Barristan's Trainees

[Roswell]

I look forward to reading how these boys develop.  He thinks six might eventually become knights and master knightly weapons.  I'm not so sure it's a good idea to take them away from what they use best but rather allow them to continue to use what they're good at and give them additional training in what he calls the weapons of the knight: sword, lance, shield.

1. Which of the boys will be the total ass kicker, in your opinion?
2. Which fighting style do you like better?
3. Which of the knightly skills will be hardest to learn?

[Lion of the West]

I don't remember enough of them to answer the three questions, but I have a soft spot for the Red Lamb. I'm really looking forward to how he'll progress and turn out. And I'm hoping somewhat that maybe he, or someone else, will one day make it back to the Lamb People and perhaps help them to turn themselves into warriors so that they are not victimized any longer.

PS: I don't want the Lhazarene to turn into militant imperialists but self defence would be useful for them to get a hold of.

[Leo of House Cartel]

Some of the highest praise in the entire story right here..

 A few might well be ready. The boy from the Basilisk Isles, for a start. Tumco Lho. Black as maester's ink he was, but fast and strong, the best natural swordsman Selmy had seen since Jaime Lannister.  - ADWD, The Kingbreaker.

[Darth Sidious]

9 hours ago, Leo of House Cartel said:

Some of the highest praise in the entire story right here..

 A few might well be ready. The boy from the Basilisk Isles, for a start. Tumco Lho. Black as maester's ink he was, but fast and strong, the best natural swordsman Selmy had seen since Jaime Lannister.  - ADWD, The Kingbreaker.

Tumco

12 hours ago, The Transporter said:

I look forward to reading how these boys develop.  He thinks six might eventually become knights and master knightly weapons.  I'm not so sure it's a good idea to take them away from what they use best but rather allow them to continue to use what they're good at and give them additional training in what he calls the weapons of the knight: sword, lance, shield.

1. Which of the boys will be the total ass kicker, in your opinion?
2. Which fighting style do you like better?
3. Which of the knightly skills will be hardest to learn?

1. All of them in their own way.  Tumco?
2. The Lash
3. Proper riding for most.  I expect the Dothraki boys have this one down.  Swordsmanship is another tough skill.

[Ser Duncan of Flea Bottom]

Red Lamb and Tumco Lho are very likely to become knights in the future, well, they have a great master, but they also seem to have natural talent.

[Deepbollywood Motte]

I just finished a reread of all the books last night and in the last Barristan (the Queen's hand) chapter he takes two of his "new-made knights" into the dungeons to speak with Arch and Drink. So at least two are already knighted. It doesn't say who but IMO Red Lamb and Tumco Lho are the best contenders. They seemed to be the furthest in their training. 

I like to see these young trainees to start a knightly tradition adapted to the cultures of the east but realisticly this won't happen. I think they will probably die fighting or Daenerys will take them with her to wherever she goes next.

[Shouldve Taken The Black]

On 04/02/2018 at 1:35 PM, LionoftheWest said:

PS: I don't want the Lhazarene to turn into militant imperialists

I do. Imagine being conquered by the "Lamb People". Insult to injury right there. 

[The Commentator]

The "knightly" way of fighting is not perfect.  It couldn't hurt to bring other skills into the training.  A philosophy adjustment couldn't hurt.  That guy at the Vale should not have lost to someone like Bronn.  This Tumco looks like he has a lot of street smarts.  A lot of the knights could benefit from good, old fashioned street smarts.  Duncan had it and it compensated for his lesser skills.  A lad like Tumco has the skills and the street smarts will be formidable.

[LindsayLohan]

8 hours ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

The "knightly" way of fighting is not perfect.  It couldn't hurt to bring other skills into the training.  A philosophy adjustment couldn't hurt.  That guy at the Vale should not have lost to someone like Bronn.  This Tumco looks like he has a lot of street smarts.  A lot of the knights could benefit from good, old fashioned street smarts.  Duncan had it and it compensated for his lesser skills.  A lad like Tumco has the skills and the street smarts will be formidable.

I wonder if even Barristan has any idea what he's doing:  He's changing the way knights are going to approach training and fighting forever, if this is successful.  Incorporation of different weapons, diversified training, but mixed with Selmy's sense of knightly courtesy and honor dialed up to 11.  Selmy knows Danaerys needs knights, but he might not be aware of the long-term impact "Selmy's School of Chivalry and Advanced Personal Combat" will have on the world. 

[Seams]

This is a good topic. I've recently been seeing parallels between Brienne and Ser Barristan, and it crossed my mind that Brienne training Pod is like Barristan training his young squires:

Brienne cut two wooden swords from fallen branches to get a sense of Podrick’s skills. The boy was slow of speech but not of hand, she was pleased to learn. Though fearless and attentive, he was also underfed and skinny, and not near strong enough. If he had survived the Battle of the Blackwater as he claimed, it could only be because no one thought him worth the killing. “You may call yourself a squire,” she told him, “but I’ve seen pages half your age who could have beat you bloody. If you stay with me, you’ll go to sleep with blisters on your hands and bruises on your arms most every night, and you’ll be so stiff and sore you’ll hardly sleep. You don’t want that.”

“I do,” the boy insisted. “I want that. The bruises and the blisters. I mean, I don’t, but I do. Ser. My lady.”

So far he had been true to his word, and Brienne had been true to hers. Podrick had not complained. Every time he raised a new blister on his sword hand, he felt the need to show it to her proudly. He took good care of their horses too. He is still no squire, she reminded herself, but I am no knight, no matter how many times he calls me “ser.”

