The Meereense blot

[Makk]

I really liked that series of essays and agree with them strongly. From memory GRRM used pretty strong words to describe the essays. Exactly or perfectly. I'm not saying GRRM has stated that every single detail in the essays is completely correct, but I personally suspect most if not all is.

10 hours ago, Oana Becherescu said:

And what kind of disturbes me is that this essay implies that fighting to free slaves is bad

I don't think this is what the essays imply at all. They are saying you can't just snap your fingers and expect hundreds of years of culture to change. The transition is messy and the road to peace involved compromise, even when she knew it was wrong. Just because things were not completely black and white does not validate slavery.

[SeanF]

6 hours ago, Oana Becherescu said:

The mere definition of cohexisting implyes a harmony like ying and yang,light and dark,fire and ice,life and death.They are opposites but they do have an harmony.Remove one and will end in disaster.

 

I think you presume that the peace was real,while war ships are on Meereen's doors and the Yunkish had already summoned Volantene aid as @SeanF mentioned we see from Tyrion's POV.It's most likely that war will start before Dany retuns to Meereen

We can't really come to a definitive conclusion about Slavers Bay until we know the outcome of the War, and the aftermath. We've been waiting !nine years for that.

[Rose of Red Lake]

5 hours ago, CamiloRP said:

I think it's impossible for anyone to be fully anything. But he's reeeally pacifist still. And I think he doesn't consider stuff like the Vietnam war being a war worth fighting for for the Vietnamese 

Just my take but, I think he favors non-violent resistance and peace as the default with war as a last resort to end tyrannical rule. War that enhances a warlord's standing and power to make it easy for them to make more war is not just. Nor can the hard struggle of justice be entrusted to one person riding around on a nuclear warhead. I think he will have Dany fail in order to make these points--that nukes cause more problems than they solve, that absolute power corrupts, that the struggle for justice is long and slow, and that people can be easily fooled when hope is politicized. What can look like liberation can simply be someone on a power trip.

[The Lord of the Crossing]

13 hours ago, Oana Becherescu said:

Sorry if this has been asked or the topic does not fit here.I'm new and it's my first post.I've seen many praising this essay and saying that Martin gave it credit to Adam Feldman.I've read it and it didn't quite make sense to me.He stated that the peace was real but without text support and his interpretations about Daenerys character didn't seemed quite right.He sort of thinks of her like she's having double personality or that the fact she decides to end slavery with war (and to be honest,peace didn't quite work out well for the slaved didn't it?) it means she won't reason in Westeros.I think she will be capable to see the difference between Westeros and Essos.And what kind of disturbes me is that this essay implies that fighting to free slaves is bad.Don't get me wrong,war is war no matter the cause and it ain't pretty but I'm sure as hell I would like to fight for a cause that matters than to bow the head and look away when I can make a difference for the better.I know Martin is not pro war all the way but I saw interviews where he sayed that we also don't have to turn a blind eye to the injustice.

Finally,my question is : how much credit did Martin really gave to this essay?

A theory can be admired for the work it took and for the clarity with which it was presented, and still be wrong.  I read that essay.  It is rather long.  I do not believe the Ghiscari upper class (former slave owners) were serious about the peace.  They were waiting for Hizdahr to gain power and sure enough, they tried to assassinate Daenerys Targaryen.  Ghiscari and the Harpies wanted to do this in public by poisoning the locust.  I believe that essay even goes on to say that Barristan messed up when he arrested Hizdahr.  I do not hold it against people to spin a theory.  That is part of the past time and the entertainment outside of reading the novels.  But just because a lot of work went into it does not mean it is right.  Just look at how hard some of the fans on this forum try to smear Daenerys Targaryen and it always fails to gain much ground.  They put a lot of effort into it but then it fails.  A long, multi-page essay is not necessarily right.  If it takes that many words to build and support . . it is most likely incorrect. 

[SeanF]

11 hours ago, CamiloRP said:

I didn't know he stated that, but I still knew it wasn't, it's pretty obviously supposed to be the US invasion of Iraq

I think a better analogy (if one is trying to compare with real world history) is with the various revolutions that swept Europe, Spanish America, and Haiti, around the turn of the 19th century.  These revolutions were probably necessary, but brought war and tyranny, as well as freedom and progress, in their wake.

