VOL. 2 / AGoT Reread: Direwolves, Dragons [eggs], Momont’s Raven, and Cats, Oh My! Pets or Providence?

[evita mgfs]

VOL. 2 / AGoT Reread: Direwolves, Dragons [eggs], Mormont’s Raven, and Cats, Oh My! Pets or Providence?

WELCOME, ALL! WE ARE OFF TO OUR NEW THREAD!

PLEASE RE-POST ANYTHING FROM THE FIRST THREAD THAT WE WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF DISCUSSING.

NEXT UP

CHAPTER 23 / ARYA, TO BE PRESENTED BY KISS’DBYFIRE ON JANUARY 8

CHAPTER 24 / DAENERYS, TO BE PRESENTED BY EVITA ON JANUARY 9

THANKS, LITTLE WING, FOR KEEPING ON ME. I HAD A SICK "DIREWOLF"! [HE IS BETTER, SO FAR. HE IS AN "OLDER" DOG, BUT I DON'T SAY IT IN FRONT OF HIM!

I WILL REPOST OUR NEW SCHEDULE AS WELL.

REREAD INFORMATION

Our topic is not all inclusive, meaning that we do not reread each POV and only address the animals in the heading. Since Martin associates certain characters with multiple attributes of their House Sigil, we also address the characters within the POV’s as well as analyzing the “animals” Martin uses to disclose them. [The Starks are “wolves”, the Lannister’s “lions”, the Baratheons “stags”, the Targaryens “dragons”, the Mormonts “bears”, and so on!]

We also have been pointing out, even documenting, ALL Martin’s references to “animals”, be they employed to depict a character, be they appearing in figurative language, or be they populating the environment.

Anyone new to our thread, we welcome you. You can access the first volume here: http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/76320-agot-reread-direwolves-dragons-eggs-momonts-raven-and-cats-oh-my-pets-or-providence/

If you are “new” and wish to contribute to the group by writing a POV introduction, let me know. I will work you into the next schedule. You are not “obligated” to do so. We are delighted to have your contributions regardless, and we look forward to ALL responses to our findings.

[evita mgfs]

UPDATED SCHEDULE AND TOWER OF THE HAND LINKS 25-36

25.

Bran IV JANUARY 12 LITTLE WING

26.

Eddard V JANUARY 13 ALIA OF THE KNIFE

27.

Jon IV JANUARY 16 EVITA

28.

Eddard VI JANUARY 17 LITTLE WING

29.

Catelyn V JANUARY 2O REDRIVER

30.

Sansa II JANUARY 21 ALIA OF THE KNIFE

31.

Eddard VII JANUARY 24 REDRIVER

32.

Tyrion IV JANUARY 25 LITTLE WING

33.

Arya III JANUARY 29 EVITA

34.

Eddard VIII JANUARY 30 ALIA OF THE KNIFE

35.

Catelyn VI FEBRUARY 2 LITTLE WING

36.

Eddard IX FEBRUARY 3 REDRIVER

37. Dany FEBRUARY 6 KISS’DBYFIRE

38. Bran FEBRUARY 7 EVITA

[Alia of the knife]

Loved the comparison to Hawthorne that Arabella pointed out, because I don't doubt that Hawthornes style of "dark romanticism" would have an influence on Martin, especially in analyzing hypocrisy and secrets as we saw in his works "The Scarlet Letter," and the cycle of wrong-doing visited from one generation to the next as in, "The House of the Seven Gables.

I would throw in also Millers, "The Crucible."

I think you can see the same elements of fear, hysteria and hypocrisy throughout, especially in places like Court, The Wall, and later, in the remains of Winterfell.

(Thoughts, Evita)?

I don't know if I would go so far as compare Tyrion to Dimmsdale, though Tyrion does attempt to have sincere objectives of justice, and "doing the right thing" for Westeros, or Shae to Hester Prynn, but there are certain similarities in their roles, because in that time and place Prynn would have been considered no better than Shae.

Tyrion is from a highborn family, now the Hand, and Tywin has dared Tyrion to shame his family, by having his relationship with a prostitute become open, so Tyrion has to hide it, as well as Shae, though I would argue that given what we've seen alluded to between Tywin and Shae, perhaps he better suits the role of Arthur Dimmsdale.

And no two families suffer more from the "sins of the Fathers" than the Stark and the Targaryens, and by extention the Martels, Berantheons, and soon the Lannisters.

As in "Gables," the actions of one generation reverberate to the next.

All of these families utilize their animal "spirits" to their benefit.

- The Starks have been given their direwolves as guides, or guardians, (I find it interesting that the Dragons would appear not long after their arrival).

- The Targaryens will get their dragons they've been striving for, perhaps to rebuild their line?

The Lannisters have killed off many families, their enemies "DNA" wiped away much like a lion who goes into to take over a Pride and kills the cubs of the previous lion.

But, have they killed too many, so many that they themselves become a threat to other families, a threat great enough to be turned upon?

(I also wanted Little Wing to know that I went to her Signature to sign the petition to save the Red Wolf.

Hope it helps, it looks like the goal is close).

[evita mgfs]

TOWER OF THE HAND LINKS

CHAPTER 23 / ARYA, TO BE PRESENTED BY KISS’DBYFIRE ON JANUARY 8

http://towerofthehand.com/books/101/023/index.html

CHAPTER 24 / DAENERYS, TO BE PRESENTED BY EVITA ON JANUARY 9

http://towerofthehand.com/books/101/024/index.html

[ArabellaVidal]

I should really dig up my Hawthorne! Things keep coming back to me! I seem to remember an allusion to moonlight and its effects in an essay or introduction by the great Hawthorne. I seem to remember an intro before reading The Scarlet Letter and unless my memory deceives me it was written by Hawthorne. In connection with this Tyrion POV and the Prologue moonlight seems relevant. I can believed GRRM reading and enjoying Hawthorne too.

[evita mgfs]

Loved the comparison to Hawthorne that Arabella pointed out, because I don't doubt that Hawthornes style of "dark romanticism" would have an influence on Martin, especially in analyzing hypocrisy and secrets as we saw in his works "The Scarlet Letter," and the cycle of wrong-doing visited from one generation to the next as in, "The House of the Seven Gables.

I would throw in also Millers, "The Crucible."

I think you can see the same elements of fear, hysteria and hypocrisy throughout, especially in places like Court, The Wall, and later, in the remains of Winterfell.

(Thoughts, Evita)?

I don't know if I would go so far as compare Tyrion to Dimmsdale, though Tyrion does attempt to have sincere objectives of justice, and "doing the right thing" for Westeros, or Shae to Hester Prynn, but there are certain similarities in their roles, because in that time and place Prynn would have been considered no better than Shae.

Tyrion is from a highborn family, now the Hand, and Tywin has dared Tyrion to shame his family, by having his relationship with a prostitute become open, so Tyrion has to hide it, as well as Shae, though I would argue that given what we've seen alluded to between Tywin and Shae, perhaps he better suits the role of Arthur Dimmsdale.

And no two families suffer more from the "sins of the Fathers" than the Stark and the Targaryens, and by extention the Martels, Berantheons, and soon the Lannisters.

As in "Gables," the actions of one generation reverberate to the next.

All of these families utilize their animal "spirits" to their benefit.

- The Starks have been given their direwolves as guides, or guardians, (I find it interesting that the Dragons would appear not long after their arrival).

- The Targaryens will get their dragons they've been striving for, perhaps to rebuild their line?

The Lannisters have killed off many families, their enemies "DNA" wiped away much like a lion who goes into to take over a Pride and kills the cubs of the previous lion.

But, have they killed too many, so many that they themselves become a threat to other families, a threat great enough to be turned upon?

(I also wanted Little Wing to know that I went to her Signature to sign the petition to save the Red Wolf.

Hope it helps, it looks like the goal is close).

:bowdown: :bowdown: ALIA OF THE KNIFE: GREAT OBSERVATIONS!

Since you asked, I see Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter in the regional surnames bastards are required to take by law as a way of distinguishing them from the trueborn children, especially important when two houses are uniting forces through marriage, I suppose. Hester Prynn wears a scarlet “A” to mark her publicly as an adulteress just as Jon Snow wears the name Snow to mark him as a bastard. We bear witness to the scorn and prejudice of others toward those named bastard.

Hester does have “free will” in choosing to stray outside her marriage bed, and she refuses to identify the father of her child. Likewise, Ned refuses to name Jon Snow’s mother, thereby protecting the identity of the fallen woman and maybe even protecting Jon from any backlash that may result from exposing this knowledge. As you said, the sins of the fathers or mothers are visited on theire children, for both Pearl and Jon are victims of their parents’ immorality because they have no voice in selecting their parents.

In Hawthorne’s novel, I always perceived Hester’s lover as a coward and a hypocrite. He does not intervene at the town meeting and announce that he is Pearl’s father, and then since he is a man of god, he is a hypocrite for not owning up to his sins of the flesh. Contrarily, I never associated Ned with either cowardice or hypocrisy, probably because he does not abandon his bastard: Ned even moves Jon into Winterfell to be raised along with his trueborn children. However, Ned does “allegedly” father a child while newly married to another, which appears hypocritical his when examined with Ned’s self-proclaimed “honor” in mind. However, if we believe that Ned is protecting Jon from possible repercussions that may result parentage is revealed, then we see Ned as more heroic and selfless that as hypocritical.

Jaime Lannister voices his disdain of Ned’s besmirched honor when he boasts to Catelyn that he has remained true to his sister Cersei, never straying to sleep with another as Ned. Jaime’s skewed reasoning is laughable for he ranks himself somehow superior to Ned for remaining faithful to his own sister who even bears three illegitimate children from her unions with Jaime!

Regarding The Crucible, I see some of this played out mostly with the Lannisters because they are famous for circulating vicious rumors to bring about the demise of others: Cersei bearing false witness against Margery Tyrell, which does cause a public outcry. Less so but along the same lines is the Lannisters substituting poor Jeyne Poole for Arya Stark so that Ramsay Bolton can claim Winterfell through their marriage.

I am working on Dany’s POV where she has the dragon dream, and in my analysis, I am finding many, many striking parallels to the dragon eggs and the direwolves of House Stark. You mention the coincidence of their arrival, and yet it makes sense since their disappearance from coincides with the Doom of Valyria. I believe Theon Greyjoy says the direwolves had not been sighted beyond the Wall in 200 years, and Dany’s numbers are similar if not the same when she speculates whether dragons still exist in the east. If the direwolves exist, then it makes sense the dragons do – or will – as well.

I also liked your mention of the short story “The Lady and the Tiger” and I did not get to respond. I like that Martin gives his readers credit for being able to think for themselves. He lets us puzzle things out by providing us clues along the way. This is sort of the idea behind the short story, letting the readers contrive their own ending, or proposing a riddle for them to figure out on their own by using their imagination. If you have ever seen the movie or read the novel The Neverending Story, one message is that people need to read and to exercise their imaginations by pretending to be a character in a book, and if people do not read and use their imaginations, “The Nothing” will take over the world. I think Martin encourages his readers to exercise their imaginations as well!

[Little Wing]

(I also wanted Little Wing to know that I went to her Signature to sign the petition to save the Red Wolf.

Hope it helps, it looks like the goal is close).

:kiss: Thank you!

Here's another petition. I think they've achieved their goal, but there are other petitions there.

ETA: Put a new link for a petition that hasn't yet achieved their goal.

[Alia of the knife]

:bowdown: :bowdown: ALIA OF THE KNIFE: GREAT OBSERVATIONS!

Since you asked, I see Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter in the regional surnames bastards are required to take by law as a way of distinguishing them from the trueborn children, especially important when two houses are uniting forces through marriage, I suppose. Hester Prynn wears a scarlet “A” to mark her publicly as an adulteress just as Jon Snow wears the name Snow to mark him as a bastard. We bear witness to the scorn and prejudice of others toward those named bastard.

Hester does have “free will” in choosing to stray outside her marriage bed, and she refuses to identify the father of her child. Likewise, Ned refuses to name Jon Snow’s mother, thereby protecting the identity of the fallen woman and maybe even protecting Jon from any backlash that may result from exposing this knowledge. As you said, the sins of the fathers or mothers are visited on theire children, for both Pearl and Jon are victims of their parents’ immorality because they have no voice in selecting their parents.

In Hawthorne’s novel, I always perceived Hester’s lover as a coward and a hypocrite. He does not intervene at the town meeting and announce that he is Pearl’s father, and then since he is a man of god, he is a hypocrite for not owning up to his sins of the flesh. Contrarily, I never associated Ned with either cowardice or hypocrisy, probably because he does not abandon his bastard: Ned even moves Jon into Winterfell to be raised along with his trueborn children. However, Ned does “allegedly” father a child while newly married to another, which appears hypocritical his when examined with Ned’s self-proclaimed “honor” in mind. However, if we believe that Ned is protecting Jon from possible repercussions that may result parentage is revealed, then we see Ned as more heroic and selfless that as hypocritical.

Jaime Lannister voices his disdain of Ned’s besmirched honor when he boasts to Catelyn that he has remained true to his sister Cersei, never straying to sleep with another as Ned. Jaime’s skewed reasoning is laughable for he ranks himself somehow superior to Ned for remaining faithful to his own sister who even bears three illegitimate children from her unions with Jaime!

Regarding The Crucible, I see some of this played out mostly with the Lannisters because they are famous for circulating vicious rumors to bring about the demise of others: Cersei bearing false witness against Margery Tyrell, which does cause a public outcry. Less so but along the same lines is the Lannisters substituting poor Jeyne Poole for Arya Stark so that Ramsay Bolton can claim Winterfell through their marriage.

I am working on Dany’s POV where she has the dragon dream, and in my analysis, I am finding many, many striking parallels to the dragon eggs and the direwolves of House Stark. You mention the coincidence of their arrival, and yet it makes sense since their disappearance from coincides with the Doom of Valyria. I believe Theon Greyjoy says the direwolves had not been sighted beyond the Wall in 200 years, and Dany’s numbers are similar if not the same when she speculates whether dragons still exist in the east. If the direwolves exist, then it makes sense the dragons do – or will – as well.

I also liked your mention of the short story “The Lady and the Tiger” and I did not get to respond. I like that Martin gives his readers credit for being able to think for themselves. He lets us puzzle things out by providing us clues along the way. This is sort of the idea behind the short story, letting the readers contrive their own ending, or proposing a riddle for them to figure out on their own by using their imagination. If you have ever seen the movie or read the novel The Neverending Story, one message is that people need to read and to exercise their imaginations by pretending to be a character in a book, and if people do not read and use their imaginations, “The Nothing” will take over the world. I think Martin encourages his readers to exercise their imaginations as well!

Amazing Evita, and I agree as well that Martin likes us to not only use our imaginations, but to follow the bread crumbs.

Like Arabella said, I may have to drag out my Hawthorne as well.

Another great thing about this thread is discovering old literary loves.

Great call out on Jaimie and Cersei's relationship, as well as Jaimies hypocrisy.

If I remember correctly, I think he also says that he actually had no feeling for his children, and irony seeing as how he tried to kill Neds son and then later, Darkstar tried to kill his daughter, Myrcella.

The old gods have a long reach.

[Little Wing]

Just to share the good news, there's a new sample chapter and discussion here.

[Alia of the knife]

:kiss: Thank you!

Here's another petition. I think they've achieved their goal, but there are other petitions there.

Done! :D :D

[kissdbyfire]

Hi guys. Sorry about the late post. It probably isn’t too coherent. I haven’t been able to catch up with the thread yet so I’m sure there are tons of dots that I haven’t connected. For instance, I know there’s been some talk about doors and what they may symbolise but I haven’t really read thoroughly. I’m looking forward to being enlightened by your comments. :)

And sorry about the shambolic post! ;)

AGoT, chapter 23, ARYA II

I really like this chapter. There’s not an awful lot going on but that only makes even better for me, as Martin focuses on Arya’s relationship with Eddard. I think the Eddard we see here may be full of regrets, and I think this plays an important part on how it all infolds with Arya, Needle, Syrio etc.

Eddard arrives late, again, as Arya thinks, and everyone is already eating. He’s clearly stressed. I think the real doubts he had started to nurse about Robert a while back are now bothering him more and more. He’s probably coming to realise that the whole ‘hand of the king’ gig is going to be much harder than he’d originally thought. And, of course, he now knows – or rather, senses – that letting Cersei get away with killing Lady was a huge mistake. He feels guilty about it, and so he should, imo. But I digress...

[bear with me, people, I said it was going to be shambolic! :P ]

Eddard leaves the table before the meal is over. We see Arya feeling completely shut out and excluded. If I’m not mistaken, every Stark kid who is a PoV has had or will have at least one moment like this.

In this scene we also have a glimpse at what life in Winterfell under normal circumstances was like.

No one talked to Arya. She didn’t care. She liked it that way. She would have eaten her meals alone in her bedchamber if they let her. Sometimes they did, when Father had to dine with the king or some lord or the envoys from this place or that place. The rest of the time, they ate in his solar, just him and her and Sansa. That was when Arya missed her brothers most. She wanted to tease Bran and play with baby Rickon and have Robb smile at her. She wanted Jon to muss up her hair and call her “little sister” and finish her sentences with her. But all of them were gone. She had no one left but Sansa, and Sansa wouldn’t even talk to her unless Father made her.

Back at Winterfell, they had eaten in the Great Hall almost half the time. Her father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. “Know the men who follow you,” she heard him tell Robb once, “and let them know you. Don’t ask your men to die for a stranger.” At Winterfell, he always had an extra seat set at his own table, and every day a different man would be asked to join him. One night it would be Vayon Poole, and the talk would be coppers and bread stores and servants. The next time it would be Mikken, and her father would listen to him go on about armor and swords and how hot a forge should be and the best way to temper steel. Another day it might be Hullen with his endless horse talk, or Septon Chayle from the library, or Jory, or Ser Rodrik, or even Old Nan with her stories.

Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father’s table and listen to them talk.

She ends up running to her room, the only place in all of KL where she feels safe. And. As I said above, I think there’s a dot to be connected here regarding doors – we have a very clear and specific description of Arya’s bedroom door:

Her bedchamber was the only place that Arya liked in all of King’s Landing, and the thing she liked best about it was the door, a massive slab of dark oak with black iron bands. When she slammed that door and dropped the heavy crossbar, nobody could get into her room, not Septa Mordane or Fat Tom or Sansa or Jory or the Hound, nobody! She slammed it now.

When the bar was down, Arya finally felt safe enough to cry.

She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything bad that had happened. Sansa said so, and Jeyne too.

I think this chapter is where Arya hears for the first time of the dangers surrounding the Starks.

She’d sensed it, of course, but here is where she actually has it spelled out for her – sorta.

