The Dragon Demands

It explicitly says that while Jaehaerys was harsh with Saera, he wasn't beyond forgiving her - until she outright fled Westeros. Barth even thinks he just wanted to send her to a sept to straighten her out for a few years, not permanently. That and her behavior was really negative and unrepentant: "Hey, Maegor could do it, why can't I?" isn't the thing to say to your father whose 2 brothers were killed by his evil uncle Maegor. Saera never even asked to come back. Probably wasn't a high point of Jaehaerys's life, but it was a bad situation all around. ....I'd hoped we'd see a few more direwolves when Jaehaerys visited the North, given that they hadn't died out by this time period south of the Wall. Other maester records don't doubt giants etc. exist - they do have bones, cave paintings, etc. as physical evidence.

Regarding the Great Council of 101 AC (it fits here more than in the Dance thread): There were 14 claimants great and small. 9 lesser claimants were soon dismissed. The final five were Vaegon (discounted due to his maester's vows, and he didn't even press the claim), Rhaenys and her daughter Laena (dismissed for being female), and the two finalists, Viserys and Laenor. A full list of the 9 minor claimants wasn't given. Some included: 3 bastard sons of Saera Targaryen, each by different men. One looked just like a young Jaehaerys, one was the bastard son of a Triarch of Old Volantis (it seems Saera finally got her elephant). Saera herself didn't even press her claim - though Vaegon didn't press his claim either yet was included in this count, so let's say she counts as a fourth. A man who provided parchments (is that meant to be real proof?) that he was a descendant of Gaemon the Glorious of Dragonstone, through a younger daughter who wed a minor lord, and on for seven generations. Is this real? It seems real. A red-haired man claiming he was a bastard son of Maegor, product of raping an innkeeper's daughter (they believed the rape happened, but did doubt Maegor ever fathered a child) due to his apparent sterility). A man falsely claiming to be a bastard son of Jaehaerys himself. Seized and imprisoned when the king proved him a liar. Those are seven claimants. Who were the other two?

Vaegon strikes me as just "cold and aloof". Autism would be indicated by stuff Jaehaera had - outright lack of social cues. Vaegon learned enough social cues to get by, if perfunctory. Moreover, disinterest in sex isn't really a symptom of autism (he even ignored books of erotica, so it wasn't social anxiety either). A lot of people now are saying he just sounds like he was "Asexual and Aromantic" (….how did Aromantic become a thing? Everybody needs somebody, no man is an island...) At any rate, while he might plausibly have had "really high functioning Asperger's/Autism" to the point that it was indistinguishable...it was indistinguishable. He must have had other stuff going on: Asexual. He doesn't really have any of the markers of the autistic spectrum (narrow interests, patterns, extreme social blindness). He KNEW social cues, he just didn't really care.

i wish we had a few more links between Deria and Morion Martell

Ser...just because she thinks there’s a king beyond the wall doesn’t mean there is one. And many of the kings you listed were stated to have lived thousands of years ago.

I just finished this through the beginning of Heirs / death of Alysanne. Broadly divides into 2 halves, the first half ended with the Shivers winter plague and bookended by Third Dornish War: after that it’s about their trials with their children, and had many timeskips (48 to 62 were covered heavily, nearly linear). The Shivers plague is also a big chapter break given just how many characters died. I took a lot of handwritten notes, proceeding slowly. Will raise any points from those when I finish.

going through my handwritten notes.... I was very confused by something about Joffrey Doggett. It was pretty much implied that the surviving Warrior's Sons outside of Westeros "chose" or elected a new Grand Captain to replace the loss of the previous one in the trial of seven. But then on page 97 (US Hardcover) it says that Joffrey Doggett was the "self-proclaimed" Grand Captain of the Warrior's Sons. What? Arguably the High Lickspittle did order them all to disband, but LONG BEFORE that, Doggett visited Oldtown when it was still ruled by the original High Septon to receive his blessing. That "self-proclaimed" seem contradictory. yeah...even within the book, on page 83 it introduces Ser Joffrey by saying that the Warrior's Sons "chose" a new Grand Captain, but then also on page 114, it says he "took on the mantle" of Grand Captain.

