About the question of the Targaryens assimilating: Ruling classes don’t assimilate as quickly as regular immigrants do. The English kings spoke French until the 15th century. It makes sense for the Targaryens to still uphold some Valyrian traditions 100 years after the conquest.
I disagree the Normands bought with them lots of French nobles which is the reason why they were able to continue speaking it Targaryens were mostly on their own
@@romulusnuma116 Yes, the Targaryens were mostly on their own, which is why they mostly speak the common tongue. But it still makes sense for at least some of them to uphold some Valyrian traditions.
I generally want to agree with Preston’s point that Targaryen Incest was not nearly as normalised as we and post-Baratheon characters think it was, but there just seems to be too many examples of genuine love, or lust, between family members to discount it. The scion of their house, Aegon I, famously married Visenya for duty but Rhaenys for love, which he didn’t have to do. Bloodraven and Bittersteel fighting over a woman their whole lives who was their sister is probably the most famous example as no one told them they had to do that, they just did that naturally. At the same time, there’s Naerys and her brother Aemon the Dragonknight. And while they didn’t have sex like Aegon IV believed and Daeron II was legitimate, it still seems very likely that they were forbidden lovers who just couldn’t be together. Jaehaerys II and Shaera are probably the example that proves this point best as after Aegon V grew a distaste of the practise of incest, these two ruined two very politically strategic marriages for the Crown just to marry one another in a way that makes it sound like they were star crossed lovers who couldn’t bear to be apart from one another. Hell, even the most integrated to Westerosi religion and customs, Baelor The Blessed, locked his sisters in the Maidenvault so he wouldn’t be tempted by them. So if there isn’t something in the Valyrians which makes them more prone to Incest than other races, why did the king who believed more strongly in the Andal gods than any other Targaryen king still feel these urges? And there are many, many more examples than this one could cite. I really like the idea Preston is going for and that the Targaryens did feel the same taboo about Incest that most people did, but there are just too many examples from the text which say this just isn’t the case. There are too many characters who do feel this way about their siblings to discount them as simply political marriages like the Hapsburgs when many Targaryens explicitly create unnecessary political crises just to indulge their incestous desires.
The love is stuff that is claimed by biased histories. We also know that politics, prophecy and dragon hatching are factors, which each seem much more logical than finding your sibling hot.
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin Aegon I aside, all of the examples I cited were after the Dance so dragonriding genes were not nearly as important as they were in the first century of Targaryen rule. Likewise, if they were motivated by long term planning in regards to politics or prophecy, why did they constantly fight each other, often motivated by the same rivalries that other people would have? It hardly seems consistent that they would want to intermarry because they were thinking about the future only to then kill their cousins in the present. Likewise, the histories are biased but they are not SO biased that they can straight up discount events that happened, otherwise we would have no textual evidence that Jaehaerys I and Alysane ever quarrelled at all. So clearly the events as described have _some_ legitimacy to them and as I said, there are simply too many examples of personal desire overcoming long term planning in the history of House Targaryen to discount what seems to be the certainty that they are simply more prone to Incest than other people. I want to agree with you as the idea that the Targaryen custom was actually cold and calculated to maintain dragonriding genes all along is a great and intriguing one, but there’s simply too much contradictory evidence of what these characters were actually like for that to hold up to scrutiny.
@@Longshanks1690 This is a very good counter to Prestons theories. The fact that you sight 4-5 instances of Targaryens marrying/fighting/imprisoning each other for love/romance/lust after the dying of the dragons really lends credence that the dragon riding gene theory may not play as big a roll in the affairs of Targaryen marriages.
Honestly it feels like having any color aside from grey or black or brown makes this feel aesthetically waaaaaaay closer to the book vision of westeros
They seem to be almost done jumping around. They have about 2-3 years left of the Dance after this next time skip for episode 8. Feels like they’ve been focusing on the Targaryen’s inputs only, skipping over a lot of other families, because at this time the entire focus of the realm was on the people who had dragons.
The assimilation conversation is super interesting. Preston is of course right that after 100 years any family would be super integrated into their new society, however I think it changes the situation being royalty and the most powerful people in the world. As the society around them begins to shape them, because of their position of power they also shape the cosiera around them and are able to isolate themselves and continue customs that others can’t. I think this is also why they speak Valyrian to the dragons and between each other at times. It’s too maintain their sense of elitism and supremacy of their family over others
Well yes and not, Germanic upper class identity after the conquest of the West Roman Empire endured more than 100 years, because it was so large; They became the upper strata of they respective societies, not just their royal houses. Here we have 3 dozens or so of Valyrian characters in a sea of Westerosi nobility. So I'd imagine assimilation would be rather typical.
Regarding the Velaryon sigil, it should be noted that in many cultures seahorses are more associated with dragons than horses. In Japanese seahorses are called Tatsu-no-otoshigo, which translates to Dragon’s bastard child (or evil spawn).
For the record, the Prince of the UK Harry (so not the direct heir), went to a party where he dressed up as a Nazi officer. Certainly affected his reputation at the time.
I was thinking of crown prince Rudolph of Austria. He slept around and infected his wife with a sexually transmitted disease.. causing her to be infertile and so she couldn't provide a male heir to the austrian throne.
Medieval Christians absolutely did not believe it was a good thing that Rome fell. If they did they wouldn’t have revived it in 800. Who is the most important theologian to medieval Christians, Augustine, who so loved the Roman Empire.
I've read Confessions and City of God and I never got the sense that Augustine loved the Roman Empire. He uses Roman history to illustrate his points and it often makes the Romans look quite bad. He criticizes events like the foundation myth with Romulus murdering his brother and the Rape of the Sabine Women. He points out that the Romans constantly backstab one another and that even the histories admit the only times the Romans ever had social unity was when they were in imminent danger of annihilation.
@@Vmac1394 Augustine criticizes pagan Rome. In the city of god he defends Christianity against pagan attacks that it was the cause of the sack of Rome in 410. Many pagans saw it as divine punishment for adopting Christianity. Augustine argues that no, Christianity is the reason for the empires success and paganism is not. Go back and read book 4. Augustine was a Roman who supported and loved the Roman Empire, a Christian Roman empire I might add.
25:00 - George thinking about making the Targaryens black. Yes, I think he was waxing poetic - but that literally coulndnt fit in the story because that would make Jon half-black and his identity couldnt be hidden.
Thank you for being at least one other person who knows this... I always get pissed when people bring up vomitoriums because they DID exist but they were NOT "a place where people when to vomit," that's a misunderstanding of Latin... vomitorium was literally just the word for the aisle breaks in the bench rows in an area that led to entrances for each section to allow the rapid discharge *of people out from the arena* when the games were over
@@KomodoDojo I didn't take it as a gaffe. I took it as though he was speaking about the modern common (mis)conception, played straight. Maybe that's giving him too much credit. Not sure.
@@Kavurcen He has a high opinion of himself. You can be well-read but also ignorant. Preston speaks with confidence and conviction which is really effective in convincing people of an idea. So he’s wrong, it doesn’t in the end detract from his argument which is glorification in media. The idea of the vomitorium being something more than an architectural design is personified in western media as something else. It ironically is evidence of the argument of a fake representation of the past.
I REALLY liked Feast when I first read it. I’m not sure how it holds up overall though. The kingsmoot was one of the most gripping scenes of the entire series for me.
I suppose, aside from some pacing problems, the issues with Feast aren't really issues with Feast, but problems with what came after. People had to wait five more years for the rest of the story, and even then ADWD ends on so many cliff hangers that it resolves almost nothing from AFFC or ADWD. If ADWD was released closer to AFFC and actually resolved plot lines that were supposed to be resolved over this arc of the story, it would be much easier to appreciate it.
One thing I always thought was interesting about Blazonry is the posit that a lot of knight's armor may have been painted going into battle, and the reason we think most of them wore plain armor is the monks that collected the armor scrubbed the paint off to preserve it and that's how they painted pictures of the battles. Not entirely too sure if that's just an old historian wife's tale but I thought it was pretty cool. I know they found a Germanic ritter helmet with some very cool paintings on it, in addition to some other helms.
