“This beggar queen must understand, such wonders do not come cheaply…Unsullied are the finest foot in all the world, and each represents many years of training. Tell her they are like Valyrian steel, folded over and over and hammered for years on end, until they are stronger and more resilient than any metal on earth.”

Synopsis: Daenerys gets given the showfloor pitch by Kraznys mo Nakloz by way of Missandei, and debates slavery with Barristan and Jorah.

SPOILER WARNING: This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector.

Political Analysis:

Given how much Daenerys does in ASOS – overthrowing the societies, economies, and governments of an entire region and causing a continent-wide convulsion in the process – it’s surprising how few Daenerys chapters there are in this book, compared to AGOT or ADWD. This chapter thus has a lot of work to do, because this chapter is where Dany’s story arc in this book begins with an introduction to Astapor and through them to the Slave Cities (her primary antagonist in this and ADWD), and where Dany is going to make some of the most important decisions of her life, in terms of whether her future is going to be in Essos or Westeros.

Introducing Astapor

Before I begin, I should state that a good bit of what I want to say about Astapor I already said in a rather substantial essay as part of the Laboratory of Politics series. In this essay, I’m going to try to avoid repeating myself and instead focus on new material. The first task that GRRM sets himself in this chapter is to introduce Astapor – the city and the social system – as the main character Dany will be dealing with:

In the center of the Plaza of Pride stood a red brick fountain whose waters smelled of brimstone, and in the center of the fountain a monstrous harpy made of hammered bronze. Twenty feet tall she reared. She had a woman’s face, with gilded hair, ivory eyes, and pointed ivory teeth. Water gushed yellow from her heavy breasts. But in place of arms she had the wings of a bat or a dragon, her legs were the legs of an eagle, and behind she wore a scorpion’s curled and venomous tail. The harpy of Ghis, Dany thought. Old Ghis had fallen five thousand years ago, if she remembered true; its legions shattered by the might of young Valyria, its brick walls pulled down, its streets and buildings turned to ash and cinder by dragonflame, its very fields sown with salt, sulfur, and skulls. The gods of Ghis were dead, and so too its people; these Astapori were mongrels, Ser Jorah said. Even the Ghiscari tongue was largely forgotten; the slave cities spoke the High Valyrian of their conquerors, or what they had made of it. Yet the symbol of the Old Empire still endured here, though this bronze monster had a heavy chain dangling from her talons, an open manacle at either end. The harpy of Ghis had a thunderbolt in her claws. This is the harpy of Astapor.

Even before Quentyn gets there, Astapor is a hellish place. The colors that make it up – red brick, shiny or dull bronze, yellowish waters – are appropriately reminiscent of Warhammer’s Khorne, or of the Christian devil in his relatively modern goateed incarnation. The water stinks of hellfire or perhaps the wrath of God, pouring forth from the incarnation of a fallen goddess who towers menacingly over the city.

Mephistolean imagery aside, the Plaza of Pride has something else to communicate about how the Astapori culture interacts with the past: this is a city obsessed with the past, recycling (and distorting) old symbols to legitimate and justify their actions today. Despite the fact that “the gods of Ghis were dead, and so too its people,” or that “even the Ghiscari tongue was largely forgotten,” the whole city of Astapor insists on an unbroken line of descent, and (as Kraznys does) insists that “we are the sons of the harpy.” Not merely a source of “pride” or “heritage,” it’s clearly used to establish hierarchies of status: “Old Ghis ruled an empire when the Valyrians were still fucking sheep,” so that Kraznys can declare himself superior not just to Daenerys but also to the “poor little scribe.” Going back to our ongoing theme of culture as power in Dany’s time with the Dothraki and the Qartheen, it’s critically important that this chapter portrays the Astapori as seeing themselves the superior to barbarian people.

But no amount of cultural nationalism can entirely hide the signs of change: bold claims of Ghiscari superiority are spoken in “the High Valyrian of their conquerors, or what they had made of it,” and the Harpy to which Kraznys claims descent from has changed, the “thunderbolts” (reminiscent of nothing as much as the thirteen arrows held in the talons of the bald eagle on the Great Seal of the United States) have become “a heavy chain dangling from her talons, an open manacle at either end.” The meaning is hardly obscure: the Ghiscari have altered their most important cultural symbols to legitimate and naturalize slavery, to drape it in the appeal to tradition. In it’s way, it’s not that different from how Ironborn adherents of the Old Way distort their own history, for much the same ends.

The Bricks of Astapor

Another visual key and/or metaphor for Astapor are its red bricks. Similar to the Bronze Age Indus Valley cities of Harappa and Mehenjo-Daro, Astapor is a city built from millions of uniform bricks:

“Astapor was a queer city, even to the eyes of one who had walked within the House of Dust and bathed in the Womb of the World beneath the Mother of Mountains. All the streets were made of the same red brick that had paved the plaza. So too were the stepped pyramids, the deep-dug fighting pits with their rings of descending seats, the sulfurous fountains and gloomy wine caves, and the ancient walls that encircled them. So many bricks, she thought, and so old and crumbling. Their fine red dust was everywhere, dancing down the gutters at each gust of wind. Small wonder so many Astapori women veiled their faces; the brick dust stung the eyes worse than sand. “Make way!” Jhogo shouted as he rode before her litter. “Make way for the Mother of Dragons!” But when he uncoiled the great silver-handled whip that Dany had given him, and made to crack it in the air, she leaned out and told him nay. “Not in this place, blood of my blood,” she said, in his own tongue. “These bricks have heard too much of the sound of whips.”