As Eddard compares Arya to Lyanna and Brandon, we hear about the wolf blood of the Starks for the first time. It’s also one of the very few times, if not the only one, where Arya is thought of as beautiful, albeit indirectly. Eddard tells Arya she looks like Lyanna; earlier, down in the crypts with Robert, he had thought:

Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his heart. Robert had loved her even more. She was to have been his bride.

The wolf blood:

“I ought to snap this toy across my knee here and now, and put an end to this nonsense.”

“Needle wouldn’t break,” Arya said defiantly, but her voice betrayed her words.

“It has a name, does it?” Her father sighed. “Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ‘The wolf blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave.” Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had died before she was born. “Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her.”

“Lyanna was beautiful,” Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of Arya.

“She was,” Eddard Stark agreed, “beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time.”

Eddard never comes across as a deeply instinctive fella, but I think that is just the impression we, readers, get. I just think he has learned to ignore them, or better said, unlearned how to listen to them – because my premise is that the Starks with their connection to the direwolves are all instinctive to varying degrees. And upon learning that Summer saved Bran and realising what a mistake it was to let Lady be killed, he is much more willing to follow his gut feeling – and that’s why, at least in part, he not only lets Arya keep Needle, but finds her a dancing master.

Arya then tells Eddard how guilty she feels over Mycah’s death, how much she hates Cersei and Joffrey and the rest of them, and her sadness over having to drive Nymeria away.

“Arya, what did you think to do with this … Needle? Who did you hope to skewer? Your sister? Septa Mordane? Do you know the first thing about sword fighting?”

All she could think of was the lesson Jon had given her.

“Stick them with the pointy end,” she blurted out.

Her father snorted back laughter. “That is the essence of it, I suppose.”

Arya desperately wanted to explain, to make him see. “I was trying to learn, but …” Her eyes filled with tears. “I asked Mycah to practice with me.” The grief came on her all at once. She turned away, shaking. “I asked him,” she cried. “It was my fault, it was me …”

Suddenly her father’s arms were around her. He held her gently as she turned to him and sobbed against his chest. “No, sweet one,” he murmured. “Grieve for your friend, but never blame yourself. You did not kill the butcher’s boy. That murder lies at the Hound’s door, him and the cruel woman he serves.”

“I hate them,” Arya confided, red-faced, sniffling. “The Hound and the queen and the king and Prince Joffrey. I hate all of them. Joffrey lied, it wasn’t the way he said. I hate Sansa too. She did remember, she just lied so Joffrey would like her.”

“We all lie,” her father said. “Or did you truly think I’d believe that Nymeria ran off?”

Arya blushed guiltily. “Jory promised not to tell.”

“Jory kept his word,” her father said with a smile. “There are some things I do not need to be told. Even a blind man could see that wolf would never have left you willingly.”

“We had to throw rocks,” she said miserably. “I told her to run, to go be free, that I didn’t want her anymore.

There were other wolves for her to play with, we heard them howling, and Jory said the woods were full of game, so she’d have deer to hunt. Only she kept following, and finally we had to throw rocks. I hit her twice. She whined and looked at me and I felt so ’shamed, but it was right, wasn’t it? The queen would have killed her.”

“It was right,” her father said. “And even the lie was … not without honor.”

I also find it interesting that Eddard not only says ‘we all lie’ but that some lies are not without honour. But I won’t go into it now as this is a completely different kettle of fish.

And then we have the ‘pack survives’ bit Eddard tells Arya.

“Arya, sit down. I need to try and explain some things to you.”

She perched anxiously on the edge of her bed. “You are too young to be burdened with all my cares,” he told her, “but you are also a Stark of Winterfell. You know our words.”

“Winter is coming,” Arya whispered.

“The hard cruel times,” her father said. “We tasted them on the Trident, child, and when Bran fell. You were born in the long summer, sweet one, you’ve never known anything else, but now the winter is truly coming. Remember the sigil of our House, Arya.”

“The direwolf,” she said, thinking of Nymeria. She hugged her knees against her chest, suddenly afraid.

“Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm. Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa … Sansa is your sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you … and I need both of you, gods help me.”

He sounded so tired that it made Arya sad. “I don’t hate Sansa,” she told him. “Not truly.” It was only half a lie.

“I do not mean to frighten you, but neither will I lie to you. We have come to a dark dangerous place, child. This is not Winterfell. We have enemies who mean us ill. We cannot fight a war among ourselves. This willfulness of yours, the running off, the angry words, the disobedience … at home, these were only the summer games of a child. Here and now, with winter soon upon us, that is a different matter. It is time to begin growing up.”

“I will,” Arya vowed. She had never loved him so much as she did in that instant. “I can be strong too. I can be as strong as Robb.”

He held Needle out to her, hilt first. “Here.”

She looked at the sword with wonder in her eyes. For a moment she was afraid to touch it, afraid that if she reached for it it would be snatched away again, but then her father said, “Go on, it’s yours,” and she took it in her hand.

“I can keep it?” she said. “For true?”

“For true.” He smiled. “If I took it away, no doubt I’d find a morningstar hidden under your pillow within the fortnight. Try not to stab your sister, whatever the provocation.”

“I won’t. I promise.” Arya clutched Needle tightly to her chest as her father took his leave.

And the next morning, she starts her dancing lessons. It’s just a short scene, mostly to introduce Syrio; I don’t really have anything specific to say about it.

[redriver]

I like this chapter too.Especially since it's mostly a two way between Eddard and Arya.They are both stressed but I think the interaction helps them both.

I'm no expert in door symbolism,but it seems like Ned has given permission for Arya to walk through a door to being herself,acknowledging her "wolf blood",letting her keep Needle and arranging a tutor for her.

The door stuff will return at the Black and White temple.

[Alia of the knife]

Hi guys. Sorry about the late post. It probably isn’t too coherent. I haven’t been able to catch up with the thread yet so I’m sure there are tons of dots that I haven’t connected. For instance, I know there’s been some talk about doors and what they may symbolise but I haven’t really read thoroughly. I’m looking forward to being enlightened by your comments. :)

And sorry about the shambolic post! ;)

AGoT, chapter 23, ARYA II

I really like this chapter. There’s not an awful lot going on but that only makes even better for me, as Martin focuses on Arya’s relationship with Eddard. I think the Eddard we see here may be full of regrets, and I think this plays an important part on how it all infolds with Arya, Needle, Syrio etc.

Eddard arrives late, again, as Arya thinks, and everyone is already eating. He’s clearly stressed. I think the real doubts he had started to nurse about Robert a while back are now bothering him more and more. He’s probably coming to realise that the whole ‘hand of the king’ gig is going to be much harder than he’d originally thought. And, of course, he now knows – or rather, senses – that letting Cersei get away with killing Lady was a huge mistake. He feels guilty about it, and so he should, imo. But I digress...

[bear with me, people, I said it was going to be shambolic! :P ]

Eddard leaves the table before the meal is over. We see Arya feeling completely shut out and excluded. If I’m not mistaken, every Stark kid who is a PoV has had or will have at least one moment like this.

In this scene we also have a glimpse at what life in Winterfell under normal circumstances was like.

No one talked to Arya. She didn’t care. She liked it that way. She would have eaten her meals alone in her bedchamber if they let her. Sometimes they did, when Father had to dine with the king or some lord or the envoys from this place or that place. The rest of the time, they ate in his solar, just him and her and Sansa. That was when Arya missed her brothers most. She wanted to tease Bran and play with baby Rickon and have Robb smile at her. She wanted Jon to muss up her hair and call her “little sister” and finish her sentences with her. But all of them were gone. She had no one left but Sansa, and Sansa wouldn’t even talk to her unless Father made her.

Back at Winterfell, they had eaten in the Great Hall almost half the time. Her father used to say that a lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. “Know the men who follow you,” she heard him tell Robb once, “and let them know you. Don’t ask your men to die for a stranger.” At Winterfell, he always had an extra seat set at his own table, and every day a different man would be asked to join him. One night it would be Vayon Poole, and the talk would be coppers and bread stores and servants. The next time it would be Mikken, and her father would listen to him go on about armor and swords and how hot a forge should be and the best way to temper steel. Another day it might be Hullen with his endless horse talk, or Septon Chayle from the library, or Jory, or Ser Rodrik, or even Old Nan with her stories.

Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father’s table and listen to them talk.

She ends up running to her room, the only place in all of KL where she feels safe. And. As I said above, I think there’s a dot to be connected here regarding doors – we have a very clear and specific description of Arya’s bedroom door:

Her bedchamber was the only place that Arya liked in all of King’s Landing, and the thing she liked best about it was the door, a massive slab of dark oak with black iron bands. When she slammed that door and dropped the heavy crossbar, nobody could get into her room, not Septa Mordane or Fat Tom or Sansa or Jory or the Hound, nobody! She slammed it now.

When the bar was down, Arya finally felt safe enough to cry.

She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and herself most of all. It was all her fault, everything bad that had happened. Sansa said so, and Jeyne too.

I think this chapter is where Arya hears for the first time of the dangers surrounding the Starks.

She’d sensed it, of course, but here is where she actually has it spelled out for her – sorta.

As Eddard compares Arya to Lyanna and Brandon, we hear about the wolf blood of the Starks for the first time. It’s also one of the very few times, if not the only one, where Arya is thought of as beautiful, albeit indirectly. Eddard tells Arya she looks like Lyanna; earlier, down in the crypts with Robert, he had thought:

Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his heart. Robert had loved her even more. She was to have been his bride.

The wolf blood:

“I ought to snap this toy across my knee here and now, and put an end to this nonsense.”

“Needle wouldn’t break,” Arya said defiantly, but her voice betrayed her words.

“It has a name, does it?” Her father sighed. “Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ‘The wolf blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave.” Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had died before she was born. “Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her.”

“Lyanna was beautiful,” Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of Arya.

“She was,” Eddard Stark agreed, “beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time.”

Eddard never comes across as a deeply instinctive fella, but I think that is just the impression we, readers, get. I just think he has learned to ignore them, or better said, unlearned how to listen to them – because my premise is that the Starks with their connection to the direwolves are all instinctive to varying degrees. And upon learning that Summer saved Bran and realising what a mistake it was to let Lady be killed, he is much more willing to follow his gut feeling – and that’s why, at least in part, he not only lets Arya keep Needle, but finds her a dancing master.

Arya then tells Eddard how guilty she feels over Mycah’s death, how much she hates Cersei and Joffrey and the rest of them, and her sadness over having to drive Nymeria away.

“Arya, what did you think to do with this … Needle? Who did you hope to skewer? Your sister? Septa Mordane? Do you know the first thing about sword fighting?”

All she could think of was the lesson Jon had given her.

“Stick them with the pointy end,” she blurted out.

Her father snorted back laughter. “That is the essence of it, I suppose.”

Arya desperately wanted to explain, to make him see. “I was trying to learn, but …” Her eyes filled with tears. “I asked Mycah to practice with me.” The grief came on her all at once. She turned away, shaking. “I asked him,” she cried. “It was my fault, it was me …”

Suddenly her father’s arms were around her. He held her gently as she turned to him and sobbed against his chest. “No, sweet one,” he murmured. “Grieve for your friend, but never blame yourself. You did not kill the butcher’s boy. That murder lies at the Hound’s door, him and the cruel woman he serves.”

“I hate them,” Arya confided, red-faced, sniffling. “The Hound and the queen and the king and Prince Joffrey. I hate all of them. Joffrey lied, it wasn’t the way he said. I hate Sansa too. She did remember, she just lied so Joffrey would like her.”

“We all lie,” her father said. “Or did you truly think I’d believe that Nymeria ran off?”

Arya blushed guiltily. “Jory promised not to tell.”

“Jory kept his word,” her father said with a smile. “There are some things I do not need to be told. Even a blind man could see that wolf would never have left you willingly.”

“We had to throw rocks,” she said miserably. “I told her to run, to go be free, that I didn’t want her anymore.

There were other wolves for her to play with, we heard them howling, and Jory said the woods were full of game, so she’d have deer to hunt. Only she kept following, and finally we had to throw rocks. I hit her twice. She whined and looked at me and I felt so ’shamed, but it was right, wasn’t it? The queen would have killed her.”

“It was right,” her father said. “And even the lie was … not without honor.”

I also find it interesting that Eddard not only says ‘we all lie’ but that some lies are not without honour. But I won’t go into it now as this is a completely different kettle of fish.

And then we have the ‘pack survives’ bit Eddard tells Arya.

“Arya, sit down. I need to try and explain some things to you.”

She perched anxiously on the edge of her bed. “You are too young to be burdened with all my cares,” he told her, “but you are also a Stark of Winterfell. You know our words.”

“Winter is coming,” Arya whispered.

“The hard cruel times,” her father said. “We tasted them on the Trident, child, and when Bran fell. You were born in the long summer, sweet one, you’ve never known anything else, but now the winter is truly coming. Remember the sigil of our House, Arya.”

“The direwolf,” she said, thinking of Nymeria. She hugged her knees against her chest, suddenly afraid.

“Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm. Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa … Sansa is your sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you … and I need both of you, gods help me.”

He sounded so tired that it made Arya sad. “I don’t hate Sansa,” she told him. “Not truly.” It was only half a lie.

“I do not mean to frighten you, but neither will I lie to you. We have come to a dark dangerous place, child. This is not Winterfell. We have enemies who mean us ill. We cannot fight a war among ourselves. This willfulness of yours, the running off, the angry words, the disobedience … at home, these were only the summer games of a child. Here and now, with winter soon upon us, that is a different matter. It is time to begin growing up.”

“I will,” Arya vowed. She had never loved him so much as she did in that instant. “I can be strong too. I can be as strong as Robb.”

He held Needle out to her, hilt first. “Here.”

She looked at the sword with wonder in her eyes. For a moment she was afraid to touch it, afraid that if she reached for it it would be snatched away again, but then her father said, “Go on, it’s yours,” and she took it in her hand.

“I can keep it?” she said. “For true?”

“For true.” He smiled. “If I took it away, no doubt I’d find a morningstar hidden under your pillow within the fortnight. Try not to stab your sister, whatever the provocation.”

“I won’t. I promise.” Arya clutched Needle tightly to her chest as her father took his leave.

And the next morning, she starts her dancing lessons. It’s just a short scene, mostly to introduce Syrio; I don’t really have anything specific to say about it.

Great analysis KBF!, (I'm all out of likes apparently), :bang:

Doors not only symbolize paths taken of course, but they also symbolize safety as well, and I think in this case for Arya, getting behind those doors and locking it simply means she is locking out her outer personna so that she can become what I think she truly is, which is tender-hearted, (I know- gasp), and free to be herself without people seeing who she truly is.

I think she is someone with deep emotions that are black and white, (note the House of the Black and White of the FM), and not the grey as depicted by her families colors.

Just as there are many types of Dornishmen, there could be two types of Starks:

The icy, rigid nature of stoicism and those of the wolfs blood with unrestrained passions and emotions.

But, I do think that it's Neds lessons to Arya, and her reverence for him that will save her from the precipice, anchors her to her idenity along with her warging abilities, and never lets her forget that she is her Fathers Daughter.

[evita mgfs]

Hi guys. Sorry about the late post. It probably isn’t too coherent. I haven’t been able to catch up with the thread yet so I’m sure there are tons of dots that I haven’t connected. For instance, I know there’s been some talk about doors and what they may symbolise but I haven’t really read thoroughly. I’m looking forward to being enlightened by your comments. :)

And sorry about the shambolic post! ;)

AGoT, chapter 23, ARYA II

I really like this chapter. There’s not an awful lot going on but that only makes even better for me, as Martin focuses on Arya’s relationship with Eddard. I think the Eddard we see here may be full of regrets, and I think this plays an important part on how it all infolds with Arya, Needle, Syrio etc.

snip

And the next morning, she starts her dancing lessons. It’s just a short scene, mostly to introduce Syrio; I don’t really have anything specific to say about it.

I like this chapter too.Especially since it's mostly a two way between Eddard and Arya.They are both stressed but I think the interaction helps them both.

I'm no expert in door symbolism,but it seems like Ned has given permission for Arya to walk through a door to being herself,acknowledging her "wolf blood",letting her keep Needle and arranging a tutor for her.

The door stuff will return at the Black and White temple.

:bowdown: :bowdown: KISS’DBYFIRE AND REDRIVER: GOOD CALL ON THE DOOR SYMBOLOGY.

KISS’DYBYFIRE: For someone who has not been keeping up with the thread, you knew about the “door” symbology, so you have made some progress in trying to catch up. I hope your work load lessens soon!

REDRIVER, you have a good grasp of what Martin does with doors even though you humbly claim you are no expert. I think Martin’s uses of symbols have meanings that are not always “universal” but they are relevant to his series A Song of Ice and Fire. In other words, he employs “doors” for his own purposes – yet he also uses “doors” in a “universal” sense, especially later, when Bran passes through the mouth of the “face door” at the Wall.

I noticed that Arya closes her door and bars it against all others, but readily opens the door to Ned, even while holding Needle in her hand. She does not think twice about giving her father access to her chamber, nor does she fear that he will discover Needle. She has NO SECRETS from her father – she does not dissemble, and she answers him honestly. She does, however, protect Jon Snow who gave her Needle. She does not “lie” – she omits this information, remaining silent when Ned asks her who gave her the Bravos’ sword.

WINDOWS are also important, and Martin even is using WINDOWS with Mormont and his raven. But in Arya’s POV, I noticed that Ned takes up residence on her “window seat” laying Needle across his lap, again assuming the position of the stone Stark statues in the crypts of Winterfell. In Catelyn’s first POV, Ned has Ice across his lap when he sits under the weirwood in the godswood, so Martin is suggesting death hovers over Ned and he soon will be a statue in the crypts of Winterfell.

Ned does not open the windows as he does while in Winterfell, and this suggests several things. He may feel “trapped” in his current situation, symbolized by not opening the windows. He also does not spend time studying what he sees through Arya’s window, which may suggest that what is outside is not what he wants to see, as he earlier studied the battlements of his home castle. By keeping the window closed, he may feel he is protecting his children and himself from the evils from the outside world, specifically the adders of King’s Landing.

Regardless, I saw just how vulnerable Arya is – and how deeply the situation with Lady, Nymeria, Mycha, and Sansa affected her. Arya opening the door for Ned releases the floodgates. She pours her heart out to Ned, exposing her guilt over the butcher’s boy. She does not hide the secrets of her heart from her father, and she doesn’t hate Sansa enough to skewer her with Needle, not really. Ned is father confessor for Arya, absolving her of her sins, magnified in her child’s mind. However, some of her thoughts of vengeance are deep-rooted, and she sincerely despises Cersei and Joffrey enough to do some “needlework” on them if ever given the opportunity.

