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Would the Essos Storyline be more interesting if the Villains had more Depth?


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29 minutes ago, astarkchoice said:

This 

Agreed theres no way a slave market being set up outside  mereens walls isnt a direct provocation, the slavers know the volantene fleet and new ghis legions are on their way thus are acting like they have already won. With the insurgency raging ,astopor fallen  and now dany gone it would seem like a forgone conclusion that slavery is comming back in a big way. The sheer mass of forces aligned makes it look impssible to see it going any other way

 

That is unless  as we readers know appearances can be decieving, that the strongest elements of the slavers army (the new ghis  legions) , slave leaders and various niche mercs from nearby pro slave cities (the slingers and crossbowmen)  have bloody flux among  them (thus will not only lose but retreat back and bring deadly plauge to slavery strongpoints) ALSO  that the seemingly mightly volantis fleet may be riddled with pro slavery troops and is about to be ambushed by the ironborn ,  that 2 sellsword companies are about to turn sides  mid battle and finaly that danys forces arent waiting and are gonna mount a suprise offensive !! All in all the stage is set for such a comprehensive  loss  for the slavers from such a seemingly easy win that its hard to see this not kickstarting the anti slave war essos needs!

 

One of the many things I dislike about Adam Feldman’s analysis is the basic assumption of moral equivalence between each party to this conflict.

It’s “both sides-ism” at its worst.

Within the city there is a clear aggressor (the Harpies).  Without the city, there is an equally clear aggressor (the slaver coalition).

There is no casus belli against either the freedmen, or the Meereenese State.

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4 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

Whether something is "just" or not is not an objective fact.

They had freed their slaves, yes … only to hire them back as servants at wages so meagre that most could scarce afford to eat. Those too old or young to be of use had been cast into the streets, along with the infirm and the crippled. (ADWD, Daenerys I) - this is objectively unjust

 

"The Yunkai'i will resume slaving, as before. Astapor will be rebuilt, as a slave city. You will not interfere." (ADWD, Daenerys VI) - this is objectively unjust

 

"Be patient, my sweet," said Hizdahr. "They are about to loose the lions."
Daenerys gave him a quizzical look. "Lions?"
"Three of them. The dwarfs will not expect them."
She frowned. "The dwarfs have wooden swords. Wooden armor. How do you expect them to fight lions?"
"Badly," said Hizdahr, "though perhaps they will surprise us. More like they will shriek and run about and try to climb out of the pit. That is what makes this a folly." (ADWD, Daenerys IX) - this is objectively unjust (and I suspect this kind of slip would have happened again)
 
 
The queen had also wished to forbid the follies, comic combats where cripples, dwarfs, and crones had at one another with cleavers, torches, and hammers (the more inept the fighters, the funnier the folly, it was thought), but Hizdahr said his people would love her more if she laughed with them, and argued that without such frolics, the cripples, dwarfs, and crones would starve. So Dany had relented.  - (ADWD, Daenerys IX) - this is objectively unjust
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11 minutes ago, SeanF said:

One of the many things I dislike about Adam Feldman’s analysis is the basic assumption of moral equivalence between each party to this conflict.

It’s “both sides-ism” at its worst.

Within the city there is a clear aggressor (the Harpies).  Without the city, there is an equally clear aggressor (the slaver coalition).

There is no casus belli against either the freedmen, or the Meereenese State.

Moraly speaking there is a clear evil and good side here.

Now as for casus belli there is one  but only from the sort of evil sociopathic people who would own ,buy, kill and train slaves!.....they dont see them as human so dany has 'stolen property' and is endangering a vastly profitable economy ! Just as back in history (and now ) there are plenty who will kill  en masse to protect a bottom line

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6 hours ago, SeanF said:

6.  Regarding the "human heart in conflict with itself", the right course of action might be unclear to a character in-universe, but clear as crystal to a reader, given that we have a wider range of knowledge and perspective than that character has, and because we don't share their in-universe prejudices.

The peace being unjust and shaky, does not contradict "the human heart in conflict with itself". Daenerys wants "a respite from the killing, for some time to build and heal" and "to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow" but she has to fight. Whereas Adam Feldman's "human heart in conflict with itself" can be boiled down to : Daenerys does what is right (compromising with the slavers with all what it intrails) but "war felt better" (as he puts it) because "fire and blood"/"crazy geens" (I guess), ignoring the cost of said peace.

Edited by Oana_Mika
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Bloodbeard laughed. "He's dead. He won't bite."
 
Gingerly, so gingerly, the seneschal approached the head, lifted it delicately by the hair. "Admiral Groleo."
 
[...]