It's very complicated and varies by period and personal choice. Some armour was certainly painted, although it seems more common on lower end armours. Textile coverings are also popular in later periods. Jupons, coat armours, and surcoats were common in the 14th and early 15th centuries. Really, it just depends. Later on the in the late 15th and into the 16th century, things went crazy with embossing, etching, and other absolutely insane designs that look stunning. But certainly, plenty of Men at Arms would have worn white armour, i.e, polished and uncovered and this is mentioned. There was a huge variety though.
You’re wrong about the gladiator rings not being brutal. I had to read Galen’s writings for my history of science degree. Pretty much our entire early basis of anatomy is based on being able to cut up/attempt to fix dying or dead gladiators. It is some insanely brutal stuff.
@@TheDelinear hey im not arguing the tourney in hotd was way too brutal for westeros’ tourney standards, but the sentiment that the gladiatorial arenas and their brutality are largely myth is absolutely wrong. You can read the historical accounts of Roman’s throwing naked and unarmed men to battle lions. That’s not even the main show
@@HickoryBill Exactly...see how the strawman turns into "six gladiators per battle!" hyperbole? The fights were brutal and there was plenty of death and blood. As you mention, there were Man Vs Beast(s) competitions.....the men being slaves and/or prisoners. The animals were brought from all over the empire...the more exotic the better...and COULD die in the first fight. Some arenas were filled with water and there were naval battles. "Gladiators" become a "True Scotsman" argument after a while. It IS true that most of the named "Gladiators" wouldnt be at much risk of dying...a Christian prisoner who has to battle lions....PROBABLY going to die.
@@mschell8022 And Id say he's doing the "Everybody but me thinks....-insert strawman" . We all know it when we see it, because every basic bitch does it. Hey Preston...what do you think of the wage gap, the decimation of Native people, the level of Fascism in America, if a woman can be a man if she wishes on a star, if Led Zeppelin is a good band, if we should celebrate Columbus day, or if gladiators actually REGULARLY died fighting in Arenas (all over Rome's vast empire)? We already know the answer to all of it....and the strawmen he would use....and the "1619" handbook he would get all of his fun facts from. He probably thinks Reagan used Springsteen's "Born In The USA" without even understanding what it was about! Basic Bitch Arguments that only are allowed to persist because these guys dont challenge themselves with people who dont hold their views....and surround themselves with callow yes men/Carmine.
You have to remember that HBO is trying to win back the audience that D&D wrote the later seasons of GOT for, the normie fan that knows nothing about the books, or really care for Fantasy, and those people pushed GOT into being a huge cultural phenomenon. The people who think Danaerys name was Khaleesi and enjoy gratuitous sex, violence, and nonsensical battle scenes over dialogue scenes or character development scenes. So it’s no surprise that Condyl is basing the Targaryens off Hollywood renditions of Rome. Edit: To the people who think this a “strong woman YAS slay Queen show”, you are going to be sorely disappointed because everyone is in the Dance of Dragons are pretty shitty, despite their gender. Lol.
So I went and read the interview and it pretty much was exactly how you reported on it here but the thing that stood out to me and I thought was really funny was the indication at the beginning that Linda was not there and that she just left after saying hello to Ryan "to look after our dog Lancelot" And given the way Linda has been ranting about the show and the casting of black people on Twitter, I just found that very funny
Thanks for this comment. Until I read it, my head canon understanding of Linda was kind of an "old man yells at clouds" level adversarial relationship to fans. But after your comment, I actually read her comments about Corlys, and Jesus christ that's a lot more racist than I expected and not ok.
The funniest thing about Linda is that she likes to do the whole "but muh faithful source material" thing that Rings of Power fans are obsessed with. Except, not only is GRRM not long dead like Tolkien, but she actually knows him, and has publicly admitted that he does not give a shit. I think his words per Linda were something to the effect of "get off Twitter." And GRRM himself has been repeatedly stoked about some differences between books and show, even in GOT, but especially in HOTD! See: his absolutely raving love of Considines Viserys. How far up your ass does your head need to be to play white knight for an an authors canon, against that authors own beliefs? Not to mention the suspicious silence on other issues. Black Corlys is a tragedy, of course. Silence on the funeral changed from Laenor's, an actual textual difference. Instead her issue is with Laenor surviving, which doesn't matter and a slim chance but plausible per book canon. She seems really mad the gay (+black) man didn't die, for no damn reason... hmmmmm.....
@@Kavurcen Noticed she also tastefully defended with the classic "I have many racialized friends/there are plenty of racialized actors I approve of in Got" when referencing Dornish characters.
@@Kavurcen I thought the Velaryons being black was one of the best choices the show made. Not only does it help sell Valyria as an actual foreign empire (multiple "races" of people coming from multiple conquered nations, assimilating into the culture and eventually rising to positions of power), it also helps make the Velaryons feel visually distinct from the Targaryens (drives home how they are their own family), makes it easier to understand the conflict since we have more visual variety among the cast instead of 20 similar looking people with white wigs, and also gives the people who care about representation something more to like about the show. It makes sense in every way imo
I wouldn't use modern immigration to explain what's going on with the Targaryens. A much better analogy is the Normans who largely considered themselves French and used French as the court language in England for hundred of years after 1066. I think the show nails this with them still using what is basically a dead language in court that's not understood by anyone other than Maesters.
High valerian isn't "basically a dead language" it's a lingua franca in Essos and a lot of free cities still speak the language. We know Tyrion has learned it, so a bunch of studious lords and all the maesters probably know it as well
@@blaubeer8039 well 200 years after the fall of rome latin was still alive. tyrion does struggle to comunicate in the free cities, but he already has a leg up from the normal westerosi. latin was an academic language in europe for more than a millenium after the fall of rome
@@blaubeer8039 The majority of the population in the Free Cities would speak their local variant of Valyrian, but High Valyrian would likely still be well known by the elites and used as a diplomatic language.
@@jeannebouwman1970 I meant more like in Westeros but the historical analogy would be say in 800 AD Latin you'd learn in school is well on it's way to becoming Italian, French, Spanish etc and only really survives in written texts and monasteries, not as a commonly spoken language. The big point is that they are slowly becoming more and more Westerosi but are still kind of different than 99.5% of their subjects and keep up some district cultural practices like High Valyrian and incestual marriage and their own wedding rites etc etc
The gladiator games weren't the only blood games that were being played. There were many different types. Like gladiators killing slaves and criminals. Animals killing slaves and criminals. Animals killing each other. And don't get me started about the times they flooded the colosium to recreate naval battles
I believe that the main problem with Rhaenyra's heirs being bastards and other cases of breaking the legal and social rules is that she is a princess of a rather fresh foreign dynasty with nuclear weapons (dragons). For anyone who is not a dragon raider, the law and institutions are only shield and hope that they won't go back to the times of conquest or Maegor the Cruel when Targaryen did whatever they wanted, because they have dragons, a power without match. For the most historical empires, after conquest there should come a time of cohabitation, law and compromises between conquered and conquerors, due to the inability to keep the conquering power and the threat of violence indefinitely. With dragons in the Westeros, we still have this staying threat without any chance of regular opposition from the smallfolk or the lords, so any rules and institutions (marriage, inheritance, punishments for the crimes, etc) and abiding them by Targaryen are crucial. They are all that difference this regime from straight-up bloody tyranny. And any rules-breaking Targaryen should be a scary and threatening thing to any inhabitant of Westeros or public order. The big problem with this interpretation which we see in a lot of materials - with Alicent being jealous, conservative bigot and brave free spirit you-go-girl Rhaenyra - is that Alicenta is regular person from good family, but with not such a great standing in westerosi society (she Is a daughter of the second son, woman) and Rhaenyra is an heir to the throne, from master-race of eugenic dragon riders, who believe themselves to be above other people (or even closer to goods) because they descent from the old slaving empire. Alicent don't have too much choice, structurally, than just abide the rules. Being the mother of a dragon rider or a Targaryen king is probably the highest and safest position someone like her can secure and the only situation in which she has a chance to not be defenseless snd afraid for her life if next targaryen noble decide that he wants to for example murder someone or burn a city. For her, situation in which her son was maimed without any consequences, by Rhaenyra nad Daemon kids. was probably a tipping point, because she again felt helpless. Not because she is not brave enough, not because she is not yass-slay-queen-rebel, but basically because she is not Targaryen. In the contrast - Rhaenyra, as heir and dragon raider, has probably the best, most independent position in 7 kingdoms, apart of her sex, because she has hierarchic advantage over almost anyone and also possibility to use ultimate nuclear dragon violence on the whim . Her misbehaving and rule breaking is not a sign of bravery, its more like Elon Musk or other privileged billionaire or politician flaunting that they don't have to follow rules. Or worse. Because of dragons.
