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Episode 141: A CLASH OF KINGS, TYRION XIII: "Look Upon My Works" SHOW NOTES!
🕑 Added 2021-01-11 15:00:04 +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 one hundred and forty-first episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Look Upon My Works: An Analysis of ACOK, Tyrion XIII,” in which Tyrion is pretty sure that he didn’t do anything wrong at all with the wildfire. If anything, it’s all Stannis’ fault.
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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
Ser James K, a Sworn Sword patron, asked a two-part question. But given that we’re doing a Tyrion chapter, we’ll talk about the second question. He asks:
Now this next question you may be saving for down the road but I gotta ask, who do you think Tyrion’s father is?
(Personally I find Tyrion being the only son of Tywin, Jamie and Cersei being born from Aerys, the most poetic.)
Long may your podcast reign gentlemen.
So, thank you James for the question. If you’d like to ask us questions we’ll answer here on the NotACast pod-cast, you are welcome to become a Sworn Sword or higher level patron over at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF where you can join and get show notes, bonus episodes, merch, access to the NotASlack and more!
Indeed. But enough about patreon. When we last checked in with Tyrion, he had a lovely dinner with Cersei, got sent off in battle by Sansa and was heading to the walls to wish Stannis a warm welcome to King’s Landing with a special surprise. Let’s find out the aftermath of Tyrion’s present to Stannis in this synopsis of ACOK, Tyrion XIII.
Synopsis
Motionless as a gargoyle, Tyrion Lannister hunched on one knee atop a merlon. Beyond the Mud Gate and the desolation that had once been the fishmarket and wharves, the river itself seemed to have taken fire. Half of Stannis's fleet was ablaze, along with most of Joffrey's. The kiss of wildfire turned proud ships into funeral pyres and men into living torches. The air was full of smoke and arrows and screams.
The start of this chapter is a reaction gif to Davos’ chapter, and I am horrifically here for it.
Tyrion watches as the Baratheon crews try to maneuver away from the wildfire, throwing down oars into the water to try to get out of the green hell, but there was no place to run. All the while, fires rage under the city walls of King’s Landing from Tyrion’s fire pots. Tyrion thinks it looks beautiful:
A terrible beauty. Like dragonfire. Tyrion wondered if Aegon the Conqueror had felt like this as he flew above his Field of Fire.
Well, that’s an interesting way to put it Tyrion.
Anyways, Tyrion feels the heat from the flames hitting his face, but he refuses to turn away. He realizes the gold cloaks were cheering, but Tyrion’s not in a cheering mood. This wasn’t enough to win that battle. More ships get #BoomRoasted by the wildfire as hundreds of men burn or drown or do both. Tyrion obviously feels pity for these men, despite knowing that they are on the other side, right? No. This is Tyrion’s reaction:
Do you hear them shrieking, Stannis? Do you see them burning? This is your work as much as mine. Somewhere in that seething mass of men south of the Blackwater, Stannis was watching too, Tyrion knew. He'd never had his brother Robert's thirst for battle. He would command from the rear, from the reserve, much as Lord Tywin Lannister was wont to do. Like as not, he was sitting a warhorse right now, clad in bright armor, his crown upon his head. A crown of red gold, Varys says, its points fashioned in the shapes of flames.
Obligatory and perhaps only but Tyrion is GOOD.
It’s then that Joffrey finally makes his appearances, squeaking about his burning ships. Tyrion sees the wildfire burning his own ships but rationalizes it as the cost of doing business. Besides, the fleet was doomed anyways. Tyrion had watched it all from the outstretched arms of someone holding him, and he knows that Bronn had whipped the oxen into raising the chain at the mouth of the Blackwater. Stannis could come into the Blackwater Rush, but he couldn’t get out.
That was the hope anyways. The reality was that some of Stannis’ ships were avoiding the wildfire. Some of the Myrish galleys ran to the south bank while eight ships had beached on the north bank. The last two lines of ships carrying the soldiers had mostly gotten away and might swing back for another try.
That might take a bit of time; even the bravest would be dismayed after watching a thousand or so of his fellows consumed by wildfire. Hallyne said that sometimes the substance burned so hot that flesh melted like tallow. Yet even so . . .
Tyrion, though, isn’t delusional about his own men. He knows that they’d break if the battle was going against the Lannisters. Jacelyn Bywater had told him that. And then Tyrion notices dark shapes moving through the burned out ruins of the riverfront
Time for another sortie, he thought. Men were never so vulnerable as when they first staggered ashore. He must not give the foe time to form up on the north bank.
Tyrion sends a runner to Lord Jacelyn that there’s enemy troops on the north bank. He also wants his trebuchets to pivot thirty degrees west to engage the troops on the shores. At that Joffrey starts yelling about how he was to have the trebuchets. He says all this with his visor up to let out some heat. Tyrion promptly shuts the visor and tells him to keep it shut for safety. But Joff can have the trebuchets.
