Septon Barth, Aegon I, Valyrian steel: A mystery unraveled! Myrish looking glasses!

[house of dayne]

Steel doesnt rust

[WilliamWesterosiWallace]

1 hour ago, house of dayne said:

Steel doesnt rust

Huh.

[Macgregor of the North]

Steel will certainly rust over a long time and therefore over hundreds of years should lose its sharpness a bit. And you are right WWW it has saw enough wear and tear by armed people sitting on it to contribute to the sharp edges that cut people the most becoming dull. But this hasn't happened. 

You are on to something surely with the sharpness aspect. I'm with that. 

The Iron throne may not have had the meticulous crafting with all the folding and spells etc but it had a very important part of Valyrian steels making, it was forged in Dragonflame which makes it at least in a very basic form to be Valyrian steel or close enough. Is this enough to keep its edge? Would be nice to quiz GRRM on that. 

 

[Macgregor of the North]

6 hours ago, house of dayne said:

Steel doesnt rust

I think you are applying to much real world thinking to your posts when you mention things backed up by your own profession. remember this a fantasy novel and there can be vast differences easily explained by the fact this is a fantasy story. 

It reminds of a debate I once had on here with a guy who was an archery teacher. Now this guy was absolutely so set on the idea that Sam was never ever going to be anything other than a hopeless archer and he could never learn archery and the story will not go that road(Sam becoming quite the bowman) etc etc. I argued that in real life that you could actually, but in any event this is a fantasy novel and because GRRM wants Sam to learn the bow, he will. And lo and behold last time we see Sam with his bow he was at battle at sea and had hit the other ships and can hit the butt most often now to. 

Basically. Moral of the story, do not apply too much of your real world thinking to a fantasy novels steel just because you are a chef and work with knives in the real world as it may prove rather pointless. 

[Anton Martell]

It is true that real life cannot apply,

 

but I think the sharpness is overrated. It's like barbed wire, even if it's dull it scrapes you and cut you. True Valyrian steel would cut through like butter.

 

Again, I can buy the magic of valyrian steel is dragon, but the rest seems to me a bit far fetched

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

following for when I have more time to read. 

[Macgregor of the North]

I've been thinking a bit on this and I noticed a quote to add to the discussion that you missed from the OP, 

Here's Ned:

"Ned could feel cold steel against his fingers as he leaned forward. Between each finger was a blade, the points of twisted swords fanning out like talons from arms of the throne. Even after three centuries, some were still sharp enough to cut. The Iron Throne was full of traps for the unwary. The songs said it had taken a thousand blades to make it, heated white-hot in the furnace breath of Balerion the Black Dread. The hammering had taken fifty-nine days. The end of it was this hunched black beast made of razor edges and barbs and ribbons of sharp metal; a chair that could kill a man, and had, if the stories could be believed."

The some part is interesting. Isn't it strange he says some, and you know what's stranger when you think on it, how comes it's the parts that cut people that stay sharp? Aerys cut himself how many times on hands legs and arms? And that's the parts that should have seen the most wear and tear due to cleaning and also armoured people sitting the throne.

I'm sure Joffrey cuts himself and can't hold court one day because of it as well so a full three hundred years later it's still slicing people in the same areas. 

Do the areas that come into contact with blood have anything to do with it or have I taken this too far? 

[Seams]

1 hour ago, Macgregor of the North said:

Do the areas that come into contact with blood have anything to do with it or have I taken this too far? 

I don't think you've taken it too far. I think GRRM wants us to see the Iron Throne as the King's Landing equivalent of a heart tree, where blood sacrifices take place before the carved face and the blood soaks into the roots. More broadly, I think he wants us to see the Iron Throne as something that has a sort of consciousness - it decides which people should be cut; there is an implication that it didn't like Aerys or that it killed King Maegor.

Speaking of consciousness, Tobho Mott says that old swords remember. So a thousand swords bound together must have an interesting collective consciousness at its disposal.