But here is the “rub”: Arya loses Ned, and the hole left in her heart is enormous, and she needs to fill it with dark secrets spawned from these initial lessons she has learned about the darkness that dwells in the hearts of humankind. Egads! She is even present when her father is beheaded. Two observations I have made:

1. Arya’s hatred of Sansa is “superficial” and part of sibling rivalry and growing pains. She does not learn to process her hatred until Ned gifts her Syrio, and through her exhausting dancing lessons, she finally has an outlet for all her penned up emotions.
   

Arya’s behavior reminds me of a character in Frank O’Connor’s short story “First Confession”, about a seven-year-old Irish lad preparing to make his first confession, but his catechism teacher scares him to death with her talk of hell and damnation, and he misinterprets her lessons because of her methodology, and he decides to skip confession by feigning a toothache because he has made himself sick with worry.He has a guilty conscience about his unkind thoughts of murdering his intrusive grandmother, and he contemplates cutting up her body and transporting it in a barrow.When he asks his catechism teacher if the commandments “Thou shall honor thy mother and thy father” and “Thou shalt not kill” includes grandmothers, and she tells him “yes”, so poor Jackie concludes that he has broken all the Ten Commandments and will subsequently go straight to hell if he tries to lie to the priest.

Jackie’s reasons for wanting to kill granny are silly, childish things that in his mind he escalates into the “sins of a lifetime”:he doesn’t like that she has moved into his home, that she walks around barefoot, that she drinks porter from a jug and eats potatoes with her bare fingers, and that she gives his older, nasty and hypocritical sister Nora a penny on Fridays from her old age pension because Nora “sucks up” to the old lady.

Arya is like Jackie in that she overthinks and over analyzes, and she is the first to blame herself; she is as guilty of self-centered thinking as most children are, and up to this point, Arya has her father to steer her through the rough spots.Jackie in his story does not have a sympathetic father; his “dah” sides with Nora and oft gives Jackie a “flaking”.And Nora does torment her little brother Jackie, jealous because Jackie is his mother’s favorite child.Fortunately, Jackie meets up with the priest and makes a “good” face-to-face confession to the kind confessor, who does not speak of hell and damnation, but who gently, and with humor, urges Jackie to disclose his darkest, deepest sins.

The priest tells him how messy killing granny would be, and besides, Jackie would hang when he is caught, and the priest says he has seen many a man hang, and it is an ugly business.Jackie is horrified, and says, gee, I never thought of that – and so it goes. My point is, Arya will be stuck like Jackie, always looking to the “outside” to find a father figure after losing her “dah”.

1. Arya’s later journey to Braavos allows her to bond with “males” whom she consciously or subconsciously adopts as surrogate father figures, all of them pale in comparison to Ned, but Arya is not choosy and deals with the cards she is dealt. As a result, Arya takes the education each relationship allows her: Yoren, Jaqen, the Hound, and now the kindly priest impact her development, which compels Martin in his creation of a very complex, deep, and controversial player in his song of ice and fire.
   

The Hound really confuses her sensibilities because she loathes him beyond all reason for Mycah, yet she nurses him as he is dying, giving him water and keeping him hydrated, feeding him, and so on. Then, ironically, when he asks her to gift him the gift of death, she can’t. How can she kill a man who she bonds with, who allows her a glimpse into his tormented soul? Arya witnesses him weak and helpless as a newborn puppy. A Hound should be made of “sterner stuff”! Even though she once despised him, she runs out of steam when push comes to shove. As a matter-of-fact, I think Arya denies him a quick death because she is too furious with him for dying – he is copping out and leaving her like all the others, and she thinks she is punishing him by not ending his suffering. Arya has a child’s mind trying to make sense of complex, adult thinking.

As a servant of Him of Many Faces, Arya does not have to “think” about her victims as flawed people. She does not have to get to know them personally. Someone else makes the decisions for her. She does have to maintain objectivity, something she is slowly learning for I think Dareon is a kill she commits from passion and loyalty to Jon Snow.

It is ironic that the characters who most welcome windows are the characters who end up in locations as dark as night: Ned and his grave, Bran and his cave, and Arya and the HoB&W. Their theme song should be “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”!

[evita mgfs]

AGOT Daenerys III Chapter 24 Overall

AN: I tackled this POV with some reservation because I fell out with Dany after the way she treats her dragons. However, I am amazed by the wealth of information I found in a careful look at this POV, and I am ashamed to admit I had forgotten a great deal about her story arc. Needless-to-say, I discovered a great deal, and now I SEE where other posters are coming from when they make a case for Dany and Jon’s parallel journeys and when they draw comparisons between the Others and their wights with the Ghost Grass and the direwolves with the dragons [eggs]. So I apologize in advance – I was hoping to be uninspired, which would allow me to write a shorter post. I have a feeling I will be composing another “big one”.

SUMMARY

In Danerys’ third POV, we meet a “new” Daenerys, a young girl evolving into a Khaleesi, even requesting that others address her according to her rank as the wife of Khal Drogo, a horselord. Khaleesi gives orders to Ser Mormont to command her khas, including her delusional brother Viserys, so that she can enjoy the beauty around her, notably the Dothraki Sea. Khaleesi reflects on how difficult her adjustment has been, but she dreams of a fire-breathing dragon whose flames consume her; consequently, she adapts to her new role, growing stronger and bolder with each day, both her mind and her body adjusting to the new demands put upon her. Drawing strength from her eggs, Khaleesi distances herself from her cruel brother Viserys whom she comes to realize is a pitiful thing and no dragon, ill-fit to rule the Seven Kingdoms, ill-fit to lead men into battle, ill-fit to do much of anything, truly. After Viserys disrespects his sister in the presence of Ser Mormont and her khas, Khaleesi humiliates him by forcing him to “walk” instead of ride to camp. Furthermore, Khaleesi’s new found confidence emboldens her, which she proves when she leads her husband outside their sleeping tents at night to make mad, passionate love beneath the sky with only the moon, stars, and the entire Khalasar in audience to mark their intimate moment which proves to be “fruitful”.

FIRST SENTENCE

The Dothraki sea," Ser Jorah Mormont said as he reined to a halt beside her on the top of the ridge.

• This first sentence introduces the Dothraki sea, another visionary creation of the author Martin and a land of mystery and symbology.

• The first sentence also informs us on the location of the khalasar in Essos, providing us with a geographical reference to Martin’s land of ice and fire.
  
• At Khaleesi’s side is Ser Mormont, not her brother nor her husband, which also gives us insight into her character development: she has grown closer to her “bear” since her last POV.
  

FYI: THE WIKI ON THE DOTHRAKI SEA

“The Dothraki Sea, according to the Wiki of Ice and Fire, is a “vast inland region on the continent of Essos, located east of the Free Cities. Its landscape of steppes and plains is home to the nomadic Dothraki equestrian people, who constantly battle each other and raid surrounding lands.”

“Save for Vaes Dothrak there are no roads, hills, or cities, leaving an ocean of unbroken rippling grass, for which the Dothraki Sea is named. Over a hundred types of grass grows on the plains, that often grow thick and taller than a man's head and from afar look like a sea, as it rolls like waves in the breeze.^[1][2] Some rivers run through the lands, though they are often shallow and shift with the seasons; overall sand is more prevalent than water.”

“Its only city, an ancient ruin called Vaes Dothrak, lies at the heart of the Sea and is home and heart of the Dothraki people and culture. Other than that it is largely empty with packs of wild dogs, herds of free-ranging horses and rare hrakkar. http://awoiaf.wester...hp/Dothraki_Sea

CLOSE READING ANALYSIS OF DAENERYS III

Beneath them, the plain stretched out immense and empty, a vast flat expanse that reached to the distant horizon and beyond. It was a sea, Dany thought. Past here, there were no hills, no mountains, no trees nor cities nor roads, only the endless grasses, the tall blades rippling like waves when the winds blew. "It's so green," she said.

• The Dothraki sea is “immense”, reaching to the horizon and beyond, and Martin aptly employs water imagery and language to depict this location for us. In this passage, the blades of grass ripple like waves; moreover, the wind becomes a characterization worthy of further discussion because “wind” is important in the sailing of vessels upon the water.

• Along with the water and nautical references, Martin suggests “drowning” through Viserys who meets up with Jhogo’s whip. When the whip coils around his neck, he cannot catch his breath much like the scenario of a victim who is submerged in water and cannot surface to catch a breath.
  
• I also checked out the symbology of “grass” and “green”, and these passages follow:
  

GRASS

Grass is the symbol for usefulness;

• The Khaleesi serves a purpose for her brother and for Khal Drogo, which authenticate her usefulness.
  

it might represent native land, or, when pulled, surrender or conquest of a land or territory.

• The Dothraki sea is the native land of the Dothraki, the heart of their culture; furthermore, the khals war against one another, which leads to surrender and conquest, and these victories may occur on the Dothraki sea.
  

Commonness, submission, lower caste of people, sign of defeat.

• The commonness of the Dothraki is highlighted by the remarks and observations supplied by others; in this POV, Viserys calls his sister a “horselord’s slut” and he calls her khas “Dothraki dogs”.
  
• The Dothraki may represent the lower caste of people because they seemingly bond with their horses, live a nomadic lifestyle, and love to engage in battle.
  
• I do not associate “defeat” with Khal Drogo or Dany; however, Viserys is cowed by his sister in the tall grasses, and with the association in this POV of a SNAKE to Viserys, Martin teases us by suggesting that Viserys IS a “snake in the grass”.
  

Evanescence; quick to grow but may soon be gone.

• Green grass is a “summer thing” where I live, so through the passage of the seasons, we may observe the brevity of well-manicured lawns. In its relevance to our story, we have the waning of the long summer as winter approaches and the advent of the long night.
  
• Dany’s girlhood is evanescent, for in this POV we see how she changes as she grows closer to her husband’s people and their ways.
  

Also love, taking life easy, as in Yeats and Blake.

• The grass as love correlates to Dany’s deepening affections for Khal Drogo. They make mad, passionate love on a bed of “grass”, and when he gives Dany his seed, Dany’s womb is “fertilized” – so “seed” and “fertilization” work nicely in the grass symbology.
  
• 
  

Under the grass is a term commonly associated with death.

• Grass may represent death in a society that buries their dead beneath the earth, but Drogo and Dany share the idea of a funeral pyre instead of cairns or crypts. Therefore, “death” and the grass foreshadow Viserys end: when Dany abandons him in the Dothraki sea, even taking his horse, he disappears beneath the blades as Dany moves farther away from him.
  

http://www.umich.edu...ml/G/grass.html

GREEN

inexperience, hope;

• Dany marries Khal Drogo without knowledge or experience of her wifely duties

• Dany’s new attitude is built on hope as are her dreams for the future.
  

new life, immaturity;

• Dany adopts a “new life” with the Dothraki people, and she carries “new life” inside her.
  
• Immaturity: Viserys behaves in an immature fashion as his sister grows wiser. He foolishly demands repayment for a debt: he wants the gold crown Drogo promised when he sold his sister to him for wife.
  
• Dany is “immature” in many ways – she needs to be schooled by Doreah on how to pleasure her husband; she foolishly holds her brother in high regard, giving validation to his threat of waking the dragon and his pining for his lost kingdom: in this POV, Dany matures and sees her brother true.
  
• Martin likes to use “green” to describe those who are “newbies” to a task, such as when Benjen tells Jon his is a green boy and not ready to range across the Wall.
  

a combination of blue and yellow,

• I know these two colors, when mixed together, make the color green, but I am not able to find these colors joining in any respects relevant to the Dothraki sea and Dany. Ser Jorah does mention blue and yellow grasses, but they do not unite to make green.
  

it mediates between heat and cold and high and low;

• The mediation between heat and cold is “solid” for Martin’s series is called “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Dany is also the dragon and therefore linked to heat just as Jon Snow is a Stark of Winterfell, an agent of the cold north.
  
• So many things can relate to “high and low” in the Land of Ice and Fire, but in this POV, Dany gives commands from a ridge, elevated above her khas and her brother. High and low may suggest status, as we have the exiled prince and princess of the House Targaryen in the Dothraki sea rather than draped in silks and adorned in jewels in King’s Landing.
  
• 
  

it is a comforting, refreshing; it is the color of plant life.

• Khaleesi removes her boots to stand barefoot in the grass because the feel of it is comforting and refreshing, especially between her toes.
  

• The Isle of Faces is guarded by the order of “Green Men”. I am speculating that these “green” men have an association with “plant life” since this isle is home to weirwoods. I suspect, hesitantly, that these green men are not inexperienced in their task – they are “well-seasoned”, and the “green” somehow relates to the greenseers and the greendreams, who also are allianced with the CotF, aspects of nature, magic, Bloodraven, and Bran.
  
• 
  

• My literature teachers also said that “green” represents jealousy, at least as far as Shakespeare is concerned, for he coined the expression of “jealousy” as a “green-eyed” monster. In Daenerys’ third POV, the “green-eyed monster” is her brother Viserys who now resents Dany’s status in the Dothraki community. Viserys’s envy extends to others, or anyone who has better circumstances than himself.
  

"Here and now," Ser Jorah agreed. "You ought to see it when it blooms, all dark red flowers from horizon to horizon, like a sea of blood.

• The blooming red flowers and the simile comparing those flowers to a “sea of blood” evoked many associations for me, and here are a few:
  

• The field of poppies in the Wizard of Oz that Dorothy and company must cross over to reach the Emerald City.
  
• Aaron, with Moses, turning the Nile waters to blood in an attempt to convince Pharoah of God’s powers.
  
• God parting the Red Sea for Moses and company who are fleeing the Egyptians hot-footing it behind them.
  

Come the dry season, and the world turns the color of old bronze. And this is only hranna, child. There are a hundred kinds of grass out there, grasses as yellow as lemon and as dark as indigo, blue grasses and orange grasses and grasses like rainbows. Down in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, they say there are oceans of ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback with stalks as pale as milkglass. It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the damned. The Dothraki claim that someday ghost grass will cover the entire world, and then all life will end."

That thought gave Dany the shivers. "I don't want to talk about that now," she said. "It's so beautiful here, I don't want to think about everything dying."

"As you will, Khaleesi," Ser Jorah said respectfully.

• I wish to draw a few parallels with Daenerys’ POV and Jon’s POV: 1) Daenerys and Ser Jorah Mormont look from a ridge at the Dothraki sea of green grass in a fashion similar to Jon Snow and Tyrion looking from “the edge of the world” out at the haunted forest defined as “a wall of night”. 2) The ghost grass that glows in the dark and is possessed with the spirits of the damned remind me of the Others and their minions with their blue eyes and seemingly reanimated state. 3) Daenerys’ thoughts about the east reveal “rumors” of strange creatures: “It was said that manticores prowled the islands of the JadeSea, that basilisks infested the jungles of Yi Ti, that spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their arts openly in Asshai, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible sorceries in the black of night.” These “entities” bring to mind the dangers believed to lurk in the lands beyond the Wall, like the Others, the wights, the giants, the grumkins, the snarks, the skinchangers, etc. However, we learn in Bran’s POV that the mythical direwolves had vanished around the same time as the dragons BUT amazingly the Starks come upon a litter of direwolf pups on execution day. Consequently, in the minds of the readers, we realize that if direwolves are indeed a reality, then certainly the dragons are a reality, or will be a reality, in Khaleesi’s future. 4) Martin personifies the Wall, Winterfell, the wind, and more just as he personifies the wind “breathing” through the blades of grass. 5) Even though Daenerys shivers when Ser Jorah speaks of the dying grasses, Martin discloses her relationship with fire, heat, flame, and dragons; likewise, Jon Snow is defined in terms of “ice and cold” as a bastard of Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell – even his name depicts an arctic environment: “Snow”. The Stark’s house sigil is the direwolf, and Jon Snow’s direwolf is named “Ghost”, an appellation shared with the “ghost” grass that Ser Jorah speaks of. 6) Daenerys removes her boots so that her bare feet are exposed to the grass and the dirt. In a similar fashion that is rather a “stretch”, Tyrion and Jon remove their gloves to shake hands, bare flesh touching bare flesh. Somehow the idea of the bare skin in contact with “something” implies a mystic communion of some kind: Dany in the grass emphasizes her acceptance and marriage to the Dothraki people and their culture. Tyrion and Jon shaking hands is a demonstration of friendship, or the joining of two rival houses, the Starks and the Lannisters. 7) Dany draws comfort and strength from her dragon eggs just as Jon draws comfort from Ghost. 8) Both are rejuvenated in their darkest moments of despair, both find strength in their respective sources, and both change their ways of looking at their plights. 9) Daenerys and Jon Snow are the victims of the whims of others, and neither is allowed a voice in his/her path for his/her future. Daenerys is sold to Khal Drogo by Viserys for a crown, and Jon is sent to the Wall primarily because of Catelyn’s desire to rid her family of the bastard. 10) Both display survivors’ instincts and mentally and physically adapt to their lots and their environments.
  

She heard the sound of voices and turned to look behind her. She and Mormont had outdistanced the rest of their party, and now the others were climbing the ridge below them.

• Ironically, Daenerys’ party, including her brother, are both symbolically “behind” and “beneath” her, and she and Ser Jorah rode out ahead of them.
  
• Daenerys hears the “sound of voices”, and Martin utilizes auditory language to emphasize Viserys’ annoying voice which will accost the ears with his screaming and sobbing and whining in this POV. On the other hand, the singing dragon is not an unpleasant noise, from what little I can garner from Martin’s description later.
  

Her handmaid Irri and the young archers of her khas were fluid as centaurs,

• The simile comparing Irri and the archers as fluid as centaurs conveys how they are one with their horses, united in movement just as centaurs are a mythological creature that are part man and part horse.
  
• Martin says “fluid” which fits the water imagery of the Dothraki sea.
  

but Viserys still struggled with the short stirrups and the flat saddle. Her brother was miserable out here. He ought never have come. Magister Illyrio had urged him to wait in Pentos, had offered him the hospitality of his manse, but Viserys would have none of it.

• Martin shows through visual images and other means that Viserys is not fitting in with the Dothraki people at all. In this instance, we have a picture of Viserys struggling to sit a horse.
  
• Martin reveals that Magister Illyrio “urged” Viserys to remain in Pentos, foreseeing Viserys’ misery among the horde.
  
• We see in Visery’s refusing Illyrio’s hospitality Viserys’ stubbornness.
  

He would stay with Drogo until the debt had been paid, until he had the crown he had been promised. “And if he tries to cheat me, he will learn to his sorrow what it means to wake the dragon,” Viserys had vowed, laying a hand on his borrowed sword. Illyrio had blinked at that and wished him good fortune.

