Dany somehow knows what molten gold tastes like...

[snow is the man]

15 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

Ned said some lies were not dishonorable, if uttered in service of a noble purpose.  Why didn't Dany lie about what Viserys had said, in order to save his life; the way that Arya saved Nymeria's life?

Really? Visery's was gonna kill her. What was her options? And he had his blade drawn in that sacred city so he was already a dead man walking. And even if he managed to get away with that he then put a sword to dany pregnant belly. If khal drogo didn't kill him for that he would look incredibly weak. So visery's was already dead. But even if he wasn't he would have killed dany right there.

I argue that tywin lannister was a kin slayer because he meant for tyrion to die unless he left for the wall. And when I I say is a kin slayer I meant if he had gone through with the execution. He knew the trial was rigged.

[Traverys]

15 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

She spoke the 'Killing Word,' my dear...

Can someone put in a nutshell this "Killing Word" concept for me? Every time I try to read that post I'm thrown off by all the esoteric word use and the spectrum of colors used in the formatting.

[ravenous reader]

 

4 hours ago, Pain killer Jane said:

this reference [Dany tasting molten gold] here seems to connect to the the hot blood and molten gold.

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For centuries the Targaryens had married brother to sister, since Aegon the Conqueror had taken his sisters to bride. The line must be kept pure, Viserys had told her a thousand times; theirs was the kingsblood, the golden blood of old Valyria, the blood of the dragon. 

- Dany I, aGoT

And Viserys is the one here saying that blood is gold.

This is bloody brilliant PK!   (pardon pun -- I just can't help myself...)

There seems to be a curious mirroring between the sacrifice and the beneficiary of that sacrifice.  Some on this thread have termed it 'empathy' or 'telepathy'-- I tend to think it's something more sinister than that, something more akin to your Polynesian/Hawaaian 'mana' concept, in which personal power is accrued by feeding off the lifeblood, figuratively and literally, of other beings.  

Accordingly, Viserys tasting the 'hot molten gold' in the same moment of his death can be understood as Viserys tasting his own blood -- the 'hot golden blood' of the dragon -- which reciprocally his sister, by feeding off his sacrifice, also tastes in the moment of her self-aggrandizement.  How did Daenerys become a dragon?  By consuming another dragon (think of the ouroboros, the dragon biting its own tail)!  

Her guilt -- by the way, a pun on 'gilt'  -- at having been complicit in her brother's death peeps through in the way she keeps insisting that Viserys was no dragon, because fire cannot kill a dragon, as if in denial about the 'golden blood' they both share.  Regardless of her rationalizations, it's evident that another dragon most definitely can kill a dragon (just look at all those infamous 'dances of dragons' vying for ascendance) -- and that's what played out at Vaes Dothrak.  Given that a dragon's blood is golden, and that Viserys tasted it in his mouth as it flowed out of him, the implication is that blood of a kind, contrary to popular belief, was indeed shed at Vaes Dothrak; and therefore that a sin was committed by someone.

We can find a correlation between Dany profiting off the 'golden blood' of Viserys -- representing one dragon consuming another -- and the scene in which Bran has a similarly visceral reaction to tasting the blood of the unknown captive at the weirwood -- which I'd suggest represents one greenseer consuming another.  Moreover, I believe as I hinted above that this man's name (the weirwood sacrifice) was also 'Brandon Stark'.  Note the ambiguity inherent in the sentence construction, in which it's not definitively clear who exactly tasted the blood: the witness/beneficiary of the blood, or the captive like Viserys tasting the blood in the moment of his own death, when his throat is cut? 

Although this appears to have been executed by proxy; nevertheless, as suggested by the intimate nature of the experience (the 'taste' in both cases respectively) symbolically Bran cuts the captive's throat, like Dany symbolically cuts Viserys's throat.  Interestingly, both Bran and Dany though tasting the blood can only mutely look on (maybe because when your mouth is full of blood you cannot talk!), mirroring the 'mute appeal' of the captives themselves:

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand.

"No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.

Initially, 'the broken boy' is the subject of the sentence, but then we have the ambiguous 'his life flowed out of him', which now seems to be not 'the broken boy' watching but the 'man being broken' as it were in front of his eyes.  Taking the sacrificed man as the new subject referenced by 'his life', the attribution of the following 'Brandon Stark' becomes ambiguous.  Does this mean that our Bran tasted the captive's blood (as Dany tasted Viserys's blood); or that the other 'Brandon' tasted his own blood as his life flowed out of him (as Viserys tasted his own blood in the moment of his execution)? 

GRRM very deliberately used the full name 'Brandon Stark' instead of 'Bran' in this context, in order to create this profound merging of identity (beyond merely introducing a confusion of identity), precisely to suggest the transference of power from one party to another.  We may also infer, based on this critical passage of Bran's first greenseeing initiation, additionally using the Dany-Viserys parallel, that Bran is a descendant of this man, in addition to deriving his skinchanging power via this man and his sacrifice.  The spilled blood 'flowing out in a red tide' is the same blood flowing in the red tide of Bran's veins (and arteries of course), the same blood that 'makes [him] a greenseer'.  

Let's go back to that important moment when Bran ate the bloody weirwood bole (paralleling Dany drinking the shade of the evening or warlock wine...which resembles black blood):

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

Something about the look of it made Bran feel ill. The red veins were only weirwood sap, he supposed, but in the torchlight they looked remarkably like blood. He dipped the spoon into the paste, then hesitated. "Will this make me a greenseer?"

"Your blood makes you a greenseer," said Lord Brynden. "This will help awaken your gifts and wed you to the trees."

Bran did want to be married to a tree … but who else would wed a broken boy like him? A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. A greenseer.

Based on the disturbing conclusions we've drawn, we can rephrase:  Bran's blood makes him a greenseer; but, what's equally true is that it's the blood of another -- particularly the sacrifice of this blood (of his unidentified ancestor, as I've posited) -- that is fundamentally responsible for making him a greenseer.  In short, his power is founded on the death of another. The 'blood' implies a blood sacrifice.  In fact, at the moment this is being said, as if to reinforce this idea in the reader subconsciously, Bran is described transfixed by the 'red veins' which 'look remarkably like blood' -- someone else's blood, probably Jojen's, much as I hate to admit it (sorry Evita! ).  Then, in the greenseeing 'trip'/vision, time is rewound all the way back to the beginning -- the beginning of greenseeing (at least insofar as Stark history is concerned)-- which likewise starts with a sacrifice.

The 'drumming' of the man's feet against the earth in the grotesque dance of death accompanying Bran's shamanic ecstasy is similarly represented in the Vaes Dothrak scene, in which Viserys does the same 'dance' for Dany.  Check out the similarities in the way the two passages conclude:

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys V

When the gold was half-melted and starting to run, Drogo reached into the flames, snatched out the pot. "Crown!" he roared. "Here. A crown for Cart King!" And upended the pot over the head of the man who had been her brother.

The sound Viserys Targaryen made when that hideous iron helmet covered his face was like nothing human. His feet hammered a frantic beat against the dirt floor, slowed, stopped. Thick globs of molten gold dripped down onto his chest, setting the scarlet silk to smoldering … yet no drop of blood was spilled.

He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon.

 

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@Pain killer Jane said:

There is also this in Arya's chapter

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"The others?"