Of course I have to point out the pun evidence, too: "throne" and "thorn" make up one of GRRM's many wordplay pairs. (And don't get me started on "North" which is "thorn" spelled backwards kinda sorta, and "Dorne" which is the German word for "thorn"...) There is a long tradition of people in fairy tales pricking themselves on a thorn, with the resulting drop of blood having some kind of magical consequence. I think the throne/thorn pun will circle back to Ser Alliser Thorne, who is master of arms at the Wall and who begged Tyrion for support for the Night's Watch as he sat on the throne. Maybe this underscores WWW's OP: that the swords in the throne finally will be put back to use to fight the REAL enemy, instead of being used to fight other humans or to resist unification of the seven kingdoms.

If the gods wood or weirwood or heart tree are the throne-equivalent for the Kings of Winter, we should probably also compare the Iron Throne to other thrones such as the seastone chair, the throne with the sun-spear design in Dorne, Bloodraven's tangled root chair, Lysa Arryn sitting on the carved weirwood chair of the Arryns, etc. If there's a game of thrones under way, it makes sense to try to understand all the thrones.

[WilliamWesterosiWallace]

11 hours ago, Macgregor of the North said:

Steel will certainly rust over a long time and therefore over hundreds of years should lose its sharpness a bit. And you are right WWW it has saw enough wear and tear by armed people sitting on it to contribute to the sharp edges that cut people the most becoming dull. But this hasn't happened. 

You are on to something surely with the sharpness aspect. I'm with that. 

The Iron throne may not have had the meticulous crafting with all the folding and spells etc but it had a very important part of Valyrian steels making, it was forged in Dragonflame which makes it at least in a very basic form to be Valyrian steel or close enough. Is this enough to keep its edge? Would be nice to quiz GRRM on that. 

 

If I had one question for GRRM, that'd be it. "Did the steel that was used to make the IT become Valyrian steel after Balerion melted it?" If only...

8 hours ago, Anton Martell said:

It is true that real life cannot apply,

 

but I think the sharpness is overrated. It's like barbed wire, even if it's dull it scrapes you and cut you. True Valyrian steel would cut through like butter.

 

Again, I can buy the magic of valyrian steel is dragon, but the rest seems to me a bit far fetched

Well, it does cut rather well. It took two fingers off Viserys, it cut Rhaenyra because she touched it, it used to cut Aerys all the time. One can't assume people were actively trying to get cut by the IT. One can only assume they were cut by accident, by misfortune. And, to be cut in a misfortune, they'd need to apply pressure where they shouldn't in a sharp surface. And, in 300 years, the thing still cuts just by looking at it wrong. Can that be from bad posture only? Or is it that the knives are so bloody sharp, any touch is a cut?

6 hours ago, Macgregor of the North said:

I've been thinking a bit on this and I noticed a quote to add to the discussion that you missed from the OP, 

Here's Ned:

"Ned could feel cold steel against his fingers as he leaned forward. Between each finger was a blade, the points of twisted swords fanning out like talons from arms of the throne. Even after three centuries, some were still sharp enough to cut. The Iron Throne was full of traps for the unwary. The songs said it had taken a thousand blades to make it, heated white-hot in the furnace breath of Balerion the Black Dread. The hammering had taken fifty-nine days. The end of it was this hunched black beast made of razor edges and barbs and ribbons of sharp metal; a chair that could kill a man, and had, if the stories could be believed."

The some part is interesting. Isn't it strange he says some, and you know what's stranger when you think on it, how comes it's the parts that cut people that stay sharp? Aerys cut himself how many times on hands legs and arms? And that's the parts that should have seen the most wear and tear due to cleaning and also armoured people sitting the throne.

I'm sure Joffrey cuts himself and can't hold court one day because of it as well so a full three hundred years later it's still slicing people in the same areas. 

Do the areas that come into contact with blood have anything to do with it or have I taken this too far? 