• This is brilliant – and even funny, the portrait of Viserys puffing himself up, daring to threaten safely from afar Khal Drogo, even boasting that Drogo will be sorrowful IF he wakes the dragon. Ooooh! Khal Drogo better watch out! BUT the brilliance is in Viserys laying his hand on the BORROWED SWORD. Viserys does not even have a weapon of his own with which to duel the Khal.
  
• Daenerys must realize Illyrio’s diplomacy when he wishes Viserys “good fortune” rather than warning the arrogant Viserys that he is out of his league with Khal Drogo.
  

Dany realized that she did not want to listen to any of her brother's complaints right now. The day was too perfect. The sky was a deep blue, and high above them a hunting hawk circled. The grass sea swayed and sighed with each breath of wind, the air was warm on her face, and Dany felt at peace. She would not let Viserys spoil it.

• Daenerys does not want to listen to Viserys’ complaints because she is having a mystic communion with nature, relishing the beauty around her, and Viserys’ whining will only spoil her peace and quiet.
  
• The hawk circling overhead may be part of the environment, but it nods to dragons in the future, for aren’t dragons bird-like in their structure? plus they have wings and hunt their prey from overhead.
  
• The grass “swaying” is nautical for boats sway on the water’s surface, and the grass sighs, which is Martin personifying the Dothraki sea as he does other inanimate objects in other POV’s.
  
• The “breaths” of wind is another nautical touch, plus personification. This wind denotes serenity whereas the wind at the Wall tried to undress Tyrion.
  

"Wait here," Dany told Ser Jorah. "Tell them all to stay. Tell them I command it."

The knight smiled. Ser Jorah was not a handsome man. He had a neck and shoulders like a bull, and coarse black hair covered his arms and chest so thickly that there was none left for his head. Yet his smiles gave Dany comfort. "You are learning to talk like a queen, Daenerys."

"Not a queen," said Dany. "A khaleesi." She wheeled her horse about and galloped down the ridge alone.

• Daenerys “commands” that her khas stay behind, and her assuming a position of authority by confidently voicing her demands reveals how she is maturing and learning to fill her new role as a Khaleesi. Mormont even tells her she is learning to talk like a Queen.
  
• Daenerys dismisses the title of QUEEN in preference for KHALEESI, a sign that she has come to accept her new husband, his people, and their land.
  
• The unflattering description of Ser Jorah intimates a big hairy beast, so we have the beauty Khaleesi and her Bear, the beast: “Beauty and the Beast”. This combination is usually popular with some readers.
  

The descent was steep and rocky, but Dany rode fearlessly, and the joy and the danger of it were a song in her heart. All her life Viserys had told her she was a princess, but not until she rode her silver had Daenerys Targaryen ever felt like one.

• Khaleesi rides fearlessly, enjoying the danger with a “song in her heart”. The song indicates contentment and pleasure, and the word “song” appears in the title of the series “A Song of Ice and Fire”.
  
• Daenerys finally feels like a princess, a transformation she attributes to riding her silver.
  
• Later, Khaleesi narrates her recollection of an inspiring dragon dream, and the dragon sings to her.
  

At first it had not come easy.

• Compelled by her evil brother Viserys to marry Khal Drogo, Daenerys suffers in the demands placed upon her in her new life with a strange husband and an even stranger people and culture. Her body is riddled with sores and blisters from riding horseback day in and day out, and she cries herself to sleep nightly. She has no relationship with Drogo during the day, even forced to dine alone or with her slaves or her brother and Ser Jorah. Drogo comes to her near morning to ride her like a wild stallion, which leaves her aching and bruised and too exhausted to sleep.
  

Day followed day, and night followed night, until Dany knew she could not endure a moment longer. She would kill herself rather than go on, she decided one night . . .

• Just when Daenerys commits to killing herself, she has a dream that turns her entire life around.
  

DANY’S DRAGON DREAM

Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her, She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

• This dream foreshadows the conflagration in Daenerys’ final POV.
  
• Viserys’ absence from this dream also hints at future events.
  
• The description of the dragon parallels the colors of one of her dragon eggs and the colors of one of her dragons.
  
• Scarlet and black are connected to her brother Rhaegar’s black armor, his breast-plate encrusted with rubies.
  
• Daenerys’ blood on the dragon MAY be the blood that results from a live birth of a child since Daenerys will symbolically be the mother of dragons. Her blood on the dragon MAY also represent a transference of her “pain” onto the dragon who seems to heal her physically and mentally by assuming this pain.
  
• Martin reinforces the water imagery in its eyes of “pools” of magma and in this baptism by fire: a “jet” of fire “cleanses” and “scours” her and her blood “boils” and turns to “steam”.
  
• Martin personifies the dragon fire that “swallows” Daenerys, and she opens her arms to embrace it as if it is a lover or a long lost friend or family member.
  
• The dragon fire symbolically “burns” away the “old” Daenerys as she seemingly molts like a snake or a bird, her skin sloughing away to expose her new and improved self: now fiercer and stronger.
  
• In her dragon dream, the “dragon” awakens inside her, so in Daenerys she achieves the very thing that her brother Viserys threatens will happen to him when he temper is aroused – “do you want to wake the dragon?” Daenerys’ inner dragon wakes just as Viserys’ boast of a waking dragon fizzles.
  
• Daenerys’s dream MAY also be a subconsciously inspired vision, a product of her coping mechanisms, and the dragon and his fire are manifestations of her hope for a better future. I liken this to Dany being served “lemons” from which she makes “lemonade”.
  

And the next day, strangely, she did not seem to hurt quite so much. It was as if the gods had heard her and taken pity. Even her handmaids noticed the change. "Khaleesi," Jhiqui said, "what is wrong? Are you sick?"

• Daenerys notices on the very next day that her pain has lessened, and for some reason, her change prompts one of her hand maid to ask her if she is ill. I would think Daenerys’ appearance might improve with her new attitude.
  

"I was," she answered, standing over the dragon's eggs that Illyrio had given her when she wed. She touched one, the largest of the three, running her hand lightly over the shelf. Black-and-scarlet, she thought, like the dragon in my dream. The stone felt strangely warm beneath her fingers . . . or was she still dreaming? She pulled her hand back nervously.

• Daenerys stands over her dragon eggs when she announces that she WAS sick, which implies that she is no longer.
  
• Daenerys proves her brilliance when she notices that one of the dragon eggs is the same colors as the dragon who appeared in her dream.
  
• For some reason, Daenerys rationalizes now and later on the warmth she feels when she touches the dragon egg.
  

From that hour onward, each day was easier than the one before it. Her legs grew stronger; her blisters burst and her hands grew callused; her soft thighs toughened, supple as leather.

The khal had commanded the handmaid Irri to teach Dany to ride in the Dothraki fashion, but it was the filly who was her real teacher. The horse seemed to know her moods, as if they shared a single mind. With every passing day, Dany felt surer in her seat. The Dothraki were a hard and unsentimental people, and it was not their custom to name their animals, so Dany thought of her only as the silver. She had never loved anything so much.

• Daenerys attributes her advancement in equestrian skills to her filly who teaches her by sharing her moods and her mind, which directly corresponds to the relationships several of the Starks form with their direwolves.
  
• The Dothraki custom of not naming their horses reminds me of the wildling’s custom of not naming their children until their survival is more certain.
  

Daenerys’ days continue to improve, and she moves to the head of the khalasar so that she can see the beauty of the land around her before it is spoiled by the great horde’s passing. Martin provides a “miniature” travel log of Daenerys’ journey, mentioning elk, tigers, and lemurs, the latter having silver fur and purple eyes, mirroring the Targ signature traits. Her agony fades and she finds a sweetness in her pain; moreover, she looks forward to her saddle in the days and her husband in the nights.

Daenerys reaches the bottom of the ridge where the grasses rose tall around her. She is blessedly alone, losing herself in the green. She is thankful for this brief reprieve because in the khalasarm she was never alone since her hand maids slept with her and her khas guarded her from harm.

Martin also emphasizes the animalism of the Dothraki by endowing them with ferocity and power – Khal Drogo is seemingly part stallion, and he and the other Dothraki men take their women from behind, doggy-style, just as many animals in the wild mate. Martin even describes the sex act in terms of a wild ride on the back of a stallion.

her brother was an unwelcome shadow, day and night. Dany could hear him on the top of the ridge, his voice shrill with anger as he shouted at Ser Jorah. She rode on, submerging herself deeper in the Dothraki sea.

• Daenerys thinks of Viserys as an unwelcome shadow who follows her day and night. “Shadows” are another motif in the series. Later, Ser Jorah will describe Viserys as the shadow of a snake.
  
• She hears his voice shrill with anger from her position, so she rides out, “submerging herself deeper into the Dothraki sea” just as a swimmer might submerge herself beneath the waters of an ocean. She is trying to make herself disappear so that she can escape Viserys.
  

The green swallowed her up. The air was rich with the scents of earth and grass, mixed with the smell of horseflesh and Dany's sweat and the oil in her hair. Dothraki smells. They seemed to belong here. Dany breathed it all in, laughing. She had a sudden urge to feel the ground beneath her, to curl her toes in that thick black soil. Swinging down from her saddle, she let the silver graze while she pulled off her high boots.

• Martin personifies the grass as it “swallowed” her up.
  
• Khaleesi appreciates the smells permeating the air for they distinguish the Dothraki and they belong in the grass sea: scents of earth and grass, horseflesh, oil, and sweat.
  
• On impulse, she dismounts to feel the ground beneath her feet and the thick black soil between her toes.
  

Viserys came upon her as sudden as a summer storm, his horse rearing beneath him as he reined up too hard. "You dare!" he screamed at her. "You give commands to me? To me?" He vaulted off the horse, stumbling as he landed. His face was flushed as he struggled back to his feet. He grabbed her, shook her. "Have you forgotten who you are? Look at you. Look at you!"

• Viserys accosts her like a “summer storm”, another water image for sailors often are surprised by sudden storms and squalls.
  
• Displaying his ineptitude for horsemanship, Viserys reins his horse too hard, then vaults off and stumbles, but he still grabs his sister and demands that she look at herself, her feet bare and her body clothed in Dothraki attire.
  
• Viserys’ words foretell another inquisitor who will demand to know “who you are!” He asks, “Have you forgotten?” In the House of Black and White, the priest quizzes Arya often, “Who are you?” Contrary to Viserys urging Dany to “remember” who she is, Arya is trying to forget her name so she can serve the Faceless Men as an assassin.
  

Dany did not need to look. She was barefoot, with oiled hair, wearing Dothraki riding leathers and a painted vest given her as a bride gift. She looked as though she belonged here. Viserys was soiled and stained in city silks and ringmail.

• Martin documents Viserys’ decline in status and respect through his actions and his folly of a wardrobe. His soiled silks and borrowed sword are out of place in the Dothraki horde, and the horse people laugh behind his back. Dany dons leathers and a painted vest, assimilating among her husband’s people, learning their language, wearing their attire, becoming one with her horse, and so on, whereas Viserys holds on desperately to his alleged birthright, flaunting that he is king and that his laws must be obeyed. Dany matures, Viserys regresses.
  
• Dany looks as if she belongs in the Dothraki sea, blending into the environment while Viserys unsuitable attire and his shrill cries bring attention to him, but the scorn and resentment he receives from his audience is filled with mockery and derision.
  
• Daenerys is beginning to see the truth of Viserys, and she notes that his city silks are soiled and stained, and he does not cut a figure in his ringmail.
  

He was still screaming. "You do not command the dragon. Do you understand? I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, I will not hear orders from some horselord's slut, do you hear me?" His hand went under her vest, his fingers digging painfully into her breast. "Do you hear me?"

• Viserys continues to screami as he has a “temper tantrum” waged against Khaleesi who dares to defy him. He brings ridicule upon himself by claiming to be the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms while behaving like a selfish, spoiled child who grabs his sister’s breast and gives her a “titty-twister”.
  
• Viserys ironically keeps asking if Dany hears him when he is speaking in her face, but she could hear his screaming when he was far away from her and Ser Jorah.
  

Dany shoved him away, hard.

Viserys stared at her, his lilac eyes incredulous. She had never defied him. Never fought back. Rage twisted his features. He would hurt her now, and badly, she knew that.

Crack.

• Daenerys has never refused her brother, especially in front of witnesses. She gives in to his rage and abuse, afraid that he will wake his dragon and cause her pain. Now, emboldened by her dragon dream and her dragon eggs, Dany is FIERCE – she even shoves him “hard”, and I do not think she oft put hands in her brother.
  
• Dany braces for the hurt Viserys’ eyes promise, and she may forget she has bodyguards now that she is Khaleesi.
  

• Dany’s bloodrider saves her from Viserys’ twisted rage by cracking his whip, the coil taking Viserys around the throat. With a yank, Viserys sprawls on the grass choking. The Dothraki riders laugh at him and Jhogo asks if Khaleesi wishes him dead. Dany says no, refusing to take an ear to teach him respect as Quaro thinks.
  

Her brother was on his knees, his fingers digging under the leather coils, crying incoherently, struggling for breath. The whip was tight around his windpipe.

• The self-proclaimed great Viserys is brought down by his sister who actually saves him from the khas.
  
• Viserys struggles to breath, an appropriate state for an inexperienced swimmer thrust into the tall grasses of the Dothraki sea.
  

Jhogo gave a pull on the whip, yanking Viserys around like a puppet on a string. He went sprawling again, freed from the leather embrace, a thin line of blood under his chin where the whip had cut deep.

• Viserys is likened to a puppet on a string, in this case Viserys is manipulated by Jhogo who yanks on the whip to spin him around and send him sprawling in the dirt.
  
• The roles of brother and sister are reverse: Viserys is now the puppet on a string who must cow to Khaleesi’s wishes.
  

"I know you did," Dany replied, watching Viserys. He lay on the ground, sucking in air noisily, red-faced and sobbing. He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been.

• Dany’s epiphany is complete for she sees Viserys true, as a poor, pitiful thing who had controlled her with fear. She realizes that he was always a pitiful thing, and wonders why she had not seen it before.
  
• Her fears of waking Viserys’ dragon disappears leaving a hollow place inside her.
  
• Viserys “sucks in” the air noisily, which is pertinent to a floundering swimmer.
  

"Take his horse," Dany commanded Ser Jorah. Viserys gaped at her. He could not believe what he was hearing; nor could Dany quite believe what she was saying. Yet the words came. "Let my brother walk behind us back to the khalasar." Among the Dothraki, the man who does not ride was no man at all, the lowest of the low, without honor or pride. "Let everyone see him as he is."

• Newly emboldened Daenerys is going to give a little payback for all the injustices her older brother has waged against her. She delivers unto him a serious punishment in the Dothraki culture: she takes his horse, which is akin to taking the car keys from a popular teen on prom weekend. All the Dothraki will laugh at him, mock him, disrespect him even more than they had before.
  
• Khaleesi strips Viserys of his pride and honor, making him the lowest of the low and no man at all.
  
• 
  

"No!" Viserys screamed. He turned to Ser Jorah, pleading in the Common Tongue with words the horsemen would not understand. "Hit her, Mormont. Hurt her. Your king commands it. Kill these Dothraki dogs and teach her."

• Even Khaleesi’s lesson in humility does not mute her brother who orders Ser Jorah to hit her, to HURT HER and to kill the Dothraki DOGS. He reminds Ser Jorah that his KING commands him, which is also ironic because any drip of power Viserys had has dried up and blown away, and now Daenerys holds all the cards. Ser Jorah will prove this is so, for he ignores the orders of Viserys, whom he swore allegiance to, in favor of the Khaleesi, a woman and a Dothraki slut.
  

The exile knight looked from Dany to her brother; she barefoot, with dirt between her toes and oil in her hair, he with his silks and steel. Dany could see the decision on his face. "He shall walk, Khaleesi," he said. He took her brother's horse in hand while Dany remounted her silver.

• Martin presents two images, and Ser Jorah must needs choose between these Targaryen children who both claim power and who both have issued a command.
  
• Silk and steel should trump barefoot, sweaty Dothraki slut, but Ser Jorah chooses the Khaleesi and takes Viserys’ horse from him.
  
• 
  

Viserys gaped at him, and sat down in the dirt. He kept his silence, but he would not move, and his eyes were full of poison as they rode away. Soon he was lost in the tall grass. When they could not see him anymore, Dany grew afraid. "Will he find his way back?" she asked Ser Jorah as they rode.

• Viserys plops down in the dirt, which is appropriate for he is lower than dirt.
  
• The SHADOW OF A SNAKE has eyes FULL OF POISON. He is LOST in the tall grass, silently slithering, and Martin makes funny that Viserys is literally and figuratively A SNAKE IN THE GRASS.
  
• Despite all her brother’s cruelties, Daenerys still shows affection for him when she worries about whether he will find his way back to camp.
  

"Even a man as blind as your brother should be able to follow our trail," he replied.

• Ser Jorah confirms that Viserys is blind, at least symbolically, for he lives in a fantasy world where he demands respect and expects donations to his cause without giving any service in return. But even though Viserys is blind to such things, he has enough sense of self-preservation to follow the ruts left by the horde to safety rather than allowing night to fall by pouting in the grasses, leaving himself vulnerable to attack by other Dothraki or wild animals.
  
• Khaleesi fears his pride may prevent his return, but Ser Jorah laughs at this notion and replies, “It is hard to drown in the Dothraki sea, child." “Drown” continues the water imagery.
  

Dany saw the truth of that. The khalasar was like a city on the march, but it did not march blindly. Always scouts ranged far ahead of the main column, alert for any sign of game or prey or enemies, while outriders guarded their flanks. They missed nothing, not here, in this land, the place where they had come from. These plains were a part of them . . . and of her, now.

• Daenerys considers herself part of “them”, the Dothraki people, and she feels the plains are part of her as well.
  

"I hit him," she said, wonder in her voice. Now that it was over, it seemed like some strange dream that she had dreamed. "Ser Jorah, do you think . . . he'll be so angry when he gets back . . . She shivered. "I woke the dragon, didn't I?"

• Dany amazed herself when she stood up to Viserys and even defended herself, pushing him hard. Now it seems like a strange dream for she has no previous victory over her brother to reference from their past together. Daenerys had always done his will, obeyed him or suffered the consequences.
  
• Dany fears Viserys will retaliate, and she anticipates what is in store for her since she woke the dragon.
  

Ser Jorah snorted. "Can you wake the dead, girl? Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, and he died on the Trident. Viserys is less than the shadow of a snake."

• Ser Jorah comforts Dany by assuring her that Rhaegar, who is named the “last dragon”, died on the Trident, so she need not fear his ghost rising; and all of this talk of Dany’s deceased brother correlates to Dany’s dragon dream and her dragon egg.
  