Yoren spat. "Sellswords and freeriders and like trash. That inn was full o' them, and I saw them take the scent. The scent of blood or the scent of gold, they smell the same in the end. 

-Arya III,aGoT

Even more brilliant and bloodier!  

So -- extrapolating again, using Tywin's 'shitting gold' and 'the king eats and the hand takes the shit', we can say that the scent of blood = the scent of gold = the scent of shit -- they all smell the same in the end.  To quote PK, 'dust to dust, ashes to ashes, shit to shit' -- And it all stinks!

PK, this quote dovetails nicely with all your ideas about the 'soiled knights' or in other words 'spotted knights' who have been anointed with excrement of various kinds, which is then magically transmuted in the imagination of the society to 'gold'.  The other day I found this passage and had been wanting to share it with you:

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A Clash of Kings - Tyrion XIV

"I yield, ser," a different knight called out, farther down the river. "Yield. Ser knight, I yield to you. My pledge, here, here." The man lay in a puddle of black water, offering up a lobstered gauntlet in token of submission. Tyrion had to lean down to take it from him. As he did, a pot of wildfire burst overhead, spraying green flame. In the sudden stab of light he saw that the puddle was not black but red. The gauntlet still had the knight's hand in it. He flung it back. "Yield," the man sobbed hopelessly, helplessly. Tyrion reeled away.

A man-at-arms grabbed the bridle of his horse and thrust at Tyrion's face with a dagger. He knocked the blade aside and buried the axe in the nape of the man's neck. As he was wresting it free, a blaze of white appeared at the edge of his vision. Tyrion turned, thinking to find Ser Mandon Moore beside him again, but this was a different white knight. Ser Balon Swann wore the same armor, but his horse trappings bore the battling black-and-white swans of his House. He's more a spotted knight than a white one, Tyrion thought inanely. Every bit of Ser Balon was spattered with gore and smudged by smoke. He raised his mace to point downriver. Bits of brain and bone clung to its head. "My lord, look."

Tyrion swung his horse about to peer down the Blackwater. The current still flowed black and strong beneath, but the surface was a roil of blood and flame. The sky was red and orange and garish green. "What?" he said. Then he saw.

This is an example of a 'shitty' knight who subsequently gets figuratively covered in gold, glorified for his work as a Kingsguard:

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A Storm of Swords - Jaime VIII

"Aye. As you command, my lord."

"Dismissed." As he left, Jaime turned to Ser Balon Swann. "Ser Balon, I have watched you tilt many a time, and fought with and against you in mêlées. I'm told you proved your valor a hundred times over during the Battle of the Blackwater. The Kingsguard is honored by your presence."

"The honor's mine, my lord." Ser Balon sounded wary.

Here is the opposite but related scenario of the golden knight covered in battle shit:

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A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys VIII

"So they betrayed me, is that what you are saying? Why? Did I mistreat the Second Sons? Did I cheat you on your pay?"

"Never that," said Brown Ben, "but it's not all about the coin, Your High-and-Mightiness. I learned that a long time back, at my first battle. Morning after the fight, I was rooting through the dead, looking for the odd bit o' plunder, as it were. Came upon this one corpse, some axeman had taken his whole arm off at the shoulder. He was covered with flies, all crusty with dried blood, might be why no one else had touched him, but under them he wore this studded jerkin, looked to be good leather. I figured it might fit me well enough, so I chased away the flies and cut it off him. The damn thing was heavier than it had any right to be, though. Under the lining, he'd sewn a fortune in coin. Gold, Your Worship, sweet yellow gold. Enough for any man to live like a lord for the rest o' his days. But what good did it do him? There he was with all his coin, lying in the blood and mud with his fucking arm cut off. And that's the lesson, see? Silver's sweet and gold's our mother, but once you're dead they're worth less than that last shit you take as you lie dying. I told you once, there are old sellswords and there are bold sellswords, but there are no old bold sellswords. My boys didn't care to die, that's all, and when I told them that you couldn't unleash them dragons against the Yunkishmen, well …"

You saw me as defeated, Dany thought, and who am I to say that you were wrong? "I understand." She might have ended it there, but she was curious. "Enough gold to live like a lord, you said. What did you do with all that wealth?"

P.S.  I wonder if there is a wordplay on 'old', 'bold,' 'cold' (i.e. dead) and 'gold' sellswords!

Since Kingsguards are 'spotted or soiled knights' and proxy assassins, the question also arises whether those who employ them should be held responsible for any of the 'shitty transactions' they are called on to perform on behalf of those rulers.  I observed with interest how several readers react when one dares to suggest Dany bears any responsibility for her brother's death, which as I've shown is heavily suggested by the symbolism inherent in the text.  Who was really the 'spotted knight'  in the transaction -- the man with the chamber pot of melted gold upended on his head; the man who physically turfed the golden diarrhea onto his head; or the woman who watched 'the shit go down' without getting her hands dirty?  In other words, if blood = gold = shit = mud = ashes, does Dany really exit this transaction without any shit stuck to her whatsoever -- is she really and truly the only 'spotless knight' in the equation?  

I think we have our answer in the 'taste of molten gold' which comes back to haunt her.  Figuratively, Dany has shit in her mouth, although her beautiful shiny white hair like Jaqen's is squeaky clean.  Oh -- I've just noticed; she has white hair just like the white-haired lady in Bran's execution scene!  

This kind of dynamic I've demonstrated of the secret 'assassin-behind-the-assassin' can be found in multiple contexts, once one starts digging a little deeper into the text.  My favourite example of late is the execution in the Prologue in which the Other does the dirty on Waymar, while his brother like Dany sits on the side watching mutely.  Like Dany and Bran, Will can taste something in his mouth:

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A Game of Thrones - Prologue

Ser Waymar looked him over with open disapproval. "I am not going back to Castle Black a failure on my first ranging. We will find these men." He glanced around. "Up the tree. Be quick about it. Look for a fire."

Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It cut right through him. He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green sentinel, and began to climb. Soon his hands were sticky with sap, and he was lost among the needles. Fear filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort.

A dagger in the dark.  As @40 Thousand Skeletons has highlighted, the taste of iron is synonymous with the taste of blood, due to the high iron content of blood, as well as GRRM's juxtaposition of the two elsewhere in the text; e.g. Theon saying 'my blood is salt and iron'; or the nightingale announcing Pate's impending death 'trilling gold for iron, gold for iron, gold for iron'...Pate hoped to exhange an iron key for a gold coin, but he ended up paying with his life; in fact, one could say he ended up paying 'the iron price' with his own blood!

And like Dany and Bran, although never made explicit, there is also a suggestion of Will having been smeared symbolically in his brother's blood, with the reiteration of the 'sticky sap' mirroring Waymar's blood which is also described in that fashion:

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A Game of Thrones - Prologue

Ser Waymar looked him over with open disapproval. "I am not going back to Castle Black a failure on my first ranging. We will find these men." He glanced around. "Up the tree. Be quick about it. Look for a fire."

Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It cut right through him. He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green sentinel, and began to climb. Soon his hands were sticky with sap, and he was lost among the needles. Fear filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort.

Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, "Who goes there?" Will heard uncertainty in the challenge. He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched.

A Game of Thrones - Prologue

"Will, where are you?" Ser Waymar called up. "Can you see anything?" He was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. "Answer me! Why is it so cold?"

