts it: now that she’s come into her own as a protagonist, Qarth has been presented to her as a test by the Bleeding Star
- And George has clearly put a lot of thought into that, and organized the themes and images of Qarth to speak to temptation, seduction, and fatal self-regard
- You could argue that what we’re seeing with Qarth is every other storyline in ACOK sanded down to its basics and suspended in isolation
- In a book about leadership amidst the intertwining political and magical expansions, Dany is explicitly setting out to challenge and improve her leadership skills in Qarth by running a gauntlet of political and magical trickery
- So what’s the problem?
- None of this sounds bad, necessarily! Where does Qarth go wrong?
- Unfortunately, the best way for me to get into it is to bring up a subject that will make my beloved co-host uncomfortable: drugs
- It’s not my fault! It’s impossible to talk about Qarth without talking about drugs, because drugs are what Qarth is made of. I’m not talking purely about the House of the Undying; that’s just where the influence becomes explicit
- I’m talking about the undeniable fact that both weed and psychedelics are at the heart of fantasy as a genre, and Qarth is George poking fun at that with love. It’s practically an in-joke for his fellow D&D stoners: a Lava Lamp the size of a city
- All those dazzling colors, and not only that, but the colors are crowding around Dany as if they’re moving...this is 100% an acid flashback on George’s part
- The selling point of psychedelic drugs is that they’ll take you to other worlds; you can see the appeal for fantasy writers and readers! But this is not accurate
- What these drugs actually do is the inverse: they enchant the everyday, transforming a leaf, an apple, a kitten’s face into a representation of the divine
- There’s a reason substances like these are associated with religious awakenings the world over. They make you see God in everything
- Some of my favorite art (and yours too, Jeff, and dear listener at home) is impossible to imagine without the influence of these drugs
- Not because they make you smart (they can do quite the opposite if you’re not careful with them), but because they offer a different way of looking at the world
- Moreover, an entire wave of pop culture sprang up around these drugs in the 1960s and 70s, and that’s had a massive influence in every area of American life even if you’ve never touched one of these drugs. Qarth stands in for all that
- But one problem with both these drugs and the art influenced by them is how often the insight doesn’t translate to the sober mind
- Sometimes, the sober mind is transported to this enchanted view of the everyday, but sometimes, the sober mind goes yeah dude, that’s a leaf. I’ve seen leaves.
- It’s so easy to get lost in the golden imagery and forget all else, and I feel like that’s what happened in Qarth: George got into the visuals and the themes and neglected the bones of plot progression and character development
- There’s no urgency in Qarth, no momentum, no narrative thrust. There’s no sweeping transformation of Dany’s character like in AGOT, ASOS, and ADWD
- And there’s little about her visit to Qarth that connects with character beats moving forward.
- Oh, sure. In plot-terms, the Qartheen don’t disappear from Dany’s narrative: Dany will hear about the Qartheen warlocks are after her in ASOS, she’ll meet up with Xaro again in ADWD and Qarth will go to war with Dany
- And, I guess, if I’m being extremely fair, she’s learning to distrust people who seem nice and give her stuff. (Though, didn’t she learn that lesson from Illyrio and from the wine merchant who attempted to poison her back in AGOT?)
- Take the example of Khal Drogo and the Dothraki from this chapter: she thinks about her experiences with Drogo: whether she would be regarded as conqueror or liberator by Westeros, how she doesn’t want to do similarly to Westeros as Drogo did to the Lhazarene.
- Dany consistently reflects on her experiences among the Dothraki and gains critical character progression as a result of it.
- The same can’t be said for Qarth.
- I was thinking about how in this very chapter, Dany sees slaves, hears that slaves are sold in Qarth in the market and witnesses that Xaro’s manse is inhabited almost entirely by slaves.
- So, come ASOS and Dany’s experiences in Astapor, this seems a likely spot where Dany would be connecting her experiences in Astapor to, right?
- WRONG
- She connects the slavery she witnesses in Astapor to her personal experiences with Viserys and Illyrio from AGOT: "Do you know what it is like to be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though not as he had wished, and I . . . my sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have forgotten how it felt to be afraid?"