Unlike the well-designed cities of the Indus Valley, with their impressive levels of urban planning, water supply, and sewage, the overwhelming sense is of stagnation and decline. Even as the Free Cities have advanced well into the Renaissance, this is a city which clings to the past rather than striving for the future; as Dany notes right away, Astapor is “an old city…but not so populous as it was in its glory, nor near so crowded as Qarth or Pentos or Lys.” The very bricks we’re talking about old and crumbling rather than fresh and uniform, just like the statues (“another gigantic harpy stood atop the gate, this one made of baked red clay and crumbling visibly, with no more than a stub of her scorpion’s tail remaining. The chain she grasped in her clay claws was old iron, rotten with rust”).

There is another reason, however, why the bricks are Astapor’s key visual metaphor, one that ties back to the themes discussed above:

“Bricks and blood built Astapor,” Whitebeard murmured at her side, “and bricks and blood her people….An old rhyme a maester taught me, when I was a boy. I never knew how true it was. The bricks of Astapor are red with the blood of the slaves who make them.”

The bricks are red in order to draw your attention to the fact that everything in Astapor flows from slavery, that there is no part of this city from the very foundations on up that is not tainted with the blood of slaves. Indeed, I would argue that the extent to which Astapor is a slave society rather than a society with slavery is implicated in the city’s decline: the use of the past tense in Barristan’s rhyme, the fact that the rhyme is old, suggests that (slightly different to Barrsitan’s conclusion) the slaves no longer make bricks. Just as the sheer profits of sugar-production drove out all alternative uses for land or labor in the Caribbean, rendering them utterly dependent on imports for the basic necessities of life, the Good Masters of Astapor have redirected all forms of economic activity towards the production of Unsullied slaves for export and associated services, neglecting even basic maintainance of civic infrastructure.

Language Games

However, what connects Daenerys’ story arc to her arcs in AGOT and ACOK, is that Dany’s story here is very much about the power of cosmopolitanism and cultural adaptation, although this time framed around not cultural assimilation or culture shock but rather the power of multi-lingualism:

“Tell the Westerosi whore to lower her eyes,” the slaver Kraznys mo Nakloz complained to the slave girl who spoke for him. “…Even the dim purple eyes of a sunset savage can see how magnificent my creatures are, surely.” Kraznys’s High Valyrian was twisted and thickened by the characteristic growl of Ghis, and flavored here and there with words of slaver argot. Dany understood him well enough, but she smiled and looked blankly at the slave girl, as if wondering what he might have said. “The Good Master Kraznys asks, are they not magnificent?” The girl spoke the Common Tonguwell, for one who had never been to Westeros. …It had been Ser Jorah’s suggestion that she speak only Dothraki and the Common Tongue while in Astapor. My bear is more clever than he looks. “Tell me of their training.” “The Westerosi woman is pleased with them, but speaks no praise, to keep the price down,” the translator told her master. “She wishes to know how they were trained.”

Because the trilingual Dany can speak High Valyrian natively (enough to get past the difference in dialect, which even Tyrion struggles with in ADWD), she is able to play a double game with Kraznys, pretending ignorance while being able to listen in on his every word, so that she hears both what is being said and what’s being meant. (Which is not that different from how, when one becomes proficient enough in a foreign language, one begins to understand statements both on a literal level and on a deeper level of idiom.)

Missandei occupies a similar space, as the classic translator slave (a role discussed at length in Captives and Cousins) who interprets not merely between languages but between cultures. In this position, she exercises a subtle authority that belies her subordinate status, as she’s able to carefully edit out her master’s vulgarity (so as to not miss a sale) and explain to her master both the literal meaning of Dany’s words and their relevance to the price being offered.

In this situation, it is Kraznys – who positions himself as superior to both “savage” and slave because he is of the oldest civilization in the world – who is the least powerful, because his xenophobia and cultural chauvinism has left him inflexible and parochial in his thinking. One detects something here of a carictature of every Ugly American who thinks that they can make anyone else in the world understand English by speaking loudly and slowly.