The backlash on the part of the Slavers resembles the various forms of White Terror and counter- revolution that were a feature of such conflicts.

[Dracul's Daughter]

11 hours ago, Makk said:

From memory GRRM used pretty strong words to describe the essays.

Can you send a link to that?

[Dracul's Daughter]

11 hours ago, Makk said:

I don't think this is what the essays imply at all. They are saying you can't just snap your fingers and expect hundreds of years of culture to change. The transition is messy and the road to peace involved compromise, even when she knew it was wrong. Just because things were not completely black and white does not validate slavery.

While I agree that you can't just snap fingers and reslove everything,I hardly believe that the slavers were willing to change.

[Hodor the Articulate]

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

I think a better analogy (if one is trying to compare with real world history) is with the various revolutions that swept Europe, Spanish America, and Haiti, around the turn of the 19th century.  These revolutions were probably necessary, but brought war and tyranny, as well as freedom and progress, in their wake.

The backlash on the part of the Slavers resembles the various forms of White Terror and counter- revolution that were a feature of such conflicts.

I mean, it makes more sense to compare abolition to abolition than to some unrelated war.

14 hours ago, CamiloRP said:

I didn't know he stated that, but I still knew it wasn't, it's pretty obviously supposed to be the US invasion of Iraq

Here's what GRRM has said on that subject:

“I’ve said many times I don’t like thinly disguised allegory, but certain scenes do resonate over time. Other people have made the argument, which is more contemporary, that it might have resonances with our current misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’m aware of the parallels, but I’m not trying to slap a coat of paint on the Iraq War and call it fantasy.” (x)

The Iraq War was a foreign power going in and removing their head of state, the pretext being that he was a threat to the US. I think parallels can be drawn... if you're looking at the situation in Slaver's Bay through the eyes of the slave masters. To the freedmen, Dany is a "mother" protecting her own. So I'd find it pretty problematic if George was indeed trying to equate Meereen and Iraq.

[CamiloRP]

6 hours ago, SeanF said:

I think a better analogy (if one is trying to compare with real world history) is with the various revolutions that swept Europe, Spanish America, and Haiti, around the turn of the 19th century.  These revolutions were probably necessary, but brought war and tyranny, as well as freedom and progress, in their wake.

The backlash on the part of the Slavers resembles the various forms of White Terror and counter- revolution that were a feature of such conflicts.

I don't know about the rest, but I can talk about Haiti's case as I studied a lot of that period of Haitian history because it's so cool, is that it was a revolution by slaves and conquered people against slavers and conquerers, there was no outside aid and no cultural clash, so it doesn't seem to fit as well as Iraq does.

[CamiloRP]

59 minutes ago, Hodor the Articulate said:

To the freedmen, Dany is a "mother" protecting her own. So I'd find it pretty problematic if George was indeed trying to equate Meereen and Iraq.

Yep, that always bugged me, I assumed it was bc of all the propaganda there is in the US and such. I'm glad to see it isn't

[SeanF]

2 minutes ago, CamiloRP said:

I don't know about the rest, but I can talk about Haiti's case as I studied a lot of that period of Haitian history because it's so cool, is that it was a revolution by slaves and conquered people against slavers and conquerers, there was no outside aid and no cultural clash, so it doesn't seem to fit as well as Iraq does.

The revolt was kick-started by Daenerys, and she has a few hundred sellswords, but the large majority of the people fighting the Slavers are ex-slaves.  Some of them are "foreign" but only in the sense that they were deported there.   The ratio of free to slave is similar to that of Haiti. Most of the Slavers' armies, however, are foreign, coming from places like Qarth, New Ghis, Tolos, or sellswords.  

I accept, there is no racial divide, as there was in Haiti.

[CamiloRP]

5 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The revolt was kick-started by Daenerys

And that changes the whole story, it's not just slaves fighting for themselves, it's not a successful revolution, it's an invasion with help from the slaves.

 

6 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The ratio of free to slave is similar to that of Haiti.

I doubt it's that bad, Haiti's ratio was something like ten thousand to one, it god that bad that to have children with slaves wasn't that looked down upon, while Meeren seems to have enough of a non slave population. They have workers that aren't slaves, the graces and more.