The Roman Empire converted to Christianity and the most christianized bit was the one that survived for 1000 more years. The Barbarians WERE CHRISTIAN. It's important not to forget that. What killed the Western Roman Empire was an inability to collect taxes combined with the loss of the graine provinces in North Africa to the vandals, this killed the grain dole and ended social cohesion in italy. The lack of money meant that the empire had to pay it's army in land and not coin so in effect they established multiple "barbarian" kingdoms, the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Franks, the Burgundians ect. At some point the General Controlling Rome and the leader of it's armies realized that he didn't control any areas outside Italy directly so he simply realized that it wasn't an empire anymore and sent the regalia to Constantinopel. The Eastern Roman Empire spent the next 200 years trying to reassert control and did everywhere except France and Britain. This attempt basically ended with a combination of a civil war, persian invasion and avar invasion.
I'm sorry but ican't get over this lol the Velaryons being black just doesn't make sense no matter how you wanna twist it.. their purpose in the story is literally just that they are of the same ethnic group as the Targaryens. It's their one defining characteristic. Making the Valyrian ruling class multi-ethnic removes the whole point behind the "pure Valyrian blood" theme. George very purposefully writes the Targaryens as Valyrian-supremacists who believe that they are superior to others because of their race (and then of course demonstrates that they are infact not actually superior). This idea that you have characters that have ultimately racist motivations but at the same time you make their racism inclusive is just nonsense.
For me, the best example of QT's hyperviolence is definitely Grindhouse Deathproof and the theme of a guy killing people with a car. The design of the car itself and the fact that it is death proof, but only for the driver. And this crash scene with repeated shots of how the characters die one by one.
33:45 just because there are rules about heraldry doesn’t mean that the escutcheon (not coat of arms or “sigil” as GRRM calls them, escutcheons were are the “shield” component of coats of arms without the supporters or achievements around it) didn’t break those rules all the time. Every culture has their own traditions which conflicted with each other and their own personal inclusions which could be seen as strange. Not to mention that at a certain point esutcheons were quartered so many times that you’d end up with ones like modern Spain’s today, which you can’t easily recall or draw without staring at it Same thing applies to flags, yes there *are* rules about how they *should* be designed, but any American who’s seen an atrocious town or state flag can tell you they aren’t always at all. Including “flawed” heraldry, imo, makes the setting more believable and also unique. Westeros isn’t 1:1 medieval Europe
When Spielberg made "Temple of Doom" he rejected the elephant wranglers using their long sticks because he didn't see them use that in "The Jungle Book"... Hollywood historical imaging is even more powerful than hisory itself. I like to think those lewd tapestries were later removed by Baelor the Blessed.
My personal ranking: 1. Feast for Crows 2. Storm of Swords 3. Hedge Knight 4. Mystery Knight 5. Sworn Sword 6. Clash of Kings 7. Game of Thrones 8. Dance of Dragons
Liking A Feast For Crows is only surprising to anybody if you read it before that content happened in the tv show. The downside was that we were removed from most of the "main characters" and were introduced to new characters and storylines. If you have the context of the show, the book provides so much more information and context...plus a great idea of who Brienne already is. If you are reading from book to book with no context, you have a head full of ideas and theories that arent even touched on by the content of AFFC. If youve already seen the show, the Arya content in Braavos (whether it pays off later in the books) is such a HUGE improvement over what we get in the show.
It's very telling that these people complaining about the women getting the best characters are *actually* just complaining about women getting as much screen time as they do.
Yeah it's sometimes a legitimate criticism, but absolutely doesn't apply to fire and blood. It's the age old irony of opposed ideologies when taken to extremes ending up mirroring each other. The extreme woke and the extreme anti woke basically sound the same, make most of the same logical fallacies and jump at ghosts and imagined slights the same way, you can basically just word swap them for eachother they are so interchangeable.
Some friends and I were chatting about the incest tendency for Targaryens. We think the biological tendency to not want to screw your close relatives may be "resessive" in dragonriders, and that the two traits might be closely tied together, hence the "keep the blood pure" goal of producing heirs and dragonriders. I understand being squicked out by the casualness of the incest. I can see living as a Targaryen as kind of like being an Apex predator, anything goes of you want it, social guidelines are set by others and do not apply to you. Imagine being an actual physical Dragon among puny men, and the god complex that would give you.
5:05 "the Barbarians" also weren't savages. A good chunk had been citizens even (Odoacer, who famously deposed the last Western Roman Emperor was an officer of the Roman Army for 6 years before overthrowing Romulus Agustulus).
They gave the Velaryons the fictional sea-horse (a hippocampus) as sigil, instead of the real animal. Some of the real medieval families had similar figures in their coats-of-arms.
I don't agree that all the characters are grey or horrible. Corlys and Rhaenys are nice people. Rhaenyra children are good and kind boys, the same for Baela and Rhaena. Helaena is innocent and sweet. In season two: Daeron is THE nice person in the story. Adam is the most honorable in all Fire and Blood. Netles and Benjicot cried after battle. There is also Cregan Stark, Aly Black, and other minor characters.
hey i know itd take a little more trouble but if you guys are discussing an image such as a sigil, it would greatly enhance the viewing experience if you put it on screen.
@@blaubeer8039 I am more concerned with the textual evidence about Targaryen consideration of dragons and prophecy. Targs in love is not a very compelling reason for me.
26:00 - Having colonies all over the world actually dosent logically mean that entire noble families will be multiracial. There were not black noble houses in Rome, there were not black, indian, australian, or native american noble houses in europe, just because of colonisation.
Valyria existed 5000 years. Rome controlled North Africa for a few hundred and European colonization was for a few hundred. There would be nothing illogical about a black Valyrian house.
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin I guess if it existed for 5 times longer than the longest empire known in the real world, then anything is possible. However I do point out that Valyria the country was founded 5,000 years ago, so the imperial stage would begin later in its history. However, all we do know about the people of Valyria is that they were so obsessed with blood purity they married siblings. Therefore I really dont see them ever interbeeding with the people from the conquered territories, or even countencing the ascention of nonvalyrian race people to a noble status. I could well imagine Valyrians having sex with slaves, and then over a few centuries there would be a good chance that some people born as slaves would posess dragon riding capabilities, which may allow them to earn status in Valyria and become noble. That means that this population of people who have a non-valyrian phenotype but do have dragon-genes and therefore become noble would have a mixed race appearence (since the slave population would be extremely multiracial) and would not look as clearly and homogenously african as the Velaryons do in the show. The real world analogy of this is the Coloreds of south africa. However, the Coloreds of SA only started to gain standing in SA after the British abolished slavery. But give it 5000 years and anything could happen. Come to think of it, Valyria didnt have a colony anywhere where black people live. On the wiki it says that Summer Isles were 'raided by slavers' from Valyria, I suppose that's sufficient. Really, the possibly Valyrian descended house they should have made black is the Hightowers, since the Hightowers were the kings of Old Town, which was apparently founded specifically as a trade port with the Summer Islanders, Valyria and Old Ghis. Old town would logically have an increased black presence historically due to this regular trade, whereas Driftmark would never see any trade or travel of the black summer islanders, making it unlikely that their looks would be preserved for this long, unless they practised more extreme incest than the Targaryens.
@@umwha Dude, the Basilisk Isles were part of Valyria for thousands of years. And we only hear that Targaryens worried about blood purity (perhaps because they were dragon riders). Clearly the other Valyrians didn't care that much as they married into the people of the Free Cities. You're really trying hard to have a problem with something.
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin Correct me if I'm wrong but we've never heard what the indigenous population of Basilisk isles look like - of if there is an indigenous population at all. Additionally, there do not seem to be any native humans on Sothoryos, only Brindled Men. All black people on known planetos must ancestrally come from the Summer Isles.