The slaver in the maroon tokar produced a parchment. "I have the honor to bear this message from the council of masters." He unrolled the scroll. "It is here written, 'Seven entered Meereen to sign the peace accords and witness the celebratory games at the Pit of Daznak. As surety for their safety, seven hostages were tendered us. The Yellow City mourns its noble son Yurkhaz zo Yunzak, who perished cruelly whilst a guest of Meereen. Blood must pay for blood.' "

[...]

“Your Grace,” Ser Barristan called out. “If it please you to recall, the noble Yurkhaz died by happenstance. He stumbled on the steps as he tried to flee the dragon and was crushed beneath the feet of his own slaves and companions. That, or his heart burst in terror. He was old.”

[...]

"Our peace has not been breached. Blood pays for blood, a life for a life. To show our good faith, we return three of your hostages." The iron ranks behind him parted. Three Meereenese were ushered forward, clutching at their tokars—two women and a man.
 
"Sister," said Hizdahr zo Loraq, stiffly. "Cousins." He gestured at the bleeding head. "Remove that from our sight."

[...]

Reznak mo Reznak cleared his throat noisily. "Meaning no offense, yet it seems to me that Her Worship Queen Daenerys gave you … ah … seven hostages. The other three …"

“The others shall remain our guests,” announced the Yunkish lord in the breastplate, “until the dragons have been destroyed.”

A hush fell across the hall. Then came the murmurs and the mutters, whispered curses, whispered prayers, the hornets stirring in their hive. “The dragons …” said King Hizdahr.

“… are monsters, as all men saw in Daznak’s Pit. No true peace is possible whilst they live.”

Reznak replied. “Her Magnificence Queen Daenerys is Mother of Dragons. Only she can—”

Bloodbeard’s scorn cut him off. “She is gone. Burned and devoured. Weeds grow through her broken skull.”

A roar greeted those words. Some began to shout and curse. Others stamped their feet and whistled their approval. It took the Brazen Beasts pounding the butts of their spears against the floor before the hall quieted again.

- A Dance with Dragons - The Discarded Knight

 

So the yunkish needed just an excuse to execute one of Dany's people (Drogon did not kill Yurkhaz and they recognize him being out of Dany's control by saying she is "burned and devoured"). And their sign of good fiath is releasing three of the meereense nobles, but not one of Dany's people. I would hardly call that a peace in good faith.

 

Edited by Oana_Mika
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15 minutes ago, Oana_Mika said:

I also want to ask you if you think they believe Drogon arrived and killed the yunkish masters at Dany's command or do they saw that it was out of her control? If they think that she controled Drogon, why they believe he ate her or that she is dead (I don't really think they expect her to be alive)? If they accept that Dany had no control over Drogon, why did they kill Groleo in retaliation?

After these guys fed people to dogs at Astapor, and drove plague-ridden survivors North, I’m supposed to believe that they’re “peaceful”, and that fighting them is wrong?

The more I consider The Meereenese Blot, the more it reads like the kind of argument that one of Sauron’s emissaries would make.

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19 minutes ago, SeanF said:

After these guys fed people to dogs at Astapor, and drove plague-ridden survivors North, I’m supposed to believe that they’re “peaceful”, and that fighting them is wrong?

The more I consider The Meereenese Blot, the more it reads like the kind of argument that one of Sauron’s emissaries would make.

I edited my comment because I wanted to post the quotes and I did no think I expressed my thoughts clear with that questions. Also, notice how they only release Hizdahr's family.

Edited by Oana_Mika
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8 hours ago, SeanF said:

1. How does the establishment of a slave market outside Meereen represent a "just peace"?

You're the one who brought up whether it's "just", those quotation marks aren't a quote of me. I'm not claiming anything is just.

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2. Meereenese territory extends 150 miles upriver, and at least 163 miles down the coast.  Therefore, the market is on Meereenese soil.

I will ask again: what determines the boundary?

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3.  Trying to claim that the Volantenes have nothing to do with their allies sitting outside Meereen's walls is disingenuous.

Who made such a claim?

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If the Yunkish believed in peace they would have notified the defenders that they had sent envoys to Volantis

Why would there be such an obligation? Dany doesn't have to tell the Yunkish about anyone she was talking to in preparation for war against them. Countries in the real world don't have to reveal their diplomatic cables to other countries they're negotiating with. And these aren't friends/allies who have implicit assumptions that they would share such information.

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and they would have sent out fresh envoys to inform the Volantenes of the peace deal.

There you are on closer ground, since trying to enlist someone as an ally would bring up more of those implicit assumptions. But the difficulty of communicating over distance is going to apply all the more once they are in Meereen.

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It would be like saying that even if it turned out that the slavers were behind the poisoned locusts, it makes no difference to the sincerity of their efforts to make peace with  her.

The contested theory over at the Meereenese Blot is that the Shavepate, a dissenter under Dany, poisoned the locusts to sabotage the peace. If it was instead a dissenter in the opposite coalition who poisoned them to undermine Yurkhaz, what would that establish?