It was cold. Shivering, Will clung more tightly to his perch. His face pressed hard against the trunk of the sentinel. He could feel the sweet, sticky sap on his cheek.

A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.

Other suggestive instances equating 'sticky sap' with blood, sacrifice, and the acquisition of magical power:

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A Clash of Kings - Bran VI

Swiftly, swiftly, he whirled and bounded back into the trees, wet leaves rustling beneath his paws, branches whipping at him as he rushed past. He could hear his brother following close. They plunged under the heart tree and around the cold pool, through the blackberry bushes, under a tangle of oaks and ash and hawthorn scrub, to the far side of the wood . . . and there it was, the shadow he'd glimpsed without seeing, the slanting tree pointing at the rooftops. Sentinel, came the thought.

He remembered how it was to climb it then. The needles everywhere, scratching at his bare face and falling down the back of his neck, the sticky sap on his hands, the sharp piney smell of it. It was an easy tree for a boy to climb, leaning as it did, crooked, the branches so close together they almost made a ladder, slanting right up to the roof.

Growling, he sniffed around the base of the tree, lifted a leg and marked it with a stream of urine. A low branch brushed his face, and he snapped at it, twisting and pulling until the wood cracked and tore. His mouth was full of needles and the bitter taste of the sap. He shook his head and snarled.

A Dance with Dragons - Jon III

Beneath the weeping Wall, Lady Melisandre raised her pale white hands. "We all must choose," she proclaimed. "Man or woman, young or old, lord or peasant, our choices are the same." Her voice made Jon Snow think of anise and nutmeg and cloves. She stood at the king's side on a wooden scaffold raised above the pit. "We choose light or we choose darkness. We choose good or we choose evil. We choose the true god or the false."

Mance Rayder's thick grey-brown hair blew about his face as he walked. He pushed it from his eyes with bound hands, smiling. But when he saw the cage, his courage failed him. The queen's men had made it from the trees of the haunted forest, from saplings and supple branches, pine boughs sticky with sap, and the bone-white fingers of the weirwoods. They'd bent them and twisted them around and through each other to weave a wooden lattice, then hung it high above a deep pit filled with logs, leaves, and kindling.

 

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A Game of Thrones - Prologue

The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.

The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray. Long, elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around his throat. They were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was icy cold.

 

Compare this Prologue to Varamyr's Prologue, in which almost identical wording is used to convey the accusing stare of wighted Thistle, with the implication that Will and Varamyr caused the deaths of Waymar and Thistle respectively:

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A Dance with Dragons - Prologue

When they reached the crest the wolves paused. Thistle, he remembered, and a part of him grieved for what he had lost and another part for what he'd done. Below, the world had turned to ice. Fingers of frost crept slowly up the weirwood, reaching out for each other. The empty village was no longer empty. Blue-eyed shadows walked amongst the mounds of snow. Some wore brown and some wore black and some were naked, their flesh gone white as snow. A wind was sighing through the hills, heavy with their scents: dead flesh, dry blood, skins that stank of mold and rot and urine. Sly gave a growl and bared her teeth, her ruff bristling. Not men. Not prey. Not these.

The things below moved, but did not live. One by one, they raised their heads toward the three wolves on the hill. The last to look was the thing that had been Thistle. She wore wool and fur and leather, and over that she wore a coat of hoarfrost that crackled when she moved and glistened in the moonlight. Pale pink icicles hung from her fingertips, ten long knives of frozen blood. And in the pits where her eyes had been, a pale blue light was flickering, lending her coarse features an eerie beauty they had never known in life.

She sees me.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

Well, you've asked an interesting question.  LOL.

I do think there is something to visions, dreams and state of mind.  Whether that is drug induced, hypnotically induced (staring into a fire), a coma state or dream state... the mind experiences an altered state.  I think you are suggesting synesthesia induced by drugs:

- a sensation produced in one modality when a stimulus is applied to another modality, as when the hearing of a certain sound induces the visualization of a certain color.

 

  

LOL no, that's what other people are suggesting. I concede that is certainly possible, but I am suggesting that Dany included molten gold in a list of things she has literally tasted because she has literally tasted it. And the most logical explanation is that she somehow experienced her brother's death and literally remembers the taste of molten gold.

The drug at that stage was simply acting to open up Dany's mind to her own memories. It appears she wasn't hallucinating just yet. She was remembering real tastes.

[Pain killer Jane]

24 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

This is bloody brilliant PK!   (pardon pun -- I just can't help myself...)

There seems to be a curious mirroring between the sacrifice and the beneficiary of that sacrifice.  Some on this thread have termed it 'empathy' or 'telepathy'-- I tend to think it's something more sinister than that, something more akin to your Polynesian/Hawaaian 'mana' concept, in which personal power is accrued by feeding off the lifeblood, figuratively and literally, of other beings

Thank you. And yes this is exactly what I was implying with my later comment. And not just Bran but there is an even more outright example when Arya through Nymeria she tastes her mother's blood. 

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She paddled after the sharp red whisper of cold blood, the sweet cloying stench of death. She chased them as she had often chased a red deer through the trees, and in the end she ran them down, and her jaw closed around a pale white arm. She shook it to make it move, but there was only death and blood in her mouth.

-Arya XII, aSoS

 

49 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Her guilt -- by the way, a pun on 'gilt'  -- at having been complicit in her brother's death peeps through in the way she keeps insisting that Viserys was no dragon, because fire cannot kill a dragon, as if in denial about the 'golden blood' they both share.  Regardless of her rationalizations, it's evident that another dragon most definitely can kill a dragon (just look at all those infamous 'dances of dragons' vying for ascendance) -- and that's what played out at Vaes Dothrak.  Given that a dragon's blood is golden, and that Viserys tasted it in his mouth as it flowed out of him, the implication is that blood of a kind, contrary to popular belief, was indeed shed at Vaes Dothrak; and therefore that a sin was committed by someone.

We can find a correlation between Dany profiting off the 'golden blood' of Viserys -- representing one dragon consuming another -- and the scene in which Bran has a similarly visceral reaction to tasting the blood of the unknown captive at the weirwood -- which I'd suggest represents one greenseer consuming another.  Moreover, I believe as I hinted above that this man's name (the weirwood sacrifice) was also 'Brandon Stark'.  Note the ambiguity inherent in the sentence construction, in which it's not definitively clear who exactly tasted the blood: the witness/beneficiary of the blood, or the captive like Viserys tasting the blood in the moment of his own death, when his throat is cut? 

Although this appears to have been executed by proxy; nevertheless, as suggested by the intimate nature of the experience (the 'taste' in both cases respectively) symbolically Bran cuts the captive's throat, like Dany symbolically cuts Viserys's throat.  Interestingly, both Bran and Dany though tasting the blood can only mutely look on (maybe because when your mouth is full of blood you cannot talk!), mirroring the 'mute appeal' of the captives themselves:

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A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand.

"No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.

Initially, 'the broken boy' is the subject of the sentence, but then we have the ambiguous 'his life flowed out of him', which now seems to be not 'the broken boy' watching but the 'man being broken' as it were in front of his eyes.  Taking the sacrificed man as the new subject referenced by 'his life', the attribution of the following 'Brandon Stark' becomes ambiguous.  Does this mean that our Bran tasted the captive's blood (as Dany tasted Viserys's blood); or that the other 'Brandon' tasted his own blood as his life flowed out of him (as Viserys tasted his own blood in the moment of his execution)? 