• Mormont says that Viserys is lower than a shadow of a snake! [We always said “lower than a snake’s belly”.
  

His blunt words startled her. It seemed as though all the things she had always believed were suddenly called into question. "You . . . you swore him your sword . . . "

• Daenerys is taken aback by Ser Jorah’s candor, especially since he has sworn his sword to Viserys.
  
• Even though Dany herself thinks little of her brother, she is still startled to hear Ser Jorah, Viserys’ only ally, speak out against him.
  

"That I did, girl," Ser Jorah said. "And if your brother is the shadow of a snake, what does that make his servants?" His voice was bitter.

"He is still the true king. He is . . . "

Jorah pulled up his horse and looked at her. "Truth now. Would you want to see Viserys sit a throne?"

Dany thought about that. "He would not be a very good king, would he?"

"There have been worse . . . but not many." The knight gave his heels to his mount and started off again.

• Ser Jorah guides Daenerys to her conclusion that Viserys is not king material. Mormont even admits that there have not been many kings who as bad as Viserys WILL BE if he assumes the throne.
  

Dany rode close beside him. "Still," she said, "the common people are waiting for him. Magister Illyrio says they are sewing dragon banners and praying for Viserys to return from across the narrow sea to free them."

"The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends," Ser Jorah told her. "It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace." He gave a shrug. "They never are."

• Ser Jorah exposes the lies behind Magister Illyrio’s flattery, for he tells Viserys and maybe Dany that the common people are sewing dragon banners and praying for his return. If the people really wanted Viserys to return, they would have rallied and organized fund raisers to earn enough money to finance Viserys’ and Dany’s return home.
  
• Daenerys sees the truth in Ser Jorah’s explanation, for it makes sense to her that the common people have many hardships that occupy their thoughts and exhaust their limbs, so they have no energy left to follow the high lords as they play their “game of thrones”.
  

Dany rode along quietly for a time, working his words like a puzzle box. It went against everything that Viserys had ever told her to think that the people could care so little whether a true king or a usurper reigned over them. Yet the more she thought on Jorah's words, the more they rang of truth.

• Dany puzzles over Ser Jorah’s revelations, and she slowly acknowledges that they ring of truth and that Viserys has deliberately mislead her, OR that Viserys is delusional, which is quite possible since madness runs in the Targ bloodline.
  
• “They rang of truth” fits with the musicality of the series, “A Song of Ice and Fire”.
  

"What do you pray for, Ser Jorah?" she asked him.

"Home," he said. His voice was thick with longing.

"I pray for home too," she told him, believing it.

Ser Jorah laughed. "Look around you then, Khaleesi."

• Daenerys’ and Jorah’s shared wish for home is SO Wizard of Oz I can hear Dorothy saying “There is no place like home” while tapping her ruby slippers together.
  
• Ser Jorah tells Khaleesi that her home is now around her, and she wants to believe this herself, but another vision appears in her mind’s eye.
  

But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King's Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind's eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind's eye, all the doors were red.

• Daenerys sees King’s Landing burning with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window and all the doors are red.
  
• I am noting the continuation of the window and door symbology, and here Khaleesi seems to be receiving a vision that corresponds to her desires to be home.
  
• This vision feeds another that Dany thinks she sees later when she enters her tent:
  

As she let the door flap close behind her, Dany saw a finger of dusty red light reach out to touch her dragon's eggs across the tent. For an instant a thousand droplets of scarlet flame swam before her eyes. She blinked, and they were gone.

• Daenerys’ wish for home is answered when she sees a finger of dusty red light POINTING the way by identifying the dragon eggs as her means of fulfilling her wish, but Daenerys does not catch on.
  
• The 1000 “droplets” of scarlet flame swim before her continues the water imagery from her dragon dream and from the Dothraki sea, but these droplets of red also represent the 1000 red doors Dany sees in her mind’s eye.
  
• The scarlet and black pertain to Rhaegar’s black armor and ruby encrusted breast plate.
  

Stone, she told herself. They are only stone, even Illyrio said so, the dragons are all dead. She put her palm against the black egg, fingers spread gently across the curve of the shell. The stone was warm. Almost hot. "The sun," Dany whispered. "The sun warmed them as they rode."

• Once again, Daenerys dismisses the warmth of the egg, rationalizing the the long ride in the sun heated up the egg. IMO, the warmth of the shell or surface of the egg suggests that a life is growing inside it.
  
• Daenerys reminds herself that Illyrio said all the dragons are dead; therefore, she must banish any foolish notions of hatching live dragons from her eggs because the eggs are only stone, not viable hosts for life.
  
• I wonder when Dany will reason out that if Illyrio mislead hersand her brother about the common people breathlessly awaiting their return with hand-sewn banners to wave and a prayer in their heart, then Illyrio may be misleading her about the existence of dragons.
  
• Why does Illyrio gift Dany three eggs? What ulterior motive is lurking behind his carefully staged and executed acts and responses? How does he hope to use Dany and her dragons to his advantage? Did Illyrio gift Dany special dragon eggs? Are these dragon eggs somehow related to the dead Targaryen children? Who owned these eggs before Illyrio? What is their provenance?
  

"My brother will never take back the Seven Kingdoms," Dany said. She had known that for a long time, she realized. She had known it all her life. Only she had never let herself say the words, even in a whisper, but now she said them for Jorah Mormont and all the world to hear.

Ser Jorah gave her a measuring look. "You think not."

"He could not lead an army even if my lord husband gave him one," Dany said. "He has no coin and the only knight who follows him reviles him as less than a snake. The Dothraki make mock of his weakness. He will never take us home."

• Daenerys’ epiphany continues as she speaks the truths about Viserys’ incompetence: he is no leader who can command men, he has no money of his own to finance a war, he only counts one knight as a supporter, and that knight reviles him, and the Dothraki make fun of him for his weaknesses.
  

"Wise child." The knight smiled.

"I am no child," she told him fiercely. Her heels pressed into the sides of her mount, rousing the silver to a gallop. Faster and faster she raced, leaving Jorah and Irri and the others far behind, the warm wind in her hair and the setting sun red on her face. By the time she reached the khalasar, it was dusk.

• Ser Jorah calls Khaleesi “wise:” for she is beyond her years in understanding the flaws of human nature, and she now assesses her brother objectively to conclude that he will never make it home.
  
• Daenerys puts her inner dragon on display when she “fiercely” tells Ser Jorah that she is NO CHILD. Then she rides her silver, galloping non-stop to the khalasar by dusk, leaving her khas in the dust.
  

The slaves had erected her tent by the shore of a spring-fed pool. She could hear rough voices from the woven grass palace on the hill. Soon there would be laughter, when the men of her khas told the story of what had happened in the grasses today. By the time Viserys came limping back among them, every man, woman, and child in the camp would know him for a walker. There were no secrets in the khalasar.

• Daenerys speculates how the khalasar will react to the news that Viserys is a “walker”. She realizes that all the people will gossip about his low status, and that he will be scorned, no matter how much he claims to be a king or how much he demands his crown.
  

• Again, the fact that no secrets exist in a khalasar precedes a later observation, “There is no privacy in the heart of the khalasar”.
  

After returning to her tent, Dany orders a steaming bath in a big copper tub.

"Have you ever seen a dragon?" she asked as Irri scrubbed her back and Jhiqui sluiced sand from her hair. She had heard that the first dragons had come from the east, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai and the islands of the Jade Sea. Perhaps some were still living there, in realms strange and wild.

• Dany plays detective and quizzes Irri on what she knows about the existence of dragons.
  
• Khaleesi’s wishful thinking leads her to the assumption that dragons may still live somewhere in the east in a realm strange and wild. Since the direwolves lived beyond the Wall, it stands to reason that other dragons exist in the east. Bran even feels the presence of dragons in his 3E vision.
  

"Dragons are gone, Khaleesi," Irri said.

"Dead," agreed Jhiqui. "Long and long ago."

Viserys had told her that the last Targaryen dragons had died no more than a century and a half ago, during the reign of Aegon III, who was called the Dragonbane. That did not seem so long ago to Dany. "Everywhere?" she said, disappointed. "Even in the east?" Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer, and neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it back, but Dany had always heard that the east was different.

• We learn from Daenerys’ memory what Viserys told her about the Targaryen dragons dying off no more than 150 years ago. We can compare this to the direwolves that had disappeared beyond the Wall about 200 years ago. But neither Theon Greyjoy nor Viserys Targaryen are reliable sources; even so, there is only a 50 year difference in the stories, so maybe the disappearance of the direwolves and the dragons occurred simultaneously.
  
• We learn that magic died in the west as a result of the Doom of Valyria.
  
• Dany heard from other sources that may or may not have been reliable that the east was different, and that magic – and therefore dragons – may survive elsewhere in the east.
  
• Dany may be right, especially if the dragons and the direwolves are somehow linked.
  

Why shouldn't there be dragons too?

"No dragon," Irri said. "Brave men kill them, for dragon terrible evil beasts. It is known."

"It is known," agreed Jhiqui.

• Irri and Jhiqui agree that “it is known” that dragons are evil beasts who were slain by brave men.
  
• Both of the slave girls share information that is based on superstition, local legends, and the like. They are parrots and repeat what they hear others say, and they are not beyond exaggerating in their communications, although sometimes exaggeration seems a reality to some people. After telling the same tale several times, most people start to embellish the story to make it more entertaining.
  

"A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons came from the moon," blond Doreah said as she warmed a towel over the fire. Jhiqui and Irri were of an age with Dany, Dothraki girls taken as slaves when Drogo destroyed their father's khalasar. Doreah was older, almost twenty. Magister Illyrio had found her in a pleasure house in Lys.

• Khaleesi appears taken with Doreah’s story of the dragons coming from the moon. Since Doreah is older than Dany and her slave girls with a difference in age spanning six or seven years, it stands to reason that she may have acquired more information than the local Dothraki’s, especially because she worked in a pleasure house and probably had a big turnover of customers who brought news from lands near and far, including information about dragons.
  

Silvery-wet hair tumbled across her eyes as Dany turned her head, curious. "The moon?"

"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return."

The two Dothraki girls giggled and laughed. "You are foolish strawhead slave," Irri said. "Moon is no egg. Moon is god, woman wife of sun. It is known."

"It is known," Jhiqui agreed.

• Even though Irri and Jhiqui giggle and make fun of Doreah’s response to Khaleesi’s inquiry, Dany’s interest is piqued by the allusion to the moon being an egg, and from the egg came the dragons.
  
• Since Dany is associated with the moon with her silver hair, she is further likened to the moon through Doreah’s reference to the moon as an egg, and Khaleesi herself has three dragon eggs which she would like to hatch.
  
• Sun is a male symbol, which works well with Khal Drogo and his association with the sun and stars. Perhaps Khaleesi sees some correlation in herself as the female counterpart to sun as Moon, and Sun and Moon must merge in order for dragons to be hatched from the eggs she coddles.
  
• Drogo later calls his Khaleesi “moon of my life” just as she calls Drogo “my sun and stars”.
  

SYMBOLOGY OF THE COLOR SILVER

AN: I already analyzed SILVER AND GOLD as colors in the first thread, so I am just posting SILVER again to remind us how much the symbology applies to Daenerys, especially with her silver hair, her filly silver, Drogo’s silver bells, and the silver MOON which is associated with Dany as the FEMALE aspect of the celestial bodies and the EGG aspect, the source of DRAGONS according the Doreah.

When opposed with GOLD (masculine), Silver is usually feminine.

Silver often represents the moon, virginity, purity, the QUEEN. The culmination of these symbols can be seen in the Greek goddess Artemis, twin sister of Apollo, the SUN God. She was one of the few virgin goddesses, the moon was her symbol, and she hunted with silver bow and arrows. http://www.umich.edu...l/S/silver.html

Dany's skin was flushed and pink when she climbed from the tub. Jhiqui laid her down to oil her body and scrape the dirt from her pores. Afterward Irri sprinkled her with spiceflower and cinnamon. While Doreah brushed her hair until it shone like spun silver, she thought about the moon, and eggs, and dragons.

• The spa treatment Khaleesi receives from her slave girls is not unlike some of the spa options one can receive today when visiting such an institution. She is rubbed down with oil and anointed with fragrances.
  
• Again, we have a reference to Dany’s hair shining like spun silver, which intimates the silver moon shining in the night sky.
  

• That Khaleesi contemplates “singly” the moon, the eggs, and the dragons, we must guess how her mind’s eye is evaluating their significance individually then apply it to the whole – from the specific to the general.
  
• IMO, Khaleesi is contriving her night time love-making with Khal Drogo beneath the moon so that she can conceive a child, and through her pregnancy she MAY believe that she will be fulfilled with a child, and/or that she MAY nurture the dragon eggs as well and give them the gift of life simultaneously with her first-born.
  

After a simple meal, Khaleesi invites Doreah to stay and eat with her while sending all her other maids away. She needs Doreah for her knowledge of pleasing a man because Doreah’s background involved exercises in the art of love-making. I suspect Dany wants to stimulate her husband so that he will impregnate her because she is determined to conceive a child.

The moon rises high, and Drogo stands in Daenerys doorway in surprise because she is waiting and ready and hot for him. She drops her sleeping silks and leads her man outside: "This night we must go outside, my lord," she told him, for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man's life must be done beneath the open sky.

Khal Drogo followed her out into the moonlight, the bells in his hair tinkling softly. A few yards from her tent was a bed of soft grass, and it was there that Dany drew him down. When he tried to turn her over, she put a hand on his chest. "No," she said. "This night I would look on your face."

• Daenerys uses her sexuality to arouse Drogo and to control him, for when he tries to take her from behind, she refuses to comply and tells him that she wishes to look upon his face! Oh, that’s hot!
  

There is no privacy in the heart of the khalasar. Dany felt the eyes on her as she undressed him, heard the soft voices as she did the things that Doreah had told her to do. It was nothing to her. Was she not khaleesi? His were the only eyes that mattered, and when she mounted him she saw something there that she had never seen before. She rode him as fiercely as ever she had ridden her silver, and when the moment of his pleasure came, Khal Drogo called out her name.

• Khaleesi and Drogo have an audience, a full house, and it must be titillating to perform for a crowd if she is a babe and he is a mega-hunk, so watching these two engage in intimacy would be real entertainment for the khalasar. Moreover, Martin hints at Khaleesi learning some new tricks that will enflame Drogo’s passion.
  
• Note that Daenerys MOUNTS Drogo – we have Daenerys ON TOP for the first time, riding him fiercely, more fiercely than she had ever ridden her own horse.
  
• Yikes! Sound Effects! Drogo calls out her name so lost in his lust, and I am sure Martin politely left out all the references to sweat, to grunts, to sighs, to moans, and all other such informative modifications.
  
• I may date myself, but so what. If you are familiar with Pamela Anderson, a former Baywatch babe with ample endowments, a Playboy centerfold in multiple issues and reprints, former wife of Tommy Lee, a two-timing rocker whose enormous body part impressed those who pirated a copy of a notorious sex tape featuring the two newlywoods kanoodling on their honeymoon. Well, I NEVER saw this video – I only heard of it, and the E! Network ran a bio on Pamela Anderson, and I confess I watched in amazement, mouth hanging opened, as she kept going back into surgery to have her breasts enlarged. One time she had the implants removed, and that lasted less than a year. She went back to her surgeon to have the largest implants medically allowed for her height, weight, and such. So when I envision this scene in my mind, sweet Khaleesi is morphed into the Pam bombshell, and I see her in all her feigned sexiness, tossing her head wildly, arching her back, and making the earth move beneath them. [Pamela Anderson was a recent contestant on Dancing With the Stars, All Stars, where she performed her signature Somba, a dance with lots of wild hip gyrations, hair tossing, and steamy facial expressions – it is this “PAM” I see riding Drogo. I can even see her cracking Jhogo’s whip in wild abandon!]
  

They were on the far side of the Dothraki sea when Jhiqui brushed the soft swell of Dany's stomach with her fingers and said, "Khaleesi, you are with child."

"I know," Dany told her.

It was her fourteenth name day.

• This tasty little scene is Martin’s way of letting the readers know that Khaleesi’s seduction worked – and what bittersweet irony – she confirms her pregnancy on her fourteenth nameday.
  

[Alia of the knife]

AGOT Daenerys III Chapter 24 Overall

AN: I tackled this POV with some reservation because I fell out with Dany after the way she treats her dragons. However, I am amazed by the wealth of information I found in a careful look at this POV, and I am ashamed to admit I had forgotten a great deal about her story arc. Needless-to-say, I discovered a great deal, and now I SEE where other posters are coming from when they make a case for Dany and Jon’s parallel journeys and when they draw comparisons between the Others and their wights with the Ghost Grass and the direwolves with the dragons [eggs]. So I apologize in advance – I was hoping to be uninspired, which would allow me to write a shorter post. I have a feeling I will be composing another “big one”.

SUMMARY

In Danerys’ third POV, we meet a “new” Daenerys, a young girl evolving into a Khaleesi, even requesting that others address her according to her rank as the wife of Khal Drogo, a horselord. Khaleesi gives orders to Ser Mormont to command her khas, including her delusional brother Viserys, so that she can enjoy the beauty around her, notably the Dothraki Sea. Khaleesi reflects on how difficult her adjustment has been, but she dreams of a fire-breathing dragon whose flames consume her; consequently, she adapts to her new role, growing stronger and bolder with each day, both her mind and her body adjusting to the new demands put upon her. Drawing strength from her eggs, Khaleesi distances herself from her cruel brother Viserys whom she comes to realize is a pitiful thing and no dragon, ill-fit to rule the Seven Kingdoms, ill-fit to lead men into battle, ill-fit to do much of anything, truly. After Viserys disrespects his sister in the presence of Ser Mormont and her khas, Khaleesi humiliates him by forcing him to “walk” instead of ride to camp. Furthermore, Khaleesi’s new found confidence emboldens her, which she proves when she leads her husband outside their sleeping tents at night to make mad, passionate love beneath the sky with only the moon, stars, and the entire Khalasar in audience to mark their intimate moment which proves to be “fruitful”.

FIRST SENTENCE

The Dothraki sea," Ser Jorah Mormont said as he reined to a halt beside her on the top of the ridge.

• This first sentence introduces the Dothraki sea, another visionary creation of the author Martin and a land of mystery and symbology.

• The first sentence also informs us on the location of the khalasar in Essos, providing us with a geographical reference to Martin’s land of ice and fire.
  
• At Khaleesi’s side is Ser Mormont, not her brother nor her husband, which also gives us insight into her character development: she has grown closer to her “bear” since her last POV.
  