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I really don't think that either Hizdahr and co., or the Yunkish, will be manning the defences against Volantis, do you?

Certainly not the Yunkish, unless Dany makes some entirely different and unlikely deal with them. Their agreement was not to defend Meereen against anyone. Hizdahr is in a very different position since he is King of Meereen and only has that status because of Dany. Of course, he's not going to do anything after Barristan & the Shavepate's coup against him.

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they're already keeping hold of their hostages

Hostages were part of the agreement, not a violation of it. It's the killing of Groleo that constitutes a breakdown.

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and upping their demands.

That's after Drogon appears, Yurkhaz dies and Dany leaves the event that is supposed to be part of a sealing of the peace between the sides.

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 Nor did the US agree to peace at Paris, while simultaneously encouraging powerful enemies of United Kingdom to join in the conquest of Canada.

The United States was in fact fighting Britain in alliance with other European powers who were rivals of that country. Britain made a separate peace with France & Spain in the Treaty of Versailles, and there was yet another agreement with the Dutch republic. America had been rebelling for 8 years, which was enough time for all those parties to get involved and have their own negotiations with Britain.

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5.     Any nation that acted like Astapor would be treated as a rogue state

Astapor was not in fact treated as a rogue state in the text. Nor was the Kingdom of Dahomey. Britain was unusual in wanting to suppress the slave trade (not piracy, which other nations already agreed on).

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As European nations improved their naval power, so they increasingly switched from paying protection money to the corsair states of North Africa to attacking them, in order to prevent them acquiring slaves and to free those that had been taken.  The links between slave-trading and piracy are obvious, both in-universe, and in real life.

Those European countries were entirely able to distinguish between pirates and slave traders like Dahomey, which is why they all agreed on suppressing the former but not the latter.

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Ultimately, the French obliterated the Kingdom of Dahomey.

Yes, "ultimately", when the French wanted to annex that territory. That did not mark them as an enemy of humanity, but of the French specifically.

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6.  Regarding the "human heart in conflict with itself", the right course of action might be unclear to a character in-universe, but clear as crystal to a reader, given that we have a wider range of knowledge

That just sounds like dramatic irony, which is useful for a number of things but not so much for internal conflict.

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and perspective than that character has.

Yes, near-view vs far-view and the biases of fiction. Although part of what GRRM is trying to do with his "ruling is hard" idea is lean somewhat against the latter.

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how determined they are to restore the ancien regime.

They've already accomplished that everywhere but Meereen. The benefit of a peace agreement, from their POV, is locking in their gains and avoiding yet another loss of that at Dany's hands.

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What may appear a hard choice for Stannis, is not really so

Of course it's difficult, Davos has recently gotten out of a dungeon for attempting to kill Melisandre and then been raised up to King's Hand after affirming that the rightful penalty for Stannis' sworn men betraying him is death. Dany is not so much risking her life as the lives of her people, and it is on that ground that she has a compelling reason to avoid war.

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Ditto Jon, if he prized "the Nights Watch must take no part", over and above saving innocents from the family of Caligulas that rules Winterfell.   For Jon, it require a real break with what he has been indoctrinated into believing.  To a reader, it's quite plain that Nights Watch neutrality is irrelevant to the current situation that the North finds itself in.

Jon (unlike Dany) openly decided to break his vows of neutrality, and got killed for it in a mutiny. How can that still be the obvious choice?

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That slave and free cannot co-exist, that one or the other must prevail, should be as obvious to the reader as it had become to many Americans in 1860

In fact slaves & free men have co-existed throughout the VERY long history of slavery in real life and on Planetos.

6 hours ago, Oana_Mika said:

The difficulty resides in the fact that she has to battle two wars : one within the city (the Sons of the Harpy) and one outside

That's a story of conflict, but not of the heart in conflict with itself. Your point about the relative size of her army does speak to that though, as it makes peace more sensible for her to seek (but only if there's any peace to be had).

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She gave all up for a peace that was ultimately unfair and clearly shaky.

That's part of what makes it a difficult decision.

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Why do you think Yunaki will fight for Dany and her people against Volantis

I don't. Why do you think I think that?

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Why is so hard for you to accept the proof that the yunkish made a farce from said peace and that they only waited for Volantis?

Because there is no "proof", otherwise Yezzan wouldn't have been arguing for peace when others were insisting on war.

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Are you saying that the slaves are wrong for not wanting peace with the masters when said peace involved them remaining slaves? Are said masters (yunkish) willing to free them? Are you suggesting that the slaves do not have a reason to riot, or that they shouldn't?

I never said or suggested any such thing.

6 hours ago, Oana_Mika said:

if you wish to know how much the yunkish are on Meereen's side

 

I never claimed they were on Meereen's side, they're a former belligerent who have merely made an agreement to stop fighting rather than to give any assistance.