 

But the biggest difference is who rules after the conflict. In Haiti it was the former slaves, who are Haitian, therefore there's no cultural divide, in fact their religion and culture was better respected under the new leadership. While in Meeren the new ruler is Dany, a person that never set foot in Meeren (that we know of) and shares no culture with this people, causing her to disrespect it and produce a clash.

Also, in Haiti they didn't keep the slavers with them, they only caused them trouble from France, but if they had them in a Pyramid with them they would be all dead, which is what Dany should have done and what would have happened if the conflict in Meeren was a slave revolt.

 

[SeanF]

15 minutes ago, CamiloRP said:

And that changes the whole story, it's not just slaves fighting for themselves, it's not a successful revolution, it's an invasion with help from the slaves.

 

I doubt it's that bad, Haiti's ratio was something like ten thousand to one, it god that bad that to have children with slaves wasn't that looked down upon, while Meeren seems to have enough of a non slave population. They have workers that aren't slaves, the graces and more.

 

But the biggest difference is who rules after the conflict. In Haiti it was the former slaves, who are Haitian, therefore there's no cultural divide, in fact their religion and culture was better respected under the new leadership. While in Meeren the new ruler is Dany, a person that never set foot in Meeren (that we know of) and shares no culture with this people, causing her to disrespect it and produce a clash.

Also, in Haiti they didn't keep the slavers with them, they only caused them trouble from France, but if they had them in a Pyramid with them they would be all dead, which is what Dany should have done and what would have happened if the conflict in Meeren was a slave revolt.

 

Meereen fell because the slaves rose up in revolt.  The Unsullied were likewise, former slaves.  Daenerys has  no foreign army of any significance with her.

At various points, the Spanish did povide aid to the Haitians, in order to hurt the French.  Culturally, there remained a divide between the mixed race population, who dominated government, and the black population.

The ratio was 6/1 slave to free in Haiti, similar to Volantis.  It's unlikely to be much different in Slavers Bay.

I agree, if allowed to do so, the freedmen would give the Slavers the same treatment that Dessalines did.

[CamiloRP]

2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

At various points, the British did provide aid to the Haitians, in order to hurt the French. 

Yes, but the british didn't rule over Haiti afterwards.

 

2 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Culturally, there remained a divide between the mixed race population, who dominated government, and the black population.

No, they where racially divided, but they had the same culture.

 

[SeanF]

Just now, CamiloRP said:

Yes, but the british didn't rule over Haiti afterwards.

 

No, they where racially divided, but they had the same culture.

 

My bad, I meant Spanish.

[Makk]

14 hours ago, Oana Becherescu said:

Can you send a link to that?

I couldn't find the same source but I did find this

Quote

Then he went on to add that sometimes there's an essay or even a series of essays that "really gets it right". He specifically cited the difficulty he had with the Meereenese sections of ADwD, trying to figure out the POV, and he called it the "Meereenese Knot." He admitted being annoyed when some turned it into "the Meerenese Blot", but someone made a series of essays with that title. "I read those when someone pointed them out to me, and I was really pleased with them, because at least one guy got it. He got it completely, he knew exactly what I was trying to do there, and evidently I did it well enough for people who were paying attention."

 

[Hodor the Articulate]

12 hours ago, CamiloRP said:

But the biggest difference is who rules after the conflict. In Haiti it was the former slaves, who are Haitian, therefore there's no cultural divide, in fact their religion and culture was better respected under the new leadership. While in Meeren the new ruler is Dany, a person that never set foot in Meeren (that we know of) and shares no culture with this people, causing her to disrespect it and produce a clash.

While Dany isn't of the region, neither are most of the slaves. Unfortunately, because of the way the story is structured, Meerenese culture is seemingly framed as that of the Meerenese nobility, but that would be ignoring the various cultures of the freedmen and the Yunkish refugees (who make up a majority of the population). There doesn't seem to be a culture clash between Dany and the freedmen.

[CamiloRP]

42 minutes ago, Hodor the Articulate said:

While Dany isn't of the region, neither are most of the slaves. Unfortunately, because of the way the story is structured, Meerenese culture is seemingly framed as that of the Meerenese nobility, but that would be ignoring the various cultures of the freedmen and the Yunkish refugees (who make up a majority of the population). There doesn't seem to be a culture clash between Dany and the freedmen.