Since with Dany and Viserys we are seeing the Dance of the Dragons, I wonder if Bran's vision is the War of Wolves/the Warg Kings' ending? 

57 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

PK, this quote dovetails nicely with all your ideas about the 'spotted knights' who have been anointed with excrement of various kinds, which is then magically transmuted in the imagination of the society to 'gold'.  The other day I found this passage and had been wanting to share it with you:

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A Clash of Kings - Tyrion XIV

"I yield, ser," a different knight called out, farther down the river. "Yield. Ser knight, I yield to you. My pledge, here, here." The man lay in a puddle of black water, offering up a lobstered gauntlet in token of submission. Tyrion had to lean down to take it from him. As he did, a pot of wildfire burst overhead, spraying green flame. In the sudden stab of light he saw that the puddle was not black but red. The gauntlet still had the knight's hand in it. He flung it back. "Yield," the man sobbed hopelessly, helplessly. Tyrion reeled away.

A man-at-arms grabbed the bridle of his horse and thrust at Tyrion's face with a dagger. He knocked the blade aside and buried the axe in the nape of the man's neck. As he was wresting it free, a blaze of white appeared at the edge of his vision. Tyrion turned, thinking to find Ser Mandon Moore beside him again, but this was a different white knight. Ser Balon Swann wore the same armor, but his horse trappings bore the battling black-and-white swans of his House. He's more a spotted knight than a white one, Tyrion thought inanely. Every bit of Ser Balon was spattered with gore and smudged by smoke. He raised his mace to point downriver. Bits of brain and bone clung to its head. "My lord, look."

Tyrion swung his horse about to peer down the Blackwater. The current still flowed black and strong beneath, but the surface was a roil of blood and flame. The sky was red and orange and garish green. "What?" he said. Then he saw.

This is an example of a 'shitty' knight who subsequently gets figuratively covered in gold, glorified for his work as a Kingsguard:

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A Storm of Swords - Jaime VIII

"Aye. As you command, my lord."

"Dismissed." As he left, Jaime turned to Ser Balon Swann. "Ser Balon, I have watched you tilt many a time, and fought with and against you in mêlées. I'm told you proved your valor a hundred times over during the Battle of the Blackwater. The Kingsguard is honored by your presence."

"The honor's mine, my lord." Ser Balon sounded wary.

Fantastic catch, I didn't realized Tyrion had said 'spotted knight' and I just listened to that chapter not three days past. 

I have one for you as well

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His palfrey was a blood bay, his destrier a magnificent grey stallion. It had been long years since Jaime had named any of his horses; he had seen too many die in battle, and that was harder when you named them. But when the Piper boy started calling them Honor and Glory, he laughed and let the names stand. Glory wore trappings of Lannister crimson; Honor was barded in Kingsguard white. Josmyn Peckledon held the palfrey's reins as Ser Jaime mounted. 

- Jaime, aFfC

Hasty hailed from the stormlands, so had neither friends nor foes along the Trident; no blood feuds, no debts to pay, no cronies to reward. He was sober, just, and dutiful, and his Holy Eighty-Six were as well disciplined as any soldiers in the Seven Kingdoms, and made a lovely sight as they wheeled and pranced their tall grey geldings. Littlefinger had once quipped that Ser Bonifer must have gelded the riders too, so spotless was their repute.

All the same, Jaime wondered about any soldiers who were better known for their lovely horses than for the foes they'd slain.

-Jaime III, aFfC

And Jaime rides the bloody red horse whose name is Honor and dressed in white. We are given this info in Jaime IV, when he spurs Honor through the gates. 

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

is the opposite but related scenario of the golden knight covered in battle shit:

Quote

A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys VIII

"So they betrayed me, is that what you are saying? Why? Did I mistreat the Second Sons? Did I cheat you on your pay?"

"Never that," said Brown Ben, "but it's not all about the coin, Your High-and-Mightiness. I learned that a long time back, at my first battle. Morning after the fight, I was rooting through the dead, looking for the odd bit o' plunder, as it were. Came upon this one corpse, some axeman had taken his whole arm off at the shoulder. He was covered with flies, all crusty with dried blood, might be why no one else had touched him, but under them he wore this studded jerkin, looked to be good leather. I figured it might fit me well enough, so I chased away the flies and cut it off him. The damn thing was heavier than it had any right to be, though. Under the lining, he'd sewn a fortune in coin. Gold, Your Worship, sweet yellow gold. Enough for any man to live like a lord for the rest o' his days. But what good did it do him? There he was with all his coin, lying in the blood and mud with his fucking arm cut off. And that's the lesson, see? Silver's sweet and gold's our mother, but once you're dead they're worth less than that last shit you take as you lie dying. I told you once, there are old sellswords and there are bold sellswords, but there are no old bold sellswords. My boys didn't care to die, that's all, and when I told them that you couldn't unleash them dragons against the Yunkishmen, well …"

You saw me as defeated, Dany thought, and who am I to say that you were wrong? "I understand." She might have ended it there, but she was curious. "Enough gold to live like a lord, you said. What did you do with all that wealth?"

P.S.  I wonder if there is a wordplay on 'old', 'bold,' 'cold' (i.e. dead) and 'gold' sellswords!

I wouldn't say this is opposite but a transference of power as Brown Ben is taking the power from a dead powerful foe. 

Also Martin is cleverly negating a saying here "Fortune favors the bold" through punning. Ben implies that he was lucky aka fortunate in finding 'a fortune in coin' but he then negates this by saying the bold sellswords die and the old (craven) sellswords live. Therefore saying that luck had nothing to do with it. It is the manufactured luck and profiting from it that we were speaking about in the other thread.  

As to the wordplay, there may be a connection, we shall have to investigate. 

[Damon_Tor]

On 5/19/2017 at 8:56 PM, Lollygag said:

Since their line has been inbred since Egg/whats-her-name Blackwood, Viserys and Dany are both half Blackwood.

Genes don't work that way.

For one thing, Betha Blackwood wasn't herself "100% Blackwood" because he mother was probably from some other house, as was her grandmother and her great grandmother. She may well have not carried whatever genes made Bloodraven and other historic Blackwoods special.

And also, mixing genes isn't like mixing paint: you have no copies of a gene, one copy, or two copies, and what that means varies wildly depending on the gene in question, whether it's recessive, dominant, or semi-dominant.

So let's say Betha Blackwood carried one copy of a "Greenseer gene" a genotype we'll call "Gg". Let's say Egg had one copy as well (Targaryens seemed to have visions with some frequency as well). Now let's say that the Greensight is a recessive trait, you need two copies (GG) to have meaningful visions. Half of their kids would be Gg just like them, a quarter wouldn't carry the gene at all (gg), and the remaining quarter would be GG and would have the visions.

Note this is for the sake of argument, and I don't think it's this simple. The point is "Half Blackwood" is meaningless.

[StarkofWinterfell]

7 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

 

This is bloody brilliant PK!   (pardon pun -- I just can't help myself...)