6 hours ago, astarkchoice said:

All in all the stage is set for such a comprehensive  loss  for the slavers

I agree their loss seems overdetermined, which is part of what makes this less interesting than various battles that have taken place in Westeros.

6 hours ago, Oana_Mika said:

Her Meereen storyline would not be just a filler and she would not be sucking at ruling with the peace being a sham because it shows that she is very willing to compromise, she is conciliatory

Why isn't it a waste to be compromising & conciliatory if it's a sham?

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6 hours ago, SeanF said:

Within the city there is a clear aggressor (the Harpies).  Without the city, there is an equally clear aggressor (the slaver coalition).

There is no casus belli against either the freedmen, or the Meereenese State.

Dany had already attacked Yunkai previously, after sacking Astapor and prior to Meereen. It would be a bit silly to claim that the coalition against Napoleon was simply the aggressor after he had attacked a number of them before later going on the defensive.

6 hours ago, Oana_Mika said:

They had freed their slaves, yes … only to hire them back as servants at wages so meagre that most could scarce afford to eat. Those too old or young to be of use had been cast into the streets, along with the infirm and the crippled. (ADWD, Daenerys I) - this is objectively unjust

Frederick Douglass would disagree with you on the justness of low-paying but voluntary wage labor as a replacement for slave labor. There's nothing objective about justice, the is-ought gap is unbridgeable.

6 hours ago, Oana_Mika said:

"crazy geens" (I guess)

You've got that phrase in quotes, but search as you might you won't find that phrase at the Meereenese Blot. Thus, it's not a quote at all. I suggest you not attempt to "guess".

5 hours ago, Oana_Mika said:

So the yunkish needed just an excuse to execute one of Dany's people (Drogon did not kill Yurkhaz and they recognize him being out of Dany's control by saying she is "burned and devoured").

Yurkhaz was the leader of the Yunkai, and however unreasonable they blame Dany for their leader's death (just as they had previously blamed her for a burned tokar). Dany's presumed death certainly alters the calculus, but her regime still persists and would possess any perceived "debt" of a life for a life.

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And their sign of good fiath is releasing three of the meereense nobles, but not one of Dany's people. I would hardly call that a peace in good faith.

If they presume Dany to be dead and Hizdahr to be in sole command, then releasing his relatives is precisely the right move to indicate their good faith to the opposite party.

4 hours ago, SeanF said:

The more I consider The Meereenese Blot, the more it reads like the kind of argument that one of Sauron’s emissaries would make.

You should wonder why GRRM saw "one of Sauron’s emissaries" as getting it right.

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3 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

You're the one who brought up whether it's "just", those quotation marks aren't a quote of me. I'm not claiming anything is just.

I will ask again: what determines the boundary?

Who made such a claim?

Why would there be such an obligation? Dany doesn't have to tell the Yunkish about anyone she was talking to in preparation for war against them. Countries in the real world don't have to reveal their diplomatic cables to other countries they're negotiating with. And these aren't friends/allies who have implicit assumptions that they would share such information.

There you are on closer ground, since trying to enlist someone as an ally would bring up more of those implicit assumptions. But the difficulty of communicating over distance is going to apply all the more once they are in Meereen.

The contested theory over at the Meereenese Blot is that the Shavepate, a dissenter under Dany, poisoned the locusts to sabotage the peace. If it was instead a dissenter in the opposite coalition who poisoned them to undermine Yurkhaz, what would that establish?

Certainly not the Yunkish, unless Dany makes some entirely different and unlikely deal with them. Their agreement was not to defend Meereen against anyone. Hizdahr is in a very different position since he is King of Meereen and only has that status because of Dany. Of course, he's not going to do anything after Barristan & the Shavepate's coup against him.

Hostages were part of the agreement, not a violation of it. It's the killing of Groleo that constitutes a breakdown.

That's after Drogon appears, Yurkhaz dies and Dany leaves the event that is supposed to be part of a sealing of the peace between the sides.

The United States was in fact fighting Britain in alliance with other European powers who were rivals of that country. Britain made a separate peace with France & Spain in the Treaty of Versailles, and there was yet another agreement with the Dutch republic. America had been rebelling for 8 years, which was enough time for all those parties to get involved and have their own negotiations with Britain.

Astapor was not in fact treated as a rogue state in the text. Nor was the Kingdom of Dahomey. Britain was unusual in wanting to suppress the slave trade (not piracy, which other nations already agreed on).

Those European countries were entirely able to distinguish between pirates and slave traders like Dahomey, which is why they all agreed on suppressing the former but not the latter.

Yes, "ultimately", when the French wanted to annex that territory. That did not mark them as an enemy of humanity, but of the French specifically.

That just sounds like dramatic irony, which is useful for a number of things but not so much for internal conflict.

Yes, near-view vs far-view and the biases of fiction. Although part of what GRRM is trying to do with his "ruling is hard" idea is lean somewhat against the latter.