Intersectionality and Cruelty

Speaking of chauvinism, I don’t think it’s an accident either that Kraznys combines cultural with gendered chauvinism, taking the opportunity to say crudely misogynistic things that would normally lose a sale, shielded in the (inaccurate) belief that his customer can’t understand what he’s saying:

“My tongue is wasted wagging at women. East or west, it makes no matter, they cannot decide until they have been pampered and flattered and stuffed with sweetmeats. Well, if this is my fate, so be it. Tell the whore that if she requires a guide to our sweet city, Kraznys mo Nakloz will gladly serve her…and service her as well, if she is more woman than she looks.” “Good Master Kraznys would be most pleased to show you Astapor while you ponder, Your Grace,” the translator said. “I will feed her jellied dog brains, and a fine rich stew of red octopus and unborn puppy.” He wiped his lips. “Many delicious dishes can be had here, he says.” “Tell her how pretty the pyramids are at night,” the slaver growled. “Tell her I will lick honey off her breasts, or allow her to lick honey off mine if she prefers.” “Astapor is most beautiful at dusk, Your Grace,” said the slave girl. “The Good Masters light silk lanterns on every terrace, so all the pyramids glow with colored lights. Pleasure barges ply the Worm, playing soft music and calling at the little islands for food and wine and other delights.” “Ask her if she wishes to view our fighting pits,” Kraznys added. “Douquor’s Pit has a fine folly scheduled for the evening. A bear and three small boys. One boy will be rolled in honey, one in blood, and one in rotting fish, and she may wager on which the bear will eat first.”

In addition to making the reader deeply dislike Kraznys mo Nakloz even more (enough that his fiery death comes as a genuine moment of catharsis, without any of the empathy cudgel that GRRM deploys in other moments of comeuppance), there is a theme here being established as to how the whole of the Slave Cities combine sex and violence as spectacle. While it could certainly be argued that this is something of an Orientalist trope, I would argue that the symbolism isn’t necessarily non-Western in character: as Dan Carlin points out, gladiatorial combats involving humans and animals are most associated with the decidely-Occidental Rome.

Indeed, I would argue that when we look at Astapor, we see Roman signifiers all over the place: the tokar is clearly a nod to the toga, the “lockstep legions” evoke the Roman Legions who also fought in disciplined formations using shields, spears, and short-swords, with the harpy standing in for the Roman eagle, and Astapor was ruled for thousands of years as a colony of the Valyrian Freehold (making them distant cousins to Dany herself; more on this in a bit). Perhaps instead of indulging in orientalist tropes, GRRM is actually asking us to rethink how civilized the civilizations we in the “West” think of as our antecedents really were…

The Unsullied as Industrial Process

However, Kraznys’ personal cruelty is mere background noise, a backup band for the lead singer, compared to what we learn about the Unsullied. As I said at the beginning, I don’t want to repeat what I said in my essay on the Slave Cities, so allow me to summarize what we learn in this chapter:

First, the Unsullied are slave soldiers chosen as children. This raises the spectre of child soldiers who are also ruthlessly indoctrinated, drugged to the gills, and dehumanized.

Second, 2/3 of recruits die in the training process. This means that the 1,000 recruits standing in front of Dany in the Plaza of Pride produced 3,000 dead children as an “industrial byproduct” (to quote myself) when you include the babies they are required to kill, as well as 1,000 dead dogs.

Third, rather than being a part of Astapori society and culture, the Unsullied are an ethnically diverse population who have been stolen by force from their native lands (mostly by the Dothraki, but seafaring slavers as well), which cuts against cultural relativist arguments against Dany’s crusade:

Some of the soldiers were tall and some were short. They ranged in age from fourteen to twenty, she judged. Their cheeks were smooth, and their eyes all the same, be they black or brown or blue or grey or amber. …The girls followed close behind with the silk awning, to keep her in the shade, but the thousand men before her enjoyed no such protection. More than half had the copper skins and almond eyes of Dothraki and Lhazerene, but she saw men of the Free Cities in the ranks as well, along with pale Qartheen, ebon-faced Summer Islanders, and others whose origins she could not guess. And some had skins of the same amber hue as Kraznys mo Nakloz, and the bristly red-black hair that marked the ancient folk of Ghis, who named themselves the harpy’s sons…

While arguably those who share Kraznys’ ethnicity could be said to belong to Ghiscari culture – although how far that point goes I’m not really sure, unless the argument is that these people have willingly enslaved themselves – the majority of them are Dothraki or Lhazarene, reflecting the geographic center of the slave-catching industry. However, the ranks of the Unsullied are broadly diverse, with all of the different ethnicities of Essos represented, symbolizing how all of Essos is complicit in this system.

Fourth, the Ghiscari are representing a relatively new process as something ancient. As Kraznys says:

“The Unsullied have something better than strength, tell her. They have discipline. We fight in the fashion of the Old Empire, yes. They are the lockstep legions of Old Ghis come again, absolutely obedient, absolutely loyal, and utterly without fear.”

However, the Unsullied are a corruption of Ghiscari culture and tradition: as AWOIAF tells us, “those men were free, and the Unsullied are not;” in ADWD, we learn that the present-day legions of New Ghis “were free citizens who served for three-year terms.” The Good Masters have created a false history in order to equate two radically different institutions, and in the process justify and naturalize inhumanity on an industrial scale – this is what marks them out more than anything else as a true slave society.

