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Fire & Blood
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Chapter 21-AppendicesChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary: “Under the Regents—War and Peace and Cattle Shows”
Content Warning: The source material in this section includes suicide, sexual assault, other forms of gender-based violence, and ableist language.
Aegon III was 12 when Tyland died. The young king tried to assert himself by making appointments to fill the gaps on the regents and small council, but Unwin Peake, now the Hand, countermanded the orders. As Hand, Protector of the Realm, and Lord Regent, Peake installed family members and favorites in the Kingsguard and other key roles. He created a personal guard called the Hand’s Fingers.
Then Queen Jaehaera died by suicide. Rumors flew that she died of murder. Gyldayn speculates that Unwin was behind the murder. Seven days after Jaehaera’s funeral, Unwin told the king that he would be marrying Myrielle, Unwin’s daughter. The councils intervened. Unwin was forced to organize what Mushroom called “the Maiden’s Day Cattle Show” (647). The daughters of every house paraded in front of the king. Many potential rivals were killed, raped, and maimed before the ball, and Unwin was rumored to be behind the violence. Baela and Rhaena disrupted the ball to present their distant cousin, six-year-old Daenaera Velaryon, as the chosen bride. Unwin called this folly, but the regents forced his hand. Daenaera and Aegon III wed in 133, ensuring the king would lack an heir since the girl was too young for childbirth.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Under the Regents—The Voyage of Alyn Oakenfist”
Alyn, an accomplished sea captain, was tasked with defeating the Red Kraken, rebellious Lord Dalton Greyjoy, but the job was complete before he arrived.
Gyldayn notes that “[s]o much of history tells the deeds of kings and queens, high lords, noble knights, holy septons, and wise maesters,” but history sometimes turns on the “ordinary man or woman…[who] will somehow rise up and by some simple act or whispered word change the destiny of kingdoms” (685). In this case, it was Tess, a salt-wife (captive woman) who killed Dalton Greyjoy after he coerced her to have sex.
Alyn soon returned to King’s Landing with Viserys II Targaryen, youngest son of Rhaenyra and Daemon. People thought Viserys died during the Dance. He actually spent the Dance as a captive in the house of Lysandro Rogare of Lys. When Lysandro realized the boy was a Targaryen, he had his daughter Larra of Lys marry Viserys. Alyn freed Viserys at a high cost: 100,000 gold dragons, transfer of banking services from the Iron Bank of Braavos to Lys, and recognition of Viserys’s marriage to Larra.
Aegon III, long guilty for surviving his brother, was happier with Viserys’s return. He now had a male heir. With a 19-year-old wife, Viserys was likely to have his own heir before the king and Daenaera. Unwin resigned as Hand in a huff. Lord Thaddeus Rowan became Hand.
Chapter 23 Summary: “The Lysene Spring and the End of Regency”
Lord Rowan was a weak Hand. Larra’s brothers prospered in King’s Landing, and her father and uncle were the princes in Lys. Larra was pregnant by the time her popularity waned. Some claimed she manipulated the king, the queen, and Viserys for Lys. In 135, Larra and Viserys had a son named Aegon. Rumors swirled that she baptized the baby in the rites of Lysene gods. These whisperers claimed she used her gods to transform herself into a cat or even a man during orgiastic rites. Westeros would be cursed.
And Westeros did seem cursed. On Driftmark, baby Laena’s dragon egg hatched a wyrm, a small, dragon-like creature lacking limbs, instead of a dragon. It bit her. Aegon III’s companion Gaemon Palehair died of poisoning that almost killed Daenaera as well. Lysandro and his brother Drazenko Rogare were assassinated in Lys. The heir left standing embezzled the funds in the Bank of Lys, which collapsed, taking the investments of many Westerosi lords and investors down with it. Larra’s brother Moredo Rogare escaped Westeros, but the other brothers in King’s Landing were arrested. Even the Hand was arrested and charged with working for Lys to overthrow Aegon III. No one knew who ordered the arrest, but that person was likely a pawn of Unwin Peake.
The Kingsguard came to arrest Larra. She retreated to Maegor’s Holdfast with Aegon III, Viserys, and her protector Sandoq the Shadow. The king and Viserys refused to hand her over. 18 days passed before the conspirators against Aegon III lost heart. Gyldayn speculates that Marston Waters, the most visible leader, was “neither a great knight nor a good man” (692). Many conspirators had ties to Unwin Peake; none named him, though, so he could not be punished. Viserys and Larra had a second son, Aemon. The boy who grew up to be Aegon IV took Aemon’s dragon egg and beat the baby with it until someone stopped him.
On his 16th birthday, Aegon III brought the Kingsguard and Sandoq with him to the throne room. He dismissed the regents. He told Lord Torrhen, who was planning a feast and progress to win over the lords and smallfolk, to get off the Iron Throne and cancel the feast: “I mean to give the smallfolk peace and food and justice […]. Full bellies and dancing bears shall be my policy” (710), he told Torrhen. Mushroom left with Torrhen. Gyldayn mourns the end of Mushroom’s ability to provide the “truths no one else dared speak,” many of them “droll” (711). Aegon III’s rule was the “broken reign of the Broken King” (711), and Mushroom outlived Aegon III.
Appendices
Lineages and Family Tree
These pages include a list of Targaryen rulers and a genealogical tree of the Targaryen dynasty. Rhaenyra is excluded from the line of succession in the list of rulers. The dense layout of the tree reflects the practice of incestuous marriage.
“A Conversation Between George R. R. Martin and Dan Jones” Summary
Martin and Jones discuss Martin’s writing process, the publication of his works in the Song of Ice and Fire universe, and his inspirations as he wrote. Martin notes that he was inspired by popular histories of medieval Europe. His favorite is Thomas Costain’s A History of the Plantagenets, an illustrated book full of entertaining stories that likely will not stand up to the scrupulous standards of an academic historian. Other inspirations include Scottish history, Hadrian’s Wall in England, and the Norman Conquest of 1066.