- Of course that’s much more powerful touchstone for Dany’s view of slavery! George put a ton of work into unpacking all of this in AGOT.
- That’s simply not the case with Qarth, but it could have been. Dany’s experiences being sold into slavery, watching the Lhazarene being violently impressed into slavery are the first parts of the arc. The second could have been Dany’s experiences in Qarth unpacking how the wealth, glory and grandeur of Qarth, all the beautiful sites and smells are built on slavery.
- Something which would then resonate with the children’s rhyme she hears about in Astapor: "Bricks and blood built Astapor, and bricks and blood her people."
- As you were saying: there’s no momentum in Qarth, no real internal character conflict for Dany to wrestle with, no springboard from which she’ll reflect upon and grow as a character.
- The plot beats buried under that cosmic trippy surface are so threadbare and uninteresting. Dany drifts along listlessly, ending up at the House of the Undying because why not, leaving the city at the end of the book because I guess it’s time
- I get, at some level, that this is the point: Qarth is listless because getting everything you want all the time is boring, not rewarding. (More on that in Dany III and IV.) But this shapelessness leaves Qarth feeling half-baked and hollow
- Our supporting cast isn’t helping matters. We’re still not digging beneath the surface of the Dothraki, despite being repeatedly told that Dany has bonded with these people. At the end of AGOT, she freed them as equals and they stuck around after the dragonbirth, hers more than they ever were Drogo’s
- In Dany I, they walked into the wasteland together, and she was constantly dwelling on her responsibility for them, on how she could ensure their survival
- Her story is all about flux, constant transformation, an irresistible force in search of an immovable object, and within that, her khalasar is a constant
- Yet all we get out of this relationship in this chapter--and in the book as a whole--is Dany adopting the Qartheen perspective to refer to the Dothraki as savages, and admitting she has no idea what’s going on behind their eyes
- The argument that this reflects alienation on Dany’s part does not hold water, because again: we are told there is a significant bond here. So where is it?
- Then there are Qarth’s three wise men (well, two men and a woman). Boooooooooring.
- Benefit of the doubt: Pyat, Xaro, and Quaithe are supposed to be archetypes more than complex psychologies, standing in for the paths they offer Dany
- And that’s fine! The problem for me is that they’re too muddled and passive to act as proper archetypes in this regard; there’s not enough tension or threat
- I just rewatched THE WORLD’S END, one of my favorite movies, and that’s a movie self-consciously made up of archetypes within patterns
- But each archetypal character is built from consistent details that clearly communicate their place in the pattern and how it fits with each plot beat
- Pyat, Xaro, and Quaithe offer such simplistic temptations with so little payoff. They compete with each other, but not with any great verve or drama, and it’s never effectively framed like Dany has to choose between one or the other
- On twitter, user @Calicoville put it really well in a great twitter thread response to my frustrations with Qarth. I’ll read two of their points, because I think they correlate strongly with what you’re saying
- Qarth itself we learn about in worldbook-style narration. Its political complications – e.g. the conflicts between the Pureborn, the guilds, etc – don't have any bearing on the story. Quarth is a collection of details that don't add up to any greater meaning.
- In terms of storytelling, it's conveyed voice-of-god style, with no sense of "Is this true? Whose account can we trust?" Presumably Dany learns about Qartheen politics from Xaro, but even though he's trying to play her, we never get a sense this might be untrustworthy.
- I’d only add that Quaithe frustrates me along similar lines with her constant cryptic lines that seem to exist almost entirely for fans to speculate about -- but I’ll leave my full thoughts about Quaithe to ACOK, Dany III.
- Dany drifts among them like a dandelion spore on the wind, with very little of the character stakes you need for an effective story about temptation and power
- She tries to bribe some people with Xaro, which we are told fails in a blunt and uninteresting way, and then she shrugs and goes to find enlightenment with Pyat and the Undying, which also fails, and then she shrugs and leaves town.Somewhere in there, Quaithe is cryptic and annoying, as is her way
- Compare this to Arya at Harrenhal or Jon at Craster’s Keep, where George embeds ethical struggles in a well-defined setting and secondary cast and turns them back on the POV characters in ways that build on their previous struggles.
