After a salutary break from what had been a bit of Fire & Blood-related burnout, I’m back to tackle the last and biggest Jaehaerys chapter.

So join me, as like sands through an hourglass, these are the days of House Targaryen’s lives…

Also, decided to start putting in topic breaks to make these recaps a bit more readable (which some chapters would have benefited from).

To Boldly Go Where No Westerosi Has Gone Before

The chapter begins on a sprightly, slightly mysterious note, with GRRM channeling his love of the Age of Sails in full, as we learn what happened to Ferdinand Magellan Elissa Farman’s expedition to circumnavigate the globe. Interesting note: Elissa calculated both the latitude and the longitude of her fleet’s position on the 12th day…which is an astonishing feat of astonomy if you know the history of the search for longitude. It does create something of a worldbuilding issue: if Westeros, Braavos, and the Summer Islands can build deep-oceangoing vessels and the technology of latitude and longitude if available, why is the dominant mode of sailing hugging the coastline?

Elissa Farman’s expedition to circumnavigate the globe. Interesting note: Elissa calculated both the latitude and the longitude of her fleet’s position on the 12th day…which is an astonishing feat of astonomy if you know the history of the search for longitude. It does create something of a worldbuilding issue: if Westeros, Braavos, and the Summer Islands can build deep-oceangoing vessels and the technology of latitude and longitude if available, why is the dominant mode of sailing hugging the coastline? Turns out that the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria Sunchaser, Lady Meredith, and Autumn Moon did in fact find land across the Sunset Sea, but only three islands, which of course she named after Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya, because while cultures might differ, colonialist nomenclature rarely does.

Sunchaser, Lady Meredith, and Autumn Moon did in fact find land across the Sunset Sea, but only three islands, which of course she named after Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya, because while cultures might differ, colonialist nomenclature rarely does. Unfortunately for her, Elissa has her Alexander-at-Hyphasis/Magellan-at-Puerto-San-Julian moment due to the loss of the Autumn Moon with all hands due to either enormous storms or kraken, and the Lady Meredith refuses to follow her further west.

And as was her wont, “Alys Westhill…pressed on westward, chasing the sun” and vanishes into history.

Autumn Moon goes to Sothyros instead, and we learn that the Summer Islanders have something of a mercantile empire out in the jungles of the southern continent, as “there were fortunes to be had there…emeralds, gold, spices.” And somehow they know how to avoid the Planetosi equivalents of ebola, hookworm, and malaria that killed nine-tenths of Eustace Hightower’s crew. I wonder what other secrets the Summer Islands hold?

And of course, a romantic like GRRM doesn’t let things end there: Corlys finds the Sun Chaser in Asshai (which unfortunately only continues the controversy over whether Lomas Longstrider made it to Asshai). Did Elissa succeed and die on the far side of the world, as Magellan did, or was her ship blown east across the face of the waters?

The Winter of Shivers

The winter of 59-60 AC gives us a really good example of what the coming winter in TWOW might look like: “The North has hit first and hardest, as crops died in the field, streams froze, and bitter winds came howling over the Wall. Though Lord Alaric Stark had commanded that half of every harvest be preserved and put aside against the coming winter, not all his bannermen had obeyed. As their larders and granaries emptied, famine spread across the land, and old men bade farewell to their children and went out into the snow so their kin might live. Harvests failed in the riverlands, the westerlands, and the Vale as well, and even down into the reach. Those who had food began to hoard, and all across the Seven Kingdoms the price of bread began to rise. The price of meat rose even faster, and in the towns and cities, fruits and vegetables all but disappeared.”

A couple things to note there: “bitter winds…howling over the Wall” strikes me as a deliberate reference to TWOW and the White Walkers bringing the cold with them. Poor Alaric, spending so much of his life preparing for the crisis and then no one listens to him…definite shades of Stannis there. the harvests failing in the Riverlands, Westerlands, and Vale don’t portend well for the Lannisters or Littlefinger.

