Dany's mounts, treasons, and fires: three plot-points you must know.

[three-eyed monkey]

17 hours ago, James Arryn said:

You are calling it ‘crime against the queen’, but Dany is not queen of Volantis.

No, she is queen of Meereen. And she is opposed by the slavers, which is why she took hostages from the powerful families.

19 hours ago, James Arryn said:

There is neither crime nor treason here. 

Clearly whoever sent the poisoned locusts was committing treason. Even if you think they were for Hizdahr, which I doubt very much, then it is still treason because it kills her king and breaks the marriage Dany made for peace. So the treason is being committed against the queen of Meereen by the Harpies, including Hizdahr. He wanted Dany to eat the locusts and he wanted Drogon killed.

However, the slaver conspiracy against her runs far deeper than the Harpies. It includes, Old Ghis and Volantis and everything in between, and we know this because they are sending armies against her. Dany is not the queen of Volantis and I never said she was. Volantis is ruled by triarchs selected by the ruling class, the Old Blood, who dwell in the black-walled heart of the city. One of these triarchs, Nyessos, we are told owes much of his wealth to the slave trade. I doubt he's the only one. The wealth of the Old Blood is largely built on slavery. It is why the elephants and tigers have united and are sending a fleet against her. The black-walled heart of Old Volantis, symbolizes the black heart of the slaver economy. This is the root of the treason being committed by the Harpies and Meereen, which are but a branch, and Dany will burn the treason at it's root.

I'm curious as to what you think the treason for gold, the mount for dread and the fire for death refer to?

21 hours ago, Mithras said:

All this means that the guesses based on such dreams and visions, even if GRRM wanted to foreshadow certain things when he wrote them, might not be as strong. Fat man's ever changing plans and all that.

The story has changed but the structure has not. Dany's story will still have three acts, major plot-points, and a resolution to her arc, regardless of whether there is a five year gap or a ten year gap or no gap. GRRM knows where he's going, even if how he gets there has changed. It's the same with Illyrio, he wants Aegon on the throne even if the plan to get him there has changed along the way.

19 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Also, this may not be a popular theory around here, but I’m pretty sure the treason for love will be Jon killing Dany to save Arya.

Dany needs to give herself willingly, that's the point of the Azor Ahai and Nissa Nissa story. That's the difference between sacrifice and true sacrifice. The only true sacrifice is self sacrifice.

 

 

[three-eyed monkey]

23 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

The Harpies are betraying her, but their allies, I do not see how they can, because Daenerys has no sort of arrangement with them that they can betray.

She is the queen of Meereen, she married Hizdahr for peace, but the Harpies are betraying her, that means they are not really allies.

[Craving Peaches]

39 minutes ago, three-eyed monkey said:

She is the queen of Meereen, she married Hizdahr for peace, but the Harpies are betraying her, that means they are not really allies.

I know that, I'm talking about Volantis, how is Volantis betraying her when there is no prior relationship between them and Daenerys for them to betray?

[three-eyed monkey]

9 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I know that, I'm talking about Volantis, how is Volantis betraying her when there is no prior relationship between them and Daenerys for them to betray?

The treason is committed by the slavers, for the gold that flows from the slave trade. In Meereen this is the Harpies, but Dany doesn't know who the head of the Harpies is. Barristan suspects it is Hizdahr but in fact the conspiracy against Dany runs much deeper. We know this a readers because we have other information from pov's like Tyrion and Victarion in Volantis and that helps us understand this. I mean, the fact that Volantis is sending a fleet to join the slaver alliance assembling against her shows what side they are on. The slavers' side.

Dany herself knows there are people plotting against her and is mindful of treason.

Quote

When Reznak and Skahaz appeared, she found herself looking at them askance, mindful of the three treasons. Beware the perfumed seneschal. She sniffed suspiciously at Reznak mo Reznak. I could command the Shavepate to arrest him and put him to the question. Would that forestall the prophecy? Or would some other betrayer take his place? Prophecies are treacherous, she reminded herself, and Reznak may be no more than he appears.

The problem is that if she arrests a betrayer then some other betrayer will only take his place. She has the right of it, and must learn that there is only one way to deal with the treason.

Quote

"Treason is a noxious weed," Pycelle declared solemnly. "It must be torn up, root and stem and seed, lest new traitors sprout from every roadside."

The fire is the black-walled heart of Volantis, which she will come to understand is the root of the slaver conspiracy against her, and she will light the fire for the death of the slaver establishment. Dany does not have a prior relationship with Volantis, but the slavers who are committing treason against her clearly do.