Do you know what surprises me the most? That no one, in 300 years, has thought to take a hammer to these edges. Seriously? No king ever got cut in the throne and thought "shit! I'll get someone to hammer these edges out tomorrow". That seems, to me, very odd. Unless the very metal kept its own edge, as Valyrian steel is said to do. If so, hammering it wouldn't have the same effect as it'd have on normal steel. If you take a hammer to the edge of a house knife once, it already lost all its edge. Valyrian steel is said to keep its edge. But I'm just speculating. If we aren't told someone tried to take the edge off the IT, then no one did, as strange as that sounds.

4 hours ago, Seams said:

I don't think you've taken it too far. I think GRRM wants us to see the Iron Throne as the King's Landing equivalent of a heart tree, where blood sacrifices take place before the carved face and the blood soaks into the roots. More broadly, I think he wants us to see the Iron Throne as something that has a sort of consciousness - it decides which people should be cut; there is an implication that it didn't like Aerys or that it killed King Maegor.

Speaking of consciousness, Tobho Mott says that old swords remember. So a thousand swords bound together must have an interesting collective consciousness at its disposal.

Of course I have to point out the pun evidence, too: "throne" and "thorn" make up one of GRRM's many wordplay pairs. (And don't get me started on "North" which is "thorn" spelled backwards kinda sorta, and "Dorne" which is the German word for "thorn"...) There is a long tradition of people in fairy tales pricking themselves on a thorn, with the resulting drop of blood having some kind of magical consequence. I think the throne/thorn pun will circle back to Ser Alliser Thorne, who is master of arms at the Wall and who begged Tyrion for support for the Night's Watch as he sat on the throne. Maybe this underscores WWW's OP: that the swords in the throne finally will be put back to use to fight the REAL enemy, instead of being used to fight other humans or to resist unification of the seven kingdoms.

If the gods wood or weirwood or heart tree are the throne-equivalent for the Kings of Winter, we should probably also compare the Iron Throne to other thrones such as the seastone chair, the throne with the sun-spear design in Dorne, Bloodraven's tangled root chair, Lysa Arryn sitting on the carved weirwood chair of the Arryns, etc. If there's a game of thrones under way, it makes sense to try to understand all the thrones.

Amazing. I'm scared at how many connections you've made xD. 

About the throne having a consciousness, and the collective minds of the swords: You watch Preston Jacobs' channel too, don't you?  In his "Minds of Wolves and Robins" series, he talks in length about collective consciousness. 

The parallel between Thorne and Throne and Thorn and Dorne and North can go a long way. I've seen people talk about Theon's name meaning "godly" in, I think, Greek, but I don't take those translations all too really. Once I wrote a story about a girl named Sarah Winter, and then googled the name to find out there was already a very famous lady named Sarah Winter. I didn't know she was even alive before googling her, and yet I got her name right to the last vowel. I think the names could mean something, but, most of the times, I think they're just coincidences.

My hypothesis about the Iron Throne being turned into arrowheads is just a tinfoil possibility; the point of the Myrish Looking Glasses series is to point out details characters might've missed, and my OP was more to show that Septon Barth (and everyone else, really) missed this very important detail about the IT - that it is still sharp. After three hundred years of butts and hands and gloves and capes and cleaning rags and armors, it is still sharp. 

I do believe the "Game of Thrones" is a clever way of saying this story is about a "dance of chairs" (Dança das cadeiras, in portuguese - a children's game in which there is always an X number of chairs and an X+1 number of kids dancing around them, and when the song stops all the children have to sit, until there are two kids and one chair, and then the winner is determined).

We could theorize about the connection between Sweetrobin's and Bloodraven's weirwood thrones, the origins of the Seastone Chair, etc. In the end, I believe this "dance of chairs" means to remove all the players, one throne after the other, until only one is left. It probably will be the Iron Throne, the objective of everyone's desire, But we'll have to wait and see...

Thanks for the thoughtfut discussion, everyone!  