As a historian, I especially like the link between the rising price of food and the coming of the Shivers; the close association between famine and plague throughout history bears witness to the fact that malnourished/starving people have weakened immune systems, which helps to turn diseases into epidemics.

Even more so than the Great Spring Sickness, the Shivers really evokes the cultural impact of the Black Death, especially the way that “all across the Seven Kingdoms, the noble and humble alike were struck down,” even if the epidemiology suggests a reversed “sweating sickness.” At the same time, it still doesn’t solve the population problem even if we take an extremely high estimate of 25% population loss (based on Oldtown’s disproportionate losses).

Unfortunately for Rego Draz, another historical parallel with the Black Death is the parallel outbreak of conspiracy theories and persecutions that blame suspect groups of outsiders for the spread of the plague. On the other hand, given the one-off nature of this incident (we don’t hear of Essosi merchants being murdered in other cities), this may be a case of the evil councilors theory being applied ot the Master of Coin who they “held…to blame for the high cost of bread.”

While Draz’ death is perhaps the most violent, one of the longer-term political effects of the Shivers is to reshape the political landscape by clearing out many of the old guard – Edwell Celtigar, Prentys and Lucinda Tully, Lyman Lannister, Donnel the Delayer, the High Septon, the Master of Laws, the Commander of the City Watch, and the Grand Maester. So we get a practically new Small Council, with Septon Barth still at its head, but with Elysar as Grand Maester, Ser Robert Redwyne taking over the City Watch, Ryam Redwyne joining the Kingsguard (although again, not enough about this guy – all he does this chapter is narc on Ser Lucamore and then tell the king and queen about their daughter’s death), Rodrik Arryn becoming Master of Laws, and Florence Tyrell née Fossoway serving as precedent for Princess Elaena acting as the shadow Mistress of Coin.

The most personal and most politically important death is the death of Princess Daenerys, the “darling of the realm.” As Gyldayn notes, the death of Daenerys “struck at the very heart of the Doctrine of Exceptionalism,” although Targaryen immunity to disease is one of those worldbuilding details that GRRM honors in the breach as much as in the observance. Not really sure what that’s supposed to indicate, because those who die from disease don’t really fall into neat categories of “false” dragons. Needless to say, it’s an important moment in the Golden Age of Jaehaerys’ reign, where for the first time we see that House Targaryen isn’t truly bullet-proof, that misfortune can do what wars cannot.

The Conciliator Goes Forth to War, His Kingdom to Maintain

In a somewhat unexpected direction for “the Conciliator,” in this chapter we learn about not one but two wars in which Jaehaerys I not only fought in but played a pivotal role. Further complicating the oft-repeated narrative about war and peace in Dorne that runs through the reigns of Aegon I, Aenys Aegon II, Daeron I, Baelor, Aegon IV, and Daeron II, both of these wars were fought in Dorne.

The Third Dornish War (61 AC) in a lot of ways plays out more like finishing up old business from the early part of Jaehaerys’ reign, with the denoument of the “bad to worse” Ser Borys, and Rogar Baratheon’s failed attempt to die on the battlefield (which seems oddly anticlimactic). It’s also strongly reminiscent of the Vulture Hunt from the Second Dornish War, given the starring role of the Baratheons and the Dondarrions, albeit at a much smaller scale (indeed, I’d have saved the nick-name of the Vulture Hunt for the coflict that involved less than a thousand men on both sides rather than the war involving multiple armies and tens of thousands of combatants). There also seems to have been somewhat less of an issue of Dornish nationalism in this war, although it would have been nice to know from which minor Dornish house he came from.