It was as good a time as any; flinging more firepots down onto burning ships seemed pointless . Joff had the Antler Men trussed up naked in the square below, antlers nailed to their heads. When they'd been brought before the Iron Throne for justice, he had promised to send them to Stannis. A man was not as heavy as a boulder or a cask of burning pitch, and could be thrown a deal farther. Some of the gold cloaks had been wagering on whether the traitors would fly all the way across the Blackwater. "Be quick about it, Your Grace," he told Joffrey. "We'll want the trebuchets throwing stones again soon enough. Even wildfire does not burn forever."
Okay, I thought I was only going to do one of these, but second obligatory, but Tyrion is GOOD!
Joffrey heads off all psychotically gleeful he gets to commit war crimes. Tyrion tells Ser Osmund Kettleblack to keep Joffrey safe which the knight amiably agrees to do. Tyrion recalls warning Trant and Kettleblack to protect the king with the threat of them dying if they didn’t. Tyrion had surrounded Joff with a dozen gold cloaks and then thinks he’s doing a lot to protect Joffrey. He wants Cersei to do the same for Alayaya.
No sooner was Joff off than a runner came panting up the steps. "My lord, hurry!" He threw himself to one knee. "They've landed men on the tourney grounds, hundreds! They're bringing a ram up to the King's Gate."
Tyrion curses and starts moving down the steps. Pod waits for him with his horse, and he, Pod and Mandon Moore ride to the King’s Gate. When they arrive, they hear the ram hitting the gate, and Tyrion notices a lot of wounded men around the gate. He orders everyone to mount up. He wants to know who’s in command. They need to make the attack.
"No." A shadow detached itself from the shadow of the wall, to become a tall man in dark grey armor. Sandor Clegane wrenched off his helm with both hands and let it fall to the ground. The steel was scorched and dented, the left ear of the snarling hound sheared off. A gash above one eye had sent a wash of blood down across the Hound's old burn scars, masking half his face.
"Yes." Tyrion faced him.
Clegane's breath came ragged. "Bugger that. And you."
A sellsword steps up and says they’ve attacked three times, but they’ve taken 50% casualties. And with the wildfire … Tyrion cuts him off. They’re not fighting in a tourney. Get on your fucking horses. All of you. Even Sandor. It’s only then that Tyrion notices the whites in Sandor’s eyes and realizes he’s terrified. Tyrion tries reasoning with Sandor Clegane. They need to disperse the men ramming the gate. Ah, but Sandor has a different idea: open the gates, let them come in and surround them and kill them. Excellent. My preferred strategy when defending cities in Rome II Total War! Regardless, Sandor’s not going out again.
Ser Mandon Moore steps up and declares that the King’s Hand has given an order. Follow it.
"Bugger the King's Hand." Where the Hound's face was not sticky with blood, it was pale as milk. "Someone bring me a drink." A gold cloak officer handed him a cup. Clegane took a swallow, spit it out, flung the cup away. "Water? Fuck your water. Bring me wine."
Tyrion realizes that Sandor Clegane is dead on his feet. So, now he needs to figure out who’s going to lead the attack. Mandon Moore? Eh, dangerous, but not a dude people want to follow. Another crash at the gate as the sun sets to green and orange light. Tyrion wonders how long the gate would hold.
This is madness, he thought, but sooner madness than defeat. Defeat is death and shame. "Very well, I'll lead the sortie."
If he thought that would shame the Hound back to valor, he was wrong. Clegane only laughed. "You?"
Tyrion could see the disbelief on their faces. "Me. Ser Mandon, you'll bear the king's banner. Pod, my helm." The boy ran to obey. The Hound leaned on that notched and blood-streaked sword and looked at him with those wide white eyes. Ser Mandon helped Tyrion mount up again. "Form up!" he shouted.
Tyrion gets up on his stallion, adorned in his crimson cloak and coat of mail. Pod hands him his helmet and shield. Tyrion moves his horse in a circle, eyeing each of the men. He realizes there’s only a few men who have saddled up. He rakes the rest with a contemptuous look.
"They say I'm half a man," he said. "What does that make the lot of you?"
That shamed them well enough. A knight mounted, helmetless, and rode to join the others. A pair of sellswords followed. Then more. The King's Gate shuddered again. In a few moments the size of Tyrion's command had doubled. He had them trapped. If I fight, they must do the same, or they are less than dwarfs.
"You won't hear me shout out Joffrey's name," he told them. "You won't hear me yell for Casterly Rock either. This is your city Stannis means to sack, and that's your gate he's bringing down. So come with me and kill the son of a bitch!" Tyrion unsheathed his axe, wheeled the stallion around, and trotted toward the sally port. He thought they were following, but never dared to look.
And that is the synopsis of ACOK, Tyrion XIII! A Clash of Kings is truly climaxing. (Phrasing!) This is an exciting chapter, and even in the midst of it, things continue to ramp up. What did you think, ser?