- Dany in Qarth is weak tea by comparison to the work done elsewhere in ACOK
- So much of ACOK, as we’ve talked about in Arya and Tyrion chapters in particular, is George doing a masterful job of showing how a nobility ensconced in high towers is navel-gazing about the nature of power and how to wield it
- All of this while the foundation of Westeros rots in the form of brutalized and murdered smallfolk in the Riverlands, at Harrenhal, in King’s Landing.
- And while Dany will come to see the lies and corruption of the Thirteen, the Pureborn, the warlocks and the literal rotting heart in the House of the Undying, it’s all at the 10,000 foot level with no attention paid to what’s underneath the high walls, manses and the warlock’s palace of dust.
- It’s Dany as dragon queen reacting to another ruling structure with no appreciation for the whole scope of Qarth.
- It’s just not how GRRM does up Westeros with its intense focus on how the game the high lords play affect the smallfolk at the bottom, and it makes for a lesser story for reasons I’ll unpack at the end.
- Dany takes a bath and gets good news
- As you noted, we do get some promising character notes for Dany in this chapter
- She takes Jorah’s advice when it’s good--he tells her that Qarth’s sweet smell exists to cover up the foul, which to give Jorah some rare credit, is 100% true
- But Dany knows in the wake of the Lynesse backstory in Dany I that Jorah is interested in her romantically; as she says, she’s struggling to get him to see her as a queen, a leader, instead of either a virginal child or an available sex object
- Jorah’s view of Dany as a prism for how Littlefinger views Sansa
- Starting in AGOT and really picking up in ASOS, Littlefinger has a similar relationship with Sansa Stark, anointing himself as her father-figure/actual father while at the same time taking on the Creepyfinger persona as GRRM explained:
- Petyr's feelings towards Sansa are not entirely paternal. They're partially paternal, because Littlefinger has very mixed feelings here. I mean, sometimes he sees Sansa and she's the daughter he never had. The daughter he might've had with Cat if he and Cat had been married as he dreamed when he was a small boy living in her father's castle and was so madly in love with her.
At other times, he detaches himself from that and he's less 'Petyr' and he's more 'Littlefinger' and she's just another piece in the game. And yet at other times, she's not Cat's daughter. She's like young Cat. She's his teenage fantasies returned again. And then, his feelings toward her are sexual and romantic - That immoral dynamic that Littlefinger tries to exploit with Sansa is similar for Jorah and Dany’s relationship.
- The additional layer of fucked-upness for Jorah is that he uses his role as pseudo-father figure to Dany to urge her to not to trust other men, because he wants to be the only man in Dany’s life, the one who gets to sex her.
- That’s not to say that Jorah isn’t giving Dany good advice in this chapter. It’s just that his purpose in advising Dany not to trust are entirely wrapped up in his desire to bang her. It’s creepy as shit.
- Dany’s also aware of the limits of her perception here--sending the Dothraki out to explore the city, acknowledging that she has no clue what Quaithe is up to
- She knows precisely how to talk to both Xaro and Pyat, keeping them at arm’s length while still suggesting that they have interests in common
- Specifically, she plants the idea of them helping her go to Westeros and take the Iron Throne; that runs under the whole chapter, from Jorah ditching his Dothraki garb for Westerosi clothes early on to the news of Robert’s death at the end
- When she’s finally left alone (a rare state in Dany’s chapters), she goes for a swim in the marble pool, washing off the desert: it’s another rebirth
- Dany gets some space to consider what she wants to do, who she wants to be, and it’s easily the best part of the chapter. It links Dany’s story with the political and military questions in ACOK as a whole, beyond just prophetic imagery
- What will it mean, exactly, for her to go home? Westeros has become a very fraught topic for her, filtered through Viserys’ nostalgia for it, but also Dany’s changed perspective on him, as well as her time with the Dothraki
- Checking in with Dany’s internal compass regarding home is a great way of assessing how she has and hasn’t changed since AGOT. Her ends haven’t changed, but the means are giving her pause, in two interrelated ways
- One, she doesn’t have the power to take the Iron Throne. Her khalasar is tiny, and so are her dragons. Two, even if she had Drogo’s khalasar, everything Dany saw in AGOT has her worrying that her invasion could be one giant war crime
- Later in this chapter, she compares Westeros descending into civil war after Robert’s death to the khalasar splintering after Drogo’s fall
- George is calling back to the association between the warrior kings Robert and Drogo he made throughout book one, paralleling the western and eastern stories
- Dany is setting herself up as the one to rebuild from the ashes of Robert’s Westeros, just as she birthed dragons from the ashes of Drogo’s khalasar
- But she’s haunted by the idea that she might be the one responsible for burning down Westeros, because she was implicated in the khalasar’s violent descent
- It reminds me of Paul Atreides in Dune, another exiled noble reborn in the desert as a prophetic figure, experiencing visions of the galactic jihad to be waged in his name after he comes to power, and struggling to avoid that even as he senses its inevitability, destiny snapping into place around him whether he likes it or not
- Dany genuinely wants to create a kingdom of happy laughing people, but the ironic tragic structure here is that even though she’s desperate to stave off fire and blood in her future, it’s waiting for her in the past. Her standard for what a good country looks like is Westeros under her father, Mad King Aerys.