@@umwha Dude don't question what is clearly an ESG-influenced casting choice, or Preston will passive-aggressively call you an anti-sjw robot in his next video. Funny how "anti-wokers" are unthinking bots while Preston and Carmine are more than happy to insult and name-call their own viewers for having the gall to express an opinion that goes against their worldview
Talking about ancient myths and misconceptions, vomitorium isnt a place to vomit, it's a mass exit area out of a building. Like a Colosseum, which isn't called Colosseum, but Flavian Amphitheatre. Colosseum is the place where it is built, bcs it used to be populated by big statues (colosses).
He was wrong about how bloody games in colosseum were. Gladiators didn't commonly kill each other. But gladiator games were hardly the only games there. There were games were gladiators killing criminals and slaves. Animals killing slaves and criminals and animals killing each other.
33:00 - Really interesting about sigils. All I can say is that in the UK, there have been many times Ive seen a host of shields with sigils on, as they adorn many public buildings. I find many of the designs small, indistinct, and hard to identify from far away. Most sigils seem to be halved or quartered, and in each quarter has another typical symbol of a repeated pattern of symbols. Would be very hard to see from far away. The same symbols are used over again, or mashed togehter, into artistic abominations, with multiple animals around a crest which itself is quarered, with a crown held by doves, and a heart pierced with an arrow, and a banner with a latin quote on it - Thats just a typical crest XD.
This is a later development of heraldry, when it started in the 12th and 13th centuries they were usually single designs that were easy to see. Quartering came later and was a way to show you ancestry off, by the 19th century it’s ridiculous, the best example is George Nugent Temple-Grenville, it’s utterly ridiculous.
This is a fairly small subject you guys cover in this but just to clear matters up it seems fairly obvious that Targaryens seem almost magically or perhaps pheromonally attracted to one another. This is illustrated multiple times, from Jaehaerys and Alysanne getting married against the wishes of their mother, to King Egg's kids Jaehaerys and Shaera hooking up despite the wishes of Egg and their mother Betha Blackwood. This could also maybe explain why Jon and Dany may perhaps find themselves somewhat magnetized towards one another when they meet (along with them just being very attractive people). So, I think saying "oh, Alyssa and Baelon probably weren't into each other" even though by all accounts they very much were because brothers and sisters just aren't as a rule is a little ignorant of the reality the author is trying to illustrate.
9:00 - It's funny, for a very long time I didn't read Dunk & Egg because I thought they were comics. Eventually I learned that there were also regular written versions and I then bought "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" and I absolutely loved it.
A clash of kings is great… So the first two seasons on hotd is just incest? I’m glad I skipped it. It’s too much. Also my baby’s mother totally has purple eyes.
For me from favourite to least favourite probably: 1. A Storm of Sword 2. A Dance with Dragons 3. A Feast for Crows 4. A Game of Thrones 5. A Clash of Kings
I'm not going to quote a professor Vernon Bogdard or claim like I even got the last name spelled right but to quote paraphrase 'anything that is tempting in this world is offered to a prince of Wales'
My second (and last) post on r/asoiaf was on my love for AFfC. You would have thought I had explained the flaws of net neutrality. Also, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” audiobook is read by Harry Lloyd (Viserys) and is well worth your time. Sometimes you can find it on TH-cam or, better yet, PJ’s audible link
I‘m a bit confused by Prestons remarks about Rome. They only changed like 100 years before the fall to Christianity but they are already around for 1100 years. I don’t really see why this means that they weren’t decadent. Edit. Thank you for your answers. It’s much clearer now.
Yes, and it was a quick change. The state religion was Christianity by 380. Edward Gibbon actually caused quite a ruckus claiming that Christianity led to Rome's downfall rather than decadence and polytheism.
Hes saying Ryan wanted to bring "Roman decadence", which he clarifies is largely myth. He actually goes into some of the interpretations of Romes history from later writers in Europe. If you read about Roman history tho you'll note that the idea of decedance was actually invented by Romans sudo historians quite a while before the western half of the empire fell. Interestingly you can actually read the writings of some Romans who criticize this idea that Rome is or has become embroiled in decadence and it has brought the Empire to its knees.. again they're writing about this perceived decadence like hundreds years before the Empire falls (as I recall, im not a Rome expert tho so I'd still recommend looking it up more) A lot of it has to do with a perceived loss of social power to other groups who had long since been integrated into Roman society. (You probably recall the senatorial debate about allowing Gaelic citizens to come live in Rome and partake in the Roman government. I forget the emperor's name but he was pretty historically literate and he argued that Rome had been integrating people into its society for a long time and so it wasn't a mark of decline or Barbarian encouraging to do so) The writers in the Roman times who spoke of the decadence and decline also spoke of the alleged loss of power of the paterfamilias in the family, which was really important in traditional Roman life and something seen as a sign of womanly overreach and social decadence) Like proto incel red pilled behavior there I suppose 😂
10:40 - I actually tend to struggle with this. I have to say, on a pure enjoyment level I do actually enjoy the Dunk & Egg stories more. That being said, the main novels have a depth in the amount of world building and theories you can think of and mysteries and whatnot that just doesn't exist in those short stories because... well, they're short stories. So I struggle to say which one I prefer here. But I have to admit that just purely looking at enjoyment level, I do probably enjoy the Dunk & Egg stories more.
When you look at Elden Ring there are a couple characters with "fire-giant" ancestory who have dark skin and red hair, kind of like a Ganondorf type look. When I saw those characteristics I figured that's what George was thinking about when he imagined dark valyrians.
Sibling's attraction is observed quite often in deeply dysfunctional families. It may be said that beeing part of the royal/dragon family doesn't help in this area. Imagine you are a dragonrider and only your family has dragons. In your world there's constant abuse. So how to cope? When we find ourselves attracted to our siblings, we might make sense of our attraction in terms of the most logical category available (superior dragonraiders/dragons) and feel that what is desired is sex with another dragonrider. Another similar person in similar situation. Tricks on the mind: attraction/love/power/safety. The incest taboo and it's limitations is a vast and interesting topic.
@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl my response vanished, mayby bc I edited too many times and added links. Sorry for that. Try googling for example article: Etiological Risk Factors for Sibling Incest: Data From an Anonymous Computer-Assisted Self-Interview Karen Griffee, Sam Swindell, Stephen L. O’Keefe, Sandra S. Stroebel, Keith W. Beard, Shih-Ya Kuo, and Walter Stroup
This is incorrect. As someone who does asoiaf content and knows just about everyone in this community, they are the least "gatekeeper"-ish people around when it comes to this. And this is coming from someone who isn't a fan of them but yeah your comment is just not true compared to the other actual gatekeepers in this community.
@@OfficialRedTeamReview thanks for the insight. They’ve just said and done some things that really rubbed me the wrong way. But I’m going to trust you on this.
Is this a snippet of a podcast or something? Or does Carmine always want to end them turbo early. This was a hair over 35 minutes and I could listen to an hour podcast of y’all easily. Or maybe Preston had the new baby to tend to….? I dunno, point being is to make them longer guys. Good stuff.
Snippet of a longer one that I've cut up into pieces. Oh and I don't "turbo end" anything early, my dude. Both of us have lives and can't really do a long form 3 hour podcast like Rogan does.
@@OfficialRedTeamReview Maybe you can’t, but it’d be cooler if you did. And you totally love to end, my brutha from anotha mutha. Where is the full podcast? I’m subbed on the app.
According to a documentary they make Prince William seem like he was very close to making some of those mistakes but had some decent people watching his back I guess but interesting analogy
Well, that's arguable, but it's a bit different when there are thousands of your own people around you haven't really moved very far. The Targs are a handful of people, isolated.
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin sure, but they also have giant flying fire breathing reminders that they are Different from Everyone and it's pretty reasonable to assume that would influence their perspective on assimilation versus cultural independence
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin As some other people pointed out elsewhere, the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt are probably a better parallel. I'm no expert but my understanding is that they didn't really integrate at all with the native Egyptian people, spoke a different language and considered themselves 'other', at least for a few centuries.
