Here’s my plan with Fire and Blood, Volume I. This book is a bit of a tricky combination of stuff that’s taken word-for-word from previous texts (WOIAF, Sons of the Dragon, etc.), completely new stuff, and stuff that was in previous texts but has since been expanded.

In each post then, I will just link to where I wrote about the word-for-word stuff when the previous book came out, then continue on to the next new/expanded section, rather than have each post be discrete chapter-by-chapters. And where there is expanded stuff, I’ll link to where I’ve discussed stuff so far.

Chapter 1: Aegon’s Conquest

This section is taken virtually word-for-word from the Aegon’s Conquest section of the WOIAF, with only a few places where a word or two was changed.

Moving on!

Chapter 2: The Wars of Aegon I

This is our first real new section, although parts of this expand on stuff from the WOIAF as I’ll point out as it goes. However, it’s a quite meaty section, some twenty-four pages in length, and there’s a lot here to talk about

Overall, Aegon’s reign can be divided between “the Dragon’s Wars” (AC 1-AC 16) and “the Dragon’s Peace” (AC 17-AC 37).

The Sunderland Rebellion:

This was covered in the Vale section of WOIAF, but we get more detail than the brief paragraph in the original text.

We learn that Ser Warrick Manderly commanded the Braavosi sellsail fleet, and that Visenya and Vhagar participated in bring the Sunderlands to heel.

It’s still unclear why Marla was made queen if her brother Steffon was old enough to have sons. It could be that the Sisters followed a more Dornish inheritance pattern than was the custom among the First Men and the Andals, although @goodqueenaly suggests that it’s possible that Steffon might be a half-brother of Queen Marla or something of the kind.

Ser Warrick Manderly is rewarded for his services by getting one of Steffon Sunderland’s sons as a ward and hostage.

Marla Sunderland suffers a grim fate. After being “exile and imprisoned” (which is a very confusing turn of phrase: logically, you can’t be exiled from the place you’re being held prisoner in, which suggests she was exiled from the Sisters and imprisoned on the mainland, but it would be much simpler to say she was taken captive), she has her tongue removed and is sent to the Silent Sisters.

As we’ll see in a bit, F&B is a good bit gorier than WOIAF was, which suggests that perhaps Archmaester Gyldayn was less interested in bowlderizing history than Maester Yandel.

The Iron Islands:

This was covered in the Iron Islands chapter of WOIAF, but once again we get more detail.

We learn a bit more about Lodos the living son of the Drowned God; apparently he could work miracles, which would explain why the priests might have crowned him with the driftwood crown. Too bad for him the gift didn’t work when Aegon came.

Nice detail: apparently so many Ironborn were killed in the civil war that “krakens appeared by the hundreds, dawn by the blood.”

Aegon’s war fleet was composed of ships from the Arbor, Highgarden (this is the first we hear of Highgarden having a fleet, which is interesting), and Lannisport. (No word about the Highgarden fleet which was supposedly quite large.) But the most interesting detail is that the fleet included “a few longships from BEar Island dispatched by Torrhen Stark,” which suggests that the North did have a western fleet of some size within the last three hundred years.

Aegon allows Qhorin Volmark’s son to inherit, which is ironic given that that kid will grow up to try to claim the crown of the Iron Islands a generation later.

Winterfell was suggested as a potential overlord of the Iron Islands! Wow, the War of Five Kings would have gone quite differently if that’d happened.

Vickon Greyjoy formally renounced all claims to the Riverlands, which is a nice Crusader Kings II-style touch.

Quenton Qoherys had two sons and a grandson in addition to any children with the Tullys. More evidence of the Harrenhal curse at work.

Dorne:

This is the longest section of the chapter, and really gets into some quite gruesome detail about the atrocities of the First Dornish War.

We learn that Aegon tried to negotiate before the war, a detail which seems to try to place the Targaryens in a more peaceful and reasonable light than say, bloody-handed imperialists.

Harlan Tyrell is definitely from the Mace side of the family, coming across as one of those arrogant colonial officers who gets his men butchered out of a rich mix of racism and classism.

Some details I liked about Aegon’s column: GRRM’s discovered my love of the term “slighted” for the deliberate destruction of a castle’s fortifications; the wall of sheep carcasses is an evocative detail of the scorched earth tactics of the Dornish; Aegon splits his forces between Hellholt and Skyreach.

We learn a bit more about the seasons: AC 3-4 were autumn, suggesting that the summer had just ended. The hope was that the winter would allow them to fight more effectively in the deserts. But unfortunately the autumn kept going, making the trek across the sands deadly.

Harlan Tyrell loses 25% of his men on the march to Hellholt, in a scene reminiscent of the First Crusade (or the Holy War of R. Scott Bakker’s Prince of Nothing trilogy). Definitely a cousin of Lord Ronnie Rust, this man.

The Boneway has steps chiseled into the mountains, a nice detail.