- And hey, those smallfolk from Arya VI would agree! But primarily, this stands out as a major sign from George that Dany’s ignorance about Dad will spell disaster, just like how she keeps referring to Viserys as the rightful king who is unfortunately dead, when she knows better than that
- And her grouping of Ned Stark and Tywin Lannister as “the usurper’s dogs” gives us a glimpse of things to come.
- Ned and Tywin are nothing alike, but her POV is understandable given that her only two points of reference for Ned by ACOK, Dany II are Viserys and Jorah: two men that hated Ned Stark for uniquely wrong reasons!
- But maybe Dany wouldn’t regard Ned as one of “the usurper’s dogs” after Ser Barristan reveals to Dany in ADWD that, sure, Ned had a part to play in Aerys’ downfall, but he wasn’t involved in the murders of Elia, Rhaenys and Aegon and furthermore attempted to dissuade Robert from sending the assassin after Dany.
- Nope!
- "Lannister or Stark, what difference? Viserys used to call them the Usurper's dogs. If a child is set upon by a pack of hounds, does it matter which one tears out his throat? All the dogs are just as guilty.”
- Dany’s assignment of mass guilt is a point that GRRM is really going to explore come Astapor and Meereen in ASOS, and boy is that going to be a really fascinating discussion when we come to it.
- But I was thinking: coming on the heels of Season 8’s “The Bells”, Dany’s assignment of equal culpability regardless of actual culpability reads as an exclamation point for how Dany will regard King’s Landing come A Dream of Spring.
- We’ll talk about this more in foreshadowing and groundwork, but might a Dany, aided by a vengeful Tyrion, view the people of King’s Landing who cheer the usurper’s dragon as equally “treasonous” as those who stole her throne and deserving of a traitor’s fate?
- But that’s far in the future. For now, she’s still wrestling with her post-dragon birth identity and whether that gives her a unique place in this world.
- Dany attempts to resolve these issues by putting her faith in destiny, prophecy, the signs from the gods that she was made to overcome the emptiness within
- This is why I wouldn’t go so far as to frame Daenerys Targaryen a character study in narcissistic entitlement, as many many people have argued
- First of all, she brought fucking dragons back. I’d have a swelled head too! And in this chapter specifically, she seizes on the idea that the comet led her to Qarth not because she really believes that everything has to be about the Stormborn Mother of Dragons, but because it gives structure to her uncertain future
- To make her dream come true, Qarth has to be a bridge--a way from getting from point A (Dothraki, dragons) to point B (a happy Westeros of which I am Queen)
- After all, this is a city of dreams, right? A city alive with all the colors of the rainbow, a city where everything you could possibly want in life is on display
- And then Jorah seems to confirm this line of thinking by showing up with Quhuru Mo and the news of Robert’s death, like another welcoming gift from the city
- See, Dany? You were right! The gods brought you to Qarth to proclaim that your nemesis, whose shadow hung over you since birth, is dead. This is your moment.
- It all comes together in Dany’s mind. Qarth is her launching pad, an egg from which she can hatch, all the raw materials she needs for her perfect kingdom
- Jorah stresses logistics, but Dany’s caught up in the narrative unfolding within her, and we’ll see that push-pull at work in the rest of Dany’s ACOK chapters
- So, again: what’s the problem? This seems like a fine story/character structure!