There was unimaginable brutality in pre-Christian Rome, particularly for slaves and non-Roman citizens. There cross used to be a symbol of Roman cruelty and stuck fear in people's hearts. You could make a joke that it will does, but that ignores the authentic cruelty of their society at the time
George is pretty clear in a LOT of interviews that Westeros under Targaryen rule isn't supposed to be a depiction of Rome, its Medieval era Europe. Valyria is his closest Rome-insert..
14:30 Your conversations about assimilation are a little silly. You're comparing colonists with Rulers. The Targ's are rulers, and ruling classes have always had wildly divergent values than those they rule. Think about how long it took for Vikings to properly assimilate into British society, and other societies in Europe. Or Mongols in Russia. Or the Normans in England. It can take some time. And when considering fictional psychic dragon riders who take exceptionalism as part of their family character it is no surprise to me that they would have wildly different ideals than those that they rule.
People also take the fact that women sleeping around being less acceptable than men doing it, to mean that men could just sleep around in the middle ages. That was really not the case
I do have thoughts about the two legged four legged dragon on the banners. First thing to keep in mind is that in medieval times there wasn't a printing press nor the internett, so standardized designs for heraldry and banners was basically impossible. Like lets say there is a sigil with a black hand on a bloody field, simple enough to design. But then things start getting a bit messy, which hand is it? Left or Right? Is the hand in a fist or not? What are the length of the fingers? When you say the background is a bloody field is it just red or a mix of red and green? Since there is no printing press you had to craft the banners and heraldry by hand, and even if you had a group of artists with a unified idea of what it should look like you will still have subtle differences in style. And since there is no internett to search what the flag should look like you have vastly different designs over bigger distances. So in conclusion, who gives a shit about the number of legs the dragon banner has? Remember that not everyone gets to see a dragon, maybe most of the artists designing the logo. Of course some would have 4, heck I imagine in places where there aren't dragons there might be a lot more dragon banners where they have four legs. Heck by the start of Game of Thrones dragons have been gone for generations. Of course there are gonna be four legged designs.
American immigration is super new and it’s a cultural monolith for the most part. In parts of the world with a longer history of immigration, social integration isn’t equated with cultural assimilation and so people tend to maintain their cultural values for hundreds of years while still socially being a part of the greater nation. So the Targaryens being this culturally diluted is actually more American than following with global immigration patterns going back a thousand years
I’d disagree on it being absolute bunk. I think there’s a prime case to be made that the Crisis of the Third Century was brought on partially through decadence, especially with Commodus’s rule directly preceding it, and that the Crisis is what truly doomed Rome. After all, by the time Christianity had become the state religion, western Rome was quite different than what we think of in regards to The Roman Empire: de-urbanization, decentralization, the slave based economy moving into what was basically proto-feudalism, the marginalization of Central Italy in favor of Northern Italy (Rome had become just another city by that point, with cities like Milan and Ravenna being more important and oftentimes capitals), etc. This all being said, the idea of post-Crisis Rome being decadent is nonsense. Christian Rome was a relatively pious realm, and its eastern half lived on (and often flourished) for another thousand years.
@@PaulWHall Are we not applying our modern cultural standards to a pre modern society here though? I mean,it's understandable to the degree the Roman empire was a first attempt at modern society as Mary Beard puts it.
feel like they made the valeryons black to make the bastard stuff stand out more. probably just wanted to be able to cast a more diverse cast too plus the white dreads look sick
30:00 A half horse half sea creature/fish is what a Seahorse means, heraldically (real seahorses are described as "Hippocampus", which yeah, is kind of backwards). Description being "a seahorse" is not proof one way or the other that it is a natural or a myhological seahorse.
The Velaryons being black doesn't make any sense. Valyria had colonies, yes, but Velaryons aren't from the colonies, they are valyrian. They have common ancestry with Targaryens. Given that whites and blacks have tens of thousands, if not hunderds of thousands of years of different ancestry, there is no way black Valyrians can exist. Also I'm pretty confident that Velaryons and Targaryens interbred before Rhaenys and Corlys, so even if you accept the impossible premise of black Valyrians, they wouldn't be pure black Velaryons and pure white Targaryens. This critique is completely independent of the "anti SJW" critique (which is valid to some extent too).
I don’t really get the no good guy complaint. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel I don’t need to be cheering for or identifying to a good guy to appreciate entertainement.
And judging by the number of fictions and documentaries on serial killers and psychopaths and their popularity, it seems to me a lot of people don’t care about having an obvious good guy character
There are lots of examples of royal courts using a prestige language that the majority population didn't speak so I think the idea that the Targaryens maintained some weird Valerian customs is not too far fetched
Do people really need a good guy to root for, or is having compelling characters enough? What about something like Breaking Bad? All the main characters are extremely flawed and morally quite reprehensible, yet people loved that show.
The three heads on the Targaryen sigil have a symbolic meaning. What meaning do 4 legs have? Still waiting on Condal to give an in-universe explanation.
I feel the opposite about Daemon and Rhae. It seems more like Rhae is doing it out of duty and protecting the throne. She seemed less passionate than him, but idk. Daemon seemed ready to go back to Pentos before she gave him the plan.
I agree that the show is actually not woke and that every character still alive is sort of grey to dark grey. I think Rhaenyra is a worse person than Alicent, I like Alicent a bit more because she is more dutiful and responsible and understands that what she does has implications for the realm. Rhaenyra is more selfish and also probably more honest, but through her actions she is dooming the kingdom to a civil war. Why? Why does she even want the throne other than selfish reasons. She could just tell Viserys to make his sons heirs abdicate the throne and there would be peace.
it's gonna be super easy to downvote me for this, but regarding the Velaryons being portrayed by people of color, I would want to know how Preston reconciles this with how intermarried the Targaryens and Velaryons are at this point in the story? How do they look so different when Aegon I's mother was a Velaryon, and there are several intermarriages between then and the time of King Viserys I
@@degotas the knight of the seven kingdoms maynbe, the hedge knight is a single novella with a beginning middle and end. Unlike asoiaf which is def better even if the ending is trash, but he didnt say so because there is no ending yet so u cant say so.
Alicent is definitely not pro incest, so why did she allow her own children to marry each other? Because she didn't want Rhaenyra's child marrying Helaena? Wouldn't it have been more beneficial to strenghten alliances with other houses by marrying into them?
Sure for the morals of our time Daemon is an evil character but for the morals of the time in the show I think he’s a good guy. Even the best people have done bad things in their life even if they didn’t mean to.. As for who to root for right now I’m rooting for Viserys (even though I know how it ends I still can’t help but want the best for the guy), Corlys and the Queen who never was. They seem like good people just trying to make a name for themselves in a otherwise horrible world. Corlys really won me over this past episode when he didn’t want to disinherit Laenors kids for Laenas which would’ve technically benefited his bloodline or try and blame Daemon for something that was really out of his hands. When Rhenys was saying she knew they were bastards I just kept thinking yeah but your son not only accepts them but wanted them and claims them as his own so can you really blame Rhaenyra or the kids and try to claim they’re not your grandkids. I mean you can but what a horrible thing to do imo
True lol but I’m not really sold he pushed the horse over like Preston claims he did. He could’ve just as easily been reaching for the reigns to try and steady the horse imo but I guess we all see what we want to see in these scenes lol
Yes, Prince William would... he just had Harry to cover it up. Daemon was the only one who paid any attention to her, as a person. Why wouldn't he hold sway?
They've been collaborating longer than not since 2017 and if it wasn't for Carmine we wouldn't get nearly half of the content we've gotten so cry harder lol
![[Full] 4 ต่อ 4 Celebrity EP.920 | 3 พ.ย. 67 | one31](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KwiW2M_kAg4/mqdefault.jpg)
About the question of the Targaryens assimilating: Ruling classes don’t assimilate as quickly as regular immigrants do. The English kings spoke French until the 15th century. It makes sense for the Targaryens to still uphold some Valyrian traditions 100 years after the conquest.
I disagree the Normands bought with them lots of French nobles which is the reason why they were able to continue speaking it Targaryens were mostly on their own
also, dragons. valyrian is tied to their power
@@romulusnuma116 Yes, the Targaryens were mostly on their own, which is why they mostly speak the common tongue. But it still makes sense for at least some of them to uphold some Valyrian traditions.