[Anton Martell]

1 hour ago, WilliamWesterosiWallace said:

Do you know what surprises me the most? That no one, in 300 years, has thought to take a hammer to these edges. Seriously? No king ever got cut in the throne and thought "shit! I'll get someone to hammer these edges out tomorrow". That seems, to me, very odd. Unless the very metal kept its own edge, as Valyrian steel is said to do. If so, hammering it wouldn't have the same effect as it'd have on normal steel. If you take a hammer to the edge of a house knife once, it already lost all its edge. Valyrian steel is said to keep its edge. But I'm just speculating. If we aren't told someone tried to take the edge off the IT, then no one did, as strange as that sounds.

Maybe it's a question of respect: you don't touch the seat of the kings.

 

1 hour ago, WilliamWesterosiWallace said:

Well, it does cut rather well. It took two fingers off Viserys, it cut Rhaenyra because she touched it, it used to cut Aerys all the time. One can't assume people were actively trying to get cut by the IT. One can only assume they were cut by accident, by misfortune. And, to be cut in a misfortune, they'd need to apply pressure where they shouldn't in a sharp surface. And, in 300 years, the thing still cuts just by looking at it wrong. Can that be from bad posture only? Or is it that the knives are so bloody sharp, any touch is a cut?

We don't know how Viserys cut off his fingers. And again, you overrestimate the dullness and the wear and tear of the Iron Throne. Even with a full plate armor you're not going to dull it that much, since there isn't that much rubbing. 

As for Aerys, I'm imagining him crazy and shifting in the seat a lot, which would explain the cuts.

 

And I like the point that the IT is sort of a character in his own rights and bite the one it doesn"t like. Not as a sentient being but as a subtle message and foreshadowing from GRRM

[WilliamWesterosiWallace]

7 hours ago, Anton Martell said:

Maybe it's a question of respect: you don't touch the seat of the kings.

Maybe. You have a point here.

We don't know how Viserys cut off his fingers. And again, you overrestimate the dullness and the wear and tear of the Iron Throne. Even with a full plate armor you're not going to dull it that much, since there isn't that much rubbing. 

As for Aerys, I'm imagining him crazy and shifting in the seat a lot, which would explain the cuts.

Viserys got SO hurt they had to take away two of his fingers to save his hand. And I think a simgle time in plate-and-armor would dull any normal knife. Try to cut a simple aluminum can in your home and see what kind of an edge you get left - imagine that over 300 years, 20 different kingly butts, god-knows-how-many Handly butts, etc etc etc.

And I like the point that the IT is sort of a character in his own rights and bite the one it doesn"t like. Not as a sentient being but as a subtle message and foreshadowing from GRRM

House Ironthrone possible mottos:

"The Iron Throne will have its due."
"Maegor, Rhaenyra, Aerys. The Iron Throne is hungry for more."
"Unburnt, Unconquered, Undead"
"Watch me cut"
"Our blades are sharp"
"The Iron Throne sends its regards"

 

[rhoynestar]

The IT may have some magic on its own, imbued into it over time as the seat of kings, or from the process of its creation. I would agree that GRRM hints it may be magical in some sense.

It doesn't have to be Valyrian steel though, to have magic.

[Macgregor of the North]

On 30 July 2016 at 2:45 PM, Seams said:

I don't think you've taken it too far. I think GRRM wants us to see the Iron Throne as the King's Landing equivalent of a heart tree, where blood sacrifices take place before the carved face and the blood soaks into the roots. More broadly, I think he wants us to see the Iron Throne as something that has a sort of consciousness - it decides which people should be cut; there is an implication that it didn't like Aerys or that it killed King Maegor.

Speaking of consciousness, Tobho Mott says that old swords remember. So a thousand swords bound together must have an interesting collective consciousness at its disposal.

Of course I have to point out the pun evidence, too: "throne" and "thorn" make up one of GRRM's many wordplay pairs. (And don't get me started on "North" which is "thorn" spelled backwards kinda sorta, and "Dorne" which is the German word for "thorn"...) There is a long tradition of people in fairy tales pricking themselves on a thorn, with the resulting drop of blood having some kind of magical consequence. I think the throne/thorn pun will circle back to Ser Alliser Thorne, who is master of arms at the Wall and who begged Tyrion for support for the Night's Watch as he sat on the throne. Maybe this underscores WWW's OP: that the swords in the throne finally will be put back to use to fight the REAL enemy, instead of being used to fight other humans or to resist unification of the seven kingdoms.