There seems to be a curious mirroring between the sacrifice and the beneficiary of that sacrifice.  Some on this thread have termed it 'empathy' or 'telepathy'-- I tend to think it's something more sinister than that, something more akin to your Polynesian/Hawaaian 'mana' concept, in which personal power is accrued by feeding off the lifeblood, figuratively and literally, of other beings.  

Accordingly, Viserys tasting the 'hot molten gold' in the same moment of his death can be understood as Viserys tasting his own blood -- the 'hot golden blood' of the dragon -- which reciprocally his sister, by feeding off his sacrifice, also tastes in the moment of her self-aggrandizement.  How did Daenerys become a dragon?  By consuming another dragon (think of the ouroboros, the dragon biting its own tail)!  

Her guilt -- by the way, a pun on 'gilt'  -- at having been complicit in her brother's death peeps through in the way she keeps insisting that Viserys was no dragon, because fire cannot kill a dragon, as if in denial about the 'golden blood' they both share.  Regardless of her rationalizations, it's evident that another dragon most definitely can kill a dragon (just look at all those infamous 'dances of dragons' vying for ascendance) -- and that's what played out at Vaes Dothrak.  Given that a dragon's blood is golden, and that Viserys tasted it in his mouth as it flowed out of him, the implication is that blood of a kind, contrary to popular belief, was indeed shed at Vaes Dothrak; and therefore that a sin was committed by someone.

We can find a correlation between Dany profiting off the 'golden blood' of Viserys -- representing one dragon consuming another -- and the scene in which Bran has a similarly visceral reaction to tasting the blood of the unknown captive at the weirwood -- which I'd suggest represents one greenseer consuming another.  Moreover, I believe as I hinted above that this man's name (the weirwood sacrifice) was also 'Brandon Stark'.  Note the ambiguity inherent in the sentence construction, in which it's not definitively clear who exactly tasted the blood: the witness/beneficiary of the blood, or the captive like Viserys tasting the blood in the moment of his own death, when his throat is cut? 

Although this appears to have been executed by proxy; nevertheless, as suggested by the intimate nature of the experience (the 'taste' in both cases respectively) symbolically Bran cuts the captive's throat, like Dany symbolically cuts Viserys's throat.  Interestingly, both Bran and Dany though tasting the blood can only mutely look on (maybe because when your mouth is full of blood you cannot talk!), mirroring the 'mute appeal' of the captives themselves:

Initially, 'the broken boy' is the subject of the sentence, but then we have the ambiguous 'his life flowed out of him', which now seems to be not 'the broken boy' watching but the 'man being broken' as it were in front of his eyes.  Taking the sacrificed man as the new subject referenced by 'his life', the attribution of the following 'Brandon Stark' becomes ambiguous.  Does this mean that our Bran tasted the captive's blood (as Dany tasted Viserys's blood); or that the other 'Brandon' tasted his own blood as his life flowed out of him (as Viserys tasted his own blood in the moment of his execution)? 

GRRM very deliberately used the full name 'Brandon Stark' instead of 'Bran' in this context, in order to create this profound merging of identity (beyond merely introducing a confusion of identity), precisely to suggest the transference of power from one party to another.  We may also infer, based on this critical passage of Bran's first greenseeing initiation, additionally using the Dany-Viserys parallel, that Bran is a descendant of this man, in addition to deriving his skinchanging power via this man and his sacrifice.  The spilled blood 'flowing out in a red tide' is the same blood flowing in the red tide of Bran's veins (and arteries of course), the same blood that 'makes [him] a greenseer'.  

Let's go back to that important moment when Bran ate the bloody weirwood bole (paralleling Dany drinking the shade of the evening or warlock wine...which resembles black blood):

Based on the disturbing conclusions we've drawn, we can rephrase:  Bran's blood makes him a greenseer; but, what's equally true is that it's the blood of another -- particularly the sacrifice of this blood (of his unidentified ancestor, as I've posited) -- that is fundamentally responsible for making him a greenseer.  In short, his power is founded on the death of another. The 'blood' implies a blood sacrifice.  In fact, at the moment this is being said, as if to reinforce this idea in the reader subconsciously, Bran is described transfixed by the 'red veins' which 'look remarkably like blood' -- someone else's blood, probably Jojen's, much as I hate to admit it (sorry Evita! ).  Then, in the greenseeing 'trip'/vision, time is rewound all the way back to the beginning -- the beginning of greenseeing (at least insofar as Stark history is concerned)-- which likewise starts with a sacrifice.

The 'drumming' of the man's feet against the earth in the grotesque dance of death accompanying Bran's shamanic ecstasy is similarly represented in the Vaes Dothrak scene, in which Viserys does the same 'dance' for Dany.  Check out the similarities in the way the two passages conclude:

 

Even more brilliant and bloodier!  

So -- extrapolating again, using Tywin's 'shitting gold' and 'the king eats and the hand takes the shit', we can say that the scent of blood = the scent of gold = the scent of shit -- they all smell the same in the end.  To quote PK, 'dust to dust, ashes to ashes, shit to shit' -- And it all stinks!

PK, this quote dovetails nicely with all your ideas about the 'soiled knights' or in other words 'spotted knights' who have been anointed with excrement of various kinds, which is then magically transmuted in the imagination of the society to 'gold'.  The other day I found this passage and had been wanting to share it with you:

This is an example of a 'shitty' knight who subsequently gets figuratively covered in gold, glorified for his work as a Kingsguard:

Here is the opposite but related scenario of the golden knight covered in battle shit:

P.S.  I wonder if there is a wordplay on 'old', 'bold,' 'cold' (i.e. dead) and 'gold' sellswords!

Since Kingsguards are 'spotted or soiled knights' and proxy assassins, the question also arises whether those who employ them should be held responsible for any of the 'shitty transactions' they are called on to perform on behalf of those rulers.  I observed with interest how several readers react when one dares to suggest Dany bears any responsibility for her brother's death, which as I've shown is heavily suggested by the symbolism inherent in the text.  Who was really the 'spotted knight'  in the transaction -- the man with the chamber pot of melted gold upended on his head; the man who physically turfed the golden diarrhea onto his head; or the woman who watched 'the shit go down' without getting her hands dirty?  In other words, if blood = gold = shit = mud = ashes, does Dany really exit this transaction without any shit stuck to her whatsoever -- is she really and truly the only 'spotless knight' in the equation?  

I think we have our answer in the 'taste of molten gold' which comes back to haunt her.  Figuratively, Dany has shit in her mouth, although her beautiful shiny white hair like Jaqen's is squeaky clean.  Oh -- I've just noticed; she has white hair just like the white-haired lady in Bran's execution scene!  

This kind of dynamic I've demonstrated of the secret 'assassin-behind-the-assassin' can be found in multiple contexts, once one starts digging a little deeper into the text.  My favourite example of late is the execution in the Prologue in which the Other does the dirty on Waymar, while his brother like Dany sits on the side watching mutely.  Like Dany and Bran, Will can taste something in his mouth:

A dagger in the dark.  As @40 Thousand Skeletons has highlighted, the taste of iron is synonymous with the taste of blood, due to the high iron content of blood, as well as GRRM's juxtaposition of the two elsewhere in the text; e.g. Theon saying 'my blood is salt and iron'; or the nightingale announcing Pate's impending death 'trilling gold for iron, gold for iron, gold for iron'...Pate hoped to exhange an iron key for a gold coin, but he ended up paying with his life; in fact, one could say he ended up paying 'the iron price' with his own blood!