Depth
We’ve had a Sansa chapter, we’ve had a Davos chapter, and now we get to our third and final POV for the Battle of the Blackwater: Tyrion Lannister, master of ceremonies. This is the chapter both Tyrion and George have been building up to all through his story in ACOK. Tyrion has been setting his chain-and-wildfire trap, and George has been concealing it from us. Now the board is set; the pieces are moving. The reader has barely caught their breath from the explosive ending of Davos III when we flip to the other side of the battlefield. Tyrion XIII is a huge chapter, in scope if not in length; it starts on a dramatic note and keeps getting more intense every step of the way.
I was struck on re-read of Tyrion XIII with an overwhelming feeling of “How the hell did Tyrion end up here?” Tell me I was the only person who imagined Tyrion’s face superimposed on Paul Rudd’s body from Hot Ones saying “hey, look at us”. (I probably was). Tyrion’s story in ACOK is George conducting a masterclass of setup and payoff. I like how George pays off Tyrion’s investment with wildfire with that pyrotechnics explosion in Davos III. But I also like how this chapter is the start of the larger narrative payoff for all the setup for Tyrion’s story in ACOK. Because even though Tyrion is in a place no one - perhaps even George himself - thought he could end up at by the start of this chapter, by chapter’s end, Tyrion is already off doing more crazy shit. He’s leading the charge against Stannis’ men attacking the King’s Gate. It really has been a wild ride to get here, and even though we have one Tyrion post-Blackwater chapter left to cover in ACOK, Tyrion XIII and XIV (which I believe were probably one chapter before George split them into two) are the climax of Tyrion’s arc in ACOK.
- Staring into the abyss
- After the explosive ending of Davos III, the reader is naturally eager to get back into Tyrion’s head, because he planned it. He stands “motionless as a gargoyle,” as if turned to stone by the sight, like a victim of Medusa
- Remember, in Davos’ first chapter, he saw the gargoyles seem to stir in the shimmering air above the fire burning the gods
- Now Tyrion has become that same figure for this much larger fire: an observer from a distance, taking it all in
- His gaze puts it all in context. Between Tyrion and the fire are the burnt-out remains of the riverside--that’s his work as well
- Yet the fires burning below the walls are nothing next to the wildfire. Tyrion compares the flames to banners; if so, the wildfire has won the war
- Unlike Davos, caught in the fog of war, Tyrion can see that the wildfire explosion has claimed even more Lannister ships than Baratheon ones; he can see highborn and common men alike trapped in the face of the fire
- As you were saying last week, we don’t know what orders Tyrion gave those men, but he seems to have sent them to death in cold blood
- How does Tyrion react to what he’s done? His reaction is complicated. He’s equal parts thrilled and horrified, both clear-eyed and in denial
- Tyrion is not so far removed from the experience of those fighting the battle as to shrug off their suffering. He hears the shrieks and prayers
- As he shields his eyes from the burning blasts, I think of Oppenheimer’s reaction to the Trinity test, quoting the Bhagavad Gita:
- Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
- Tyrion thinks that he saw this unfold a thousand times in his mind’s eye, yet he has meddled with powers he did not fully understand, and so brought about a disaster on a scale he did not anticipate
- This creates a sickening sensation of vertigo, one at odds with his desire to do justice. So Tyrion feels the need to project that guilt elsewhere
- He settles on Stannis. Tyrion thinks to himself that all the misery on the river is just as much Stannis’ fault as it is his. Our fleet was doomed in either case, he tells Joffrey, because Stannis was determined to destroy it, and he would’ve sensed a trap if we didn’t send in some of our ships
- On a literal level, this is ridiculous, of course. Tyrion ramped up wildfire production, Tyrion had the chain built, Tyrion sent out the driftwood ships
- Stannis was not consulted in any of that, to say the least. He had no way of knowing he was sending his men into this level of hell
- Tyrion is desperate to avoid thinking of himself as the villain in this situation, so he insists that it’s Stannis’ fault for putting him in that position
- In this regard, Tyrion’s wildfire blast is his Red Wedding; Tywin, too, is eager to avoid facing consequences for his actions
- You’re hitting on a brilliant parallel between Tywin and Tyrion: both deflect guilt from their own actions onto others, and both do morally suspect things “all for Joffrey.”
- In Storm, Tywin will say that the fault lies with Walder Frey, and he blameshifts the breaking of guest right onto him.
- But as we know from the ASOS Epilogue, all planning was made between Tywin, Roose and Walder Frey.
- But Tywin isn’t present at the Red Wedding; so, he can claim innocence.
- Tyrion has no such claim here at the Blackwater. Though the extent of the damage done surprises him, it’s his plan, his work that’s causing the carnage he’s witnessing.
- Now! Here’s where it gets even better though. Can we see Tyrion’s reaction blameshifting of his magical apotheosis on Stannis in similar lens as Stannis killing Renly?