Not just the nobles, there's other people in Mereen than just Nobles and slaves, there's everyday workers, and even beggars, and their culture is Meerenese. Dany shouldn't care about the slavers (in fact I argued in the past that she should've taken all of them as hostages and give their wealth to the former slaves) but she should care about the non-slaver Meerenese, she should respect their culture and the freedmen culture, a problem that wasn't there in the Haitian revolution.

[SeanF]

2 hours ago, Makk said:

I couldn't find the same source but I did find this

 

@Ran clarified it back in 2014 (there's an old thread).  He made clear that Martin, while praising the essays, had not confirmed that Adam Feldman had guessed the outstanding plot elements correctly.

IMHO, some Slavers were willing to keep Daenerys as Queen, so long as she ruled in the interests of the Slavers. No doubt, others feared what would happen if the besiegers took the city by storm.  But, most were just waiting for the Volantenes.

1 hour ago, CamiloRP said:

Not just the nobles, there's other people in Mereen than just Nobles and slaves, there's everyday workers, and even beggars, and their culture is Meerenese. Dany shouldn't care about the slavers (in fact I argued in the past that she should've taken all of them as hostages and give their wealth to the former slaves) but she should care about the non-slaver Meerenese, she should respect their culture and the freedmen culture, a problem that wasn't there in the Haitian revolution.

There seems like a very steep social pyramid in Slavers Bay.  The free are a small minority, ranging from super-rich to poor.  Probably, most of the free poor to comfortably off are freedmen, rather than freeborn.  A lot of "middle class" jobs (healers, singers, scribes, goldsmiths) were done by slaves.

The only big cultural divide between Dany and free poor, and ex-slaves, that I can think of, is over the fighting pits, which everyone loves, except Dany, Barristan, and Missandei.  Fighting pits aside, there are likely a myriad different cultures, reflecting the origins of the slaves.  The religion of the Graces, for example, likely means nothing to a Dothraki or Lhazarren slave.

[Dracul's Daughter]

9 hours ago, Makk said:

I couldn't find the same source but I did find this

 

 

9 hours ago, Makk said:

Then he went on to add that sometimes there's an essay or even a series of essays that "really gets it right". He specifically cited the difficulty he had with the Meereenese sections of ADwD, trying to figure out the POV, and he called it the "Meereenese Knot." He admitted being annoyed when some turned it into "the Meerenese Blot", but someone made a series of essays with that title. "I read those when someone pointed them out to me, and I was really pleased with them, because at least one guy got it. He got it completely, he knew exactly what I was trying to do there, and evidently I did it well enough for people who were paying attention."

Thx!

6 hours ago, SeanF said:

@Ran clarified it back in 2014 (there's an old thread).  He made clear that Martin, while praising the essays, had not confirmed that Adam Feldman had guessed the outstanding plot elements correctly.

So,it really does not clarify much what Adam Feldman guessed.I think Martin mostly praised that finally someone didn't complain about how boring Dany's chapers in "A Dance with Dragons" are (BTW I really love them),that he wanted to show us how she learns to rule,how she struggles with the situation she is in and how she takes those choices.It was never about "Oh,Dany choses to use dragons so that's bad.It means she will be very bad." I mean,WTF is she supposed to do with them???Let them to rot???Use them just like a private jet???
As I said,the text in the books supports the idea that the peace could not be mantained and from TWOW released chapters I think the war starts without Daenerys returning to Meereen.In Volantis the tiger party rose and they took over the elephant one,war ships never leaved Meereen's doors,Hizdahr immediately removed from the power those who were loyal to Daenerys and we also see from Tyrion's POV that the peace was never ment to be sustained.

"Behind the Black Wall, lords of ancient blood sleep poorly, listening as their kitchen slaves sharpen their long knives. Slaves grow our food, clean our streets, teach our young. They guard our walls, row out galleys, fight our battles. And now they look east, they see this young queen shinning from afar, this breaker of chains. The Old Blood cannot suffer that."
                                          A Dance with Dragons, Chapter 22, Tyrion VI.