So just to be clear, treason for gold by the slavers for the gold that flows from the slave trade, and the fire for death is Volantis for the death of the slave trade.

[Craving Peaches]

52 minutes ago, three-eyed monkey said:

The treason is committed by the slavers

But not all the slavers are committing treason on Daenerys because not all of them had a pre-existing relationship with her to betray. It is not like Volantis promised her anything, they didn't. If X country supports traitor rebels in Y country they aren't betraying Y country unless they have an alliance or something with Y country and Volantis and Daenerys have no relationship between them so it is impossible for Volantis to betray her.

[Annara Snow]

21 hours ago, Smoke317 said:

A lot of people feel that GRRM has abandoned the Jon/Arya angle and instead is gonna push the Jon/Sansa angle.  But your theory still works if Sansa is in charge of the North and refuses to be a part of the 7 kingdoms under Dany’s rule (which also happened in the show). 

A lot of people are unhealthily obsessed with incest, indeed. I'm pretty sure there will be no Starkcest in ASOIAF.

Also, this fandom needs to let go off constantly trying to pit teenage girl main characters against each other, especially when they try to make it about ships. I hoped that would remain confined to the GoT audience, but alas   

[Annara Snow]

54 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

But not all the slavers are committing treason on Daenerys because not all of them had a pre-existing relationship with her to betray. It is not like Volantis promised her anything, they didn't. If X country supports traitor rebels in Y country they aren't betraying Y country unless they have an alliance or something with Y country and Volantis and Daenerys have no relationship between them so it is impossible for Volantis to betray her.

How is "the slavers of Volantis betrayed her" the controversial statement here rather than "Mirri Maz Duur betrayed her"? 

I actually agree that, unfortunately, treason for blood is probably meant to be Mirri, as Dany saw it that way. But I could never consider that treason. Mirri was Dany's slave. She never decides to swear her loyalty- and had no choice to do so.

[Annara Snow]

On 4/29/2023 at 3:46 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

The mummer’s dragon was in ACOK though, so that at least had been planned. Back then it was probably going to be a war between Egg’s line and Aerion’s (who was also mentioned in ACOK) after his son was passed over despite having a stronger claim than Egg. Now we don’t know what happened to little Maegor.

Blackfyre or Brightflame, I think the function is the same: to cause a headache for Daenerys and push her over the edge.

That seems very likely. Not only was Aerion mentoned in ACOK, he was a major character in The Hedge Knight, which was released a few months before ACOK. Furthermore, Aerion was written as a Viserys-like figure to Egg (who overall has strong Dany parallels, especially late in life).

But then The Sworn Sword, published in 2003, before AFFC, gives us tons pf info about the Blackfyres and Bloodraven, and of course, The Mystery Knight, published before ADWD, even more.

[Craving Peaches]

23 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

How is "the slavers of Volantis betrayed her" the controversial statement here rather than "Mirri Maz Duur betrayed her"?

Because I can see how one might consider Mirri betrayed her but I cannot see how one might consider Volantis betrayed her due to lack of any pre-existing relationship between Daenerys and Volantis for Volantis to betray.

[Annara Snow]

17 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

Because I can see how one might consider Mirri betrayed her but I cannot see how one might consider Volantis betrayed her due to lack of any pre-existing relationship between Daenerys and Volantis for Volantis to betray.

But the nobility of Meereen (probably the Green Grace, with Hizdahr likely in on it) trying to kill her definitely could be seen as treason. The OP just thinks they're a part of a larger / wider conspiracy  (which may or may not be true).

[Craving Peaches]

16 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

But the nobility of Meereen (probably the Green Grace, with Hizdahr likely in on it) trying to kill her definitely could be seen as treason.

Yes, and they may well be in collusion with foreign powers, but that doesn't automatically make the foreign powers (specifcally Volantis) traitors to Daenerys as well, because what are they betraying? They never had an alliance with her, she never (en)trusted them with anything, etc. The only one I would class as a 'traitor' is Yunkai. Volantis, New Ghis etc. never made any agreement with her that they could betray in the first place...

[James Arryn]

4 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

But the nobility of Meereen (probably the Green Grace, with Hizdahr likely in on it) trying to kill her definitely could be seen as treason. The OP just thinks they're a part of a larger / wider conspiracy  (which may or may not be true).