@@edel5223 I don't think Valyrian is understood by dragons its like how pets will respond to commands
@@romulusnuma116 dragons are said to be very intelligent, I wouldn't be surprised if they could understand valerian
I generally want to agree with Preston’s point that Targaryen Incest was not nearly as normalised as we and post-Baratheon characters think it was, but there just seems to be too many examples of genuine love, or lust, between family members to discount it.
The scion of their house, Aegon I, famously married Visenya for duty but Rhaenys for love, which he didn’t have to do.
Bloodraven and Bittersteel fighting over a woman their whole lives who was their sister is probably the most famous example as no one told them they had to do that, they just did that naturally.
At the same time, there’s Naerys and her brother Aemon the Dragonknight. And while they didn’t have sex like Aegon IV believed and Daeron II was legitimate, it still seems very likely that they were forbidden lovers who just couldn’t be together.
Jaehaerys II and Shaera are probably the example that proves this point best as after Aegon V grew a distaste of the practise of incest, these two ruined two very politically strategic marriages for the Crown just to marry one another in a way that makes it sound like they were star crossed lovers who couldn’t bear to be apart from one another.
Hell, even the most integrated to Westerosi religion and customs, Baelor The Blessed, locked his sisters in the Maidenvault so he wouldn’t be tempted by them. So if there isn’t something in the Valyrians which makes them more prone to Incest than other races, why did the king who believed more strongly in the Andal gods than any other Targaryen king still feel these urges?
And there are many, many more examples than this one could cite. I really like the idea Preston is going for and that the Targaryens did feel the same taboo about Incest that most people did, but there are just too many examples from the text which say this just isn’t the case. There are too many characters who do feel this way about their siblings to discount them as simply political marriages like the Hapsburgs when many Targaryens explicitly create unnecessary political crises just to indulge their incestous desires.
The love is stuff that is claimed by biased histories. We also know that politics, prophecy and dragon hatching are factors, which each seem much more logical than finding your sibling hot.
Baelor found all his sisters hot so he locked them in a tower
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin Aegon I aside, all of the examples I cited were after the Dance so dragonriding genes were not nearly as important as they were in the first century of Targaryen rule.
Likewise, if they were motivated by long term planning in regards to politics or prophecy, why did they constantly fight each other, often motivated by the same rivalries that other people would have? It hardly seems consistent that they would want to intermarry because they were thinking about the future only to then kill their cousins in the present.
Likewise, the histories are biased but they are not SO biased that they can straight up discount events that happened, otherwise we would have no textual evidence that Jaehaerys I and Alysane ever quarrelled at all. So clearly the events as described have _some_ legitimacy to them and as I said, there are simply too many examples of personal desire overcoming long term planning in the history of House Targaryen to discount what seems to be the certainty that they are simply more prone to Incest than other people.
I want to agree with you as the idea that the Targaryen custom was actually cold and calculated to maintain dragonriding genes all along is a great and intriguing one, but there’s simply too much contradictory evidence of what these characters were actually like for that to hold up to scrutiny.
@@Longshanks1690 This is a very good counter to Prestons theories. The fact that you sight 4-5 instances of Targaryens marrying/fighting/imprisoning each other for love/romance/lust after the dying of the dragons really lends credence that the dragon riding gene theory may not play as big a roll in the affairs of Targaryen marriages.
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin idk why we're talking abt all this when we have the Lannister twins textually in love with each other
Someone has done something right with this new series, feels much more ASOIAF than S5-8 of GoT.
Honestly it feels like having any color aside from grey or black or brown makes this feel aesthetically waaaaaaay closer to the book vision of westeros
They seem to be almost done jumping around. They have about 2-3 years left of the Dance after this next time skip for episode 8. Feels like they’ve been focusing on the Targaryen’s inputs only, skipping over a lot of other families, because at this time the entire focus of the realm was on the people who had dragons.
The mermaid-horse is called a Hippocampus. It's a real mythological and heraldic character. Check wikipedia.
The assimilation conversation is super interesting. Preston is of course right that after 100 years any family would be super integrated into their new society, however I think it changes the situation being royalty and the most powerful people in the world. As the society around them begins to shape them, because of their position of power they also shape the cosiera around them and are able to isolate themselves and continue customs that others can’t. I think this is also why they speak Valyrian to the dragons and between each other at times. It’s too maintain their sense of elitism and supremacy of their family over others
Well yes and not, Germanic upper class identity after the conquest of the West Roman Empire endured more than 100 years, because it was so large; They became the upper strata of they respective societies, not just their royal houses. Here we have 3 dozens or so of Valyrian characters in a sea of Westerosi nobility. So I'd imagine assimilation would be rather typical.
Regarding the Velaryon sigil, it should be noted that in many cultures seahorses are more associated with dragons than horses.
In Japanese seahorses are called Tatsu-no-otoshigo, which translates to Dragon’s bastard child (or evil spawn).
For the record, the Prince of the UK Harry (so not the direct heir), went to a party where he dressed up as a Nazi officer. Certainly affected his reputation at the time.
I was thinking of crown prince Rudolph of Austria. He slept around and infected his wife with a sexually transmitted disease.. causing her to be infertile and so she couldn't provide a male heir to the austrian throne.
Medieval Christians absolutely did not believe it was a good thing that Rome fell. If they did they wouldn’t have revived it in 800. Who is the most important theologian to medieval Christians, Augustine, who so loved the Roman Empire.
I've read Confessions and City of God and I never got the sense that Augustine loved the Roman Empire. He uses Roman history to illustrate his points and it often makes the Romans look quite bad. He criticizes events like the foundation myth with Romulus murdering his brother and the Rape of the Sabine Women. He points out that the Romans constantly backstab one another and that even the histories admit the only times the Romans ever had social unity was when they were in imminent danger of annihilation.
@@Vmac1394 Augustine criticizes pagan Rome. In the city of god he defends Christianity against pagan attacks that it was the cause of the sack of Rome in 410. Many pagans saw it as divine punishment for adopting Christianity. Augustine argues that no, Christianity is the reason for the empires success and paganism is not. Go back and read book 4. Augustine was a Roman who supported and loved the Roman Empire, a Christian Roman empire I might add.
25:00 - George thinking about making the Targaryens black. Yes, I think he was waxing poetic - but that literally coulndnt fit in the story because that would make Jon half-black and his identity couldnt be hidden.
Fun fact: Vomitoriums are just stadium doors.
They did have a lot of those though.
Thank you for being at least one other person who knows this... I always get pissed when people bring up vomitoriums because they DID exist but they were NOT "a place where people when to vomit," that's a misunderstanding of Latin... vomitorium was literally just the word for the aisle breaks in the bench rows in an area that led to entrances for each section to allow the rapid discharge *of people out from the arena* when the games were over
Yup Preston made a common gaff. But he’s not a Roman History guy so he gets a pass
@@KomodoDojo I didn't take it as a gaffe. I took it as though he was speaking about the modern common (mis)conception, played straight.
Maybe that's giving him too much credit. Not sure.
@@KomodoDojo he does kinda like to present himself as a Roman history guy tho, see his comments throughout this comment section
@@Kavurcen He has a high opinion of himself.
You can be well-read but also ignorant.
Preston speaks with confidence and conviction which is really effective in convincing people of an idea.
So he’s wrong, it doesn’t in the end detract from his argument which is glorification in media. The idea of the vomitorium being something more than an architectural design is personified in western media as something else. It ironically is evidence of the argument of a fake representation of the past.
of course Ryan Condal read Dunk & Egg, he pitched a Dunk & Egg prequel in 2016
I REALLY liked Feast when I first read it. I’m not sure how it holds up overall though. The kingsmoot was one of the most gripping scenes of the entire series for me.
it holds up very well, I agree with Preston that it's the most thematically coherent book out of the 5
@@blaubeer8039 yeah idk how you can read Feast and think “damn, I wish we were in Meereen” lol
I suppose, aside from some pacing problems, the issues with Feast aren't really issues with Feast, but problems with what came after. People had to wait five more years for the rest of the story, and even then ADWD ends on so many cliff hangers that it resolves almost nothing from AFFC or ADWD.
If ADWD was released closer to AFFC and actually resolved plot lines that were supposed to be resolved over this arc of the story, it would be much easier to appreciate it.
