When the Dragon Queen returns to Vaes Dothrak, it is generally assumed that something wondrous and terrible will happen wherein a terrified dosh khaleen recognizes Daenerys and her “child” Drogon as the Stallion Who Mounts the World. By this Dany will gain the allegiance of all or at least most of the Dothraki and mobilize them to destroy her Slaver enemies and seize the Iron Throne. But dragon-riders and messiahs aren’t immune to politics, and the Dothraki will not consent to be a mere vehicle for someone else’s ambitions. They are a proud people with their own idea of how things should go, so this relationship will require quite a bit of give on Dany’s part. Dragon or no dragon, if Daenerys is going to cement her authority as Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, if she is going to successfully command the Dothraki to refrain from their usual rape and slave taking, if she is going to prevent them from destroying her subjects and allies along with her enemies, and if she is going to convince them to leave their homeland and climb aboard rickety ships to cross the poison water that marks the end of the world, then she is going to have to meet some of their messianic expectations.

Consequently, before embarking on her own grand plans, the Dragon Queen is going to have to prove herself to the horse lords by winning victories. For the Stallion Who Mounts the World, no small, ordinary victory will do. Daenerys is going to have to give the Dothraki a symbolically powerful conquest, something that the khals could never have accomplished on their own, something that awakens their deepest desires and inflames their souls, something that will cause the entire world to tremble in fear and expectation. And so she will. She will give the Dothraki the Greatest City that Ever Was or Will Be.

Daenerys will do this because the Dothraki will consider Qarth the ultimate conquest. Westeros means little or nothing to the horse lords. It is the great cities of the east that hold their imagination and which they desire to plunder when their long-awaited messiah arrives:

“You must talk to my lord husband,” Dany said. “Drogo says the stallion who mounts the world will have all the lands of the earth to rule, and no need to cross the poison water. He talks of leading his khalasar east after Rhaego is born, to plunder the lands around the Jade Sea.” The knight looked thoughtful. “The khal has never seen the Seven Kingdoms,” he said. “They are nothing to him. If he thinks of them at all, no doubt he thinks of islands, a few small cities clinging to rocks in the manner of Lorath or Lys, surrounded by stormy seas. The riches of the east must seem a more tempting prospect.” (GoT, Dany VI)

And Qarth happens to be the nearest and perhaps greatest embodiment of the fantastically wealthy east:

They were tall pale folk in linen and samite and tiger fur, every one a lord or lady to her eyes. The women wore gowns that left one breast bare, while the men favored beaded silk skirts. Dany felt shabby and barbaric as she rode past them in her lionskin robe with black Drogon on one shoulder. Her Dothraki called the Qartheen “Milk Men” for their paleness, and Khal Drogo had dreamed of the day when he might sack the great cities of the east. She glanced at her bloodriders, their dark almond-shaped eyes giving no hint of their thoughts. Is it only the plunder they see? (CoK, Dany II)

But Qarth is unique among eastern cities in that it is very close to the Dothraki Sea yet completely untouchable without magical intervention.

Qarth’s natural and human defenses make it the ultimate anti-Dothraki fortress. The city is protected from approaching armies by the harsh, barren and arid Red Wastes. Attackers willing to risk the Wastes would next have to overcome the city’s three great walls, which together constitute one of the Seven Wonders Made by Man. And in the event the Qartheen felt it desirable or necessary to take the fight to the enemy, the Civic Guard maintains a large host of camelry as an anti-cavalry weapon (“the horses could not abide the close presence of camels” – CoK Dany II). Assault is impossible and the city cannot be besieged via land, making Qarth absolutely impenetrable to the Dothraki. On their own, the horse lords cannot hope to threaten the Queen of Cities and hence cannot extract any tribute.

This distance sets Qarth apart from every other mainland city in Essos. The Free Cities, the Ghiscari cities, and presumably many of the cities of the Jade Sea regularly have to deal with wandering khalasars. The Free Cities buy the khals off and make alliances with them, the Ghiscari trade with them, and the Jade Sea cities suffer from their raids (which have penetrated as far as Asshai). The khalasars are an even bigger presence in the lives of various rural peoples such as the Lhazareen, who are unable to make deals on their own and, if unprotected by the cities, are effectively treated as a human herd to be terrorized, culled and harvested at the horse lords’ whims. But the Qartheen, secure behind their walls and their desert, are completely insulated from having to deal with the Dothraki. Consequently, where other cities do their best to appease the horse lords, the Qartheen treat them with utter contempt:

She was garbed after the Qartheen fashion. Xaro had warned her that the Enthroned would never listen to a Dothraki, so she had taken care to go before them in flowing green samite with one breast bared, silvered sandals on her feet, with a belt of black-and-white pearls about her waist. (CoK Dany III)

A passing remark by Xaro Xhoan Daxos makes it clear that the Qartheen greatly desire to keep the horse lords out of sight and out of mind, lest such rude savagery upset the Qartheen’s delicate constitutions and idyllic repose:

“Go to the Dothraki if you must have slaves.” “Dothraki make slaves, Ghiscari train them. And to reach Qarth, the horselords must needs drive their captives across the red waste. Hundreds would die, if not thousands … and many horses too, which is why no khal will risk it. And there is this: Qarth wants no khalasars seething round our walls. The stench of all those horses … meaning no offense, Khaleesi.”(DwD, Dany III)

One could go so far as to argue that this absence of a meaningful Dothraki presence is one of the features that define Qarth.