- Well, in part, it’s what you said earlier: elements left dangling sloppily with no payoff. That’s exacerbated by how few chapters we get in Qarth, which only supports the idea that George threw this storyline together on the fly
- It’s also in part the prose in this closing scene, which is not the best in the series:
- Outside her walls, dusk was settling over Qarth, but a sun had risen in Dany's heart.
- Kind of a clunky metaphor. See also the opening line of Dany III:
- The drapes kept out the dust and heat of the streets, but they could not keep out disappointment.
- But I think the largest problem is that these character beats feel redundant in the wake of how Dany’s story ramped up and concluded in book one
- The big takeaway here is that Dany’s going to try and go back to Westeros? Well...yeah! Of course that’s what she’s going to do. We already knew that!
- Again, I find myself agreeing with Jorah: not much has actually changed here
- The sense of a story running in place extends to the whole of Dany’s time in Qarth. The counterargument goes that what Dany takes away from Qarth is an obsessive sense of destiny--the House of the Undying prophecies, the way everyone treats her, the aura of magic and prophecy, all of it convinces her of her importance, and so you couldn’t have “dracarys” and all that follows without it
- But again: Dany brought back dragons at the end of the last book! She already knows she’s important. Her messianic status is a given going into this book
- “You sure are something, Dany” isn’t much of a revelation after she spent her last few chapters in the previous book strapped to a rocket to the heart of the sun
- George frames Qarth as a gorgeous surface covering up the nothing at the heart of it, and I wonder if that’s a subtle confession on his part that this storyline exists to paper over a sudden gap in Dany’s story, now that events in Westeros are going to take far longer to settle down than he originally intended
- Qarth is a beautiful diversion for both Dany and us, amounting to not much more than a side quest in the scope of ASOIAF as a whole
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
Will Dany in fact “reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts” as she pledges not to do in this chapter? Out of character, or tragic reversal?
Remember those glorious camels which welcome Daenerys into the city of Qarth? Well, wouldn’t you know it, but In ADWD, Daario reports that “a corps of Qartheen camelry” is in the field marching with Yunkai, against Daenerys and towards Meereen. If I had to guess, I’d bet some of those same camel riders that welcomed Dany into Qarth with such aplomb are now riding to bring her down and will be seen fighting Barristan and the Meereenese outside of Qarth! Fun fact: horses typically don’t like the smell of camels. So, this could have an impact on Barristan’s use of cavalry outside of Meereen!
I visibly perked up whenever this chapter mentions the Undying; even amidst the flurry of imagery that starts this chapter, it’s clear that George is setting up the warlocks’ den as the climactic location of Qarth.
Jorah going down to the docks to find some news is likely when Jorah sent his final missive to Varys as he admits to Dany in ASOS that he made one report to Varys from Qarth. (Varys later uses this intelligence about Dany to mislead the small council in ASOS, Tyrion III stating that a three-headed dragon has hatched in Qarth)
Dany promises a great reward to Quhuru Mo when she returns to Westeros. Will they cross paths again thanks to Marwyn? Will there be no reward, a genuine one, a hideously ironic one?
Theory/Discussion
How would we fix Qarth?
- Have it be based on something!
- GRRM: I have tried to mix and match ethnic and cultural traits in creating my imaginary fantasy peoples, so there are no direct one-for-one correspondences. The Dothraki, for example, are based in part on the Mongols, the Alans, and the Huns, but their skin coloring is Amerindian. The Qartheen are an even more exotic hybrid, and offhand I don't recall where I got all the cuttings. - So Spake, Martin, 3/20/2002
- Yeah, I talked about how Qarth has strong similarities to the architecture of Constantinople, but notice that it’s the buildings, walls, gates.
- All of that scene-setting is fine foundation for constructing a distinct setting, but that foundation is never really advanced beyond the scaffolding -- like you were saying earlier: GRRM got lost in the image.
- Like, I’ve searched through a 3,241 page archive of everything extra-textual GRRM has said about ASOIAF. It includes 27 references to Qarth -- 23 of which are about where Qarth is on the map, 3 of which deal with the House of the Undying and the 1 is the 1 cited above.