FYI: THE WIKI ON THE DOTHRAKI SEA

“The Dothraki Sea, according to the Wiki of Ice and Fire, is a “vast inland region on the continent of Essos, located east of the Free Cities. Its landscape of steppes and plains is home to the nomadic Dothraki equestrian people, who constantly battle each other and raid surrounding lands.”

“Save for Vaes Dothrak there are no roads, hills, or cities, leaving an ocean of unbroken rippling grass, for which the Dothraki Sea is named. Over a hundred types of grass grows on the plains, that often grow thick and taller than a man's head and from afar look like a sea, as it rolls like waves in the breeze.^[1][2] Some rivers run through the lands, though they are often shallow and shift with the seasons; overall sand is more prevalent than water.”

“Its only city, an ancient ruin called Vaes Dothrak, lies at the heart of the Sea and is home and heart of the Dothraki people and culture. Other than that it is largely empty with packs of wild dogs, herds of free-ranging horses and rare hrakkar. http://awoiaf.wester...hp/Dothraki_Sea

CLOSE READING ANALYSIS OF DAENERYS III

Beneath them, the plain stretched out immense and empty, a vast flat expanse that reached to the distant horizon and beyond. It was a sea, Dany thought. Past here, there were no hills, no mountains, no trees nor cities nor roads, only the endless grasses, the tall blades rippling like waves when the winds blew. "It's so green," she said.

• The Dothraki sea is “immense”, reaching to the horizon and beyond, and Martin aptly employs water imagery and language to depict this location for us. In this passage, the blades of grass ripple like waves; moreover, the wind becomes a characterization worthy of further discussion because “wind” is important in the sailing of vessels upon the water.

• Along with the water and nautical references, Martin suggests “drowning” through Viserys who meets up with Jhogo’s whip. When the whip coils around his neck, he cannot catch his breath much like the scenario of a victim who is submerged in water and cannot surface to catch a breath.
  
• I also checked out the symbology of “grass” and “green”, and these passages follow:
  

GRASS

Grass is the symbol for usefulness;

• The Khaleesi serves a purpose for her brother and for Khal Drogo, which authenticate her usefulness.
  

it might represent native land, or, when pulled, surrender or conquest of a land or territory.

• The Dothraki sea is the native land of the Dothraki, the heart of their culture; furthermore, the khals war against one another, which leads to surrender and conquest, and these victories may occur on the Dothraki sea.
  

Commonness, submission, lower caste of people, sign of defeat.

• The commonness of the Dothraki is highlighted by the remarks and observations supplied by others; in this POV, Viserys calls his sister a “horselord’s slut” and he calls her khas “Dothraki dogs”.
  
• The Dothraki may represent the lower caste of people because they seemingly bond with their horses, live a nomadic lifestyle, and love to engage in battle.
  
• I do not associate “defeat” with Khal Drogo or Dany; however, Viserys is cowed by his sister in the tall grasses, and with the association in this POV of a SNAKE to Viserys, Martin teases us by suggesting that Viserys IS a “snake in the grass”.
  

Evanescence; quick to grow but may soon be gone.

• Green grass is a “summer thing” where I live, so through the passage of the seasons, we may observe the brevity of well-manicured lawns. In its relevance to our story, we have the waning of the long summer as winter approaches and the advent of the long night.
  
• Dany’s girlhood is evanescent, for in this POV we see how she changes as she grows closer to her husband’s people and their ways.
  

Also love, taking life easy, as in Yeats and Blake.

• The grass as love correlates to Dany’s deepening affections for Khal Drogo. They make mad, passionate love on a bed of “grass”, and when he gives Dany his seed, Dany’s womb is “fertilized” – so “seed” and “fertilization” work nicely in the grass symbology.
  
• 
  

Under the grass is a term commonly associated with death.

• Grass may represent death in a society that buries their dead beneath the earth, but Drogo and Dany share the idea of a funeral pyre instead of cairns or crypts. Therefore, “death” and the grass foreshadow Viserys end: when Dany abandons him in the Dothraki sea, even taking his horse, he disappears beneath the blades as Dany moves farther away from him.
  

http://www.umich.edu...ml/G/grass.html

GREEN

inexperience, hope;

• Dany marries Khal Drogo without knowledge or experience of her wifely duties

• Dany’s new attitude is built on hope as are her dreams for the future.
  

new life, immaturity;

• Dany adopts a “new life” with the Dothraki people, and she carries “new life” inside her.
  
• Immaturity: Viserys behaves in an immature fashion as his sister grows wiser. He foolishly demands repayment for a debt: he wants the gold crown Drogo promised when he sold his sister to him for wife.
  
• Dany is “immature” in many ways – she needs to be schooled by Doreah on how to pleasure her husband; she foolishly holds her brother in high regard, giving validation to his threat of waking the dragon and his pining for his lost kingdom: in this POV, Dany matures and sees her brother true.
  
• Martin likes to use “green” to describe those who are “newbies” to a task, such as when Benjen tells Jon his is a green boy and not ready to range across the Wall.
  

a combination of blue and yellow,

• I know these two colors, when mixed together, make the color green, but I am not able to find these colors joining in any respects relevant to the Dothraki sea and Dany. Ser Jorah does mention blue and yellow grasses, but they do not unite to make green.
  

it mediates between heat and cold and high and low;

• The mediation between heat and cold is “solid” for Martin’s series is called “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Dany is also the dragon and therefore linked to heat just as Jon Snow is a Stark of Winterfell, an agent of the cold north.
  
• So many things can relate to “high and low” in the Land of Ice and Fire, but in this POV, Dany gives commands from a ridge, elevated above her khas and her brother. High and low may suggest status, as we have the exiled prince and princess of the House Targaryen in the Dothraki sea rather than draped in silks and adorned in jewels in King’s Landing.
  
• 
  

it is a comforting, refreshing; it is the color of plant life.

• Khaleesi removes her boots to stand barefoot in the grass because the feel of it is comforting and refreshing, especially between her toes.
  

• The Isle of Faces is guarded by the order of “Green Men”. I am speculating that these “green” men have an association with “plant life” since this isle is home to weirwoods. I suspect, hesitantly, that these green men are not inexperienced in their task – they are “well-seasoned”, and the “green” somehow relates to the greenseers and the greendreams, who also are allianced with the CotF, aspects of nature, magic, Bloodraven, and Bran.
  
• 
  

• My literature teachers also said that “green” represents jealousy, at least as far as Shakespeare is concerned, for he coined the expression of “jealousy” as a “green-eyed” monster. In Daenerys’ third POV, the “green-eyed monster” is her brother Viserys who now resents Dany’s status in the Dothraki community. Viserys’s envy extends to others, or anyone who has better circumstances than himself.
  

"Here and now," Ser Jorah agreed. "You ought to see it when it blooms, all dark red flowers from horizon to horizon, like a sea of blood.

• The blooming red flowers and the simile comparing those flowers to a “sea of blood” evoked many associations for me, and here are a few:
  

• The field of poppies in the Wizard of Oz that Dorothy and company must cross over to reach the Emerald City.
  
• Aaron, with Moses, turning the Nile waters to blood in an attempt to convince Pharoah of God’s powers.
  
• God parting the Red Sea for Moses and company who are fleeing the Egyptians hot-footing it behind them.
  

Come the dry season, and the world turns the color of old bronze. And this is only hranna, child. There are a hundred kinds of grass out there, grasses as yellow as lemon and as dark as indigo, blue grasses and orange grasses and grasses like rainbows. Down in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, they say there are oceans of ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback with stalks as pale as milkglass. It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the damned. The Dothraki claim that someday ghost grass will cover the entire world, and then all life will end."

That thought gave Dany the shivers. "I don't want to talk about that now," she said. "It's so beautiful here, I don't want to think about everything dying."

"As you will, Khaleesi," Ser Jorah said respectfully.

• I wish to draw a few parallels with Daenerys’ POV and Jon’s POV: 1) Daenerys and Ser Jorah Mormont look from a ridge at the Dothraki sea of green grass in a fashion similar to Jon Snow and Tyrion looking from “the edge of the world” out at the haunted forest defined as “a wall of night”. 2) The ghost grass that glows in the dark and is possessed with the spirits of the damned remind me of the Others and their minions with their blue eyes and seemingly reanimated state. 3) Daenerys’ thoughts about the east reveal “rumors” of strange creatures: “It was said that manticores prowled the islands of the JadeSea, that basilisks infested the jungles of Yi Ti, that spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their arts openly in Asshai, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible sorceries in the black of night.” These “entities” bring to mind the dangers believed to lurk in the lands beyond the Wall, like the Others, the wights, the giants, the grumkins, the snarks, the skinchangers, etc. However, we learn in Bran’s POV that the mythical direwolves had vanished around the same time as the dragons BUT amazingly the Starks come upon a litter of direwolf pups on execution day. Consequently, in the minds of the readers, we realize that if direwolves are indeed a reality, then certainly the dragons are a reality, or will be a reality, in Khaleesi’s future. 4) Martin personifies the Wall, Winterfell, the wind, and more just as he personifies the wind “breathing” through the blades of grass. 5) Even though Daenerys shivers when Ser Jorah speaks of the dying grasses, Martin discloses her relationship with fire, heat, flame, and dragons; likewise, Jon Snow is defined in terms of “ice and cold” as a bastard of Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell – even his name depicts an arctic environment: “Snow”. The Stark’s house sigil is the direwolf, and Jon Snow’s direwolf is named “Ghost”, an appellation shared with the “ghost” grass that Ser Jorah speaks of. 6) Daenerys removes her boots so that her bare feet are exposed to the grass and the dirt. In a similar fashion that is rather a “stretch”, Tyrion and Jon remove their gloves to shake hands, bare flesh touching bare flesh. Somehow the idea of the bare skin in contact with “something” implies a mystic communion of some kind: Dany in the grass emphasizes her acceptance and marriage to the Dothraki people and their culture. Tyrion and Jon shaking hands is a demonstration of friendship, or the joining of two rival houses, the Starks and the Lannisters. 7) Dany draws comfort and strength from her dragon eggs just as Jon draws comfort from Ghost. 8) Both are rejuvenated in their darkest moments of despair, both find strength in their respective sources, and both change their ways of looking at their plights. 9) Daenerys and Jon Snow are the victims of the whims of others, and neither is allowed a voice in his/her path for his/her future. Daenerys is sold to Khal Drogo by Viserys for a crown, and Jon is sent to the Wall primarily because of Catelyn’s desire to rid her family of the bastard. 10) Both display survivors’ instincts and mentally and physically adapt to their lots and their environments.
  

She heard the sound of voices and turned to look behind her. She and Mormont had outdistanced the rest of their party, and now the others were climbing the ridge below them.

• Ironically, Daenerys’ party, including her brother, are both symbolically “behind” and “beneath” her, and she and Ser Jorah rode out ahead of them.
  
• Daenerys hears the “sound of voices”, and Martin utilizes auditory language to emphasize Viserys’ annoying voice which will accost the ears with his screaming and sobbing and whining in this POV. On the other hand, the singing dragon is not an unpleasant noise, from what little I can garner from Martin’s description later.
  

Her handmaid Irri and the young archers of her khas were fluid as centaurs,

• The simile comparing Irri and the archers as fluid as centaurs conveys how they are one with their horses, united in movement just as centaurs are a mythological creature that are part man and part horse.
  
• Martin says “fluid” which fits the water imagery of the Dothraki sea.
  

but Viserys still struggled with the short stirrups and the flat saddle. Her brother was miserable out here. He ought never have come. Magister Illyrio had urged him to wait in Pentos, had offered him the hospitality of his manse, but Viserys would have none of it.

• Martin shows through visual images and other means that Viserys is not fitting in with the Dothraki people at all. In this instance, we have a picture of Viserys struggling to sit a horse.
  
• Martin reveals that Magister Illyrio “urged” Viserys to remain in Pentos, foreseeing Viserys’ misery among the horde.
  
• We see in Visery’s refusing Illyrio’s hospitality Viserys’ stubbornness.
  

He would stay with Drogo until the debt had been paid, until he had the crown he had been promised. “And if he tries to cheat me, he will learn to his sorrow what it means to wake the dragon,” Viserys had vowed, laying a hand on his borrowed sword. Illyrio had blinked at that and wished him good fortune.

• This is brilliant – and even funny, the portrait of Viserys puffing himself up, daring to threaten safely from afar Khal Drogo, even boasting that Drogo will be sorrowful IF he wakes the dragon. Ooooh! Khal Drogo better watch out! BUT the brilliance is in Viserys laying his hand on the BORROWED SWORD. Viserys does not even have a weapon of his own with which to duel the Khal.
  
• Daenerys must realize Illyrio’s diplomacy when he wishes Viserys “good fortune” rather than warning the arrogant Viserys that he is out of his league with Khal Drogo.
  

Dany realized that she did not want to listen to any of her brother's complaints right now. The day was too perfect. The sky was a deep blue, and high above them a hunting hawk circled. The grass sea swayed and sighed with each breath of wind, the air was warm on her face, and Dany felt at peace. She would not let Viserys spoil it.

• Daenerys does not want to listen to Viserys’ complaints because she is having a mystic communion with nature, relishing the beauty around her, and Viserys’ whining will only spoil her peace and quiet.
  
• The hawk circling overhead may be part of the environment, but it nods to dragons in the future, for aren’t dragons bird-like in their structure? plus they have wings and hunt their prey from overhead.
  
• The grass “swaying” is nautical for boats sway on the water’s surface, and the grass sighs, which is Martin personifying the Dothraki sea as he does other inanimate objects in other POV’s.
  
• The “breaths” of wind is another nautical touch, plus personification. This wind denotes serenity whereas the wind at the Wall tried to undress Tyrion.
  

"Wait here," Dany told Ser Jorah. "Tell them all to stay. Tell them I command it."

The knight smiled. Ser Jorah was not a handsome man. He had a neck and shoulders like a bull, and coarse black hair covered his arms and chest so thickly that there was none left for his head. Yet his smiles gave Dany comfort. "You are learning to talk like a queen, Daenerys."

"Not a queen," said Dany. "A khaleesi." She wheeled her horse about and galloped down the ridge alone.

• Daenerys “commands” that her khas stay behind, and her assuming a position of authority by confidently voicing her demands reveals how she is maturing and learning to fill her new role as a Khaleesi. Mormont even tells her she is learning to talk like a Queen.
  
• Daenerys dismisses the title of QUEEN in preference for KHALEESI, a sign that she has come to accept her new husband, his people, and their land.
  
• The unflattering description of Ser Jorah intimates a big hairy beast, so we have the beauty Khaleesi and her Bear, the beast: “Beauty and the Beast”. This combination is usually popular with some readers.
  

The descent was steep and rocky, but Dany rode fearlessly, and the joy and the danger of it were a song in her heart. All her life Viserys had told her she was a princess, but not until she rode her silver had Daenerys Targaryen ever felt like one.

• Khaleesi rides fearlessly, enjoying the danger with a “song in her heart”. The song indicates contentment and pleasure, and the word “song” appears in the title of the series “A Song of Ice and Fire”.
  
• Daenerys finally feels like a princess, a transformation she attributes to riding her silver.
  
• Later, Khaleesi narrates her recollection of an inspiring dragon dream, and the dragon sings to her.
  

At first it had not come easy.

• Compelled by her evil brother Viserys to marry Khal Drogo, Daenerys suffers in the demands placed upon her in her new life with a strange husband and an even stranger people and culture. Her body is riddled with sores and blisters from riding horseback day in and day out, and she cries herself to sleep nightly. She has no relationship with Drogo during the day, even forced to dine alone or with her slaves or her brother and Ser Jorah. Drogo comes to her near morning to ride her like a wild stallion, which leaves her aching and bruised and too exhausted to sleep.
  

Day followed day, and night followed night, until Dany knew she could not endure a moment longer. She would kill herself rather than go on, she decided one night . . .

• Just when Daenerys commits to killing herself, she has a dream that turns her entire life around.
  

DANY’S DRAGON DREAM

Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her, She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

• This dream foreshadows the conflagration in Daenerys’ final POV.
  
• Viserys’ absence from this dream also hints at future events.
  
• The description of the dragon parallels the colors of one of her dragon eggs and the colors of one of her dragons.
  
• Scarlet and black are connected to her brother Rhaegar’s black armor, his breast-plate encrusted with rubies.
  
• Daenerys’ blood on the dragon MAY be the blood that results from a live birth of a child since Daenerys will symbolically be the mother of dragons. Her blood on the dragon MAY also represent a transference of her “pain” onto the dragon who seems to heal her physically and mentally by assuming this pain.
  
• Martin reinforces the water imagery in its eyes of “pools” of magma and in this baptism by fire: a “jet” of fire “cleanses” and “scours” her and her blood “boils” and turns to “steam”.
  
• Martin personifies the dragon fire that “swallows” Daenerys, and she opens her arms to embrace it as if it is a lover or a long lost friend or family member.
  
• The dragon fire symbolically “burns” away the “old” Daenerys as she seemingly molts like a snake or a bird, her skin sloughing away to expose her new and improved self: now fiercer and stronger.
  
• In her dragon dream, the “dragon” awakens inside her, so in Daenerys she achieves the very thing that her brother Viserys threatens will happen to him when he temper is aroused – “do you want to wake the dragon?” Daenerys’ inner dragon wakes just as Viserys’ boast of a waking dragon fizzles.
  
• Daenerys’s dream MAY also be a subconsciously inspired vision, a product of her coping mechanisms, and the dragon and his fire are manifestations of her hope for a better future. I liken this to Dany being served “lemons” from which she makes “lemonade”.
  

And the next day, strangely, she did not seem to hurt quite so much. It was as if the gods had heard her and taken pity. Even her handmaids noticed the change. "Khaleesi," Jhiqui said, "what is wrong? Are you sick?"

• Daenerys notices on the very next day that her pain has lessened, and for some reason, her change prompts one of her hand maid to ask her if she is ill. I would think Daenerys’ appearance might improve with her new attitude.
  

"I was," she answered, standing over the dragon's eggs that Illyrio had given her when she wed. She touched one, the largest of the three, running her hand lightly over the shelf. Black-and-scarlet, she thought, like the dragon in my dream. The stone felt strangely warm beneath her fingers . . . or was she still dreaming? She pulled her hand back nervously.

• Daenerys stands over her dragon eggs when she announces that she WAS sick, which implies that she is no longer.
  
• Daenerys proves her brilliance when she notices that one of the dragon eggs is the same colors as the dragon who appeared in her dream.
  
• For some reason, Daenerys rationalizes now and later on the warmth she feels when she touches the dragon egg.
  

From that hour onward, each day was easier than the one before it. Her legs grew stronger; her blisters burst and her hands grew callused; her soft thighs toughened, supple as leather.