(61 AC) in a lot of ways plays out more like finishing up old business from the early part of Jaehaerys’ reign, with the denoument of the “bad to worse” Ser Borys, and Rogar Baratheon’s failed attempt to die on the battlefield (which seems oddly anticlimactic). It’s also strongly reminiscent of the Vulture Hunt from the Second Dornish War, given the starring role of the Baratheons and the Dondarrions, albeit at a much smaller scale (indeed, I’d have saved the nick-name of the Vulture Hunt for the coflict that involved less than a thousand men on both sides rather than the war involving multiple armies and tens of thousands of combatants). There also seems to have been somewhat less of an issue of Dornish nationalism in this war, although it would have been nice to know from which minor Dornish house he came from. Speaking of Dornish nationalism, somewhat later on we come to the Fourth Dornish War (83 AC), which actually involves a military conflict between the Targaryens and the Martells for once. “Weaned on the tales of past Dornish glory,” Morion definitely comes more from the side of the family that gave rise to Meria, Aliandra, and Oberyn than the cold pragmatism of Nymor, Deria, Qoren, and Doran. I’m a little surprised that Prince Morion didn’t offer at least sub rosa support for the second Vulture King; this may be a case of Dornish songwriters waiting until after his death to turn him into more of a romantic nationalist icon than he was in life. What’s very clear is that Morion based his invasion on the Martell counter-attack during the First Dornish War, but with the exaggeration of nationalist romanticism: hence the whole oath to “burn a hundred towns and raze a hundred castles” when “there are neither a hundred towns nor a hundred castles on Cape Wrath.”

(83 AC), which actually involves a military conflict between the Targaryens and the Martells for once. “Weaned on the tales of past Dornish glory,” Morion definitely comes more from the side of the family that gave rise to Meria, Aliandra, and Oberyn than the cold pragmatism of Nymor, Deria, Qoren, and Doran. I’m a little surprised that Prince Morion didn’t offer at least sub rosa support for the second Vulture King; this may be a case of Dornish songwriters waiting until after his death to turn him into more of a romantic nationalist icon than he was in life. What’s very clear is that Morion based his invasion on the Martell counter-attack during the First Dornish War, but with the exaggeration of nationalist romanticism: hence the whole oath to “burn a hundred towns and raze a hundred castles” when “there are neither a hundred towns nor a hundred castles on Cape Wrath.” Unfortunately for Morion, romantic nationalism is at best an inconsistent path to military victory. Given that his plan entirely hinged on a surprise attack, waiting “the best part of a year” to assemble his fleet of sellsails and pirates would probably have doomed him, even if there weren’t “Jaehaerys[‘] spies in Morion’s own court.” The result is one of the most one-sided defeats this side of Cannae, with Morion and his entire fleet burn to ashes without a single life lost on the other side.The best that can be said for Morion is that at least he prepared against an attack by dragons.

One might well ask why are these two incidents included in the chapter, beyond the fact that he needed somewhere to put the additional Dornish Wars? I think part of it comes down to the broader meta-narrative about what makes a good king: if Aenys failed because he was too much the courtier, and Maegor failed because he was too much the warrior, Jaehaerys is the middle way. For the political elite to accept “the Conciliator” as their king, he must demonstrate that he can perform both halves of the warrior-poet. As we will see later with Daeron II and Aerys I, the political class of Westeros does not deal well with a monarch who is the latter but not the former.

Building Roads, Building a Kingdom

Also in this chapter, we finally get the crowning jewel of Jaehaerys’ program of public works, his network of roads. As anyone who follows my tumblr or has read my Economic Development series or read my academic book knows, I’m fascinated by public works and how they and the thinking around them shapes the worlds we live in. So how does Jaehaerys’ building plan stack up to reality?