- "The Lord of Light willed that my brother die for his treason. Who did the deed matters not."
- Back in Davos II, Stannis refuses to acknowledge culpability in taking part in the sorcerous means of killing Renly - either because he’s in denial, lying or doesn’t understand what happened (perhaps all three!)
- I dream of it sometimes. Of Renly's dying. A green tent, candles, a woman screaming. And blood." Stannis looked down at his hands. "I was still abed when he died. Your Devan will tell you. He tried to wake me. Dawn was nigh and my lords were waiting, fretting. I should have been ahorse, armored. I knew Renly would attack at break of day. Devan says I thrashed and cried out, but what does it matter? It was a dream. I was in my tent when Renly died, and when I woke my hands were clean."
- Look closely at the wording: Stannis sees the GREEN tent, CANDLES, SCREAMING and BLOOD.
- That’s precisely what Tyrion is seeing on the macro level with the green wildfire, fires burning underneath King’s Landing, “air full of smoke, arrows and screams”.
- Yet both of these men can’t comprehend the supernatural horror they’ve unleashed that’s killed people. So, they retreat into self-deception.
- It ain’t pretty, but it’s human.
- Even if Tyrion is full of it on a literal level, however, he has a point on a more poetic level:
- Like as not, he was sitting a warhorse right now, clad in bright armor, his crown upon his head. A crown of red gold, Varys says, its points fashioned in the shapes of flames.
- As I was saying in Davos III: Stannis played with fire, and now his ships are getting burned. These are the wages of signing up with a fire god
- Both Tyrion and Stannis have meddled with the dark powers, and they’re hardly the first to do that in Westerosi history
- Tyrion compares the inferno to the Field of Fire, saying that in both cases, there is a terrible beauty. The same is true of the Redgrass Field:
- I will never forget the way the sun looked when it set upon the Redgrass Field ... ten thousand men had died, and the air was thick with moans and lamentations, but above us the sky turned gold and red and orange, so beautiful it made me weep to know that my sons would never see it.
- This is George’s understanding of the primal appeal of combat as spectacle and intensity, appealing to the id left unsatisfied by domestic life
- After all, I’ve been talking all through ACOK about George’s beautiful use of color in this book, and here we have the ultimate example of it:
- A dozen great fires raged under the city walls, where casks of burning pitch had exploded, but the wildfire reduced them to no more than candles in a burning house, their orange and scarlet pennons fluttering insignificantly against the jade holocaust. The low clouds caught the color of the burning river and roofed the sky in shades of shifting green, eerily beautiful.
- It takes our breath away, as it takes Sansa’s breath away near the end of the battle. How do we reconcile wonder and terror?
- I love your point throughout the book about how George really brought the color into this story for ACOK.
- You’ve called it an “explosion of colors” in the past, and I think we’re seeing that metaphorically and literally with the denouement of all those colors
- Colors dazzle the eye and mind, making us marvel at them. But why?
- Here, the colors work as symbols, showing us the beauty and horror of war at the same time.
- There’s something imprinted in our DNA which makes us go “holy shit” when our mind’s eye sees the wildfire. It’s both a “holy shit, that’s awesome” feeling and a “holy shit, that’s horrific” feeling.
- The lights and fires dazzle even as we know that those same fires mean that men, living people with families, stories, lives, are dying in the most horrific way possible.
- I know this is a fictional story, and that Davos, Stannis, Tyrion, all those fictional men on the fictional Blackwater River aren’t real.
- And yet, in writing this chapter, I think George is basing the experiences of these fictional characters on what happened historically, what’s happening now and what will always happen.
- We’ve always had war, always will, and humans will marvel in the terrible beauty and shrink away from the screams of those dying horribly.
- Dealing with Joffrey
- The camera pans over to Joffrey, and the tone shifts to the bitter comedy that comes up so often in Tyrion chapters
- Joffrey is moved to the point that his voice breaks...because the Lannister ships are burning. Nothing about the people on them! Only about his toys
- Joff points them out with his new sword, underlining George’s point: the king cares only for objects that show off his power
- Same goes for his own conduct during the battle. He’s demanded the happy task of catapulting the Antler Men into the shit. Tyrion just blew up hundreds of men to keep this feckless little sadist on the Iron Throne
- Then again...Stannis himself threatened to catapult men from Storm’s End. Only Cressen saying they might have to eat those men stopped him
- As Davos notes, Stannis does not possess a sadistic drive like Joffrey’s.
But if his “iron sense of duty” led him to the same conclusion, does it matter? In both cases, we’re seeing an excess of kingly authority
- George cuts to Joffrey right after Tyrion imagines Stannis sitting his horse and watching. I think Stannis comes off less badly, but only because it’s difficult to come off less badly than Joffrey!
- Ain’t that a Stannis mood if there ever was one: being less bad than the alternative.