And like Dany and Bran, although never made explicit, there is also a suggestion of Will having been smeared symbolically in his brother's blood, with the reiteration of the 'sticky sap' mirroring Waymar's blood which is also described in that fashion:

Other suggestive instances equating 'sticky sap' with blood, sacrifice, and the acquisition of magical power:

 

 

Compare this Prologue to Varamyr's Prologue, in which almost identical wording is used to convey the accusing stare of wighted Thistle, with the implication that Will and Varamyr caused the deaths of Waymar and Thistle respectively:

I think what is meant by the tasting of the blood is that the weirwood was drinking it.

[Hodor the Articulate]

Rich people are always doing weird shit. I bet Illyrio routinely drops molten gold into his spiced wine.

[Lollygag]

2 hours ago, Damon_Tor said:

Genes don't work that way.

For one thing, Betha Blackwood wasn't herself "100% Blackwood" because he mother was probably from some other house, as was her grandmother and her great grandmother. She may well have not carried whatever genes made Bloodraven and other historic Blackwoods special.

And also, mixing genes isn't like mixing paint: you have no copies of a gene, one copy, or two copies, and what that means varies wildly depending on the gene in question, whether it's recessive, dominant, or semi-dominant.

So let's say Betha Blackwood carried one copy of a "Greenseer gene" a genotype we'll call "Gg". Let's say Egg had one copy as well (Targaryens seemed to have visions with some frequency as well). Now let's say that the Greensight is a recessive trait, you need two copies (GG) to have meaningful visions. Half of their kids would be Gg just like them, a quarter wouldn't carry the gene at all (gg), and the remaining quarter would be GG and would have the visions.

Note this is for the sake of argument, and I don't think it's this simple. The point is "Half Blackwood" is meaningless.

Yeah, I know all of that and I never said that Dany/Viserys/Rhaegar definitely had Bloodraven's abilities, only that there's potential for it to some degree. Your arguments in the first two paragraphs above apply to Bloodraven too, yet he still turned out quite different.

You can't apply rl genetics to greenseer abilities or warg abilities. I'm hesitant to apply rl genetics to this fantasy world at all except in the broadest terms. Greenseers are exceedingly rare so something else is going on beyond genetics. Varamyr's POV and that all of the Stark kids are wargs also mean that something is going on beyond genetics. But it does seem related to blood - magic blood.

My point is that Dany and Viserys come from the same stock as Bloodraven, hence there's a possibility that whatever created Bloodraven's abilities have left an open door...for something. Through magic, not genetics.

Blackwoods do seem very significant to the story and not just through Bloodraven. I don't think "half Blackwood" is meaningless at all. They have a future role to the play in the series in some capacity. It may be through Dany, or it may through another means. They shouldn't be dismissed, nor should Dany's Blackwood blood be dismissed especially in a series that's all about magic blood lines and when we all but have confirmation through Bloodraven that the Blackwoods are a magical bloodline.

[LynnS]

10 hours ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

LOL no, that's what other people are suggesting. I concede that is certainly possible, but I am suggesting that Dany included molten gold in a list of things she has literally tasted because she has literally tasted it. And the most logical explanation is that she somehow experienced her brother's death and literally remembers the taste of molten gold.

The drug at that stage was simply acting to open up Dany's mind to her own memories. It appears she wasn't hallucinating just yet. She was remembering real tastes.

The curious thing is that Drogon also seems to see and hear what Dany sees and hears.  If he is bonded to her in a dragon/warg state; then perhaps the taste of gold is how Drogon experiences shade of the evening. 

Some examples:

Quote

 

A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV

Long and low, without towers or windows, it coiled like a stone serpent through a grove of black-barked trees whose inky blue leaves made the stuff of the sorcerous drink the Qartheen called shade of the evening. No other buildings stood near. Black tiles covered the palace roof, many fallen or broken; the mortar between the stones was dry and crumbling. She understood now why Xaro Xhoan Daxos called it the Palace of Dust. Even Drogon seemed disquieted by the sight of it. The black dragon hissed, smoke seeping out between his sharp teeth.

 

She found herself in a stone anteroom with four doors, one on each wall. With never a hesitation, she went to the door on her right and stepped through. The second room was a twin to the first. Again she turned to the right-hand door. When she pushed it open she faced yet another small antechamber with four doors. I am in the presence of sorcery.

The fourth room was oval rather than square and walled in worm-eaten wood in place of stone. Six passages led out from it in place of four. Dany chose the rightmost, and entered a long, dim, high-ceilinged hall. Along the right hand was a row of torches burning with a smoky orange light, but the only doors were to her left. Drogon unfolded wide black wings and beat the stale air. He flew twenty feet before thudding to an undignified crash. Dany strode after him.

 

The mold-eaten carpet under her feet had once been gorgeously colored, and whorls of gold could still be seen in the fabric, glinting broken amidst the faded grey and mottled green. What remained served to muffle her footfalls, but that was not all to the good. Dany could hear sounds within the walls, a faint scurrying and scrabbling that made her think of rats. Drogon heard them too. His head moved as he followed the sounds, and when they stopped he gave an angry scream. Other sounds, even more disturbing, came through some of the closed doors. One shook and thumped, as if someone were trying to break through. From another came a dissonant piping that made the dragon lash his tail wildly from side to side. Dany hurried quickly past.

 

She fled from him, but only as far as the next open door. I know this room, she thought. She remembered those great wooden beams and the carved animal faces that adorned them. And there outside the window, a lemon tree! The sight of it made her heart ache with longing. It is the house with the red door, the house in Braavos. No sooner had she thought it than old Ser Willem came into the room, leaning heavily on his stick. "Little princess, there you are," he said in his gruff kind voice. "Come," he said, "come to me, my lady, you're home now, you're safe now." His big wrinkled hand reached for her, soft as old leather, and Dany wanted to take it and hold it and kiss it, she wanted that as much as she had ever wanted anything. Her foot edged forward, and then she thought, He's dead, he's dead, the sweet old bear, he died a long time ago. She backed away and ran.

The long hall went on and on and on, with endless doors to her left and only torches to her right. She ran past more doors than she could count, closed doors and open ones, doors of wood and doors of iron, carved doors and plain ones, doors with pulls and doors with locks and doors with knockers. Drogon lashed against her back, urging her on, and Dany ran until she could run no more.

 

Finally a great pair of bronze doors appeared to her left, grander than the rest. They swung open as she neared, and she had to stop and look. Beyond loomed a cavernous stone hall, the largest she had ever seen. The skulls of dead dragons looked down from its walls. Upon a towering barbed throne sat an old man in rich robes, an old man with dark eyes and long silver-grey hair. "Let him be king over charred bones and cooked meat," he said to a man below him. "Let him be the king of ashes." Drogon shrieked, his claws digging through silk and skin, but the king on his throne never heard, and Dany moved on.

 

"We have knowledge to share with you," said a warrior in shining emerald armor, "and magic weapons to arm you with. You have passed every trial. Now come and sit with us, and all your questions shall be answered."

She took a step forward. But then Drogon leapt from her shoulder. He flew to the top of the ebony-and-weirwood door, perched there, and began to bite at the carved wood.