This difference in motivation – the men of Old and New Ghis choosing to fight out of civic obligation whereas the Unsullied are forced into it as property – helps to explain why the Good Masters are so intent on comprehensive dehumanization. It’s not enough to mutilate children to ensure that “no woman can ever tempt them, nor any man” (and note again how this practice is justified not solely in pragmatic terms but ideological ones, as making the Unsullied “the purest creatures on the earth“). It’s not enough that the Unsullied must be drugged with the “wine of courage” to desensitize them so that they “with each passing year feel less and less,” becoming automatons in flesh. (Incidentally, GRRM’s pharmacology seems on point here: atropa belladonna contains atropine and scopolamine, which are used in heavy painkillers that bring on “twilight sleep”, and atropine sulphate which blocks nervous system responses.) It’s not enough that the Unsullied are denied individual names, similar to the use of serial numbers for prisoners and soldiers to break down resistance to conformity. No, they must ritually kill off dogs and children in order to destroy their natural human capacity for empathy.

This is the system – slavery taken to its logical extreme – that Dany is encountering, and I’m absolutely certain that the sheer baroqueness is there because GRRM wants the reader to share Dany’s shock and revulsion. And whereas Qarth was about whether Dany would fall to the temptation of opulence and safety, Astapor is about whether Dany will (in the name of expediency) choose to become complicit in this horrorshow again, or whether she’ll make a more righteous decision. I say again, because it is often forgotten that Dany was in the process of sending hundreds if not thousands of Lhazarene captives to the flesh markets of the Slave Cities to finance her invasion of Westeros (more on this later).

Barristan and Dany Debate Slavery

If it wasn’t clear what GRRM thought about this system, he chooses to have Barristan Selmy, who’s pretty much a Lawful Good Paladin, present at the “showroom floor” pitch meeting, so that he can act as Dany’s own Jiminy Cricket:

“I call that madness, not courage,” said Arstan Whitebeard, when the solemn little scribe was done. He tapped the end of his hardwood staff against the bricks, tap tap, as if to tell his displeasure. The old man had not wanted to sail to Astapor; nor did he favor buying this slave army. “…Sheep are obedient.” “…Even the bravest men fear death and maiming.”

There’s a couple different things going on in this scene that need to be teased out: first, in order for the larger plot to work, Dany has to keep her cards close to her chest until the end of next chapter and so can’t express her opinions out loud, so Ser Barristan is there in part to make the public argument against slavery, going several rounds with Kraznys, who is just as disdainful of the old knight as the old knight is of him.

Second, Barristan is there to make an existential/idealistic case that, in addition to the essential immorality of slavery in general, the Unsullied specifically are a perversion of the martial ethos he’s dedicated his life to. Arstan sees only madness in men voluntarily dying of dehydration, starvation, and/or exposure, because those deaths are being undertaken not for any legitimate military reason (like holding a castle under siege when supplies run out) only because they’ve been dehumanized to the point where they will obey any order. The issue of choice is key here. In Arstan’s worldview, courage comes only from a free decision to risk one’s own life. Similarly, Arstan denies that the Unsullied show bravery, because they’ve been dehumanized and drugged to the point where they don’t experience pain and thus have no reason to fear death. And as we know, men can only be brave when they are afraid…

Third, and perhaps most importantly, Barristan Selmy is there because Daenerys doesn’t really understand Westeros or Westerosi cultural values, as she’s spent essentially her entire life in Essos, and if she’s going to land an army on Westerosi shores and be greeted as their rightful ruler, she’s going to have to:

“My queen,” said Arstan, “there have been no slaves in the Seven Kingdoms for thousands of years. The old gods and the new alike hold slavery to be an abomination. Evil. If you should land in Westeros at the head of a slave army, many good men will oppose you for no other reason than that. You will do great harm to your cause, and to the honor of your House.” “Yet I must have some army,” Dany said. “The boy Joffrey will not give me the Iron Throne for asking politely.” “When the day comes that you raise your banners, half of Westeros will be with you,” Whitebeard promised. “Your brother Rhaegar is still remembered, with great love.” “And my father?” Dany said. The old man hesitated before saying, “King Aerys is also remembered. He gave the realm many years of peace. Your Grace, you have no need of slaves.”

There is, however, a certain tension in Barristan’s argument here. On the one hand, Barristan is right that the Westerosi hate slavery, and that bringing a slave army to Westeros will turn many against her who might have been willing to support a Targaryen claimant to the Iron Throne. On the other hand, Barristan isn’t quite telling the full story her family’s darker history, and the ways that her father violated Westerosi cultural norms.