- In ADWD, Stannis is sometimes saying awesome shit about liberating Winterfell or dying in the attempt. And then he’s also burning people.
- Germane to your point though: in ADWD, Stannis is up against the worst assholes in the series: the Freys and Boltons. So, even if we don’t like the guy, we prefer him to Ramsay, Roose and the idiot Freys.
- But in ACOK, Stannis is villain-coded. He’s the antagonist of this book, but still, you can’t get worse than Joffrey.
- This is a narrative technique that George uses to good effect in ASOIAF: putting morally questionable characters alongside evil characters.
- For another example: think attempted child-murdering Jaime Lannister in ASOS with the Bloody Mummers, Roose Bolton and Vargo Hoat and then think Jaime Lannister again in AFFC around all the asshole Freys he deals with at Riverrun.
- As Ygritte told Jon: it’s all in where you’re standing.
- The point is that in both cases, we’re seeing the battle through the eyes of those who feel forced to carry out the king’s will, not the kings themselves
- Rather than the culmination of a rise to power, our protagonists are dealing with the feeling of being subordinate to another, a cog in a system
- Tyrion has to allow Joffrey to use the catapults for his hideous reindeer games, rather than using them to fling stones...which is what they’re for
- Just as Stannis’ cause is dominated by the personal dynamic of the Baratheon brothers, Joffrey’s reign puts Lannister dysfunction on display
- The catapults are nicknamed “the Whores,” so this is how Joffrey frames his desire to use them: “Mother promised I could have the Whores!”
- That puts an image in our heads of Cersei subjecting sex workers to Joffrey’s cruel advances, an inversion of Tywin, Tyrion, and Tysha
- The Lannisters break each other’s boundaries constantly. Their personal desires drive their politics. We’ve seen that throughout the story
- Tyrion is motivated to keep Joffrey safe not out of love for his nephew nor loyalty to his king, but to save the woman Cersei thinks he is fucking
- That’s how bad things have gotten in House Lannister. The enemy’s at the gates, but they’re focused inward. We’ll see that with Cersei in Sansa VI
- A line that stuck out to me in this re-read was Tyrion remembering the reaction of some of his troops:
- A man was not as heavy as a boulder or a cask of burning pitch, and could be thrown a deal farther. Some of the gold cloaks had been wagering on whether the traitors would fly all the way across the Blackwater.
- We know that Joffrey is a psychopathic shit. We’ve seen that in evidence in almost every circumstance we’ve seen him on-page or heard of his off-page exploits.
- But those gold cloaks wagering on how far these men would fly: are all of these guys psychopaths like Joffrey? Probably not!
- Here’s the thing about leadership and especially military leadership: it’s not just about moving pieces on a map, having the best strategy for winning a battle or a war.
- It’s so much more about setting the command climate: that is the culture of a unit or organization.
- Robb Stark did some dirt out in the Westerlands, stealing livestock and such, but by-and-large, his conduct on the ground was just. Thus, we don’t hear about the men he’s commanding doing egregious war crimes, Roose Bolton who is operating practically independent notwithstanding.
- We’ve both talked a lot about the character of Steelshanks Walton: the type of person Jaime Lannister considers the median soldier of Westeros: who rapes, kills and then returns to raise a family.
- But I’m beginning to disagree with Jaime’s perspective insomuch as your Steelshanks Waltons or these gold cloaks who are wagering on war crimes are symptoms of the larger disease of who is at the top: Roose Bolton and Joffrey Baratheon.
- Now, to be fair, having a casus belli and engaging in more honorable conduct in the war as a theater commander does not necessarily preclude the lower ranking soldiers from doing evil deed: think of the They lay with lions signs draped around the necks of Riverlands women that Jaime and Brienne see.
- People can be and are shitty regardless if there’s a good leader at the top.
- Still, I’d argue that the command climate these gold cloaks wagering on how far these prisoners will fly on trebuchets are doing so because they are symptomatic of a Joffrey who orders men to fight to death over trivial matters, shoots crossbow bolts at starving peasants, who has Sansa stripped and beaten.
- Moreover, I think that George is perhaps subconscious to himself: showing a very Catholic understanding that sin begets more sin.
- Joffrey is not the legitimate King of the Seven Kingdoms and does not deserve to sit the Iron Throne. That was the original sin.
- And from that original sin flowed the murder of Ned Stark’s household and Ned Stark himself thereafter.
- There’s an almost narrative sunk cost fallacy with violence begetting violence, people doing more and more deranged things all for Joffrey, because the person and methods are wrong.
- But it’s worse than all that. The adults in the room: those who have the power to moderate Joffrey’s abuses are deciding to channel Joffrey’s psychopathy rather than curb it.
- What was Tyrion’s reaction to Joffrey trebuchet’ing people into the Blackwater?
- It’s mostly annoyance that the trebuchets are being used in a non-military way, but ultimately, it’s this short sentence:
- "Be quick about it, Your Grace."