(AFfC, Brienne III)

I like the idea that this new generation of knights will be different from mainstream knights. This may be more true of Barristan's young men, getting their training outside of Westeros. I think Pod is supposed to be compared and contrasted with his relative, Ser Ilyn Payne. I hope Pod will have a different life than Ser Ilyn has had.

I wonder whether each of Ser Barristan's young charges can be compared with another knight we have already encountered in the series?

I just re-read the passage of Barristan interacts with his trainees, and it gives us some clues to work with. I'll paste it in so we can all refresh our memories:

He spent that afternoon with his orphans, even took up sword and shield himself to provide a sterner test for a few of the older lads.

Some of them had been training for the fighting pits when Daenerys Targaryen took Meereen and freed them from their chains. Those had had a good acquaintance with sword and spear and battle-axe even before Ser Barristan got hold of them. A few might well be ready. The boy from the Basilisk Isles, for a start. Tumco Lho. Black as maester’s ink he was, but fast and strong, the best natural swordsman Selmy had seen since Jaime Lannister. Larraq as well. The Lash. Ser Barristan did not approve of his fighting style, but there was no doubting his skills. Larraq had years of work ahead of him before he mastered proper knightly weapons, sword and lance and mace, but he was deadly with his whip and trident. The old knight had warned him that the whip would be useless against an armored foe … until he saw how Larraq used it, snapping it around the legs of his opponents to yank them off their feet. No knight as yet, but a fierce fighter.

Larraq and Tumco were his best. After them the Lhazarene, the one the other boys called Red Lamb, though as yet that one was all ferocity and no technique. Perhaps the brothers too, three lowborn Ghiscari enslaved to pay their father’s debts.

That made six. Six out of twenty-seven. Selmy might have hoped for more, but six was a good beginning. The other boys were younger for the most part, and more familiar with looms and plows and chamber pots than swords and shields, but they worked hard and learned quickly. A few years as squires, and he might have six more knights to give his queen. As for those who would never be ready, well, not every boy was meant to be a knight. The realm needs candlemakers and innkeeps and armorers as well. That was as true in Meereen as it was in Westeros.

As he watched them at their drills, Ser Barristan pondered raising Tumco and Larraq to knighthood then and there, and mayhaps the Red Lamb too. It required a knight to make a knight, and if something should go awry tonight, dawn might find him dead or in a dungeon. Who would dub his squires then? On the other hand, a young knight’s repute derived at least in part from the honor of the man who conferred knighthood on him. It would do his lads no good at all if it was known that they were given their spurs by a traitor, and might well land them in the dungeon next to him. They deserve better, Ser Barristan decided. Better a long life as a squire than a short one as a soiled knight.

As the afternoon melted into evening, he bid his charges to lay down their swords and shields and gather round. He spoke to them about what it meant to be a knight. “It is chivalry that makes a true knight, not a sword,” he said. “Without honor, a knight is no more than a common killer. It is better to die with honor than to live without it.” The boys looked at him strangely, he thought, but one day they would understand.

(ADwD, The Kingbreaker)

Ser Barristan refers to the boys as his orphans. That brings to mind Yoren's wagon train with the orphans from Flea Bottom. So maybe we are supposed to compare some of these boys to the people who traveled with Arya and Gendry. The reference to ink to describe Tumco Lho may be a parallel to Lommy Greenhands, who was a dyer's apprentice and literally had green hands.

I remember that Khal Drogo had a whip - I think one may have been burned with him in the pyre? Dany received a named whip - the Harpy's Fingers - with a dragonbone handle, when she took possession of the Unsullied. Larraq also uses a trident, which might mean a comparison to Meera.

The Red Lamb is "all ferocity and no technique," according to Ser Barristan. Unfortunately, this sounds like the description of Ramsay Bolton's fighting style.

The three lowborn Ghiscari enslaved to pay their father's debts sound a bit like the poachers Ser Jorah sold into slavery instead of sending them to the Night's Watch.

[Lord Varys]

One hopes they live to fight another day. There are forces in the making there, not just with Barristan's lads but also the freedmen companies that have formed in Meereen. They are not training in the chivalric arts, of course, but they might still develop into fierce soldiers in their own right. They have their freedom now, after all, and more than enough reason and motivation to crush the slavers.

[Ponzi Scheme]

Fighting skill is not the whole of it.  Adequate skill is important but then that prerequisite only has to be met.  The best guard is one willing to give up his life for the person they protect.  

[Lion of the West]

On 2018-02-05 at 4:22 PM, Shouldve Taken The Black said:

I do. Imagine being conquered by the "Lamb People". Insult to injury right there. 

And who are they supposed to conquer? The Ghiscari who Danaerys is resetting from slavery or the nomadic horse-based Dothraki? Better just end the cycles of slavery, conquest and domination than just let it roll on and on and on.

[Shouldve Taken The Black]

10 hours ago, LionoftheWest said:

And who are they supposed to conquer? The Ghiscari who Danaerys is resetting from slavery or the nomadic horse-based Dothraki? Better just end the cycles of slavery, conquest and domination than just let it roll on and on and on.

I was making a joke, not setting out an alternative geopolitical theory for Planetos. 

[Moiraine Sedai]

On 2/5/2018 at 10:15 PM, Lord Varys said:

One hopes they live to fight another day. There are forces in the making there, not just with Barristan's lads but also the freedmen companies that have formed in Meereen. They are not training in the chivalric arts, of course, but they might still develop into fierce soldiers in their own right. They have their freedom now, after all, and more than enough reason and motivation to crush the slavers.

It makes one consider if this is just the beginning of something bigger.  Essos becoming more like Westeros.  

[Lion of the West]

5 hours ago, Shouldve Taken The Black said:

I was making a joke, not setting out an alternative geopolitical theory for Planetos. 

Ok. Thanks for clearing it up for me.