If the gods wood or weirwood or heart tree are the throne-equivalent for the Kings of Winter, we should probably also compare the Iron Throne to other thrones such as the seastone chair, the throne with the sun-spear design in Dorne, Bloodraven's tangled root chair, Lysa Arryn sitting on the carved weirwood chair of the Arryns, etc. If there's a game of thrones under way, it makes sense to try to understand all the thrones.

As always, great contribution Seams. Really interesting post there. 

[Anton Martell]

On 30 juillet 2016 at 11:21 PM, WilliamWesterosiWallace said:

Viserys got SO hurt they had to take away two of his fingers to save his hand. And I think a simgle time in plate-and-armor would dull any normal knife. Try to cut a simple aluminum can in your home and see what kind of an edge you get left - imagine that over 300 years, 20 different kingly butts, god-knows-how-many Handly butts, etc etc etc.

Yeah, it got infected. No wonder in a world where infection can happen all the time. Even a tiny cut can kill you. So it's not the IT itself that cut two fingers.

 

And I do not agree with what you say. It will get dulled, of course, but not ALL areas of the IT come into contact with plate armor. Not ALL kings or Hand sit in plate armor. And a normal knife is much thinner than a sword. A sword is made for regular contact with steel, so it's more robust... Kitchen knife are not made for metal to metal action... Plus, again, there isn't so much rubbing. You sit, you shift a little bit, but a lot of your body is going to touch some areas, not all of them. And the legs/arms part have less weight so they dull the blades even less, plus since they are thinner body parts they don't always touch the same area, which would reduce again the dulling.

[WilliamWesterosiWallace]

On 21/08/2016 at 9:01 PM, Anton Martell said:

Yeah, it got infected. No wonder in a world where infection can happen all the time. Even a tiny cut can kill you. So it's not the IT itself that cut two fingers.

 

And I do not agree with what you say. It will get dulled, of course, but not ALL areas of the IT come into contact with plate armor. Not ALL kings or Hand sit in plate armor. And a normal knife is much thinner than a sword. A sword is made for regular contact with steel, so it's more robust... Kitchen knife are not made for metal to metal action... Plus, again, there isn't so much rubbing. You sit, you shift a little bit, but a lot of your body is going to touch some areas, not all of them. And the legs/arms part have less weight so they dull the blades even less, plus since they are thinner body parts they don't always touch the same area, which would reduce again the dulling.

Sure, infection. But a small cut couldn't possibly cause that big an infection on a man who has access to the best doctors in the world every day, can it?

And about the plate and mail: YES, it would dull the parts it came into contact with. Swords meet steel every day, yes, but they also need to be sharpened after every battle, or else the dents will start to gather and the edge will be gone. If you rub steel against the edge of a blade, that edge is GONE. It can still cut, but the shiny edge is gone. And yet, after three hundred years of A LOT of armours (seriously, comemorative dates, normal court days after practice, kings that like to be dicks, there could be a lot of reasons for armour in the throne room) the IT is still sharp enough to cut with a single touch. 

[Michael Mertyns]

11 minutes ago, WilliamWesterosiWallace said:

Sure, infection. But a small cut couldn't possibly cause that big an infection on a man who has access to the best doctors in the world every day, can it?

Best doesn't necessarily mean good. It just means better than everyone else around.

[WilliamWesterosiWallace]

On 29/08/2016 at 11:50 PM, Michael Mertyns said:

Best doesn't necessarily mean good. It just means better than everyone else around.

Infections aren't like cuts. You don't just get scratched and boom, your hand is black and falling off. With wine boiling and poultices, infections are easily avoided on small cuts, made by dull edges. A cut needs to go deep to make an impact that that form of treatment can't reach.