Well, on the positive side, it’s clear that Jaehaerys had the right critique of the existing system: that existing roads were “narrow, muddy, rutted, crooked” and meandering, that “only a handful of those streams were bridged,” that King’s Landing was cut off from much of the rest of the kingdom and various regions of the kingdom were cut off from each other. It’s also good that Jaehaerys intended from the outset for this to be a multi-generation project, in that the relatively weak capacity of the medieval state make it difficult to complete projects quickly, and because it’s just good practice anyway when thinking about investments in infrastructure that last for generations if not centuries. I do feel confirmed in my belief that Jaehaerys’ system had a King’s Landing focus which had a distorting impact on the regional economy, as one of the things that Jaehaerys is dealing with is that the pre-Targaryen road systems simply didn’t bother to include the three-hilled fishing villages. Incidentally, I’m even more confused as to how King’s Landing managed to get as big as it did before now, because it’s extremely difficult to feed a city of several hundred thousand people without a decent network of roads that allow market farmers from the rural periphery to bring their goods to the city for sale. Bringing everything by ship is incredibly expensive, as anyone from Hawaii can tell you.

On the negative side, the gap between his analysis and the network of roads that we see in ASOIAF is quite startling. Jaehaerys is clearly aware that it’s a huge problem that there are so few bridges, and indeed we’re told that Jaehaerys’ work included “filling ruts, spreading gravel, bridging streams,” and yet there don’t seem to be any bridges on his major roads. Yes, part of this is necessary for the geostrategy of the series to work – the Ruby Ford can’t be bridged, otherwise the battles that happened there would have been totally different; the Kingroad and the Roseroad and the Goldroad can’t have bridges south of the city, because otherwise Stannis wouldn’t have needed his fleet to cross the Blackwater and would have taken the city long before Tywin and the Tyrells could have arrived. But this being the case, why not have the bridges on Jaehaerys’ roads be destroyed in the Dance, some by the blacks trying to hold off the Hightower army, and others by the greens trying to keep Cregan and the Riverlands boys and girls at bay? This would maintain the status quo, while emphasizing the theme that both sides in the Dance were wrecking the kingdom that Jaehaerys had built.

Then there are some things that are just puzzling. For one thing, I’m genuinely puzzled why Jaehaerys started with a command “that a road be cut through [the kingswood] to cnnect King’s Landing with Storm’s End” and then “continued north of the city, from the Rush tot he Trident and beyond…across the wild trackless North to Winterfell and the Wall.” Perhaps this decision was motivated by his complicated relationship with House Baratheon and Alysanne’s ongoing interest in the Night’s Watch, but the Stormlands and the North are two of the poorest and least economically vital regions of Westeros. By contrast, the roseroad, which becomes so vital to the survival of King’s Landing, as well as the goldroad to the Westerlands and the river road were of secondary importance.

I’m also confused about Jaehaerys’ philosophy with regards to feeder roads, ring roads, and other extensions off the central trunk. In some places – the decision to not connect Maidenpool, Duskendale, and Rosby to Riverrun via an eastern spur of the river road – this seems motivated by an overall policy that “all roads lead to King’s Landing.” In other places, like the ocean road connecting Lannisport to Highgarden, Jaehaerys seems to have understood that network redundancy is a virtue, so why don’t we see similar connections from the river road through to the rose road, let alone orbital roads in the Reach? I really feel like Septon Barth was asleep on the job here.

Keeping Up With the Targaryens

However, the heart of the chapter – and the bulk of its lengthy word count – isn’t public works or war: it’s family. One of the things that GRRM clearly wanted to do with Fire & Blood Volume I was to make the children of Jaehaerys and Alysanne, who come across as ciphers if not outright footnotes in WOIAF, real people with their own personalities and life stories. Did he succeed? Well, let’s see.

GRRM spends a lot of time on making Aegon’s unlucky heirs distinct people – but “Aemon was taller and stronger, Baelon quicker and fiercer” comes across so strongly as a gloss on “Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast” that it begins to feel Xeroxy. The paralleling even becomes text, as Gyldayn notes that “whereever Prince Aemon went, whatever Prince Aemon did, Prince Baelon would not be far behind.”