They've already accomplished that everywhere but Meereen. The benefit of a peace agreement, from their POV, is locking in their gains and avoiding yet another loss of that at Dany's hands.

Of course it's difficult, Davos has recently gotten out of a dungeon for attempting to kill Melisandre and then been raised up to King's Hand after affirming that the rightful penalty for Stannis' sworn men betraying him is death. Dany is not so much risking her life as the lives of her people, and it is on that ground that she has a compelling reason to avoid war.

Jon (unlike Dany) openly decided to break his vows of neutrality, and got killed for it in a mutiny. How can that still be the obvious choice?

In fact slaves & free men have co-existed throughout the VERY long history of slavery in real life and on Planetos.

That's a story of conflict, but not of the heart in conflict with itself. Your point about the relative size of her army does speak to that though, as it makes peace more sensible for her to seek (but only if there's any peace to be had).

That's part of what makes it a difficult decision.

I don't. Why do you think I think that?

Because there is no "proof", otherwise Yezzan wouldn't have been arguing for peace when others were insisting on war.

I never said or suggested any such thing.

I never claimed they were on Meereen's side, they're a former belligerent who have merely made an agreement to stop fighting rather than to give any assistance.

I agree their loss seems overdetermined, which is part of what makes this less interesting than various battles that have taken place in Westeros.

Why isn't it a waste to be compromising & conciliatory if it's a sham?

1. A fundamental argument against the peace with Yunkai, both in-universe, and on the part of the reader, is that it is unjust.  What Daenerys hates is that to obtain peace, she must sacrifice justice.   Establishing a slave market outside the city of Meereen is unjust.  That really is not "just a matter of opinion."

2.  The peace terms contained no territorial concessions by Meereen.  We know from Hizdhar's proposed appointment of the Shavepate to oversee the river that Meereenese rule extends for 150 miles.  We also know from the crucifixion of the children that Meereenese territory extends at least 163 down the coast.  Ergo, the market is opened on Meereenese territory.

3. You're the one trying to argue that a peace between two beligerent parties is real, once they cease hostilities, notwithstanding that one of them (unknown to the other) has engaged a very powerful third party as its proxy to attack the other.     That is where your argument (and Feldman's) becomes unsustainable.

Volantis can't prepare an invasion force overnight.  The Yunkish envoys will have had plenty of time to return home, and to report on the outcome of their negotiations. 

4.  Why would it be a dissenter who attempted to poison Daenerys?  The obvious move for the slavers is to take her out, and for Hizdahr to become sole ruler.

5.  Astapor was not treated as a rogue state, because (a) its neighbours were slave states and (b) its victims (the Lhazareen and defeated Dothraki tribes) were unable to fight back.  If Lhazar had a powerful military, they would have squashed Astapor like a bug, rather than tolerate the theft of their children.

6. I really don't see the distinction between slave traders who provoke warfare and piracy in order to get their raw material, pirates who capture people and sell them to slave-traders, and slave-trading pirates.  We're splitting hairs here.  Suffice to say that once states are strong enough to fight back against polities who seize their people as slaves, they do so.  What enraged European states was that North African states were seizing their people.  It wasn't the theft of goods on the high seas that motivated them to attack.

7.  Co-existence between slave and free ceased to be possible in the 19th century.  Free states found intolerable the idea of having to hand back runaway slaves, or to allow slavers to convey slaves across their territory.  Courts in free states increasingly treated slave mutinies as self-defence.  States with powerful navies interdicted the slave trade on the high seas. The USA fought a civil war over the matter.

In-universe, Braavos fought a war against Pentos to end slavery.  It frees slaves from ships that it captures on the high seas.  I think there is little doubt that if Astapor were its neighbour, it would have intervened very forcibly to end the creation of the Unsullied.  Unfortunately, it is far away.

7.  WRT Davos, it is not a difficult ethical choice for him to make.   Likewise for Jon, it's not a difficult ethical choice (incidentally, Nights Watch neutrality is a tradition.  It is not a part of any vow).  The difficulty lies in the fact that doing the right thing is very dangerous, and may cost both men their lives.  

It's not a case of either man having to choose between evils, or weigh up competing goods.

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9 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

Dany had already attacked Yunkai previously, after sacking Astapor and prior to Meereen. It would be a bit silly to claim that the coalition against Napoleon was simply the aggressor after he had attacked a number of them before later going on the defensive.

Frederick Douglass would disagree with you on the justness of low-paying but voluntary wage labor as a replacement for slave labor. There's nothing objective about justice, the is-ought gap is unbridgeable.

You've got that phrase in quotes, but search as you might you won't find that phrase at the Meereenese Blot. Thus, it's not a quote at all. I suggest you not attempt to "guess".