After the success of Game of Thrones, Martin’s publishers wanted a “concordance” (731) to make a definitive guide to the history of Westeros. The first iteration of the project relied on much help from Elio Garcia and Linda Antonsson, webmasters for Westeros.org. Martin conceived of the second iteration of the project of writing the history of Westeros as a “‘GRRMarillion, as a play on Tolkien’’ (732) (The Silmarillion is a fictional history of the world of Lord of the Rings). Fire and Blood is just one part of that history.
Martin agrees when Jones calls Fire and Blood a “‘fake history’” (733) in which the voice of Mushroom is the most vivid. Martin admits that he “has a lot of affection for Mushroom” (733). Martin describes how the roles and biases of Gyldayn’s sources shape the story Gyldayn is able to tell. Like Gyldayn, Martin enjoys Mushroom’s account, which is always “the most scandalous, scurrilous, filthy version of events” (734). Gyldayn must construct a narrative out of primary sources that frequently conflict.
Chapter 21-Appendices Analysis
As Fire and Blood closes, Gyldayn more openly acknowledges his biases as a historian. Gyldayn creates a historical narrative that largely focuses on important men and women. This is history from above, an approach to writing history that predominated in medieval and Renaissance times but is less favored by modern historians. History from above fails to consider the impact of popular movements and ordinary people on historical events. When Gyldayn acknowledges that Tess the salt-wife’s decision changed history despite her being a woman and captive, the lack of those kinds of characters in other parts of the narrative comes into focus.
The account of Unwin Peake’s power grab also shows some bias. Gyldayn frequently refers to rumor or unreliable sources, especially when it comes to examining the motives of those who opposed the king, his brother, and Larra. Gyldayn readily accepts as reasonable that Marston Waters was simply too lowborn to face down the king in the end. He uses a reference from Mushroom, a known liar, to dismiss the idea that the king staved off more direct assaults by threatening to kill hostages. The assumptions Gyldayn makes about Waters are rooted in Marston’s social class, while the assumptions Gyldayn makes about the Targaryens shy away from the fact that they used brute power and threats of violence frequently. Gyldayn’s comment that he will miss the tidbits Mushroom offers is an admission of personal preference, which counters the notion that Fire and Blood is objective. Gyldayn likes Mushroom because he is funny and offers juicy gossip, not because he is accurate. Martin makes the same kind of admission when he talks about his preference for spurious stories over objective historical narratives.
Martin closes the narrative with a complicated picture of women in power. The noble and royal women of Fire and Blood sometimes waged actual battle to intervene in power struggles, but they more frequently did so by manipulating the men around them or by arranging marriages for the benefit of their houses. In Chapters 21 and 23, Rhaena and Baela showed their power by picking a bride for the king who could not produce an heir quickly. Baela presumably was in touch with Alyn and knew about Viserys. Her use of marriage and Daenaera’s lack of reproductive capacity was a shrewd political move that undercut Aegon III, a person so unfit to be king that he had to stave off a coup before his regency even ended. While Baela and Rhaena were able to use marriage to exercise some power in the politics of Westeros, most women and girls were pawns. The cattle show was a spectacle of how little control women had over their fates, even when they belonged to the nobility. Finally, Gyldayn—presumably the compiler of this lineage and tree—excludes Rhaenyra from the list of rulers, showing that the one instance of female rule is not considered a legitimate part of Westerosi history.
Larra of Lys is the other prominent female figure of this section. Gyldayn presents Larra as both powerful and weak. As a 19-year-old woman, she was fertile and could be a source of the all-important heir. Her physical beauty was initially an asset that endeared Viserys to the smallfolk. Like many non-Westerosi women before her, Larra was at first seen as exciting because of her foreign origins. She became a potential source of disorder either because she was strong enough to manipulate the royal family or because she was a weak pawn of her male relatives. The inability to pin down where she fit in the power structure crystalized as rumors swirled about her being a sorceress. The rumor about her transforming at will into a man signals that anxiety about her arose because she was a woman in proximity to power. She also had power in her own right, considering her protector Sandoq was there with the Kingsguard as the muscle when Aegon pushed out the regents and Hand. To the last, women in positions of power are cast as illegitimate in the world of Westeros.
Fire and Blood ends on an ominous note. Martin explains in the interview and elsewhere that Fire and Blood is likely the first part of a history of the events that lead to the end of the Targaryen dynasty. In the final chapter of this volume, there is foreshadowing that their decline is well on its way. Baby Laena’s egg hatched a wyrm that bit her, foreshadowing how damaging the failure to obtain more dragons will be to Targaryen power. Commoners and women like Alys Rivers and Nettles apparently have dragons, and in a patriarchal society like Westeros, women with dragons always result in disorder. Then there is the future of Westeros. The first sight the reader gets of Aegon IV is that he was so jealous and violent as a boy that he assaulted his baby brother—with a dragon egg, no less.
Martin’s characterization of Aegon III is the greatest indication of trouble ahead. Aegon lacked the charm and charisma it would take to use what power he had. His first act as king was to alienate potential allies, including the regents and Torrhen Stark. Stark’s planning of the feast and progress was the move of a courtier hoping to shore up support for a weak and unpopular monarch. Aegon III’s response when Stark objected was a nonsensical and idealized vision of his rule that showed he lacked the instincts to rule effectively. Aegon III, a man whose dynasty relied on the military and symbolic power of dragons, despised dragons. Without popularity and without dragons, the Targaryens will lack the sources of power upon which they have relied for generations.
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By George R. R. Martin