Dany’s rejoinder is quite instructive, in terms of how it lays out her thinking both about how she thinks about her family’s recent history, but also the issue of slavery:

“There are sellswords in Pentos and Myr and Tyrosh you can hire. A man who kills for coin has no honor, but at least they are no slaves. Find your army there, I beg you.” “My brother visited Pentos, Myr, Braavos, near all the Free Cities. The magisters and archons fed him wine and promises, but his soul was starved to death. A man cannot sup from the beggar’s bowl all his life and stay a man. I had my taste in Qarth, that was enough. I will not come to Pentos bowl in hand.” “Better to come a beggar than a slaver,” Arstan said. “There speaks one who has been neither.” Dany’s nostrils flared. “Do you know what it is like to be sold, squire? I do. My brother sold me to Khal Drogo for the promise of a golden crown. Well, Drogo crowned him in gold, though not as he had wished, and I…my sun-and-stars made a queen of me, but if he had been a different man, it might have been much otherwise. Do you think I have forgotten how it felt to be afraid?”

Because of her age (and because neither Viserys nor Barristan stepped up to tell her the truth), Dany is largely ignorant about her family’s recent history before her birth, which renders her less than sensitive about how her landing on Westeros needs to be handled. Instead, Dany approaches the situation very much from the basis of her family’s recent history after her birth: she doesn’t want to hire sellswords in the Free Cities, because Viserys tried and failed. (Incidentally, this is pretty much the only time other than his first appearance where Barristan even vaguely gestures in the direction of Illyrio’s plan. Also, this is nice ground work for why Dany might not go along with Aegon’s proposals if they are associated with the Golden Company.

And because of her experience of Viserys (and perhaps also because she’s spent more than a few years growing up surrounded by slaves), Dany comes down on the opposite side as to Barristan – when the chips are down, she will opt to be slaver rather than live the crabbed life of an exile. This gets to an uncomfortable truth about Dany’s position: as much as she claims to understand slavery from the inside out, she’s not willing to admit that, while she was treated like a slave for a time, she did transition out of that into a position that (as I’ve said above) made her complicit in both owning slaves and enslaving the formerly free. A perfect leader of a crusade against slavery, Dany is not.

Just as our conscience is often our sharpest critic, I think it is inward recognition of this that makes her lack back against Ser Barristan. For further proof of this, we can look to Dany’s next debate.

Jorah and Dany Debate Slavery

If Barristan is Dany’s own Jiminy Cricket, Jorah is her Honest John, urging her to follow the path of least resistance, the path of easy utilitarianism. Not for no reason does Barristan mention before his counterpart even shows up on the page that “Ser Jorah was a slaver himself, Your Grace,” because GRRM wants that fact in your mind to contextualize this later conversation. Jorah is a slaver – it is a crime he has never apologized for, and indeed excused through rather creepy logical contortions; he’s still a slaver in this book and he’ll be a slaver in ADWD, and who knows whether being enslaved in ADWD will make a difference. Speaking of creepiness:

She could not understand why Ser Jorah mistrusted the old man so. Could he be jealous that I have found another man to talk to? Unbidden, her thoughts went back to the night on Balerion when the exile knight had kissed her. He should never have done that. He is thrice my age, and of too low a birth for me, and I never gave him leave. No true knight would ever kiss a queen without her leave. She had taken care never to be alone with Ser Jorah after that, keeping her handmaids with her aboard ship, and sometimes her bloodriders. He wants to kiss me again, I see it in his eyes. What Dany wanted she could not begin to say, but Jorah’s kiss had woken something in her, something that had been sleeping since Khal Drogo died. Lying abed in her narrow bunk, she found herself wondering how it would be to have a man squeezed in beside her in place of her handmaid, and the thought was more exciting than it should have been. Sometimes she would close her eyes and dream of him, but it was never Jorah Mormont she dreamed of; her lover was always younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting shadow.

Given how often Dany’s storyline has intersected with issues of consent and sexuality in uncomfortable ways, it’s gratifying to see her lay out the reasons why Jorah’s attention is unwanted – their age difference (she’s 15, he’s 45), their difference in social status (there’s the premodern sensibility to throw you for a loop), but most importantly because Jorah touched her without her consent and wants to keep doing so despite being told not to, which goes against the precepts of both chivalric romance and #MeToo. Moreover, unfortunately for any Dany/Jorah shippers out there (and based on a quick search of An Archive of Our Own, they are out there), Dany just doesn’t find him attractive. (Incidentally, I wonder if Dany’s “younger and more comely” mystery man is a specific callback to her three mounts…)

However, I can’t ignore that GRRM himself gets a bit creepy about Dany’s sexuality here. The resurgence of her libido is a legitimate character beat and needs to happen ahead of her introduction to Daario Naharis, but the sex scene with Irri is really problematic. First, the fact that it’s the would-be Liberator being serviced by a servant muddles the rest of the chapter’s argument about slavery somewhat; especially when the following scene where Dany awkwardly talks it over with Irri suggests that Dany’s handmaidens need to be reminded that they’re free on the one hand, and really want to have sex with their employer on the other. As with the later example with Cersei and Taena, there’s an underlying power disparity which can’t help but complciate the extent of consensuality. Second, since we’re in Dany’s head, we know that she’s not into Irri, and Irri tells Dany herself that she was motivated out of the “great honor” of service, the whole scene leans into the retrograde idea that women have sex with women only because men aren’t available and don’t really have sexual desire for one another – a theme which will rear its ugly head again when we get to Cersei and Taena Merryweather.