The khal had commanded the handmaid Irri to teach Dany to ride in the Dothraki fashion, but it was the filly who was her real teacher. The horse seemed to know her moods, as if they shared a single mind. With every passing day, Dany felt surer in her seat. The Dothraki were a hard and unsentimental people, and it was not their custom to name their animals, so Dany thought of her only as the silver. She had never loved anything so much.

• Daenerys attributes her advancement in equestrian skills to her filly who teaches her by sharing her moods and her mind, which directly corresponds to the relationships several of the Starks form with their direwolves.
  
• The Dothraki custom of not naming their horses reminds me of the wildling’s custom of not naming their children until their survival is more certain.
  

Daenerys’ days continue to improve, and she moves to the head of the khalasar so that she can see the beauty of the land around her before it is spoiled by the great horde’s passing. Martin provides a “miniature” travel log of Daenerys’ journey, mentioning elk, tigers, and lemurs, the latter having silver fur and purple eyes, mirroring the Targ signature traits. Her agony fades and she finds a sweetness in her pain; moreover, she looks forward to her saddle in the days and her husband in the nights.

Daenerys reaches the bottom of the ridge where the grasses rose tall around her. She is blessedly alone, losing herself in the green. She is thankful for this brief reprieve because in the khalasarm she was never alone since her hand maids slept with her and her khas guarded her from harm.

Martin also emphasizes the animalism of the Dothraki by endowing them with ferocity and power – Khal Drogo is seemingly part stallion, and he and the other Dothraki men take their women from behind, doggy-style, just as many animals in the wild mate. Martin even describes the sex act in terms of a wild ride on the back of a stallion.

her brother was an unwelcome shadow, day and night. Dany could hear him on the top of the ridge, his voice shrill with anger as he shouted at Ser Jorah. She rode on, submerging herself deeper in the Dothraki sea.

• Daenerys thinks of Viserys as an unwelcome shadow who follows her day and night. “Shadows” are another motif in the series. Later, Ser Jorah will describe Viserys as the shadow of a snake.
  
• She hears his voice shrill with anger from her position, so she rides out, “submerging herself deeper into the Dothraki sea” just as a swimmer might submerge herself beneath the waters of an ocean. She is trying to make herself disappear so that she can escape Viserys.
  

The green swallowed her up. The air was rich with the scents of earth and grass, mixed with the smell of horseflesh and Dany's sweat and the oil in her hair. Dothraki smells. They seemed to belong here. Dany breathed it all in, laughing. She had a sudden urge to feel the ground beneath her, to curl her toes in that thick black soil. Swinging down from her saddle, she let the silver graze while she pulled off her high boots.

• Martin personifies the grass as it “swallowed” her up.
  
• Khaleesi appreciates the smells permeating the air for they distinguish the Dothraki and they belong in the grass sea: scents of earth and grass, horseflesh, oil, and sweat.
  
• On impulse, she dismounts to feel the ground beneath her feet and the thick black soil between her toes.
  

Viserys came upon her as sudden as a summer storm, his horse rearing beneath him as he reined up too hard. "You dare!" he screamed at her. "You give commands to me? To me?" He vaulted off the horse, stumbling as he landed. His face was flushed as he struggled back to his feet. He grabbed her, shook her. "Have you forgotten who you are? Look at you. Look at you!"

• Viserys accosts her like a “summer storm”, another water image for sailors often are surprised by sudden storms and squalls.
  
• Displaying his ineptitude for horsemanship, Viserys reins his horse too hard, then vaults off and stumbles, but he still grabs his sister and demands that she look at herself, her feet bare and her body clothed in Dothraki attire.
  
• Viserys’ words foretell another inquisitor who will demand to know “who you are!” He asks, “Have you forgotten?” In the House of Black and White, the priest quizzes Arya often, “Who are you?” Contrary to Viserys urging Dany to “remember” who she is, Arya is trying to forget her name so she can serve the Faceless Men as an assassin.
  

Dany did not need to look. She was barefoot, with oiled hair, wearing Dothraki riding leathers and a painted vest given her as a bride gift. She looked as though she belonged here. Viserys was soiled and stained in city silks and ringmail.

• Martin documents Viserys’ decline in status and respect through his actions and his folly of a wardrobe. His soiled silks and borrowed sword are out of place in the Dothraki horde, and the horse people laugh behind his back. Dany dons leathers and a painted vest, assimilating among her husband’s people, learning their language, wearing their attire, becoming one with her horse, and so on, whereas Viserys holds on desperately to his alleged birthright, flaunting that he is king and that his laws must be obeyed. Dany matures, Viserys regresses.
  
• Dany looks as if she belongs in the Dothraki sea, blending into the environment while Viserys unsuitable attire and his shrill cries bring attention to him, but the scorn and resentment he receives from his audience is filled with mockery and derision.
  
• Daenerys is beginning to see the truth of Viserys, and she notes that his city silks are soiled and stained, and he does not cut a figure in his ringmail.
  

He was still screaming. "You do not command the dragon. Do you understand? I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, I will not hear orders from some horselord's slut, do you hear me?" His hand went under her vest, his fingers digging painfully into her breast. "Do you hear me?"

• Viserys continues to screami as he has a “temper tantrum” waged against Khaleesi who dares to defy him. He brings ridicule upon himself by claiming to be the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms while behaving like a selfish, spoiled child who grabs his sister’s breast and gives her a “titty-twister”.
  
• Viserys ironically keeps asking if Dany hears him when he is speaking in her face, but she could hear his screaming when he was far away from her and Ser Jorah.
  

Dany shoved him away, hard.

Viserys stared at her, his lilac eyes incredulous. She had never defied him. Never fought back. Rage twisted his features. He would hurt her now, and badly, she knew that.

Crack.

• Daenerys has never refused her brother, especially in front of witnesses. She gives in to his rage and abuse, afraid that he will wake his dragon and cause her pain. Now, emboldened by her dragon dream and her dragon eggs, Dany is FIERCE – she even shoves him “hard”, and I do not think she oft put hands in her brother.
  
• Dany braces for the hurt Viserys’ eyes promise, and she may forget she has bodyguards now that she is Khaleesi.
  

• Dany’s bloodrider saves her from Viserys’ twisted rage by cracking his whip, the coil taking Viserys around the throat. With a yank, Viserys sprawls on the grass choking. The Dothraki riders laugh at him and Jhogo asks if Khaleesi wishes him dead. Dany says no, refusing to take an ear to teach him respect as Quaro thinks.
  

Her brother was on his knees, his fingers digging under the leather coils, crying incoherently, struggling for breath. The whip was tight around his windpipe.

• The self-proclaimed great Viserys is brought down by his sister who actually saves him from the khas.
  
• Viserys struggles to breath, an appropriate state for an inexperienced swimmer thrust into the tall grasses of the Dothraki sea.
  

Jhogo gave a pull on the whip, yanking Viserys around like a puppet on a string. He went sprawling again, freed from the leather embrace, a thin line of blood under his chin where the whip had cut deep.

• Viserys is likened to a puppet on a string, in this case Viserys is manipulated by Jhogo who yanks on the whip to spin him around and send him sprawling in the dirt.
  
• The roles of brother and sister are reverse: Viserys is now the puppet on a string who must cow to Khaleesi’s wishes.
  

"I know you did," Dany replied, watching Viserys. He lay on the ground, sucking in air noisily, red-faced and sobbing. He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been.

• Dany’s epiphany is complete for she sees Viserys true, as a poor, pitiful thing who had controlled her with fear. She realizes that he was always a pitiful thing, and wonders why she had not seen it before.
  
• Her fears of waking Viserys’ dragon disappears leaving a hollow place inside her.
  
• Viserys “sucks in” the air noisily, which is pertinent to a floundering swimmer.
  

"Take his horse," Dany commanded Ser Jorah. Viserys gaped at her. He could not believe what he was hearing; nor could Dany quite believe what she was saying. Yet the words came. "Let my brother walk behind us back to the khalasar." Among the Dothraki, the man who does not ride was no man at all, the lowest of the low, without honor or pride. "Let everyone see him as he is."

• Newly emboldened Daenerys is going to give a little payback for all the injustices her older brother has waged against her. She delivers unto him a serious punishment in the Dothraki culture: she takes his horse, which is akin to taking the car keys from a popular teen on prom weekend. All the Dothraki will laugh at him, mock him, disrespect him even more than they had before.
  
• Khaleesi strips Viserys of his pride and honor, making him the lowest of the low and no man at all.
  
• 
  

"No!" Viserys screamed. He turned to Ser Jorah, pleading in the Common Tongue with words the horsemen would not understand. "Hit her, Mormont. Hurt her. Your king commands it. Kill these Dothraki dogs and teach her."

• Even Khaleesi’s lesson in humility does not mute her brother who orders Ser Jorah to hit her, to HURT HER and to kill the Dothraki DOGS. He reminds Ser Jorah that his KING commands him, which is also ironic because any drip of power Viserys had has dried up and blown away, and now Daenerys holds all the cards. Ser Jorah will prove this is so, for he ignores the orders of Viserys, whom he swore allegiance to, in favor of the Khaleesi, a woman and a Dothraki slut.
  

The exile knight looked from Dany to her brother; she barefoot, with dirt between her toes and oil in her hair, he with his silks and steel. Dany could see the decision on his face. "He shall walk, Khaleesi," he said. He took her brother's horse in hand while Dany remounted her silver.

• Martin presents two images, and Ser Jorah must needs choose between these Targaryen children who both claim power and who both have issued a command.
  
• Silk and steel should trump barefoot, sweaty Dothraki slut, but Ser Jorah chooses the Khaleesi and takes Viserys’ horse from him.
  
• 
  

Viserys gaped at him, and sat down in the dirt. He kept his silence, but he would not move, and his eyes were full of poison as they rode away. Soon he was lost in the tall grass. When they could not see him anymore, Dany grew afraid. "Will he find his way back?" she asked Ser Jorah as they rode.

• Viserys plops down in the dirt, which is appropriate for he is lower than dirt.
  
• The SHADOW OF A SNAKE has eyes FULL OF POISON. He is LOST in the tall grass, silently slithering, and Martin makes funny that Viserys is literally and figuratively A SNAKE IN THE GRASS.
  
• Despite all her brother’s cruelties, Daenerys still shows affection for him when she worries about whether he will find his way back to camp.
  

"Even a man as blind as your brother should be able to follow our trail," he replied.

• Ser Jorah confirms that Viserys is blind, at least symbolically, for he lives in a fantasy world where he demands respect and expects donations to his cause without giving any service in return. But even though Viserys is blind to such things, he has enough sense of self-preservation to follow the ruts left by the horde to safety rather than allowing night to fall by pouting in the grasses, leaving himself vulnerable to attack by other Dothraki or wild animals.
  
• Khaleesi fears his pride may prevent his return, but Ser Jorah laughs at this notion and replies, “It is hard to drown in the Dothraki sea, child." “Drown” continues the water imagery.
  

Dany saw the truth of that. The khalasar was like a city on the march, but it did not march blindly. Always scouts ranged far ahead of the main column, alert for any sign of game or prey or enemies, while outriders guarded their flanks. They missed nothing, not here, in this land, the place where they had come from. These plains were a part of them . . . and of her, now.

• Daenerys considers herself part of “them”, the Dothraki people, and she feels the plains are part of her as well.
  

"I hit him," she said, wonder in her voice. Now that it was over, it seemed like some strange dream that she had dreamed. "Ser Jorah, do you think . . . he'll be so angry when he gets back . . . She shivered. "I woke the dragon, didn't I?"

• Dany amazed herself when she stood up to Viserys and even defended herself, pushing him hard. Now it seems like a strange dream for she has no previous victory over her brother to reference from their past together. Daenerys had always done his will, obeyed him or suffered the consequences.
  
• Dany fears Viserys will retaliate, and she anticipates what is in store for her since she woke the dragon.
  

Ser Jorah snorted. "Can you wake the dead, girl? Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, and he died on the Trident. Viserys is less than the shadow of a snake."

• Ser Jorah comforts Dany by assuring her that Rhaegar, who is named the “last dragon”, died on the Trident, so she need not fear his ghost rising; and all of this talk of Dany’s deceased brother correlates to Dany’s dragon dream and her dragon egg.
  
• Mormont says that Viserys is lower than a shadow of a snake! [We always said “lower than a snake’s belly”.
  

His blunt words startled her. It seemed as though all the things she had always believed were suddenly called into question. "You . . . you swore him your sword . . . "

• Daenerys is taken aback by Ser Jorah’s candor, especially since he has sworn his sword to Viserys.
  
• Even though Dany herself thinks little of her brother, she is still startled to hear Ser Jorah, Viserys’ only ally, speak out against him.
  

"That I did, girl," Ser Jorah said. "And if your brother is the shadow of a snake, what does that make his servants?" His voice was bitter.

"He is still the true king. He is . . . "

Jorah pulled up his horse and looked at her. "Truth now. Would you want to see Viserys sit a throne?"

Dany thought about that. "He would not be a very good king, would he?"

"There have been worse . . . but not many." The knight gave his heels to his mount and started off again.

• Ser Jorah guides Daenerys to her conclusion that Viserys is not king material. Mormont even admits that there have not been many kings who as bad as Viserys WILL BE if he assumes the throne.
  

Dany rode close beside him. "Still," she said, "the common people are waiting for him. Magister Illyrio says they are sewing dragon banners and praying for Viserys to return from across the narrow sea to free them."

"The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends," Ser Jorah told her. "It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace." He gave a shrug. "They never are."

• Ser Jorah exposes the lies behind Magister Illyrio’s flattery, for he tells Viserys and maybe Dany that the common people are sewing dragon banners and praying for his return. If the people really wanted Viserys to return, they would have rallied and organized fund raisers to earn enough money to finance Viserys’ and Dany’s return home.
  
• Daenerys sees the truth in Ser Jorah’s explanation, for it makes sense to her that the common people have many hardships that occupy their thoughts and exhaust their limbs, so they have no energy left to follow the high lords as they play their “game of thrones”.
  

Dany rode along quietly for a time, working his words like a puzzle box. It went against everything that Viserys had ever told her to think that the people could care so little whether a true king or a usurper reigned over them. Yet the more she thought on Jorah's words, the more they rang of truth.

• Dany puzzles over Ser Jorah’s revelations, and she slowly acknowledges that they ring of truth and that Viserys has deliberately mislead her, OR that Viserys is delusional, which is quite possible since madness runs in the Targ bloodline.
  
• “They rang of truth” fits with the musicality of the series, “A Song of Ice and Fire”.
  

"What do you pray for, Ser Jorah?" she asked him.

"Home," he said. His voice was thick with longing.

"I pray for home too," she told him, believing it.

Ser Jorah laughed. "Look around you then, Khaleesi."

• Daenerys’ and Jorah’s shared wish for home is SO Wizard of Oz I can hear Dorothy saying “There is no place like home” while tapping her ruby slippers together.
  
• Ser Jorah tells Khaleesi that her home is now around her, and she wants to believe this herself, but another vision appears in her mind’s eye.
  

But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King's Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind's eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind's eye, all the doors were red.

• Daenerys sees King’s Landing burning with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window and all the doors are red.
  
• I am noting the continuation of the window and door symbology, and here Khaleesi seems to be receiving a vision that corresponds to her desires to be home.
  
• This vision feeds another that Dany thinks she sees later when she enters her tent:
  

As she let the door flap close behind her, Dany saw a finger of dusty red light reach out to touch her dragon's eggs across the tent. For an instant a thousand droplets of scarlet flame swam before her eyes. She blinked, and they were gone.

• Daenerys’ wish for home is answered when she sees a finger of dusty red light POINTING the way by identifying the dragon eggs as her means of fulfilling her wish, but Daenerys does not catch on.
  
• The 1000 “droplets” of scarlet flame swim before her continues the water imagery from her dragon dream and from the Dothraki sea, but these droplets of red also represent the 1000 red doors Dany sees in her mind’s eye.
  
• The scarlet and black pertain to Rhaegar’s black armor and ruby encrusted breast plate.
  

Stone, she told herself. They are only stone, even Illyrio said so, the dragons are all dead. She put her palm against the black egg, fingers spread gently across the curve of the shell. The stone was warm. Almost hot. "The sun," Dany whispered. "The sun warmed them as they rode."

• Once again, Daenerys dismisses the warmth of the egg, rationalizing the the long ride in the sun heated up the egg. IMO, the warmth of the shell or surface of the egg suggests that a life is growing inside it.
  
• Daenerys reminds herself that Illyrio said all the dragons are dead; therefore, she must banish any foolish notions of hatching live dragons from her eggs because the eggs are only stone, not viable hosts for life.
  
• I wonder when Dany will reason out that if Illyrio mislead hersand her brother about the common people breathlessly awaiting their return with hand-sewn banners to wave and a prayer in their heart, then Illyrio may be misleading her about the existence of dragons.
  
• Why does Illyrio gift Dany three eggs? What ulterior motive is lurking behind his carefully staged and executed acts and responses? How does he hope to use Dany and her dragons to his advantage? Did Illyrio gift Dany special dragon eggs? Are these dragon eggs somehow related to the dead Targaryen children? Who owned these eggs before Illyrio? What is their provenance?
  

"My brother will never take back the Seven Kingdoms," Dany said. She had known that for a long time, she realized. She had known it all her life. Only she had never let herself say the words, even in a whisper, but now she said them for Jorah Mormont and all the world to hear.

Ser Jorah gave her a measuring look. "You think not."

"He could not lead an army even if my lord husband gave him one," Dany said. "He has no coin and the only knight who follows him reviles him as less than a snake. The Dothraki make mock of his weakness. He will never take us home."

• Daenerys’ epiphany continues as she speaks the truths about Viserys’ incompetence: he is no leader who can command men, he has no money of his own to finance a war, he only counts one knight as a supporter, and that knight reviles him, and the Dothraki make fun of him for his weaknesses.
  

"Wise child." The knight smiled.

"I am no child," she told him fiercely. Her heels pressed into the sides of her mount, rousing the silver to a gallop. Faster and faster she raced, leaving Jorah and Irri and the others far behind, the warm wind in her hair and the setting sun red on her face. By the time she reached the khalasar, it was dusk.

• Ser Jorah calls Khaleesi “wise:” for she is beyond her years in understanding the flaws of human nature, and she now assesses her brother objectively to conclude that he will never make it home.
  
• Daenerys puts her inner dragon on display when she “fiercely” tells Ser Jorah that she is NO CHILD. Then she rides her silver, galloping non-stop to the khalasar by dusk, leaving her khas in the dust.
  