Yurkhaz was the leader of the Yunkai, and however unreasonable they blame Dany for their leader's death (just as they had previously blamed her for a burned tokar). Dany's presumed death certainly alters the calculus, but her regime still persists and would possess any perceived "debt" of a life for a life.

If they presume Dany to be dead and Hizdahr to be in sole command, then releasing his relatives is precisely the right move to indicate their good faith to the opposite party.

You should wonder why GRRM saw "one of Sauron’s emissaries" as getting it right.

1. Dany had honoured the terms of her treaty with Yunkai to the letter.  

European powers (other than the UK) were indeed very eager for peace with Napoleon (as late as 26th June 1813, Metternich was offering Napoleon retention of Belgium, Rhineland, Switzerland, and Northern Italy).  They turned because they realised he would just never stop.  As Spain found in 1808, even having a puppet government in place, under Godoy, that danced to Napoleon's tune, was not enough to spare them from invasion.

If, Dany had chosen to break her treaty with Yunkai, and had mounted an invasion, then yes, Yunkai would have casus belli.  But that is not the case.  In fact, the Yunkish broke their treaty the moment she left.  The other invading powers, Qarth, Tolos, Mantarys, New Ghis, Volantis, have no ground for war whatsoever, save one.  They are ideologically committed to slavery.

2. @Ranhas already explained what GRRM meant.

Edited by SeanF
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Personally, one thing that would make Essos storyline far more interesting would be exploring how and why Slaver's Bay turned into, well, Slaver's Bay. That way we might even understand what might be done to make slavery there disappear and for that to actually stick, because as it is, Slaver's Bay doesn't really have any real historical parallels to draw from.

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17 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

Because there is no "proof", otherwise Yezzan wouldn't have been arguing for peace when others were insisting on war.

But the majority wanted war. And the peace depending on him, whom was very sick, it's clear that is not going to last.

 

17 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

I never said or suggested any such thing.

You made a comparison between the slaves wanting Danenerys to fight against the yunkish with the yunkish wanting to go to war against Dany but Yezzan stopping them. Ergo, you implied that the slaves who want Dany to fight against their opressors instead of making peace with them are just bad as the slavers who want to crush Dany and the freedmen (ex-slaves)

 

17 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

I never claimed they were on Meereen's side, they're a former belligerent who have merely made an agreement to stop fighting rather than to give any assistance.

But if you read that quote, you'll see that they do more than "not giving assistance".

 

17 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

Why isn't it a waste to be compromising & conciliatory if it's a sham?

Because it shows how the character is and what she wants vs what she needs to do. Whereas, Adam Feldman was simply saying that she did the right thing in compromising with the slavers (which I completely disagree with because it comes at the detriment of the freedmen and slaves) but at the end she chose war because it felt better, ignoring that what the character really wanted was peace (as I showed you in my previous replies) so war could not possibly feel better to her when all she was trying to do is to avoid it. She did not like the peace because she hated to see her freed men being exploited (being hired at such low wages that most of them could scarcely afford to eat so most probably they will be the ones who will die for the meereense's entertainment in the pits too) and because she hated that the yunkish will simply continue to enslave.

I want to show you this observation (which is not mine) regarding how Adam Feldman views Dany and Jon's arc :

 

I also want to add that Feldman’s essays have some really blatant double standards when it comes to Jon and Dany’s arc of rejecting the peace they build. When analyzing why Dany and Jon dislike the peace that they built, for both Jon and Dany, he admits that they dislike it because they hate seeing the injustice that still happens, even when there’s “peace”:

And she finds that she loathes allowing injustice to continue, when peace necessarily involves letting injustices continue. (x)

~

Prior to the Pink Letter, Jon had to try to stomach a North ruled by “the Boltons,” with Roose in charge. Now, Ramsay has announced his own centrality and decided to rub his moral repulsiveness in Jon’s face, by bragging about flaying women. […] Ramsay is a monster — and heroes kill monsters. They don’t stand by and let monsters run rampant. They set the world to rights.

Ramsay also demands that Jon himself commit a morally repulsive action. He demands Jon turn over a bunch of people under his protection to the Boltons, in hopes of avoiding Bolton retaliation against the Watch. Of course Jon doesn’t even have “Reek” or “Arya” to turn over, though they could well be headed to the Wall. But this hardly matters. Based on all of Jon’s previous actions in this book, the answer here is quite obviously “no” — just as he refused to kill the old man, Jon simply will not morally debase himself to please a monster, no matter the risk to the Watch, his peace, or the larger struggle. Though Jon says it’s not for the Watch to “defend [Stannis’] widow and his daughter,” Jon will — he won’t “let them die.” (x)

So after ADMITTING that both Dany and Jon have the same motivations, they both hate the “peace” they built because they both hate to let injustices happen for the sake of “peace”, the natural conclusion would be that Dany and Jon break the peace for similar motivations, right? But Feldman, even after admitting that Dany and Jon have similar reasons to hate the peace, frames Dany and Jon’s decisions to break the peace in completely different ways: 