There is one line with queen Cersei I laughed so hard I was crying. I reread it like 10 times just funny as hell.
Preston need a history lesson Caligula wasn’t depraved? Dude stfu
"Condal probably hasn't read the Hedge Knight"
Preston, Condal literally said he read it earlier in the interview
Damn Preston deserved that interview!! Btw you guys are the best GOT/HOTD podcast by far!! Love you guys!!
One thing I always thought was interesting about Blazonry is the posit that a lot of knight's armor may have been painted going into battle, and the reason we think most of them wore plain armor is the monks that collected the armor scrubbed the paint off to preserve it and that's how they painted pictures of the battles. Not entirely too sure if that's just an old historian wife's tale but I thought it was pretty cool. I know they found a Germanic ritter helmet with some very cool paintings on it, in addition to some other helms.
It's very complicated and varies by period and personal choice. Some armour was certainly painted, although it seems more common on lower end armours. Textile coverings are also popular in later periods. Jupons, coat armours, and surcoats were common in the 14th and early 15th centuries. Really, it just depends.
Later on the in the late 15th and into the 16th century, things went crazy with embossing, etching, and other absolutely insane designs that look stunning.
But certainly, plenty of Men at Arms would have worn white armour, i.e, polished and uncovered and this is mentioned. There was a huge variety though.
You’re wrong about the gladiator rings not being brutal. I had to read Galen’s writings for my history of science degree. Pretty much our entire early basis of anatomy is based on being able to cut up/attempt to fix dying or dead gladiators. It is some insanely brutal stuff.
There's brutal and then there's six-gladiators-die-per-show-brutal. The latter is just not sustainable.
@@TheDelinear hey im not arguing the tourney in hotd was way too brutal for westeros’ tourney standards, but the sentiment that the gladiatorial arenas and their brutality are largely myth is absolutely wrong. You can read the historical accounts of Roman’s throwing naked and unarmed men to battle lions. That’s not even the main show
@@HickoryBill Exactly...see how the strawman turns into "six gladiators per battle!" hyperbole? The fights were brutal and there was plenty of death and blood. As you mention, there were Man Vs Beast(s) competitions.....the men being slaves and/or prisoners. The animals were brought from all over the empire...the more exotic the better...and COULD die in the first fight. Some arenas were filled with water and there were naval battles. "Gladiators" become a "True Scotsman" argument after a while. It IS true that most of the named "Gladiators" wouldnt be at much risk of dying...a Christian prisoner who has to battle lions....PROBABLY going to die.
Hes not saying it "wasn't brutal", he is saying that the brutality depicted in most Hollywood shows about this era is unrealistic.
@@mschell8022 And Id say he's doing the "Everybody but me thinks....-insert strawman" . We all know it when we see it, because every basic bitch does it. Hey Preston...what do you think of the wage gap, the decimation of Native people, the level of Fascism in America, if a woman can be a man if she wishes on a star, if Led Zeppelin is a good band, if we should celebrate Columbus day, or if gladiators actually REGULARLY died fighting in Arenas (all over Rome's vast empire)? We already know the answer to all of it....and the strawmen he would use....and the "1619" handbook he would get all of his fun facts from. He probably thinks Reagan used Springsteen's "Born In The USA" without even understanding what it was about! Basic Bitch Arguments that only are allowed to persist because these guys dont challenge themselves with people who dont hold their views....and surround themselves with callow yes men/Carmine.
You have to remember that HBO is trying to win back the audience that D&D wrote the later seasons of GOT for, the normie fan that knows nothing about the books, or really care for Fantasy, and those people pushed GOT into being a huge cultural phenomenon. The people who think Danaerys name was Khaleesi and enjoy gratuitous sex, violence, and nonsensical battle scenes over dialogue scenes or character development scenes. So it’s no surprise that Condyl is basing the Targaryens off Hollywood renditions of Rome.
Edit: To the people who think this a “strong woman YAS slay Queen show”, you are going to be sorely disappointed because everyone is in the Dance of Dragons are pretty shitty, despite their gender. Lol.
Not addam velaryon
@@addamsixx7915 Best boy Addam
@@aleksandarnikolov3182 LOYAL
So I went and read the interview and it pretty much was exactly how you reported on it here but the thing that stood out to me and I thought was really funny was the indication at the beginning that Linda was not there and that she just left after saying hello to Ryan "to look after our dog Lancelot"
And given the way Linda has been ranting about the show and the casting of black people on Twitter, I just found that very funny
Thanks for this comment. Until I read it, my head canon understanding of Linda was kind of an "old man yells at clouds" level adversarial relationship to fans. But after your comment, I actually read her comments about Corlys, and Jesus christ that's a lot more racist than I expected and not ok.
The funniest thing about Linda is that she likes to do the whole "but muh faithful source material" thing that Rings of Power fans are obsessed with. Except, not only is GRRM not long dead like Tolkien, but she actually knows him, and has publicly admitted that he does not give a shit. I think his words per Linda were something to the effect of "get off Twitter." And GRRM himself has been repeatedly stoked about some differences between books and show, even in GOT, but especially in HOTD! See: his absolutely raving love of Considines Viserys. How far up your ass does your head need to be to play white knight for an an authors canon, against that authors own beliefs? Not to mention the suspicious silence on other issues. Black Corlys is a tragedy, of course. Silence on the funeral changed from Laenor's, an actual textual difference. Instead her issue is with Laenor surviving, which doesn't matter and a slim chance but plausible per book canon. She seems really mad the gay (+black) man didn't die, for no damn reason... hmmmmm.....
@@Kavurcen Noticed she also tastefully defended with the classic "I have many racialized friends/there are plenty of racialized actors I approve of in Got" when referencing Dornish characters.
@@ModernSynthesist lmfao of course..... which is extra funny bc in HOTD dornish just means vaguely swarthy, like Sicilian or Jewish
@@Kavurcen I thought the Velaryons being black was one of the best choices the show made. Not only does it help sell Valyria as an actual foreign empire (multiple "races" of people coming from multiple conquered nations, assimilating into the culture and eventually rising to positions of power), it also helps make the Velaryons feel visually distinct from the Targaryens (drives home how they are their own family), makes it easier to understand the conflict since we have more visual variety among the cast instead of 20 similar looking people with white wigs, and also gives the people who care about representation something more to like about the show. It makes sense in every way imo
What are the chances that F&B v2 and a bunch of dunk and egg novellas come out before WINDS? I thinking quite high 🤔
I would agree. They lead into shows.
Honestly I’m very invested in the dunk and egg stories so It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
Can`t imagine him not releasing Blood and Fire next year or thereabouts.
I wouldn't use modern immigration to explain what's going on with the Targaryens. A much better analogy is the Normans who largely considered themselves French and used French as the court language in England for hundred of years after 1066. I think the show nails this with them still using what is basically a dead language in court that's not understood by anyone other than Maesters.
High valerian isn't "basically a dead language" it's a lingua franca in Essos and a lot of free cities still speak the language. We know Tyrion has learned it, so a bunch of studious lords and all the maesters probably know it as well
@@blaubeer8039 well 200 years after the fall of rome latin was still alive. tyrion does struggle to comunicate in the free cities, but he already has a leg up from the normal westerosi. latin was an academic language in europe for more than a millenium after the fall of rome
@@blaubeer8039 The majority of the population in the Free Cities would speak their local variant of Valyrian, but High Valyrian would likely still be well known by the elites and used as a diplomatic language.
@@jeannebouwman1970 I meant more like in Westeros but the historical analogy would be say in 800 AD Latin you'd learn in school is well on it's way to becoming Italian, French, Spanish etc and only really survives in written texts and monasteries, not as a commonly spoken language. The big point is that they are slowly becoming more and more Westerosi but are still kind of different than 99.5% of their subjects and keep up some district cultural practices like High Valyrian and incestual marriage and their own wedding rites etc etc
The gladiator games weren't the only blood games that were being played. There were many different types. Like gladiators killing slaves and criminals. Animals killing slaves and criminals. Animals killing each other. And don't get me started about the times they flooded the colosium to recreate naval battles
I believe that the main problem with Rhaenyra's heirs being bastards and other cases of breaking the legal and social rules is that she is a princess of a rather fresh foreign dynasty with nuclear weapons (dragons). For anyone who is not a dragon raider, the law and institutions are only shield and hope that they won't go back to the times of conquest or Maegor the Cruel when Targaryen did whatever they wanted, because they have dragons, a power without match. For the most historical empires, after conquest there should come a time of cohabitation, law and compromises between conquered and conquerors, due to the inability to keep the conquering power and the threat of violence indefinitely. With dragons in the Westeros, we still have this staying threat without any chance of regular opposition from the smallfolk or the lords, so any rules and institutions (marriage, inheritance, punishments for the crimes, etc) and abiding them by Targaryen are crucial. They are all that difference this regime from straight-up bloody tyranny. And any rules-breaking Targaryen should be a scary and threatening thing to any inhabitant of Westeros or public order.