- It reminds me of how back in Tyrion II how Tyrion decided to distract Joffrey from messing with his plans by dialing up a bit of “Joffrey’s justice” for the turncloak captain of the White Heart.
- Here, at the Blackwater, Tyrion is throwing more bodies in Joffrey’s way so as to prevent Joffrey from bungling the battle.
- At a level, it’s understandable for Tyrion the semi-pragmatist to try to get shit done the right way.
- And on another, it’s rotten to the core, and I call it murder.
- And those gold cloaks wagering on those murders are symptomatic of Joffrey’s toxic command climate, but also the enabling of that toxicity by those who know better.
- The next moves
- As mindblowing as the inferno was, it turns out to not have worked as well as Tyrion hoped. Like George says: you can’t have magic solve everything
- Some ships are getting away, enough to start landing men in significant quantities on the northern shore. This is bad news for the Lannisters
- It’s bad news for not only material reasons (now we have to expend our fighting men at the gates), but also because of morale
- Tyrion knows that morale is the all-important issue, on both sides of the battle. He thinks back to Jacelyn Bywater telling him that his men will fight bravely at first if only to look good for each other, but by that same token, the first to run will have hundreds on his heels. Momentum cuts both ways
- You win by acting like you’re winning; you win before the fight, simply by keeping your men fighting. That’s the big theme of this chapter
- That is the logic of such destructive strategies, the shadow on the wall:
- You know how I stayed alive this long? All these years? Fear. The spectacle of fearsome acts! Somebody steals from me, I cut off his hands. He offends me, I cut out his tongue. He rises against me, I cut off his head, stick it on a pike, raise it high up so all on the streets can see. That's what preserves the order of things. Fear.
- Tyrion is looking to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies so as to keep morale stronger on his own side. The terror is the point...or so he hopes
- In truth, Tyrion knows it’s not going to be enough. Stannis will still be able to cross eventually. That’s the bitter irony: all that planning, all that misery, and it’s still only a “half victory.” Yet more fire and blood will be required
- Because I’m that extremely normal guy who pulls out his Lands of Ice and Fire maps and starts trying to figure out where everything is occurring and then flips back to ACOK to piece it all together, let me try to sort what’s happening here from a military side of things.
- So, the King’s Gate is on the southwest corner of King’s Landing with the tourney grounds to the slight northwest of the King’s Gate.
- Tyrion is outside of the Mud Gate to observe the wildfire explosion.
- So, how did Stannis’ men both get up or across the river towards the King’s Gate?
- Possible answer: Tyrion notes that eight ships made it to the north shore. So, maybe the beached troops moved west along the north bank of the Blackwater.
- I don’t think this is likely though. The ships that beached were along a part of the river that Tyrion was able to see.
- It also seems like the farthest extent of the Baratheon advance was the first line of Baratheon ships that got blown up by the wildfire.
- Instead, if we turn back to Davos III, Davos notes: South of the Blackwater, Davos saw men dragging crude rafts toward the water while ranks and columns formed up beneath a thousand streaming banners.
- Now that Stannis has lost his fleet, the one thing that Stannis has going for him at this moment is the size of his host south of the Blackwater.
- So, I think the left wing of his army constructed the same rafts that Davos observed on the right wing and crossed the Blackwater to begin ramming the King’s Gate.
- I’ll give Stannis a small amount of military credit here: whether this was in Stannis’ playbook or improv (I think it was part of the plan), attacking two gates: the Mud Gate and King’s Gate works to spread Tyrion’s smaller army out.
- That said, Tyrion has a countermeasure in place: he’s ordered the streets cleared; so as to flex troops back and forth across the city to counter Stannis’ moves.
- It’s a risky strategy as he seems to only have the numbers to mass troops at one location at a time.
- If the Baratheons strike another gate while Tyrion is repelling an attack across the city, Tyrion runs the risk of not having enough men to hold the new gate under attack.
- But it’s really the only way that Tyrion can accomplish the mission of defending the city from Stannis.
- But Tyrion has one more advantage: cavalry and the violence of action.
- Any initial wave of Baratheon troops crossing the river would be dismounted infantry and archers and thus vulnerable to cavalry charge.
- And as we’ll find out next week, this will prove decisive to defending two gates when Stannis attacks both at the same time.