[Runaway Penguin]

Dull edges may be actually worse: They produce nastier cuts, with ripped edges of the cut etc. - so the affected surface may be easily bigger than from a deep, sharp cut. 

 

In any case, Valyrian steel is not just simple steel + dragonflame, it is closer to Damascene steel or Katanas, folded over and over and over again (in both cases arguably not to get magical sharpness and lightness - katanas are pretty brutal cleavers - but to properly treat subpar iron). It seems a lot depended on raw material (wootz steel from India for Damascene) - high carbon content and special unknown treatment/manufacturing process (read spell) caused creation of carbon nanostructures similar to nanotubes. So no, Iron Throne is not Valyrian steel. the 59 days of forging was just forging the swords on the throne and creating seat and stuff (no easy task I would say).

What might be more interesting, though... Is Dragonsteel. Maybe Dragonsteel and Valyrian Steel are not the same, Dragonsteel really being just simple steel/iron treated to a dose of dragon? In that case Iron throne would provide material for fight against the Others.

[Anton Martell]

On 1 septembre 2016 at 6:25 AM, Runaway Penguin said:

Dull edges may be actually worse: They produce nastier cuts, with ripped edges of the cut etc. - so the affected surface may be easily bigger than from a deep, sharp cut. 

 

In any case, Valyrian steel is not just simple steel + dragonflame, it is closer to Damascene steel or Katanas, folded over and over and over again (in both cases arguably not to get magical sharpness and lightness - katanas are pretty brutal cleavers - but to properly treat subpar iron). It seems a lot depended on raw material (wootz steel from India for Damascene) - high carbon content and special unknown treatment/manufacturing process (read spell) caused creation of carbon nanostructures similar to nanotubes. So no, Iron Throne is not Valyrian steel. the 59 days of forging was just forging the swords on the throne and creating seat and stuff (no easy task I would say).

What might be more interesting, though... Is Dragonsteel. Maybe Dragonsteel and Valyrian Steel are not the same, Dragonsteel really being just simple steel/iron treated to a dose of dragon? In that case Iron throne would provide material for fight against the Others.

Love this :p.

 

And about infections: if you have a tiny injury and don't treat it well you can have gangrene pretty easily. And a king can be presumptuous and think it's benign for  some time, and bam, it's too late.

 

And lately about the rubbing: 300 years of kings sitting on it, it makes 109 500 days. A king does not sit everyday in the IT (there is no audiences everyday) so let's say that he sits 4 days a week in average. It becomes 62 400 days of audience (I count the Hand filling in as the king). Now you need to add the time the king is not there (he might be away, or does not want to sit, or busy or sick etc.). let's say it becomes around 50 000 days give or take (and I think I'm being generous). The Hand might take the lead on those days but I don't think Hands would dress in armor often, so let's say 50 000 days.  Of those 50 000 I think at least 7 out of 10 are without armor (I would even go as far as 8 out of 10 since wearing an armor doesn't seem to be that common), but let's be generous again). So 15 000 days of armor throne (which seems crazy, but why not). Let's say an audience lasts around 3 hours in average. It becomes 45 000 hours of armor sitting. Sure the king will shift etc. but the part that will get the most of the rubbing will be the ass and the back. those part are probably dulled out, but the armrests and the foot of the IT won't get that much rubbing. And if you scrape metal against metal lightly for 45 000 hours, it's going to be dulled and barbed, but it will still have some sharpness.

 

[hiemal]

"Valyrian steel is just regular steel bathed in dragonflame."

Perhaps, but remember that the words of the Targaryens are "Fire and blood." Bear in mind also AA's forging (and quenching) of Lightbringer.

And finally the rumors that the smiths of Qohor had slain children in their attempts to replicate the process.

The descriptions of the blades as drinking the sunlight further make me further suspect that Valyrian Steel is composed of an alloy of Oily Black Stone  and iron (folded and folded like Damascus steel) then quenched in human blood.