The unfortunate side effect of this is that it renders their wives and children seemingly nothing more than another aspect of this friendly competition/comparison, no different from their knighthoods and their dragons. It doesn’t help that Alyssane pairs off her children like an old school SAT analogy, where Aemon:Jocelyn::Baelon:Alyssa. Jocelyn is the “solemn” one, as ladylike and proper as Aemon is cautious and serious; Alyssa, “as bawdy a wench as any barmaid in King’s Landing;” and a tomboyish dragonrider shares the same temperment as her husband who once smacked Balerion on the snout, won his spurs as a mystery knight and then immediately claimed Vhagar as his mount. Even their deaths continue the trend: Alyssa dies in childbirth, Jocelyn merely disappears from the narrative.

There is a certain blunt effectiveness to this characterization, reminding me somewhat of how silhouetting is used in animation; you’d never mistake a blind quote from the serious, cautious Aemon as coming from the brave, reckless Baelon, or mistake a vulgar joke from Alyssa as coming from Jocelyn. But there isn’t much interiority to these caricatures, because you can’t have much in the way of character depth if each character has only one dominant characteristic. Here is where I think you really see the limitations of GRRM’s history textbook approach as opposed to his usual third-person limited approach, because we lose the richness and complexity that comes with the interior monologue. (Think about how differently characters come across on the show, where we never get to see the contrast between the thoughts and actions of characters like Ned or Jaime.)

This becomes more problematic with Vaegon, the “sour, bookish brother, who would rather read than play.” While I can see GRRM working from the same nerd archetype as Viserys II, Aerys I, Aemon, and Rhaegar, Vaegon comes across as wholly unsympathetic, even as he’s arguably bullied by his sister (and not particularly well-parented by either Alysanne or Jaehaerys). And that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing – not every character needs to be sympathetic, but given the way that we’re told that “Vaegon had almost smiled” when he was sent to Oldtown and than, when faced with the attentions of young women “books remained his only passion,” it’s not exactly good representation either for people on the spectrum or asexuals, and there isn’t a lot of representation for them in the first place.

However, Vaegon’s story is but a mere amuse-bouche in comparison to the four-course banquet that is this chapter’s treatment of gender. As I’ve discussed above, it’s not a great sign that all of the women in this chapter fit into one of two buckets (the Catholic Church does a number even on those in recovery, I suppose), with Daella and Maegelle being more in the Jocelyn camp and Viserra and Saera falling more into the Alyssa camp.

What makes things worse is how much of the chapter – 20+ pages of it – is given over to the extremely gendered ends of the three sisters, which creates this numbing effect over time as one woman after another is just ground down before our eyes.

First, we have “delicate and shy” Daella, who is so consistently depicted as having a cognitive disability that I’m quite surprised that only Princess Gael was given the label. Why then supposedly caring and intelligent parents like Alysanne and Jaehaerys would be so insistent that she get married is odd, because House Targaryen was hardly in a desperate situation dynastically speaking. The best that can be said about her situation is that Rodrik Arryn doesn’t seem to have been an unkind man. Even then, the three pages that it takes her to die in childbirth rivals Alyssa Velaryon’s for their level of excruciating detail.

Then we have “”tempestuous, demanding, disobedient” and, above all, “voracious” Saera, who pushes way past Aerea’s already-borderline behavior even before she starts suborning her lady companions into premarital sex. What I find surprising is less that Saera openly speaks of polygamy (which…isn’t she supposed to be “clever but not wise”?), but that it comes after the breakdown of a spoiled child. Then it just keeps getting worse, with Saera’s attempt to steal a dragon, and then Jaehaerys killing Stinger in single combat (and making Saera’s watch), and then Saerra’s fleeing the septas for a Lyseni pleasure garden, and then the truly ugly final exchange between Jaehaerys and Alysanne.