- Sandor and the sortie
- As Tyrion arrives at the King’s Gate, George describes the groan of the gate giving way to the ram as “the moans of a dying giant”
- Magical imagery dominates because of the forces both Stannis and Tyrion have brought into play, and Tyrion’s own men have paid the price
- He orders them back out, and Sandor emerges from the shadows to object, just as he sprang from the shadows to save Sansa from falling
- He is the dying giant, appropriate given how tall he is. Sandor himself was a figure of apocalypse in Davos III, as you pointed out. But here, he lets the Hound mask fall, revealing the man beneath
- That man is terrified. More than terrified--Sandor is dead on his feet, as Tyrion puts it, reduced to a metaphorical zombie by his fear of fire
- The mask has lost its ear, and Sandor’s old burn wounds have opened. He developed the Hound persona to fight back his fear. If he becomes the monster, he no longer has to be afraid...or so the theory goes
- But cracks started to emerge with his growing sympathy for Sansa. Those cracks grew when he saw Stannis’ fire banners emerge across the river, and now the fire on the water has brought down the wall inside
- Sandor has been dragged back to the moment of his childhood trauma, rendered powerless even as he kills everyone in his path
- He holds Tyrion and the Lannisters responsible, and so is done working for them. He’s not the only one refusing to go back out:
- “We been out. Three times. Half our men are killed or hurt. Wildfire bursting all around us, horses screaming like men and men like horses—”
- This description of the battlefield has always haunted me. George frames war as a hideous inversion of nature--men like horses, horses like men
- The wildfire has made all of this worse. Tyrion has tested the borders of nature itself, and Sandor’s unit faced unimaginable casualties as a result
- Tyrion’s response exemplifies his mindset as a commander. He’s not technically wrong that he hired these men to do butcher’s work
- But as with the ship captains, he was not honest with them about the conditions in which they were going to be fighting
- It is rich for Tyrion to act as though these men want raspberries and iced milk--the luxuries he has been reserving mostly for the upper crust
- It is also galling that he disparages these sellswords as being more at home in tourneys than real fighting, given how little experience he has
- Tyrion has created the extraordinary circumstances driving these men to the point of desertion, yet is pretending they’re just lazy and cowardly
- Just to highlight your excellent point even more: when Davos saw Sandor Clegane, he watched as the NotAKnight drove his horse up onto the deck of a ship killing his way aboard.
- Moreover, Davos also noted all of the fire pots and arrows being fired from the walls, meaning that Clegane was attacking through a hail of projectiles fired by his side.
- That is not cowardice in the least. It’s going above and beyond the call of duty. Upgrade to Distinguished Service Cross.
- Add in that Sandor’s party of sellswords, gold cloaks and Lannister goons have taken 50% casualties. In the biz, we’d call that “combat ineffective.”
- On that note about these guys taking a tremendous amount of casualties and going out on three sorties: how is it that Tyrion doesn’t recognize that his men are outperforming the expectations that Jacelyn and Bronn put on them?
- I think it’s because Tyrion has not been exposed to the dangers he’s had others face.
- He’s merely watched others do the fighting and killing for him. In the long tradition of aristocracy and war, Tyrion has been a grand observer of others killing on behalf of him and his king.
- Motionless as a gargoyle are the opening words of the chapter after all!
- But all of that changes here.
- It takes a naked threat, Sandor drawing his sword, for Tyrion to realize what he has put these men through. If Sandor Clegane is afraid, well…
- He tries to explain the military need to hold the gate. Sandor suggests opening the gate and fighting them inside; this is not exactly reasonable
- But Sandor isn’t thinking in terms of Lannister victory. He’s thinking in terms of keeping himself and his men away from the wildfire
- The inferno is a totem of spiritual horror as Tyrion intended--but it terrifies his own men as much as Stannis’. Sorcery is a sword without a hilt
- Mandon Moore tries to back Tyrion up, but he only makes it worse. He embodies everything Sandor hates--a knight with his immaculate plate
- Sandor has no more patience for Lannister authority, because it has stopped protecting him and started endangering him
- And Tyrion does figure that out. Better late than never! As Sandor drowns his fear in booze, Tyrion realizes that morale is drowning with him. He needs a new leader to keep them all from breaking, but who? Mandon Moore won’t do, because he’s already like a walking corpse
- Tyrion realizes all at once that it’s up to him. It’s been up to him the whole book in one form or another, the Lannister cause on his shoulders, and now he has no choice but to go out there and risk his life for the family
- It’s madness, but it’s better than defeat. Defeat is shame; if there is one idea Tyrion has absorbed from Dad, it’s that nothing is worse than shame
- Yet Tyrion must expose himself to shame in order to seize his pride. Few of the men take the battle call of a dwarf seriously
- It is precisely on those terms that Tyrion wins them over. If I have the guts to do this, he tells them, what does that say about you?
- We’ve been saying throughout ACOK that Tyrion, like Stannis, has an optics problem. Both generals of the Battle of Blackwater believe that they are doomed to be hated, so neither put any effort into being loved
- It is only now, with his back against the wall, that Tyrion finally learns how to make his negative reputation work for him
- You despise the dwarf? Very well, then you have to fight with me, or people will say you were lesser than the dwarf everyone despises!