Right, but even if we accept that Old Volantis is somehow bankrolling the Harpy*, that’s not Volantis betraying anyone. In RL aggressive states often fund ‘resistance/freedom fighters/terrorists/coups/assassinations’. The US/CIA funded/trained/assisted/actually lead like five kajillion uprisings/coups/assassinations/terrorist attacks around the globe. Some were in democracies it superficially pretended to support due to optics but actually worked against. Those could be called betrayals..treason would be a stretch but in this case I’d stretch that far to accommodate your interpretation…but the US/CIA also funded all these in countries it had no relationship and often were fairly hostile towards.
 

Think Cuba. Was the Bay of Pigs treason against Castro? It was certainly a violation of international law, something the US has done as much or more than any other nation on earth n modern times, but international law did not exist in Planetos (what is the accepted term, btw?) so Volantis isn’t even violating that. 
 

*for which is see very little indication/evidence other than the plausible supposition that if they could do so, by the time they committed to war with her they certainly would be motivated to do so, but that is true of many other parties, and some of them ARE at least technically Dany’s subjects or ~ allies and would fit the timeline better…the Harpy was already active long before the Volantine(?) election, though I agree we hear noises that some Elephants would also support war, so not an absolute preclusion. I hope this isn’t coming out pedantic, I really enjoyed your post, it just feels like in this instance you want the ‘treason’ label to fit the crime rather than the other way around. 
 

The best devil’s advocate I could make for your position on this one aspect…I think your others are much more plausible and well argued…would either be to argue that treason in this case was used rhetorically and with a very elastic conceptualization by the author for ~ poetic/thematic symmetry, or to say that the real treason is by whoever the Harpy is/are and Volantis is taking their side, so yadda yadda treason. I don’t think either of these really work, but probably the first holds the most promise. Because the second, like almost any other rationalization still raises the question as to why you would side step the actual traitors…in this case the Harpy and whichever of her current subjects/allies comprise or support them…to apply the label to a city not really capable of betraying Dany in any way. 
 

edit: inaccurately used ‘you’ in this post under the false belief the poster I was addressing was the OP, apologies to both parties, braincramp as opposed to intentional disrespect, I promise. 

Edited April 30, 2023 by James Arryn

[Smoke317]

8 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

A lot of people are unhealthily obsessed with incest, indeed. I'm pretty sure there will be no Starkcest in ASOIAF.

Also, this fandom needs to let go off constantly trying to pit teenage girl main characters against each other, especially when they try to make it about ships. I hoped that would remain confined to the GoT audience, but alas   

On the topic of “Starkcest”, do you think the Varamyr prologue chapter was foreshadowing what was to come for the Stark kids with their warging abilities & the “unwritten” warg rules?  We saw Bran break one of those rules by feeding while warging. Even feeding on human flesh.  

One of the other rules was mating while warged into your wolf.  Do you think there’s a chance that Jon and/or Arya or Bran could break this rule?  Regardless of if you do or don’t, what effect could breaking these rules have on them as characters?

Also, do you think we’re ultimately gonna get a Jon & Val pairing?  During my initial reading of ADWD, I was really excited to see those 2 get together. 

[Annara Snow]

8 hours ago, Smoke317 said:

On the topic of “Starkcest”, do you think the Varamyr prologue chapter was foreshadowing what was to come for the Stark kids with their warging abilities & the “unwritten” warg rules?  We saw Bran break one of those rules by feeding while warging. Even feeding on human flesh.  

One of the other rules was mating while warged into your wolf.  Do you think there’s a chance that Jon and/or Arya or Bran could break this rule?  Regardless of if you do or don’t, what effect could breaking these rules have on them as characters?

Also, do you think we’re ultimately gonna get a Jon & Val pairing?  During my initial reading of ADWD, I was really excited to see those 2 get together. 

I think Varamyr is meant to be dark!Bran, and we've seen Bran violate more than one rule of skinchanging.  In Bran's case, it's because he's never been taught and explained the rules, while Varamyr knew it was wrong but broke them all anyway because he enjoyed doing anything he wanted abd  breaking taboos (kind of Euron like, but Euron is far more ambitious).

IIRC Bran has eaten some human flesh while in Summer, but more importantly, he's been committing the "greatest abomination of all" by skinchanging into Hodor. If GRRM wants Bran to commit all three, he will be warging Sumner while Summer is mating with the female from his new pack (Varamyr's pack, including Varamyr!One Eye, whom Bran! Summer has already asserted dominance over). I see no reason to think GRRM wants to use this for some Stark-direwolf incest (and that would also be direwolf incest, they are siblings too), especially since neither the Starks nor the direwolves have shown any incestuous desires, Nymeria is in the Riverlands anyway, and there's no reason to add incest there on top, which wasn't even foreshadowed or mentioned in the list of skinchanginv rules (it's a general rule).