 

"A willful beast," laughed a handsome young man. "Shall we teach you the secret speech of dragonkind? Come, come."

 

It seems to me that Drogon has a psychic link with Dany and I wonder if he experiences shade of the evening through her in the way that the Starks experience the senses of their wolves.   Is it Dany who remembers the taste of mother's milk or Drogon?
 

Quote

 

A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV

"One flute will serve only to unstop your ears and dissolve the caul from off your eyes, so that you may hear and see the truths that will be laid before you."

Dany raised the glass to her lips. The first sip tasted like ink and spoiled meat, foul, but when she swallowed it seemed to come to life within her. She could feel tendrils spreading through her chest, like fingers of fire coiling around her heart, and on her tongue was a taste like honey and anise and cream, like mother's milk and Drogo's seed, like red meat and hot blood and molten gold. It was all the tastes she had ever known, and none of them . . . and then the glass was empty.

 

"Now you may enter," said the warlock. Dany put the glass back on the servitor's tray, and went inside.

 

When Dany is addressed by the Undying is called 'mother of dragon's.  Drogon is the child of three.  He is being addressed as well.

 

Quote

 

A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV

. . . the shape of shadows . . . morrows not yet made . . . drink from the cup of ice . . . drink from the cup of fire . . .

. . . mother of dragons . . . child of three . . .

"Three?" She did not understand.

 

 

 

 

[zandru]

Okay, I give up. Clearly "the taste of gold" was something Dany remembered because of the many years that Viserys had "warged" her. (He must have really gotten off on that wedding night with Khal Drogo! ... but I digress). So Viserys "lives on" inside of Daenerys and will continue to control her actions from beyond the grave. Why else would she possibly ever use the expression "wake the dragon"? That's Viserys, talking through her!

(Sorry; it's my opinion that many of you are overthinking this one...)

[ravenous reader]

2 hours ago, zandru said:

Okay, I give up. Clearly "the taste of gold" was something Dany remembered because of the many years that Viserys had "warged" her. (He must have really gotten off on that wedding night with Khal Drogo! ... but I digress). So Viserys "lives on" inside of Daenerys and will continue to control her actions from beyond the grave. Why else would she possibly ever use the expression "wake the dragon"? That's Viserys, talking through her!

(Sorry; it's my opinion that many of you are overthinking this one...)

Firstly, it's not 'the taste of gold,' it's the 'taste of molten gold' which is an obvious reference to her brother's death.  I can't believe I missed it.  GRRM is quite strategic about his choice of words; and accordingly we ought to pay attention to them as well as their placement in any given sentence.  Notice, the thought of Viserys's death is paired with 'red meat and hot blood' in the concluding phrase not separated by commas, 'red meat and hot blood and molten gold.'  The question is why?  Why would she be reminded of her brother's death in this particular moment?  Why would his death be paired with thoughts of bloodthirsty savagery?  And why would Viserys be the final thought, the resting thought, the last taste/word on her tongue?  If you have no taste for an in-depth poetic reading, then at least attempt a decent psychological one (P.S.  I don't understand why you would revolt against either a highly symbolic or psychological reading, of both of which I can see you're eminently capable, e.g. in this post. ).   

And I don't think he 'warged her' without some help, nor does he control her per se from beyond the grave.  Think of how Bran and Jon keep in touch long-distance via their 'wolf internet' connection.  Is Bran 'warging' Jon; is Jon his puppet?  In the moment of his death, it's possible a part of Viserys's soul went into his dragon Viserion's egg, as has been suggested by @hiemal above.  What a great irony -- the guy who was always telling others not to wake a dragon finally woke one himself, LOL!  Daenerys was bonded with that egg and the dragon embryo within.  That's how in all likelihood she could experience Viserys's death along with him (there's the analogy I drew above with the captive sacrificed to the weirwood, who in that moment bonds with the tree, the selfsame heart tree to which Bran is bonded and can thereby experience the man's death via the timeless weirwood conduit).  

Besides the magical explanation, it's because Dany's feels guilty on some level about her part in her brother's death.  These suppressed feelings were dredged to the surface by the disinhibiting effect of the 'warlock wine' which is called 'shade of the evening' not least for its ability to unleash the Shadow (in a Jungian sense, at least, which denotes all the rejected aspects of the human psyche, under which being complicit in the murder of your brother would fall).

Another thing -- Viserys does live on in her in a metaphorical, if not literal sense.  She even says she hopes his dragon will accomplish what he could not.

[YOVMO]

On May 19, 2017 at 11:37 PM, ravenous reader said:

I think it means the price for Dany's power is her brother's death, which is on her hands, and which she imbibes willingly.  She is a kinslayer.

Hey RR. Sorry I disappeared again. 

@40 Thousand Skeletons I have always liked the line about the taste of molten gold. I think that RR has it right in what I quoted above if you want to read into it. That said, sometimes a smelting is just a smelting and I always liked the line because of just how evocative it is. If you have ever done any soldering you will know that the smell of the metal melting is something you can almost taste on your tongue. Molten metals in general have a very powerful and multi-sensory smell and I think that this is one of those lines that is just very good descriptive writing on the part of GRRM rather than something more.

 

[Lollygag]

I believe that there was some link between Dany and Viserys and that this is the reason she literally tasted the molten gold along with the other things listed which she also literally tasted. That all of the other tastes are literal but one is not is jarring for me. Dany has other odd connections to those she’s close to. But this link seems rather minimal overall and narratively, this magical link might exist to facilitate what I describe below.

More important is that Viserys’ death affected Dany more so than we’ve believed, and more so than what Dany has allowed herself to process. Her fever dream with Viserys accuses her of never mourning. I think Dany's anger over being sold is also fairly unrealized. We don't hear about how she's upset over what happened to herself in her narrative as much as we see her rage over the issues of slavery and child abuse.

We often take on aspects of that person when a loved one (or just one who was a major influence) dies: their possessions may become our own treasured objects. We take on qualities of that deceased person which we admire or eliminate those qualities in ourselves which led to their demise. We may adopt some of their interests and priorities in the urge to reconnect with them. I’ve listened to music which I didn’t particularly care for myself because it’s what someone who passed away liked. We donate to medical research if the loved one died of disease, or we become devoted to a cause dear the deceased loved one. I think Dany did this last one. Unfortunately Viserys’ dearest cause was ruthless conquest by fire and blood and also unfortunately, it’s in opposition of what Dany wants for herself.

When the Stark kids were left to wander alone, they were guided by “What would Ned do?” When Dany was in the same situation after Viserys' and Drago’s death, all Dany had was “What would Viserys and Drago do?”

...honey and anise and cream, like mother’s milk and Drogo’s seed, like red meat and hot blood and molten gold.

The list is broken into 3. Honey, anise and cream sound like the childhood she longs for and misses. Mother’s milk and Drago’s seed sound like the adulthood that she wanted for herself but can’t have. Red meat, hot blood and molten gold sound like destiny - Viserys destiny. Dany may have developed a strange duality.

When reading Dany we should probably wonder what thoughts, feelings and behaviors come from Dany herself, and which thoughts, feelings and behaviors come from guilt over Viserys. Again, I do think that there was some magical connection as literally tasting molten gold fits the pattern better for me, but I think her unprocessed guilt over Viserys  and how it manifests is really the most important thing here.