In turn, the Dothraki desire to bring destruction to Qarth. This long-standing cultural desire is voiced in the Vaes Dothrak prophecy of the Stallion Who Mounts the World:

Finally the crone opened her eye and lifted her arms. “I have seen his face, and heard the thunder of his hooves… As swift as the wind he rides, and behind him his khalasar covers the earth, men without number, with arakhs shining in their hands like blades of razor grass. Fierce as a storm this prince will be. His enemies will tremble before him, and their wives will weep tears of blood and rend their flesh in grief. The bells in his hair will sing his coming, and the milk men in the stone tents will fear his name. The prince is riding, and he shall be the stallion who mounts the world.” (GoT, Dany V)

Now one might argue that the slur “milk men” is here used in a rather versatile way. The crone might be generally referring to the pale faced Valyrian, Andal and Qartheen elites who dominate the great cities of Essos. She might also be describing the average inhabitant of said great cities, who, even if they are brown skinned, would be less affected by the sun then country folk, and hence far lighter than the nomadic steppe-dwelling Dothraki. When Qotho crosses blades with Ser Jorah, the bloodrider screams that the knight is “a craven, a milk man, a eunuch in an iron suit,” indicating that the slur also labels one as unmanly and a coward (GoT, Dany VIII).

But after A Game of Thrones, the “milk men” slur is only ever used to describe the Qartheen. In A Clash of Kings, Dany’s internal monologue refers to the Qartheen as milk men a total of three times. At first she merely notes that “milk men” is the name the Dothraki use, but over the course of her stay the slur appears twice more in her thoughts, its negative connotations quite clear (decadence, deception, disregard, disinterest). Dany’s Bloodrider Jhogo also calls the Qartheen “milk men” twice while escorting her palanquin through the streets. The term does not appear in subsequent books, but in A Dance with Dragons, Daario remarks that “Qartheen have milk in their veins” (DwD, Dany IV). From all this it seems clear that the Qartheen are meant to be the very pinnacle of what it means to be a milk man. So although the Stallion prophecy applies to all the “milk men” rulers and city dwellers of Essos (and presumably the Andal/First Man castle dwellers of Westeros), it especially applies to the inhabitants of Qarth. After all, the Qartheen rule the world’s greatest city, are exceptionally pale, and have an over-refined, hyper-aestheticized and thoroughly un-martial civilization, which is in many ways the antithesis of brutal, direct and warlike Dothraki culture.

So Qarth’s impenetrable defenses and the Dothraki’s material and ideological desire to sack the city combine to establish a subtle narrative link between the two peoples. Qarth does everything within its power to keep the hostile Dothraki away and defend itself against them. The Dothraki in turn greatly desire the sack of Qarth, but such a feat is beyond their power. The Qartheen are intrinsically incapable of attacking the Dothraki (for even if they were physically capable of such an undertaking they have no cultural will or desire to do so) while the Dothraki are physically incapable of attacking the Qartheen. The result is a perpetually suspended conflict, a stalemate between the world’s greatest city and the world’s greatest city destroyers. There is no contest, no truce, no toleration, no mutually-beneficial agreements, just an absence of actual war brought about by its self-evident futility. The attackers cannot successfully attack and so are deterred, with the result that the defenders never actually have to defend. The non-defenders are victorious as they stand unscathed, but the non-attackers are undefeated and cannot be made to surrender and set aside their hostility.

Now crucially, it is Daenerys who possesses the ability to bring an end to this stalemate. Xaro Xhoan Daxos is right that no khal would ever risk the Red Wastes, but as it happens a certain khaleesi recently did just that. The Qartheen allowed this khaleesi, her tiny dragons and her harmless little khalasar through their gates, allowed her to see their city, allowed her to take their measure, and then allowed her to leave, again dressed as a Dothraki and filled with bitter resentment. This khaleesi, her favorite dragon, and her khalasar will all be far more formidable when she visits them for a second time. When the Dragon Queen and her thousands of screamers suddenly emerge out of the Red Wastes, the stunned Qartheen will discover they have no real way of fighting back. Their mighty walls and triple gates will avail them not, “for dragons fly” (CoK Catelyn I). And so, once impenetrable Qarth and everything it represents shall fall to the khalasars via dragon fire, the first and greatest victim of the Stallion Who Mounts the World.