As for Jon and Val, I don't know. But I'm not sure I really see it. Val seems more to have been a source of tension and a sign of how little the people south of the Wall understand the wildlings (everyone keeps calling her a princess, and thinking up marriages for her - although Jon tries to explain that's not how it works - and no one is even asking her what she wanrs). Jon's attraction to her was even used as a part of his temptation - when Stannis offered him Winterfell, marriage to Val was a part of the deal... which was weird, because surely if Stannis doesn't understand it, Jon surely should be aware they have to ask Val how she feels about that first?

[three-eyed monkey]

17 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

But not all the slavers are committing treason on Daenerys because not all of them had a pre-existing relationship with her to betray. It is not like Volantis promised her anything, they didn't. If X country supports traitor rebels in Y country they aren't betraying Y country unless they have an alliance or something with Y country and Volantis and Daenerys have no relationship between them so it is impossible for Volantis to betray her.

The leap from slavers like the Harpies of Meereen to the Old Blood of Volantis is too big for some perhaps so I've clarified the point in the OP.

The treason is being committed by the slavers. In Meereen this is the Harpies. I'm sure we can all agree that the Harpies are treasonous towards Dany. The Sons of the Harpy, the poisoned locusts, etc. So that's the treason. You say not all slavers are committing treason, just the Harpies, but you cannot deny that all the slavers from Yunkai where the Wise Masters returned to power, to Old Ghis who are sending legions against her, to Volantis who are sending a fleet to blockade Meereen, have taken the side of the Harpies who are committing the treason.

One of the mysteries presented is who is the Harpy? Who is at the heart of the conspiracy against Dany? Is it the Green Grace or Hizdahr or someone else? I believe the answer to that mystery is that the Old Blood of Volantis are at the heart of the conspiracy. Dany has effectively united the tigers and elephants against her, unbeknownst to her yet, because her stance against slavery is threatening their wealth. The second fire will be the black-walled heart of Old Volantis. The heart or root of the conspiracy.

When Dany returns on Drogon, having woken the dragon and with a hundred thousand Dothraki screamers at her back, do you really think she will discriminate between the Harpies and those who backed the Harpies, such as the legions of Old Ghis or the Volantene fleet? Even if you argue that Volantis or Old Ghis have technically committed no treason, I doubt very much that Dany will see it that way.

The important point in terms of the story is really the character choice she is in the process of making, her second plot-point. In Meereen Dany wanted to rule in peace and she made compromises, like marrying Hizdahr and opening the fighting pits. She hoped that if she did this then all the armies would melt away. She thought about arresting people like Reznak who she did not trust but knew that other betrayers might well rise to take his place, if indeed he was even guilty. She didn't know who to trust or how to solve the problems of ruling, especially when the previous rulers of Meereen didn't want her usurping their rule. She wants to rule in peace but the slavers will never let that happen.

So she will now take a different approach and wake the dragon. The silver queen of Meereen will change mount and become the dragon queen instead. By the time Silver reaches the darkling stream, which I believe represents the Rhoyne, Dany will no longer be mounted on her. When she burns the heart of Old Volantis and the heart of the old establishment, she will evoke the symbolism of the fiery heart, because the followers of the Red God will see her as the prophesied savior Benerro speaks of who has come to make the world anew. All of this allows Dany to consolidate her position in Essos and finally turn for Westeros and the final act of her story.

 

[Craving Peaches]

4 minutes ago, three-eyed monkey said:

The leap from slavers like the Harpies of Meereen to the Old Blood of Volantis is too big for some perhaps so I've clarified the point in the OP.

I don't have a problem with understanding that they might all be involved in a conspiracy, it is the terminology of treason/traitor. I don't think it fits the Volantenes to describe them as traitors to Daenerys because they had no prior relationship with her to betray.

[three-eyed monkey]

2 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

I don't have a problem with understanding that they might all be involved in a conspiracy, it is the terminology of treason/traitor. I don't think it fits the Volantenes to describe them as traitors to Daenerys because they had no prior relationship with her to betray.

I understand your objection, even if we disagree. Hopefully I clarified that point in the OP. The treason is committed by the Harpies and the fire is the black-walled heart of Old Volantis, regardless of the larger conspiracy I'm proposing that connects both.

 

[Craving Peaches]

6 minutes ago, three-eyed monkey said:

The treason is committed by the Harpies and the fire is the black-walled heart of Old Volantis, regardless of the larger conspiracy I'm proposing that connects both.

Ah, okay. I think I understand now. Thank you for claifying.