In a very literal sense, Jon is abandoning the defense against the Others, to go fight his “other wars” — one to save thousands of innocent people, one to depose a monster. The hero’s instinct. (x)

~

Since the first book, Dany has been tormented by the innocent lives lost when she unleashes violence and war. Now, she has apparently resolved to stop letting all this bother her. Her new “fire and blood” approach just seems likely to lead to many more Astapors and thousands more Hazzeas. But in this chapter Dany seems prepared to write them off, as sad but necessary collateral damage of her embracing her true “dragon” self and who she was “made to be.” The dragons, and Dany’s own violent impulses, will no longer be chained. She has given into her greatest fear — herself. (x)

~

Ending Jon’s arc with this Wun Wun incident further hammers home the importance of Jon’s hero instinct to his arc so far.  I argued that Dany’s final chapter shows a major turning point in her values, where she rejects the idea that she should keep bending over backward to protect innocent life, rather than taking what she wants through force. For Jon, there is no similar rejection of the value of helping innocents, or of his hero’s instinct. As shown above, with Wun Wun, he keeps trying to help people and be a hero right up to the end. (x)

Like… WTF? So he says that Jon keeps “trying to help people and be a hero right up to the end”, but completely ignores that Dany also does this: right at the very end of ADWD, in her last chapters, she is shown to clearly hate the fighting pits because innocent blood will be spilled (and she later ends up rejecting Meereen’s “peace” exactly after and because she watched the events in the fighting pits), she saves Tyrion and Penny from lions and stands her ground against forcing people to fight in the pits against their will, she saves several people by taming Drogon and flying away, she wants to cry about the one little girl Drogon killed, she still hates the Meereenese nobles because of their love of butchery (so because she hates injustice and what the slavers do)… so how exactly can he draw the conclusion that Jon “keeps trying to be a hero” while Dany “rejects her values”?

Also, ever since I first read the essays, it always stood out to me how absurd it was that he literally admitted that both Dany and Jon disliked the peace they built because they hated to watch injustice happen and do nothing, and then concluded that Jon breaking the peace because he hated injustice is because of his “hero’s instinct”, while Dany breaking the peace because she hated injustice is because of her “violent impulses”. It always baffled me how no one in the fandom seemed to realize the blatant double standard.

 

16 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

You've got that phrase in quotes, but search as you might you won't find that phrase at the Meereenese Blot. Thus, it's not a quote at all. I suggest you not attempt to "guess".

 

I put that in quotes not as in quoting him. If you noticed, I specified when he used a phrase (as "war felt better")

 

16 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

Yurkhaz was the leader of the Yunkai, and however unreasonable they blame Dany for their leader's death (just as they had previously blamed her for a burned tokar). Dany's presumed death certainly alters the calculus, but her regime still persists and would possess any perceived "debt" of a life for a life.

 

If they are unreasonable to take a life from one of their hostages, who is one of Dany's men and they know that Yurkhaz did not died killed by Dany or Drogon, then they just wanted an excuse. Ergo, their peace was not sincere.

 

16 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

If they presume Dany to be dead and Hizdahr to be in sole command, then releasing his relatives is precisely the right move to indicate their good faith to the opposite party.

 

It shows that they only care for their kind : the slavers. That's why Dany marrying him was part of the deal. And Dany being presumed dead, does not mean her people vanished or that they don't deserve to get the same kind of reassurement that the yunkish don't mean to butcher them all for whatever presumable offense Dany made against them.

 

16 hours ago, FictionIsntReal said:

Frederick Douglass would disagree with you on the justness of low-paying but voluntary wage labor as a replacement for slave labor. There's nothing objective about justice, the is-ought gap is unbridgeable.

 

If we can't even agree on that I think it's just pointless to continue a discussion.

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5 hours ago, SeanF said:

2. @Ranhas already explained what GRRM meant.

 

IDK why this person keeps insisting on the peace being real if they are aware that the majority wanted war, Yezzan died so he can't hold them back anymore (so the peace was not genuine if it only depended on one obese old man whom is very sick and very likely to die soon) and we already see them attacking Meereen in TWOW. To me, the peace was clearly unsjut and fragile. This person sees that everything outside Meereen goes back as it was before (i.e. slavery), sees freed men in Meereen being hired back at so low wages that most of them can barely eat and they think it's fine. No problem. They just go and discuss Frederick Douglass. Quavo easily puts it to Tyrion why Volantis wants Dany dead : because she messed with the slavers and they think that had only those two obese old men had lived (or one of them), they would just have wanted to chat.