Others have already noted, I assume, that the line in F&B now reads "Visenya brought fire and blood to the riverlands" and not "the Reach"? Fixing the prior error?

….did someone else already notice this somewhere else? A minor change from Sons of the Dragon. The novella version says "Though half a dozen hatchlings had been born amidst the fires of Dragonstone in the later years of Aegon’s reign." However, the Fire & Blood version says "Though a dozen hatchlings had been born amidst the fires of Dragonstone in the later years of Aegon's reign" (F&B - US hardcover page 57) The number of hatchlings has thus doubled. Probably a minor point....I myself was particularly obsessed with trying to figure out which dragons appeared when and lineages, but even I think this may be fruitless: simply, not every "hatchling" lived to maturity (see Rhaena of Pentos), some got eaten by the Cannibal, etc. But what caused the change?

My progress in the book is a bit slow.....(chuckle) I physically got it only 48 hours ago in the mail Tuesday night, it's Thursday now. Plus I was at work Wednesday. Two big factors slowing me down are 1 - I'm slowly taking handwritten notes as I go through, not just skimming, 2 - Thanksgiving holiday in the USA. You're not all in USA right? (shrug) This didn't merit its own thread I just didn't know where to post....I'll organize my notes better once I've finished and post to one of the compilation threads.... Crud, I'm only up to the year 55 AC or so....

Important. (I'm not being sarcastic - updated character appearances are always frustrating - such as when we retroactively learned that Rhaenyra's eldest 3 sons had brown hair, long after fanart had already been made) …..did she have grey hair during the Dance itself due to old age?

I'm confused regarding something said about Coryanne Wylde: that among her exploits: But from The World of Ice and Fire, it say that a plague ripped through the Basilisk Isles 77 years after the Doom of Valyria ( 114 BC - 77 = 37 BC) leaving them entirely abandoned for a century ( 100 - 37 = 63 AC or so), when they were re-settled by pirates. Coryanne was young when she went to Dragonstone in 50 AC, at the beginning of her career. But the Basilisks should have been deserted at the time. How is this reconciled? That she went to the Basilisks many years later? That the book should have said the Stepstones? It may cast doubt on the veracity of Sins of the Flesh: A Caution for Young Girls as a reliable source.

Quicksilver is interchangeably referred to with male or female pronouns. They should think it’s one or the other.

Yes, many were confused

Jaehaerys I's master of coin Rego Draz was a wealthy Pentoshi magister....shunned by the other magisters for being lowborn, a cutpurse mercenary that rose up from the streets (like Varys). The text even notes, like AGOT Daenerys I, that Pentoshi are "mongrels" "a mix of Andals and Valyrians, plus old slave stock from all over including nations that don't exist anymore". Elio & Linda themselves have stated that they actually came up with the background for Pentos in World of Ice and Fire: that alone among the (Non-Braavos) Free Cities, it might have been a pre-existing city; some Andal city or town that the Valyrians just absorbed (Lorath doesn't count, it was deserted). Whatever the case, Pentoshi do look like they visibly have a lot of Andal blood in them (but from slaves or pre-existing local elites who got absorbed is unclear). World book specifies that the Valyrians who settled in Andals were the lowest sort - working class back when Valyria HAD a working class: merchants and craftsmen. Not being nobles, they didn't really care about blood purity, so they freely intermingled with the locals. So....reading the text I wondered, why would Pentoshi magisters have an aristocratic bias against Rego Draz for his low birth? When Pentos not but 150 years before wasn't really that concerned about blood purity? On the other hand, however....thinking on it, even in the World book and novels, it is said that Pentos isn't just ruled by "magisters" (anyone wealthy enough to afford it) but about forty old-money families of magisters. Not "Valyrian nobility", but entrenched old money merchant families. So....at what point did Pentos shift from being a city that didn't really care about blood purity, to having its own entrenched aristocracy? How? Just...time? The entire Century of Blood was between Valyria and Jaehaerys's time - enough time for attitudes in Pentos to shift, and an entrenched aristocracy to form? I'm interested because it's one of the few cases in which we hear about NON-noble Valyrians, below even the non-dragonlord minor nobles like the Velaryons or Celtigars. Really just Free Holders, the free land owners out in the provinces.