The slaves had erected her tent by the shore of a spring-fed pool. She could hear rough voices from the woven grass palace on the hill. Soon there would be laughter, when the men of her khas told the story of what had happened in the grasses today. By the time Viserys came limping back among them, every man, woman, and child in the camp would know him for a walker. There were no secrets in the khalasar.

• Daenerys speculates how the khalasar will react to the news that Viserys is a “walker”. She realizes that all the people will gossip about his low status, and that he will be scorned, no matter how much he claims to be a king or how much he demands his crown.
  

• Again, the fact that no secrets exist in a khalasar precedes a later observation, “There is no privacy in the heart of the khalasar”.
  

After returning to her tent, Dany orders a steaming bath in a big copper tub.

"Have you ever seen a dragon?" she asked as Irri scrubbed her back and Jhiqui sluiced sand from her hair. She had heard that the first dragons had come from the east, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai and the islands of the Jade Sea. Perhaps some were still living there, in realms strange and wild.

• Dany plays detective and quizzes Irri on what she knows about the existence of dragons.
  
• Khaleesi’s wishful thinking leads her to the assumption that dragons may still live somewhere in the east in a realm strange and wild. Since the direwolves lived beyond the Wall, it stands to reason that other dragons exist in the east. Bran even feels the presence of dragons in his 3E vision.
  

"Dragons are gone, Khaleesi," Irri said.

"Dead," agreed Jhiqui. "Long and long ago."

Viserys had told her that the last Targaryen dragons had died no more than a century and a half ago, during the reign of Aegon III, who was called the Dragonbane. That did not seem so long ago to Dany. "Everywhere?" she said, disappointed. "Even in the east?" Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer, and neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it back, but Dany had always heard that the east was different.

• We learn from Daenerys’ memory what Viserys told her about the Targaryen dragons dying off no more than 150 years ago. We can compare this to the direwolves that had disappeared beyond the Wall about 200 years ago. But neither Theon Greyjoy nor Viserys Targaryen are reliable sources; even so, there is only a 50 year difference in the stories, so maybe the disappearance of the direwolves and the dragons occurred simultaneously.
  
• We learn that magic died in the west as a result of the Doom of Valyria.
  
• Dany heard from other sources that may or may not have been reliable that the east was different, and that magic – and therefore dragons – may survive elsewhere in the east.
  
• Dany may be right, especially if the dragons and the direwolves are somehow linked.
  

Why shouldn't there be dragons too?

"No dragon," Irri said. "Brave men kill them, for dragon terrible evil beasts. It is known."

"It is known," agreed Jhiqui.

• Irri and Jhiqui agree that “it is known” that dragons are evil beasts who were slain by brave men.
  
• Both of the slave girls share information that is based on superstition, local legends, and the like. They are parrots and repeat what they hear others say, and they are not beyond exaggerating in their communications, although sometimes exaggeration seems a reality to some people. After telling the same tale several times, most people start to embellish the story to make it more entertaining.
  

"A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons came from the moon," blond Doreah said as she warmed a towel over the fire. Jhiqui and Irri were of an age with Dany, Dothraki girls taken as slaves when Drogo destroyed their father's khalasar. Doreah was older, almost twenty. Magister Illyrio had found her in a pleasure house in Lys.

• Khaleesi appears taken with Doreah’s story of the dragons coming from the moon. Since Doreah is older than Dany and her slave girls with a difference in age spanning six or seven years, it stands to reason that she may have acquired more information than the local Dothraki’s, especially because she worked in a pleasure house and probably had a big turnover of customers who brought news from lands near and far, including information about dragons.
  

Silvery-wet hair tumbled across her eyes as Dany turned her head, curious. "The moon?"

"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there were two moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return."

The two Dothraki girls giggled and laughed. "You are foolish strawhead slave," Irri said. "Moon is no egg. Moon is god, woman wife of sun. It is known."

"It is known," Jhiqui agreed.

• Even though Irri and Jhiqui giggle and make fun of Doreah’s response to Khaleesi’s inquiry, Dany’s interest is piqued by the allusion to the moon being an egg, and from the egg came the dragons.
  
• Since Dany is associated with the moon with her silver hair, she is further likened to the moon through Doreah’s reference to the moon as an egg, and Khaleesi herself has three dragon eggs which she would like to hatch.
  
• Sun is a male symbol, which works well with Khal Drogo and his association with the sun and stars. Perhaps Khaleesi sees some correlation in herself as the female counterpart to sun as Moon, and Sun and Moon must merge in order for dragons to be hatched from the eggs she coddles.
  
• Drogo later calls his Khaleesi “moon of my life” just as she calls Drogo “my sun and stars”.
  

SYMBOLOGY OF THE COLOR SILVER

AN: I already analyzed SILVER AND GOLD as colors in the first thread, so I am just posting SILVER again to remind us how much the symbology applies to Daenerys, especially with her silver hair, her filly silver, Drogo’s silver bells, and the silver MOON which is associated with Dany as the FEMALE aspect of the celestial bodies and the EGG aspect, the source of DRAGONS according the Doreah.

When opposed with GOLD (masculine), Silver is usually feminine.

Silver often represents the moon, virginity, purity, the QUEEN. The culmination of these symbols can be seen in the Greek goddess Artemis, twin sister of Apollo, the SUN God. She was one of the few virgin goddesses, the moon was her symbol, and she hunted with silver bow and arrows. http://www.umich.edu...l/S/silver.html

Dany's skin was flushed and pink when she climbed from the tub. Jhiqui laid her down to oil her body and scrape the dirt from her pores. Afterward Irri sprinkled her with spiceflower and cinnamon. While Doreah brushed her hair until it shone like spun silver, she thought about the moon, and eggs, and dragons.

• The spa treatment Khaleesi receives from her slave girls is not unlike some of the spa options one can receive today when visiting such an institution. She is rubbed down with oil and anointed with fragrances.
  
• Again, we have a reference to Dany’s hair shining like spun silver, which intimates the silver moon shining in the night sky.
  

• That Khaleesi contemplates “singly” the moon, the eggs, and the dragons, we must guess how her mind’s eye is evaluating their significance individually then apply it to the whole – from the specific to the general.
  
• IMO, Khaleesi is contriving her night time love-making with Khal Drogo beneath the moon so that she can conceive a child, and through her pregnancy she MAY believe that she will be fulfilled with a child, and/or that she MAY nurture the dragon eggs as well and give them the gift of life simultaneously with her first-born.
  

After a simple meal, Khaleesi invites Doreah to stay and eat with her while sending all her other maids away. She needs Doreah for her knowledge of pleasing a man because Doreah’s background involved exercises in the art of love-making. I suspect Dany wants to stimulate her husband so that he will impregnate her because she is determined to conceive a child.

The moon rises high, and Drogo stands in Daenerys doorway in surprise because she is waiting and ready and hot for him. She drops her sleeping silks and leads her man outside: "This night we must go outside, my lord," she told him, for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man's life must be done beneath the open sky.

Khal Drogo followed her out into the moonlight, the bells in his hair tinkling softly. A few yards from her tent was a bed of soft grass, and it was there that Dany drew him down. When he tried to turn her over, she put a hand on his chest. "No," she said. "This night I would look on your face."

• Daenerys uses her sexuality to arouse Drogo and to control him, for when he tries to take her from behind, she refuses to comply and tells him that she wishes to look upon his face! Oh, that’s hot!
  

There is no privacy in the heart of the khalasar. Dany felt the eyes on her as she undressed him, heard the soft voices as she did the things that Doreah had told her to do. It was nothing to her. Was she not khaleesi? His were the only eyes that mattered, and when she mounted him she saw something there that she had never seen before. She rode him as fiercely as ever she had ridden her silver, and when the moment of his pleasure came, Khal Drogo called out her name.

• Khaleesi and Drogo have an audience, a full house, and it must be titillating to perform for a crowd if she is a babe and he is a mega-hunk, so watching these two engage in intimacy would be real entertainment for the khalasar. Moreover, Martin hints at Khaleesi learning some new tricks that will enflame Drogo’s passion.
  
• Note that Daenerys MOUNTS Drogo – we have Daenerys ON TOP for the first time, riding him fiercely, more fiercely than she had ever ridden her own horse.
  
• Yikes! Sound Effects! Drogo calls out her name so lost in his lust, and I am sure Martin politely left out all the references to sweat, to grunts, to sighs, to moans, and all other such informative modifications.
  
• I may date myself, but so what. If you are familiar with Pamela Anderson, a former Baywatch babe with ample endowments, a Playboy centerfold in multiple issues and reprints, former wife of Tommy Lee, a two-timing rocker whose enormous body part impressed those who pirated a copy of a notorious sex tape featuring the two newlywoods kanoodling on their honeymoon. Well, I NEVER saw this video – I only heard of it, and the E! Network ran a bio on Pamela Anderson, and I confess I watched in amazement, mouth hanging opened, as she kept going back into surgery to have her breasts enlarged. One time she had the implants removed, and that lasted less than a year. She went back to her surgeon to have the largest implants medically allowed for her height, weight, and such. So when I envision this scene in my mind, sweet Khaleesi is morphed into the Pam bombshell, and I see her in all her feigned sexiness, tossing her head wildly, arching her back, and making the earth move beneath them. [Pamela Anderson was a recent contestant on Dancing With the Stars, All Stars, where she performed her signature Somba, a dance with lots of wild hip gyrations, hair tossing, and steamy facial expressions – it is this “PAM” I see riding Drogo. I can even see her cracking Jhogo’s whip in wild abandon!]
  

They were on the far side of the Dothraki sea when Jhiqui brushed the soft swell of Dany's stomach with her fingers and said, "Khaleesi, you are with child."

"I know," Dany told her.

It was her fourteenth name day.

• This tasty little scene is Martin’s way of letting the readers know that Khaleesi’s seduction worked – and what bittersweet irony – she confirms her pregnancy on her fourteenth nameday.
  

The interesting thing about this, is that I associate both Arya and Lyanna with lunar beauty and the night.

Pale, white skin, dark ebon hair and silver eyes.

[Fire Eater]

Nice job, evita.

They forded three wide placid rivers and a fourth that was swift and narrow and treacherous

Dany goes to three places so far in the series: Vaes Dothrak, Qarth and Slaver's Bay; Dany manages to get to those places with complacency from the people there. The fourth river could be Westeros where she won't find the complacency and will be the hardest part of her journey.

[Little Wing]

Re: Arya's chapter

Just a few observations: I find it interesting how early Arya notices how different everything and everyone is outside of Winterfell. It's like a veil has been lifted from her eyes and her childhood heroes, who were all that in Winterfell, fell short when it came to trying to stop Lady's and Mycah's deaths. Also, it's interesting that, although mad at Sansa, she doesn't mention her when thinking of how everyone has changed in their behaviour - she's not surprised at Sansa's actions over the whole Mycah incident. She's angry, but not really surprised. But she is surprised at the men of Winterfell just standing by and letting Lady and Mycah be killed. The disillusion and realization that the men she considered heroes, brave and honorable are just... men and not heroes, comes at a good time and is quite useful, as we see later on. It may be one of the things that helped her survive, this early disillusion. We see Arya missing Winterfell already - it takes Sansa two books later to come to the same conclusion and build her snow castle... better late than never. No one's perfect...

I agree with kissd that in talking with Arya, Ned finally lets his instincts make the call, as he should have been doing all along (but hey, as I said, no one's perfect) and he lets Arya be Arya, with Lyanna and her tragic end in mind. His parenting is not the best, as he himself admits, but he does teach compassion - he said he could break Needle if he wanted to, but he doesn't. Ned doesn't exercise his power over Arya, although, as he says, he can if he wants to. The point is that one should not destroy something only because they know they can. Especially if the thing they can destroy easily is something that makes someone else happy. He teaches compassion by example here, and this reminds me, along with "the pack survives" speech, the other lessons, short as they were in the books, Ned taught his children - we hear about the advice he gave Robb in this chapter, there was the talk about being brave when afraid with Bran. Jon also remembers Ned's pearls of wisdom. Ned's lessons live on when his children (Jon being his child in a non-biological way) remember them, and off the top of my head I can recall Jon and Arya remembering them. I think Bran too. I think these things may be a ray of light for these characters when they find themselves in dark places, doing, or deciding to do questionable things... so even if they falter morally, they will find their way up again :grouphug: I must keep this in mind when re-reading... does Sansa have Ned's lessons flash-backs? Rickon is too young to have heard Ned's lessons...

On to Dany (grudgingly...) be back later.

[Little Wing]

Lately some have been questioning Dany's treatment of her brother in light of the new sample chapter and speculating on how Westeros will look upon what happened to Vis... Not a fan of his (but then, who is?) but I am in favor of not looking at things in terms of either black or white.

In re-reading this chapter (my second re-read and I'm still surprised by some things, re-reads - everyone should do them...) I am surprised at myself in taking a compassionate look at poor ol' Vis here. In all his foolishness, there is something of note there - him trying to, violently though, make Dany see that she's losing herself in becoming Dothraki. I'm not saying he's right, but it does seem like Dany couldn't wait to become someone else. And I guess Vis was afraid she'll become a Khaleesi instead of a Targ. The identity issue, and who the characters are in their own eyes is quite a theme in itself - all major characters go through this. I am the dragon. I am a brother of the Night's Watch. I am No One. I am Reek. Hodor!(heheh) etc... Vis wants her to stay herself, a Targ. Her change marks an independence as well, and Vis wants her to be dependent on him as they go along in their fight for Westeros. This also plays a part - she is finding her own way, not as a Targ, and he cannot follow, and literally in this chapter... The thing that struck me as kind of sad here was that a Targ, a member of this royal, grand dynasty, knows less about dragons than these random Dothraki serving maids who almost give her a lesson on dragons, complete with the ever present and annoying - it is known... I mean, man oh man, that is so sad and humiliating, and I haven't seen it before. And now this drowning in the Dothraki sea as Dany drowns in their culture and becomes one of them more and more seen in this light kind of makes me more sympathetic to Vis trying to make her remember who she was. If only he at least wasn't as violent a jerk he was... Families and misunderstandings. Gotta love those :bang:

I'd also like to note that Dany is prone to escapism - she tries to escape her brother's shouting and screaming heard from afar. She does a lot of that after things don't go her way in Meereen in Dance. Oh, those figs sure need to be nibbled on Dany, Astapor doesn't matter... :ack: Also, she turns on/abandons those who are her kin or important to her in a way, once they prove to be too dangerous or simply do not serve her anymore - Vis, her dragons, Astapor... I wonder if she'd turn on Illyrio, seeing as how it's him who gave her the dragon's eggs - I mean, she owes him a lot, but she turned on people who matter to her before, her dragons included (locking them away)... the way her track record has been, I'd be careful if I were Illyrio... She truly is like a dragon biting her own tail... In her defence, she did have tough choices before her, but she certainly proved to be a child however quick she was to deny that in this chapter and snapped at Jorah... Touchy...

[Alia of the knife]

EDDARD V

THE INVESTIGATION

As the chapter opens, we see Ned sitting with Pycelle enquiring about Jon Aryns death.

Ned asks him about the events leading up to Jons death, the state of his health, what his mental state was like, and if he had any enemies.

Pycelle looks at Ned through heavily lidded eyes, as if they were almost closed, but before he engages Ned, he calls for ice milk as they are in the latter stages of the Summer, which Ned finds unpleasant.

Pycelle tells Ned that Jon was well loved, and had no enemies. He continues to tell Ned about his concerns that Realm affairs had finally taken a toll on Jon, and also of his concerns about how his family life impacted him, with a high-strung wife and sickly son.

Finally Pycelle tells Ned about the book that Jon took an interest in and gives it to him.

At the end of their conversation, Ned again questions Pycelle about the posibility that perhaps other factors could be at play, such as poison.

Pycelle was immediately defensive and outraged, more so of the fact that poison was a "womans" weapon, but nonetheless assured Ned that he didn't think it was the case.

(I have often gotten frustrated with Ned about his inability to not say damaging things, or being too open with his information. Even if he thought it was poison, he shouldn't have said it out loud, or let Cersei know what he knew, but did as Stannis did, and take cover in his fortress, letting the ravens do the talking).

THE VISIT:

When Ned goes back to his Quarters, he is informed that Little Finger wants to see him. Ned invites LF in, and he immediately perches upon the window seat and then launches into fine-tuned barbs, smiling a mocking smile throughout.

Little Finger then goes on to point out to Ned all the people watching him, the Spider, the Lioness and Ned thanks him, wondering aloud if he was wrong to not trust him.

Little Finger then informs him that not trusting him was the smartest thing Ned could do.

NED CROWNS A QUEEN:

Ned comes upon Arya while she is balancing on one toe on the hand rails of the steps. Ned is afraid she'll fall, but she tells him that a Water Dancer never falls.

Arya asks if Bran will ever walk again, or be a Knight, and Ned lists all the things he can be, but not a Knight, nor will he walk.

When they found out that Bran would live, they all went to godswood in KL. Ned sat vigil, Sansa fell asleep, and later Arya curled up to Ned under his cloak, and went to sleep.

(Ned makes a pointed reference to Cat’s gods during this chapter, clarifying they weren’t his).

Ned says something very intrigueing about Aryas future when she asked if she could be the same things Bran wanted to be, but Ned told her that one day she would marry a KING, (not a nice guy, not a lord, a high lord, or even a Prince, but a KING), rule his castle, and their sons would be great men.

(Somehow this reference made me think of Arthur and his Roundtable, and the kind of legendary figures they were, bringing justice and organization out of chaos- Could Arya be a Matriarch of such powerful men)?

Foreshadowing, and did Ned have prophetic Wolf dreams as well, but ignored them?

SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS:

Throughout, there were references to both the physical world and the metaphysical one.

Kings Landing is figuratively a jungle. Between the Spider, the Lions, the Wolves, and the birds, there is always something watching and ready to strike.

- Cats.

Arya balances dangerously on a precipice, but isn't worried about falling. Arya curls up to Ned under his cloak for warmth and comfort.

Pycelle regards Ned under heavily-lidded eyes as if asleep, but one gets the feeling that Pycelle is very, very aware, and guarded.

Perhaps even stalking Ned himself to find out how much he knows.

- Birds

Littlefinger "perches" on Neds window seat, and regards him mockingly, allowing Ned to think he sees and hears what he wants to see and hear.

He tells him the truth, but Ned thinks it's a lie and puts his trust in Little Finger.

Milk and Flowers:

Pycelle spoke much of offering the Milk of Poppy to help ease the pain, or to pave the way to death.

Poppies have long been used as a symbol of sleep, peace and death.

Milk on the other hand is the food of he gods, immortality and is associated with the moon.

At first glance, useing both milk and poppy together seems to contradict one another, as one produces death, while the other produces life and abundence.

Together however, they are both signs of immortality even as the poppies produce death, or the "next journey."