At the same time, Dany’s conflict with Jorah is primarily about slavery rather than sex:

“Ser Jorah Mormont stood waiting for her. “Your Grace,” he said, bowing his head. “The slavers have come and gone. Three of them, with a dozen scribes and as many slaves to lift and fetch. They crawled over every foot of our holds and made note of all we had.” He walked her aft. “How many men do they have for sale?” “None.” Was it Mormont she was angry with, or this city with its sullen heat, its stinks and sweats and crumbling bricks? “They sell eunuchs, not men. Eunuchs made of brick, like the rest of Astapor. Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs? They don’t even have names. So don’t call them men, ser.”

This exchange nicely recapitulates the running themes and symbolisms of the first section of the chapter: first, there’s the return of the bricks now meant to symbolize both the city and its foundations on cruelty and how the “training process” dehumanizes the Unsullied, turning them from flesh to brick. Second, there’s the dichotomy between men and eunuchs, but focusing less on the issue of genitalia but on larger issues of personhood (the names, the soulless eyes, the murder of children and animals). It is not a good sign, therefore, that Jorah doesn’t even attempt to argue that the Unsullied haven’t been dehumanized:

“When Aegon the Dragon stepped ashore in Westeros, the kings of Vale and Rock and Reach did not rush to hand him their crowns. If you mean to sit his Iron Throne, you must win it as he did, with steel and dragonfire. And that will mean blood on your hands before the thing is done.” Blood and fire, thought Dany. The words of House Targaryen. She had known them all her life. “The blood of my enemies I will shed gladly. The blood of innocents is another matter. Eight thousand Unsullied they would offer me. Eight thousand dead babes. Eight thousand strangled dogs.”

Instead, Jorah argues that, since political revolutions almost always require armed conflict, Dany might as well go all-in on violence, presumably on the theory that guilt and innocence are binary. It’s the logic of the most extreme pacifism turned on its head to justify not just committing any war crime but committing ALL of them. Needless to say, I’m quite glad that Dany argues instead for a strict distinction between legitimate combatants and civilian, a distinction which is at the heart of just war theory and international human rights law:

“Your Grace,” said Jorah Mormont, “I saw King’s Landing after the Sack. Babes were butchered that day as well, and old men, and children at play. More women were raped than you can count. There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs. The scent of blood is all it takes to wake him. Yet I have never heard of these Unsullied raping, nor putting a city to the sword, nor even plundering, save at the express command of those who lead them. Brick they may be, as you say, but if you buy them henceforth the only dogs they’ll kill are those you want dead. And you do have some dogs you want dead, as I recall.”

Jorah’s rejoinder is a weird kind of utilitarian humanitarianism: because the Unsullied have been systematically stripped of free will, they won’t commit war crimes (unless order to do so), which makes using them more moral than using an army of normal humans. And while Dany doesn’t make this argument, I am instructed by Ta-Nehisi Coates’ point that these kind of arguments always privilege some peoples’ death and suffering over others: in this case, Jorah is foregrounding the “babes…old men…children at play…[and] women” of King’s Landing (standing in for Westeros as a whole), while pushing Astapor’s atrocities to the background. To update the math I did in the beginning: the eight thousand Unsullied on sale means that, in addition to “eight thousand dead babes” and “eight thousand strangled dogs,” there are 16,000 dead trainees as well, making it 24,000 human lives spent to produce just the current crop of Unsullied. It is these invisible and overlooked bodies which have to be added to the scale in order to clarify the stakes of complicity or rejection.

To follow a somewhat different line of argument, it is important to note that Jorah Mormont’s argument to Dany is deliberately aromantic:

“Tell me, then—when he touched a man on the shoulder with his sword, what did he say? ‘Go forth and kill the weak’? Or ‘Go forth and defend them’? At the Trident, those brave men Viserys spoke of who died beneath our dragon banners—did they give their lives because they believed in Rhaegar’s cause, or because they had been bought and paid for?” Dany turned to Mormont, crossed her arms, and waited for an answer. “My queen,” the big man said slowly, “all you say is true. But Rhaegar lost on the Trident. He lost the battle, he lost the war, he lost the kingdom, and he lost his life. His blood swirled downriver with the rubies from his breastplate, and Robert the Usurper rode over his corpse to steal the Iron Throne. Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died.”

This is where I feel it’s very easy to draw the wrong conclusion about both who we’re supposed to side with in this argument, and about who George R.R Martin is as a writer and a thinker, because this chapter very much shows the Romantic and Deconstructionist sides of his mind at war with one another. I think it would be a mistake, however, to assume from this passage or the series as a whole that Martin the Deconstructor is the true reading of the series, and to discount Romanticism entirely as an illusion and a fraud.