The ambush of Orys’ column is a real work of art (by a real piece of work), waiting until the Stormlanders are crossing a bridge over the River Wyl and then bringing down a rockfall to cut off retreat.

Aegon’s made to look a bit more successful, as Skyreach and Yronwood aren’t described as abandoned.

Rhaenys takes Lemonwood, Spottswood, Stinkwater, and then Sunspear.

The bounties on the Dornish lords happened earlier than I had thought, taking place right during Aegon’s victory ceremony at Sunspear. This detail makes the Targaryens actually look a bit worse, since it precedes the war turning nasty.

Aegon’s part of the army leaves Dorne after Sunspear; WOIAF made it out that only the Targs flew back. This helps to explain why the Dornish revolt/counter-attack was so successful.

We learn a bit more about Harlan Tyrell’s defeat: the river Brimstone isn’t particularly potable (didn’t think so) and the fish aren’t edible; the Qorgyles and Vaiths had prevented him from foraging, and then he disappears on the march.

Post 6 AC, the war turns nasty when Aegon finds out about what happened to Orys and the other prisoners. (Suggests he and Orys were quite close), but it’s interesting there were “a dozen short truces” in the mean-time.

Aegon tries to punish the Wyls by burning their castles, but they use tunnels and caves deep in the mountain to hide from the fire. Here we get a bit of a divergence from WOIAF, where it says that “The Targaryens unleashed

their dragons, burning the defiant castles again and again. In return, the Dornish responded with fire of their own.” This makes it seem like Aegon was retaliating specifically against the Wyls, and then the Martells escalated from there.

their dragons, burning the defiant castles again and again. In return, the Dornish responded with fire of their own.” This makes it seem like Aegon was retaliating specifically against the Wyls, and then the Martells escalated from there. The Dornish allied with a pirate king of the Stepstones to help them burn the Rainwood and raid Cape Wrath, another indication that Rhoynish ties to the Stepstones have been geostrategically useful for the Martells.

Here’s a major change: “Vhagar’s fires were loosed upon Sunspear, Lemonwood, Ghost Hill, and the Tor.” Previously, there was this whole thing in Archmaester Timotty’s Conjectures that Sunspear was never burned for mysterious reasons.

“Vhagar’s fires were loosed upon Sunspear, Lemonwood, Ghost Hill, and the Tor.” Previously, there was this whole thing in Archmaester Timotty’s Conjectures that Sunspear was never burned for mysterious reasons. We still don’t know what happened to Lord Caron, but we do learn that Garmon died outside of Oldtown, Manfred Hightower died soon after, and was succeeded by Addam Hightower who had failed to relieve Nightsong.

Again, the Targs are made to look more reasonable, with the burning of Skyreach, Starfall, and the Hellholt described as vengeance for Oldtown and Nightsong.

When it comes to the Dragon’s Wroth (10 AC-12 AC), we get some useful details. The Hellholt was burned so bad that the sands turned into glass (very nuke-like description there). We learn the identities of those assassinated on each side: Lord Fowler, Lord Vaith, Lady Toland, and no less than four Ullers in a row (the Targs’ vengeance can be quite focused at times); and on the other side, Lord Connington dies in a hunting acccident, Lord Mertyns and his whole household poisoned, and Lord Fell smothered as we already knew.

The big new detail is that we learn what the Wyl of Wyl did to Fawnton and Old Oak. Somehow Wyl manages to infiltrate castle Fawnton during the wedding of Ser Jon Cafferen and Lady Alys Oakheart, kills Lord Oakheart and the wedding guests, makes the bride watch as they geld Ser Jon, then gang-rapes Alys and her handmaidens, and sells them to a Myrish slaver. Remember what I was saying about this being way gorier than WOIAF? Honestly, this reminds me a lot of the propaganda of atrocity from the British Empire used to justify imperialist brutality, from the Black Hole of Calcutta to Gladstone’s anti-Turkish speeches on the “Bulgarian Horrors.”

Meria gets the Catherine the Great slander in her death.

As nasty as the Fawton wedding atrocity was, it does explain why Orys wanted to send back Deria minus one hand and why lord Oakheart wanted to whore her out. Anti-Dornish sentiment – which is shown to be a broad and popular sentiment that really should have been handled better by Daeron II – is being driven not solely by racism, but by intensely personal trauma and the escalating retaliatory logic violence that can be seen from the Hatfields and McCoys to the Troubles in Northern Ireland to the partition of India and Pakistan and so on.

GRRM expands nicely on the mysterious letter from Prince Nymor that ended the war, suggesting that it might have been “a simple plea from one father to another” or a “list of all those lords and noble knights who had lost their lives during the war” (suggesting an argument about the costs of the war), and that the theory about the letter being enchanted suggested that the Yellow Toad used Rhaenys’ blood for ink to make the spell work, as well as the theory about the Faceless Men.

The next chapter is about Aegon’s Governance, which makes me very excited. See you tomorrow!