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2 hours ago, Oana_Mika said:

 

IDK why this person keep insisting on the peace being real if they are aware that the majority wanted war, Yezzan died so he can't hold them back anymore and we already see them attacking Meereen in TWOW. To me, the peace was clearly unsjut and fragile. This person sees that everything outside Meereen goes back as it was before (i.e. slavery), sees freed men in Meereen being hired back at so low wages that most of them can barely eat and they think it's fine. No problem. They just go and discuss Frederick Douglass. Quavo easily puts it to Tyrion why Volantis wants Dany dead : because she messed with the slavers and they think that had only those two obese old men had lived (or one of them), they would just have wanted to chat.

Why is it stupid to insist that the peace was real? The peace was real until their leader died in the pits and Dany disappeared, the Shavepate himself (the biggest opponent of peace) admits it. Perhaps it could have even persisted if Yazzen haven't died in the plague, but I am not convinced about that. 

When two countries make peace, their leaders make peace, despite sometimes the majority of the population and many other political figures prefer war. If the peace conference is attacked by men who were previously working for the leader of country A, the leader of country B is killed and the leader of country A disappears in the chaos, then the war is likely to continue.

 

Was the peace unjust? Yes, it was (in my opinion), but the alternative was a war which Dany may have lost.

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6 minutes ago, csuszka1948 said:

Why is it stupid to insist that the peace was real? The peace was real until their leader died in the pits and Dany disappeared, the Shavepate himself (the biggest opponent of peace) admits it. Perhaps it could have even persisted if Yazzen haven't died in the plague, but I am not convinced about that. 

When two countries make peace, their leaders make peace, despite sometimes the majority of the population and many other political figures prefer war. If the peace conference is attacked by men who were previously working for the leader of country A, the leader of country B is killed and the leader of country A disappears in the chaos, then the war is likely to continue.

 

Was the peace unjust? Yes, it was (in my opinion), but the alternative was a war which Dany may have lost.

 

Yezzan was just one of many other yunkish nobles. Yes, he persuaded the others but still, Yunkai sent envois to Volantis, which prepares an attack against Dany and her people. This is why I think they were just biding time because Yezzan being so sick it was just a matter of time until he died.

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31 minutes ago, csuszka1948 said:

Why is it stupid to insist that the peace was real? The peace was real until their leader died in the pits and Dany disappeared, the Shavepate himself (the biggest opponent of peace) admits it. Perhaps it could have even persisted if Yazzen haven't died in the plague, but I am not convinced about that. 

When two countries make peace, their leaders make peace, despite sometimes the majority of the population and many other political figures prefer war. If the peace conference is attacked by men who were previously working for the leader of country A, the leader of country B is killed and the leader of country A disappears in the chaos, then the war is likely to continue.

 

Was the peace unjust? Yes, it was (in my opinion), but the alternative was a war which Dany may have lost.

That was  surmise on the Shavepate's part.  He was not privy to the discussions of the Yunkish lords.

As set out below, the Yunkish have called upon the regional superpower to get rid of Free Meereen for good.  The Yunkish lords can't say "nothing to do with us", when the Volantenes arrive.

27 minutes ago, Oana_Mika said:

 

Yezzan was just one of many other yunkish nobles. Yes, he persuaded the others but still, Yunkai sent envois to Volantis, which prepares an attack against Dany and her people. This is why I think they were just biding time because Yezzan being so sick it was just a matter of time until he died.

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6 minutes ago, SeanF said:

That was  surmise on the Shavepate's part.  He was not privy to the discussions of the Yunkish lords.

As set out below, the Yunkish have called upon the regional superpower to get rid of Free Meereen for good.  The Yunkish lords can't say "nothing to do with us", when the Volantenes arrive.

They called upon the Volantene when they were sure that it will come to war, because there was no indication that Dany is willing to compromise. Due to the lack of communication between the Volantene and the Yunkish, they cannot recall them now.

 

I am not talking about Yezzan, but about Yurkhaz, who was the undeniable leader of their army. The Shavepate (who was probably familiar with him) said that he wanted peace - and he said it knowing about the Volantene fleet - and there is no reason to assume he lied.

 

Once the Volantene arrive, they can attack Dany alone or make their own peace with her.

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15 minutes ago, csuszka1948 said:

They called upon the Volantene when they were sure that it will come to war, because there was no indication that Dany is willing to compromise. Due to the lack of communication between the Volantene and the Yunkish, they cannot recall them now. 

Once the Volantene arrive, they can attack Dany alone or make their own peace with her.

Or attack Meereen in conjunction with all the rest of the coalition members, whose armed forces remain in the vicinity of Meereen.

What I expect the Volantenes would offer Hizdahr, had he remained in power, was that he rule Meereen as their client king, so long as the population were returned to slavery, and prominent freedmen and shavepates were handed over to them for execution.

Would Hizdahr, the Green Grace, Reznak & co. take that offer?  They'd grab it with both hands.

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