Just as the most intense cynic is a disappointed idealist, I would argue GRRM’s Romanticism is all the stronger for his clear-eyed understanding that virtue does not bring victory. The difference between Martin and his hero Tolkien (and make no mistake, GRRM clearly admires the man greatly is that, while Martin recognizes that the good don’t always win, he’s not so cynical to conclude that there is therefore no difference between the two. In Martin’s eyes, the success, the convenience of realpolitik is a crime to be decried, the original sin that causes the whole world to fall from grace.

Take The Third Option

Unbeknownst to both Barristan Selmy (who urges her to sail west and remain personally morally pure while leaving systemic oppression in place, which is very much in character for a man who served Aerys II) and Jorah Mormont (who urges complicity with evil because it’s always worked out for him, right?), Dany has already made up her mind. While first-time readers won’t find out the truth until the end of the next Dany chapter, the Mother of Dragons has decided to take a third option, to liberate the slaves and use them to overthrow the Good Masters of Astapor:

“The Good Master has said that these eunuchs cannot be tempted with coin or flesh,” Dany told the girl, “but if some enemy of mine should offer them freedom for betraying me . . .” “They would kill him out of hand and bring her his head, tell her that,” the slaver answered. “Other slaves may steal and hoard up silver in hopes of buying freedom, but an Unsullied would not take it if the little mare offered it as a gift. They have no life outside their duty. They are soldiers, and that is all.”

One of the first clues is that Dany specifically asks about whether the Unsullied would turn on their master in exchange for freedom – which is exactly what she intends to do. After learning that they won’t turn against their current owners, Dany therefore hits on the scheme of buying the Unsullied first and then liberating them. However, this raises another issue:

“Ask her how large an army she wishes to buy.” “How many Unsullied do you have to sell?” “Eight thousand fully trained and available at present. We sell them only by the unit, she should know. By the thousand or the century. Once we sold by the ten, as household guards, but that proved unsound. Ten is too few. They mingle with other slaves, even freemen, and forget who and what they are.”

Next, learning how many Unsullied there are in total allows Dany to know how many men she can either recruit into her own forces and at the same time how many will be left to defend the Great Masters when she gives the order. The fact that there are eight thousand gives rise to the particular ruse of selling one of her priceless dragons, because nothing else would allow her to buy as many as possible and thus achieve such an overwhelming victory. At the same time, Kraznys’ letting slip that the Unsullied’s mental conditioning can be overcome if they are moved into a less totalitarian social environment is something of a hint as to how the Unsullied will respond to her offer.

The next clue as to Dany’s decision comes a bit later in the chapter, when Dany returns to her ships and catches up on how her kids have been behaving in day care:

Behind the carved wooden door of the captain’s cabin, her dragons were restless. Drogon raised his head and screamed, pale smoke venting from his nostrils, and Viserion flapped at her… “They have been wild while you were gone, Khaleesi,” Irri told her. “Viserion clawed splinters from the door, do you see? And Drogon made to escape when the slaver men came to see them. When I grabbed his tail to hold him back, he turned and bit me.” She showed Dany the marks of his teeth on her hand. “Did any of them try to burn their way free?” That was the thing that frightened Dany the most. “No, Khaleesi. Drogon breathed his fire, but in the empty air. The slaver men feared to come near him.” She kissed Irri’s hand where Drogon had bitten it. “I’m sorry he hurt you. Dragons are not meant to be locked up in a small ship’s cabin.”

We have known for a long time that Dany’s dragons are linked to her on a deeper level, and as we’ll see in much more detail at the end of ADWD, this connection is very much an emotional one, where Dany’s emotions bleed over into her dragons and vice-versa. It is worth noting, therefore, that when Dany is standing in the Plaza of Pride trying to repress her righteous anger, that her dragons are going absolutely nuts, expressing everything that she cannot.

Moreover, given that close connection, Dany’s ultimate decision is foreshadowed by the way in which dragons are thematically associated with freedom. (For good and for ill, as we shall see.) In the last chapter, we are told that “a dragon never stops growing, Your Grace, so long as he has food and freedom;” in this chapter, Dany herself notes that “dragons are not meant to be locked up.” Thus, it’s no surprise that Drogon is the one who tries to breath fire on the slavers when they show up, prefiguring what he’ll do in the next Dany chapter.

But the final hint comes from when Dany turns to Jorah, her morally bankrupt but pragmatic advisor, to give her an insider’s view of the slave system (a good example of how to use Machiavellianism for a purpose):