 

[Targaryen Restoration]

On 5/19/2017 at 11:24 PM, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

From the HOTU when Dany drinks shade of the evening:

Dany raised the glass to her lips. The first sip tasted like ink and spoiled meat, foul, but when she swallowed it seemed to come to life within her. She could feel tendrils spreading through her chest, like fingers of fire coiling around her heart, and on her tongue was a taste like honey and anise and cream, like mother’s milk and Drogo’s seed, like red meat and hot blood and molten gold. It was all the tastes she had ever known, and none of them … and then the glass was empty.

So it's pretty obvious that on that list of things Dany has tasted in her life, one of them does not belong. I am pretty sure Dany has in fact tasted honey, anise, cream, milk, Drogo seed, red meat, and hot blood. However, Dany has never tasted molten gold. Or has she? Well, since it is included on the list, I guess she has tasted it before...

Obviously we all know that Viserys, not Dany, is the one who tasted molten gold when Drogo crowned him. So how did Dany taste it too? I am going to guess that Viserys, who was facing death and begging Dany for his life, managed to telepathically link to Dany in some fashion and Dany tasted the molten gold at the same time as Viserys, through her link to Viserys. Thoughts?

It is a figure of speech, nothing more. 

On 5/20/2017 at 0:27 AM, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

I might be able to buy that, but again Dany did not "experience" molten gold. She experienced her brother's death, but tasting molten gold is a strange metaphor for Viserys dying since it was Viserys who tasted it. And like I said before, everything else on the list is literal, so why would one thing be a metaphor?

Similarly, when Bran eats weirwood paste he first thinks it tastes bitter (which is likely the real taste) but after swallowing it lists off things he has literally tasted: It tasted of honey, of new-fallen snow, of pepper and cinnamon and the last kiss his mother ever gave him.

"the last kiss his mother ever gave him" and "molten gold" are all feel-good sensations, but not likely to have any taste.  As I said, it is just a figure of speech.  George being loose with his descriptions.  A mother's kiss would be a moment of bliss for a little  boy who is away from home an lost his family.  The death of big brother who threatened to kill your baby and incidentally stands in the way of the line of succession would be a feel good moment of triumph for Dany.  She herself could not do the deed even when she already knew Viserys is likely to fail in restoring her family.  Drogo provided the dirty work.  The drink and porridge were made to lure and tempt Dany and Bran.  It is not going to taste like food.  It just inserts feel-good feelings to make the person want to take another drink and another spoonful.

[ravenous reader]

53 minutes ago, YOVMO said:

Hey RR. Sorry I disappeared again. 

Welcome back!    It was becoming a little dry on the philosophical side without you, and very few understand when I venture into the absurd territory at the far side of wit; but now that you've returned ('harder and stronger...'?!) please check out the quirky convo Lynn and I are having on the Poetry Thread re: Robert Frost's 'road not taken' and its potential application to ASOIAF.  We would love to hear your thoughts (and Frost is such a post-modernist wolf in sheep's clothing, I'm sure you would enjoy deconstructing his deconstructions...I, to the contrary, seem to only have succeeded in tying myself in his knots over there trying to address Lynn's question).

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@40 Thousand Skeletons I have always liked the line about the taste of molten gold. I think that RR has it right in what I quoted above if you want to read into it. That said, sometimes a smelting is just a smelting

LOL

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and I always liked the line because of just how evocative it is. If you have ever done any soldering you will know that the smell of the metal melting is something you can almost taste on your tongue.

I'm glad that you have the opportunity to actually do some soldering, besides merely looking up the etymological underpinnings of such...

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Molten metals in general have a very powerful and multi-sensory smell and I think that this is one of those lines that is just very good descriptive writing on the part of GRRM rather than something more.

Of course, GRRM's also doing his 'sword-people' merging thing and indicating with his use of the metallurgical reference/s that a Lightbringer forging is underway.

 

[hiemal]

All tinfoil aside, my gut reaction to "the taste of molten gold" is that it is a representation "distilled" joy or pleasure- probably sexual climax and satiation given "the taste of Drogo's seed". Like solar gold distilled into honey.

[ravenous reader]

22 minutes ago, hiemal said:

All tinfoil aside, my gut reaction to "the taste of molten gold" is that it is a representation "distilled" joy or pleasure- probably sexual climax and satiation given "the taste of Drogo's seed". Like solar gold distilled into honey.

Yes, there are undeniable orgasmic and orgiastic overtones.  The myth of Zeus impregnating the childless Danae (it even sounds like Dany or Daenerys) in a 'golden rain' (the seminal infusion of the Über-deity) is probably being referenced.  Her resultant demi-god offspring Perseus (the Drogon equivalent) was destined to slay the gorgon.  One 'monster' to kill another.

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

6 hours ago, Lollygag said:

When reading Dany we should probably wonder what thoughts, feelings and behaviors come from Dany herself, and which thoughts, feelings and behaviors come from guilt over Viserys. Again, I do think that there was some magical connection as literally tasting molten gold fits the pattern better for me, but I think her unprocessed guilt over Viserys  and how it manifests is really the most important thing here.

I think a giant clue that helps to explain the mechanics of telepathy in asoiaf is way more "important" than Dany's feelings about the event. If Viserys telepathically linked to Dany or vice versa in that moment, that has huge implications. Namely, if true it confirms that Dany's telepathic abilities are not strictly limited to bonding with dragons, and that in turn implies that telepathy in general is a much more fluid spectrum of abilities than has been explicitly presented in the story thus far.

But most of the people in this thread are wwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy over-thinking the situation and ignoring the super awesome logic I have presented: Dany included molten gold in a list of things she has literally tasted -> Viserys has literally tasted molten gold -> telepathy exists and abilities can be amplified by intense situations, near-death experiences, drugs (alcohol in this case), and pain, and Viserys was effectively praying to Dany for his life (praying can be seen as literally trying to connect with a person or deity telepathically) -> therefore Dany and Viserys were connected in that moment, at least enough so that Dany could taste the molten gold as Viserys tasted it.

I generally don't believe in applying the Occam's Razor argument to asoiaf, but when there is a totally plausible and straightforward explanation to something, I lean heavily toward accepting the plausible explanation before resorting to abstract metaphorical explanations. And maybe I am biased because the metaphorical explanations don't provide us with any info to further unravel the mysteries of asoiaf, while my explanation does.

Again I'm not trying to discourage anyone who has shared their thoughts here. I am just a bit disappointed that few people are even considering my totally correct explanation. Come on people, this should be a mind-blowing catch!  

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

6 hours ago, YOVMO said:

Hey RR. Sorry I disappeared again. 

@40 Thousand Skeletons I have always liked the line about the taste of molten gold. I think that RR has it right in what I quoted above if you want to read into it. That said, sometimes a smelting is just a smelting and I always liked the line because of just how evocative it is. If you have ever done any soldering you will know that the smell of the metal melting is something you can almost taste on your tongue. Molten metals in general have a very powerful and multi-sensory smell and I think that this is one of those lines that is just very good descriptive writing on the part of GRRM rather than something more.

 

I think if Dany had said she tasted molten gold while Viserys was being crowned, that could have been good descriptive writing. But as presented, it seems infinitely more likely that Dany remembers tasting molten gold through a telepathic link to her brother, since he literally tasted molten gold.