And then finally we have “sly” and “vain” Viserra. Here, neither parent comes across particularly well. Alysanne, so supposedly well-attuned to both dynastic politics and the intermeshing of personalities, decided to marry her off to Lord Theomore Manderly. Not only is a fifteen year old girl who’s grown to expect the adortation of “great lords, famous knights, and callow boys”a really bad match for a “stout” man in his mid-fifties at least, but I don’t buy that the mariage would have actually united “one of the great houses of the North to the Iron Throne,” given that Theomore had three adult sons thirty years prior. Jaehaerys doesn’t acquit himself any better, with his line about “marriages were the queen’s domain…he never interfered in such matters” making him sound more like the emotionally-absent father in an 80s movie than a king. And then the way it ends with her showing up in Baelon’s bed naked (creepy), and then her doomed “bachelorette” party.

On their own, any of these deaths would be somewhat questionable given the book’s broader issues with gender. But the way they come one after the other feels like getting hit in the head repeatedly.

And at last, we come to the end(s). The Sicilian Mamertines “Myrish Bloodbath,” in which the losing side of a vicious factional struggle for power end up as pirates in the Narrwo Sea and then decide to try to conquer the Isle of Tarth seemingly at random is a nice elaboration on the WOIAF version, and the purely random nature Aemon’s death, the impact that it had on the rest of his family, and the way it parallels the death of Balerion as a sign that the Golden Era is now over, and everything after is declination, is well done.

“Myrish Bloodbath,” in which the losing side of a vicious factional struggle for power end up as pirates in the Narrwo Sea and then decide to try to conquer the Isle of Tarth seemingly at random is a nice elaboration on the WOIAF version, and the purely random nature Aemon’s death, the impact that it had on the rest of his family, and the way it parallels the death of Balerion as a sign that the Golden Era is now over, and everything after is declination, is well done. I’m less impressed, however, with the declination of Alysanne, who really takes a beating throughout the chapter. Given how vocal and take-no-bullshit she was in earlier chapters, Alysanne seems to wane even before she is worn down by grief and old age, ending up on the losing end of her arguments with Jaehaerys again and again, even when it comes to having a child long after she knows it to be safe..

So what the hell is going on with Jaehaerys in this chapter? Why did a man who saw how over-emphasis on child-bearing killed his mother then inflict the same thing on his daughter and his wife? Why did a man known for his insight and good judgment show neither when it came to his own family?

I think the answer comes with one of GRRM’s inspirations: Robert Graves’ I, Claudius. I, Claudius is the story of the struggles and dysfunctionalities of the Julio-Claudian dynasty at the height of their power, bringing to life the would-have-been-emperors as well as the wives and mothers who are shown to scheme and sin as much as the men, and I think, in wrestling with how to create conflict in a time of peace and bring to life the never-were-kings-and-queens, GRRM looked to one of the all-time-greats of historical dramas.

And what do we find in I, Claudius but a scene which plays out almost identically, with Augustus standing in for Jaehaerys and Julia playing the role of Saera.

As a huge fan of Graves, I can see what GRRM was going for, but I don’t think he ultimately succeeded. This scene works in the original because Augustus is shown throughout the series as a man who, for all his gifts as a statesman, is a very conventional Roman patriarch who’s incredibly thin-skinned where his family is concerned, and who at the end of the day is somewhat naive and credulous, especially when it comes to the machinations of his wife Livia. (Alysanne is certainly as intelligent as Livia, but they could not be more different in terms of temperment).

But Jaehaerys isn’t really shown as that kind of man until the end, which rather clashes with the way he’s portrayed as the ideal king throughout Fire & Blood. And what bothers me the most is that I could see how this could have worked: if GRRM had wanted to show Jaehaerys as a man who was as bad a father as he was great as a statesman, that could have been gradually revealed throughout lo these many chapters instead of coming all at once. If GRRM’s point was that the nature of patriarchal rule eventually taints even the wokest of men, I think there’s enough material in his conflict with Rhaena and his argument with Alysanne over the First Night to develop that theme, but it needed to be more directly addressed here.