“Answer me this, ser—why have the Dothraki never sacked this city?” She pointed. “Look at the walls. You can see where they’ve begun to crumble. There, and there. Do you see any guards on those towers? I don’t. Are they hiding, ser? I saw these sons of the harpy today, all their proud highborn warriors. They dressed in linen skirts, and the fiercest thing about them was their hair. Even a modest khalasar could crack this Astapor like a nut and spill out the rotted meat inside. So tell me, why is that ugly harpy not sitting beside the godsway in Vaes Dothrak among the other stolen gods?” “There are two reasons. Astapor’s brave defenders are so much chaff, it’s true. Old names and fat purses who dress up as Ghiscari scourges to pretend they still rule a vast empire. Every one is a high officer. On feastdays they fight mock wars in the pits to demonstrate what brilliant commanders they are, but it’s the eunuchs who do the dying. All the same, any enemy wanting to sack Astapor would have to know that they’d be facing Unsullied. The slavers would turn out the whole garrison in the city’s defense. The Dothraki have not ridden against Unsullied since they left their braids at the gates of Qohor.” “Who would attack Astapor?” Ser Jorah asked. “Meereen and Yunkai are rivals but not enemies, the Doom destroyed Valyria, the folk of the eastern hinterlands are all Ghiscari, and beyond the hills lies Lhazar. The Lamb Men, as your Dothraki call them, a notably unwarlike people.” “Yes,” she agreed, “but north of the slave cities is the Dothraki sea, and two dozen mighty khals who like nothing more than sacking cities and carrying off their people into slavery.” “Carrying them off where? What good are slaves once you’ve killed the slavers? Valyria is no more, Qarth lies beyond the red waste, and the Nine Free Cities are thousands of leagues to the west. And you may be sure the sons of the harpy give lavishly to every passing khal, just as the magisters do in Pentos and Norvos and Myr. They know that if they feast the horselords and give them gifts, they will soon ride on. It’s cheaper than fighting, and a deal more certain.”

I really like this exchange because it shows us that Daenerys is a natural wartime queen. She notices Astapor’s weaknesses of both materiel and manpower, but she’s cautious enough to want to know whether there’s a catch, something that she’s not seeing. That catch is, in fact, twofold: first, the Unsullied are an incredibly powerful defensive force who would be called up to defend the city in a crisis (hence why she has to buy all of them, so that the Good Masters can’t call on them when she gives the order).

The second catch, however, helps us to see the continent-wide slave system that enables Astapor to survive and prosper: the other Slave Cities don’t want to rock the boat (especially since they’ve effectively specialized in the production of different kind of slaves, so that they’re not directly competing), their greatest geopolitical nemesis was obliterated by a natural disaster, and their only other neighbors are pacifists. But more importantly, the Dothraki aren’t interested in conquering them because the Slave Cities are the ones who buy their slaves – as Jorah puts it, “what good are slaves once you’ve killed the slavers?” – through the tribute system. Thus, from every direction, the Good Masters are insulated by thick walls of self-interest.

Only Daenerys Targaryen is the first person in hundreds of years who has both the means and motive to do something about it.

Historical Analysis:

The Unsullied are a little complicated as historical parallels go, because it’s a case where GRRM is really remixing history and then turning everything up to eleven to make a point. There have been real-world cases of slave soldiers who became central to the militaries of various countries. However, their circumstances were often quite different from the horrorshow depicted here, in ways that complicate the boundaries between free and slave.

The Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire were slave soldiers, forcibly recruited as children from Christian communities in the Balkans and modern-day Turkey, and their status as slaves, their forced conversion to Islam (including circumcision), and their strict discipline (Janissaries weren’t allowed to marry or take up any trade other than soldiering, and were put under constant surveillance by palace eunuchs) led the European imaginary to conceive of them as mindless automatons. However, because their intense discipline made them the elite infantry of the Ottoman Empire, the Janissaries had a very high social status: Janissaries were regularly and well-paid, they operated on a strict meritocracy that allowed poor peasants to become generals, governors, or even Grand Viziers, and their prominence in the Sultan’s court meant that they could and would revolt and overthrow Sultans to get pay increases or privileges like the right to marry and pass on their positions to their children. By the end, the Janissaries were among the most privileged members of the empire.

Indeed, the sheer rigor of training and the high rate of human “wastage” resembles nothing so much as the Spartiates. In addition to practicing child exposure to eliminate children for reasons of ill health, congenital deformity, the wrong gender, or other factors, Spartiates were taken from their families at age seven and put through the agoge until age 30: the process involved exposure to the elements (boys were allowed only a single cloak), deliberate underfeeding to encourage them to steal and thus develop stealth skills (since stealing was harshly punished), institutionalized pederasty, and the annual murder of helots in order to terrify the slave caste into terrified obedience. Many Spartiates did not survive the training process, and even when they were done, Spartiates were required to live in military barracks and eat only with their mess, visiting their families only on occasion to sire children. And yet, technically the Spartiates were free men…

What If?

Sadly, there isn’t actually a lot of room for hypotheticals here. Ser Barristan’s suggestion to sail west and not buy the Unsullied was already covered in the last Dany chapter, and the hypothetical in which Dany actually just buys the Unsullied really belongs to next chapter.

So, I’ll just have to see you next chapter….

Book vs. Show:

While Dany’s Season 3 arc has some problems, they mostly crop up later in the season. I generally thought that Dan Hildebrand did a good job as Kraznys (and actually, that’s one case where whitewashing the character works to avoid Orientalist stereotype and get closer to what GRRM was going for with the Slave Cities). Aging up Missandei works to give the character a bit more personality and agency than she would otherwise, and Natalie Emmanuel has been a solid presence on the show despite having been given very poor material in recent seasons.