- As much as GRRM receives a lot of fair criticism for his orientalist portrayals of Slaver’s Bay and the Dothraki, they were based on historical peoples and groups and get a lot of unpacking in AGOT, ASOS, ADWD and TWOIAF.
- Qarth really doesn’t get any kind of unpacking in the narrative or in the worldbook or … anywhere.
- It’s like Qarth was entirely constructed in George’s mind as a setting-antagonist for Dany to react against without much thought put into the city.
- (Don’t get me wrong: other locations serve as setting-antagonists for our POV characters. Like Harrenhal for Arya, but for Qarth, it’s wayyyyy too transparent!)
- As evidence: in a 2015 interview on Adria’s News, Elio Garcia reported that GRRM would not give us anything about Qarth.
- The framing of the answer was in terms of spoilers GRRM refused to divulge to Elio and Linda for TWOIAF, but I wonder whether it’s not so much that GRRM didn’t want to spoil events from TWOW, but rather that he really didn’t much backstory figured for Qarth’s history
- That’s all fine, but it’s at odds with how George develops every other setting in the series: just look at the immense amount of history and backstory that GRRM imbues into every other region that the narrative directly touches!
- And that leads to the main issue: we get no real sense of Qarth as a place.
- What’s the economic and social structure of Qarth? How are the people fed? What crops are grown outside of the city? If there are no crops, where is food imported from? What’s the history of the people? Where do all the slaves come from?
- So, ultimately, my solution for Qarth is, and this will sound dumb, but ... make it feel like a real place.
- So, what’s your solution, Euron Emmett?
- My solution will come as no surprise: introduce Euron Crowseye in these chapters
- We know George has already come up with him, because he’s mentioned repeatedly in the Theon chapters
- And when Euron is introduced later in the series, he’s tied to Qartheen elements: the warlocks and their drug, shade of the evening
- Now, George might not have come up with those associations yet. But as we’ll talk about when we get to Dany V, there is a Qartheen character named “Urrathon Nightwalker” who is mentioned but unseen. That name in retrospect sounds like a Euron pseudonym
- So I think you could both build on Qarth’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses by building Dany’s time here around Urrathon Nightwalker as the villain of this storyline
- He’s a character consistent with the trippy intricate imagery of Qarth, as well as the theme of attaining absolute power only for it to hollow you out from the inside
- But his drive to use that power makes him more of an urgent scary threat than any of the elements that exist within Qarth as it stands, giving this storyline a dramatic build
- Get rid of all three Qartheen wise men and replace them with “Urrathon.” He retrieves Dany at the City of Bones (representing his plans for the world), he puts her up and squires her around town like Xaro, talking metaphysics and warning her off the rest of the city’s residents like Quaithe. He offers to help her take the Iron Throne...
- Dany’s charmed, maybe even into him a little--he’s not that different from Drogo
- At first, Urrathon claims opposition to the warlocks (using lipstick to hide his blue lips, maybe, befitting how men tend to dress in more sensual and luxurious ways in Qarth)
- But he’s actually arranging Dany’s failure to attain power via bribes and diplomacy, in order to leave her nowhere to go but the House of the Undying. It could be more interesting than her failing with Xaro just because, and then going to HOTU just because
- It’s not just the Undying waiting for Dany at the end of her adventures through the looking glass--it’s Urrathon, revealing his intentions to steal her dragons and Throne
- Drogon still burns the Undying; Urrathon escapes, and Team Dany flees his revenge (Euron hiring the Sorrowful Men just like he does the Faceless Men)
- You don’t even have to reveal that Urrathon is Euron Greyjoy if you don’t want to commit to that at the time. He can just show up in AFFC, and you let the audience put it together
- This is fanficky, I know, but I think it would make for a more focused and compelling arc in Qarth and establish one of the series’ main villains for later, especially in Dany’s story
Conclusion
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Comments
Mother of Kittens
[POTENTIAL SPOILERS!] What do y'all think about Conleth Hill's (Varys) revelation on Conan O'Brien's GoT special that GRRM sent him a letter when the show first started saying that Varys is "ultimately, a good person"?