- It’s a clever move, and it works, gathering a force behind him. For once in his life, Tyrion is in charge because of himself, not his father, not his name
- And it is on those terms that he appeals to these men. He tells them not to fight for Joffrey or Casterly Rock...and he won’t be, either
- His desire to do justice has always been hampered by his king and his House. Even as he fights for them, he admits his desire to let them all go
- Instead, he says, the men should fight for their gate, their city, because those things belong to them, not any one of the kings. Tyrion thinks that will be enough, but unlike Orpheus, he never looks back
- Tyrion is the protagonist of ACOK, and as you say, this is the climax of his arc in this book: when he commits himself to the shadow on the wall
- Tyrion has finally accepted that he can’t simply cast a long shadow on the wall of political power. He has to do it in a military context.
- It’s only when Tyrion finally answers his own call and takes his own defense of the city seriously that people take him seriously.
- All of these gold cloaks, sellswords and common men who have been dying by the droves have done so on behalf of a Lannister aristocracy which gorges itself while they starve.
- And it’s only when Tyrion declares that he’ll lead the charge that the soldiers perk up and listen.
- Given that context of everything that we’ve seen in ACOK, Tyrion crosses a bar so low that it’s on the floor.
- And yet it’s enough to get forty men to rally to Tyrion’s banner and go out for one last sortie.
- You know: Tyrion is the protagonist in ACOK, but he’s also kind-of a piece of shit too. See: giving the antler men to Joffrey.
- That reminds me of Robert: a real piece of shit who inspired people to follow him into battle with his lead-from-the-front mentality.
- The officers have to be in the same danger as the men they’re leading, and this is especially true in a medieval-ish context of very close combat.
- And Tyrion finally accepts this mantle of doing it himself, refusing to perch atop the walls while others do his killing for him.
- Say what you will about Tyrion: that’s inspirational leadership, and ultimately, it’s just enough to delay Stannis from attacking the gates just long enough for Tywin and the Tyrells to arrive.
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
Given that it was in Tyrion’s first chapter from AGOT that we learn about the field of fire, and here we have Tyrion wondering if watching all the wildfire is how Aegon the Conqueror felt at the Field of Fire, it certainly feels like George is foreshadowing Tyrion as a dragonrider, doesn’t it?
Sandor’s reputation as a coward and deserter that dogs him (heh) in ASOS begins here
Theory/Discussion
Do we think Tyrion’s use of the wildfire is justified? What if we pretend Joffrey is the rightful heir and a swell guy--would that justify it?
- Wildfire is justified
- Legitimate military target in the form of Stannis’ navy
- George has compared wildfire to Greek Fire before, but it’d be hard not to compare wildfire to napalm and its usage in World War II and especially the Vietnam War.
- Is napalm a legitimate form of weaponry on the battlefield? Look, I won’t make the moral cause for or against it, but I will note that the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in 1980 does not prohibit use of napalm against military targets but prohibits against civilian targets.
- Tyrion uses the wildfire against a strictly military target in the form of Stannis’ navy. So, at the least, the UN wouldn’t send Tyrion to the Hague for war crimes for the sole use of it.
- Then there’s the close linkage of wildfire and dragonfire.
- In a vacuum, both of these fiery substances work as tools in warfare, and the morality of its usage depends on the user and the cause.
- I, myself, think that Dany’s use of wildfire against the slavers in ASOS is justified -- though not without major negative consequences which we’ll unpack for Dany’s arc in ADWD.
- Dragonfire, of course, is not always justified: see Aemond One-Eye
- Wildfire, too, seems similar in that respect: were Joff the legitimate king and a good dude, then Tyrion’s usage of wildfire is justified whereas Aerys’ attempt to wildfire King’s Landing and kill everyone is not.
- Ultimately, I’d argue that with wildfire, like most weapons, it’s about the user and intent rather than the weapon in question.
- Legitimate military target in the form of Stannis’ navy
- Wildfire is not justified
- Inhumane on the battlefield, especially boiling the sailors in the water after they become non-combatants
- Tyrion himself admits to the central case against using wildfire:
- An arrow could be aimed, and a spear, even the stone from a catapult, but wildfire had a will of its own. Once loosed, it was beyond the control of mere men.
- I think the generals on all sides of this war have a responsibility not to use weapons they know full well they cannot control. There’s always going to be matters outside your purview, but Tyrion knows he can’t control wildfire
- This has the potential to turn into a “destroy the town in order to save it” situation at any moment. It almost happened during the riot!
- In terms of Tyrion’s culpability, it’s worth noting that safely disposing of the wildfire is a mammoth task, especially in the middle of a war
- I don’t think he has any good options. But Tyrion learned from his father well. He is using terror as as a weapon, a deliberate escalation of the war
- Soldiers live and die by different rules. I get that. What happens when those rules are changed around them without their knowledge or consent?
- I feel like our belief that soldiers are more acceptable targets is rooted in the understanding that a) they signed up for it and b) they can fight back
- Did any of these men sign up to be at ground zero for the birth of a Balrog? Do they have any way of fighting back? If not, is there any real distinction to be made between Davos Seaworth and Sansa Stark?
Conclusion
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