The big problem with this interpretation which we see in a lot of materials - with Alicent being jealous, conservative bigot and brave free spirit you-go-girl Rhaenyra - is that Alicenta is regular person from good family, but with not such a great standing in westerosi society (she Is a daughter of the second son, woman) and Rhaenyra is an heir to the throne, from master-race of eugenic dragon riders, who believe themselves to be above other people (or even closer to goods) because they descent from the old slaving empire. Alicent don't have too much choice, structurally, than just abide the rules. Being the mother of a dragon rider or a Targaryen king is probably the highest and safest position someone like her can secure and the only situation in which she has a chance to not be defenseless snd afraid for her life if next targaryen noble decide that he wants to for example murder someone or burn a city. For her, situation in which her son was maimed without any consequences, by Rhaenyra nad Daemon kids. was probably a tipping point, because she again felt helpless. Not because she is not brave enough, not because she is not yass-slay-queen-rebel, but basically because she is not Targaryen.
In the contrast - Rhaenyra, as heir and dragon raider, has probably the best, most independent position in 7 kingdoms, apart of her sex, because she has hierarchic advantage over almost anyone and also possibility to use ultimate nuclear dragon violence on the whim . Her misbehaving and rule breaking is not a sign of bravery, its more like Elon Musk or other privileged billionaire or politician flaunting that they don't have to follow rules.
Or worse. Because of dragons.
You got way too much time on your hands.
The Roman Empire converted to Christianity and the most christianized bit was the one that survived for 1000 more years. The Barbarians WERE CHRISTIAN. It's important not to forget that. What killed the Western Roman Empire was an inability to collect taxes combined with the loss of the graine provinces in North Africa to the vandals, this killed the grain dole and ended social cohesion in italy. The lack of money meant that the empire had to pay it's army in land and not coin so in effect they established multiple "barbarian" kingdoms, the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Franks, the Burgundians ect. At some point the General Controlling Rome and the leader of it's armies realized that he didn't control any areas outside Italy directly so he simply realized that it wasn't an empire anymore and sent the regalia to Constantinopel. The Eastern Roman Empire spent the next 200 years trying to reassert control and did everywhere except France and Britain. This attempt basically ended with a combination of a civil war, persian invasion and avar invasion.
I'm sorry but ican't get over this lol the Velaryons being black just doesn't make sense no matter how you wanna twist it.. their purpose in the story is literally just that they are of the same ethnic group as the Targaryens. It's their one defining characteristic. Making the Valyrian ruling class multi-ethnic removes the whole point behind the "pure Valyrian blood" theme. George very purposefully writes the Targaryens as Valyrian-supremacists who believe that they are superior to others because of their race (and then of course demonstrates that they are infact not actually superior). This idea that you have characters that have ultimately racist motivations but at the same time you make their racism inclusive is just nonsense.
I hate to break it to preston but incest is still very prevalent amongst extremely country people
In WOIAF states that there was once a tourney at. Last Harth in which 18 men died. Ryan was probably more right than we gave him credit for
Feast is like Midnight Tides of the Malazan series. On your 1st readthrough it's at the bottom, but on re-reads it rockets to the top.
I think the half horse sigil is meant to be a hippocampus, a creature from greek myth
For me, the best example of QT's hyperviolence is definitely Grindhouse Deathproof and the theme of a guy killing people with a car. The design of the car itself and the fact that it is death proof, but only for the driver. And this crash scene with repeated shots of how the characters die one by one.
I know for sure Ryan has read the hedge knight, because that was Ryan’s first wish to do as a show
The horse on the Velaryon sigil is a hippocampus, and that is actually the symbol for A World Of Ice And Fire.
33:45 just because there are rules about heraldry doesn’t mean that the escutcheon (not coat of arms or “sigil” as GRRM calls them, escutcheons were are the “shield” component of coats of arms without the supporters or achievements around it) didn’t break those rules all the time. Every culture has their own traditions which conflicted with each other and their own personal inclusions which could be seen as strange.
Not to mention that at a certain point esutcheons were quartered so many times that you’d end up with ones like modern Spain’s today, which you can’t easily recall or draw without staring at it
Same thing applies to flags, yes there *are* rules about how they *should* be designed, but any American who’s seen an atrocious town or state flag can tell you they aren’t always at all.
Including “flawed” heraldry, imo, makes the setting more believable and also unique. Westeros isn’t 1:1 medieval Europe
When Spielberg made "Temple of Doom" he rejected the elephant wranglers using their long sticks because he didn't see them use that in "The Jungle Book"... Hollywood historical imaging is even more powerful than hisory itself. I like to think those lewd tapestries were later removed by Baelor the Blessed.
I love every ASOIAF book, but Feast is my favorite too.
My personal ranking:
1. Feast for Crows
2. Storm of Swords
3. Hedge Knight
4. Mystery Knight
5. Sworn Sword
6. Clash of Kings
7. Game of Thrones
8. Dance of Dragons
Liking A Feast For Crows is only surprising to anybody if you read it before that content happened in the tv show. The downside was that we were removed from most of the "main characters" and were introduced to new characters and storylines. If you have the context of the show, the book provides so much more information and context...plus a great idea of who Brienne already is. If you are reading from book to book with no context, you have a head full of ideas and theories that arent even touched on by the content of AFFC. If youve already seen the show, the Arya content in Braavos (whether it pays off later in the books) is such a HUGE improvement over what we get in the show.
It's very telling that these people complaining about the women getting the best characters are *actually* just complaining about women getting as much screen time as they do.
Yeah it's sometimes a legitimate criticism, but absolutely doesn't apply to fire and blood. It's the age old irony of opposed ideologies when taken to extremes ending up mirroring each other. The extreme woke and the extreme anti woke basically sound the same, make most of the same logical fallacies and jump at ghosts and imagined slights the same way, you can basically just word swap them for eachother they are so interchangeable.
Condal does know about dunk & egg. He stated in an interview that George told him where the story is going to go.
Some friends and I were chatting about the incest tendency for Targaryens. We think the biological tendency to not want to screw your close relatives may be "resessive" in dragonriders, and that the two traits might be closely tied together, hence the "keep the blood pure" goal of producing heirs and dragonriders.
I understand being squicked out by the casualness of the incest. I can see living as a Targaryen as kind of like being an Apex predator, anything goes of you want it, social guidelines are set by others and do not apply to you. Imagine being an actual physical Dragon among puny men, and the god complex that would give you.
5:05 "the Barbarians" also weren't savages. A good chunk had been citizens even (Odoacer, who famously deposed the last Western Roman Emperor was an officer of the Roman Army for 6 years before overthrowing Romulus Agustulus).
They gave the Velaryons the fictional sea-horse (a hippocampus) as sigil, instead of the real animal. Some of the real medieval families had similar figures in their coats-of-arms.
I don't agree that all the characters are grey or horrible. Corlys and Rhaenys are nice people. Rhaenyra children are good and kind boys, the same for Baela and Rhaena. Helaena is innocent and sweet.
In season two: Daeron is THE nice person in the story. Adam is the most honorable in all Fire and Blood. Netles and Benjicot cried after battle. There is also Cregan Stark, Aly Black, and other minor characters.
hey i know itd take a little more trouble but if you guys are discussing an image such as a sigil, it would greatly enhance the viewing experience if you put it on screen.
I’m guessing since he hasn’t mentioned Rhaenyra murdering that rando this was recorded before ep 7?
Is Preston projecting his own values on to Baelon and Alyssa? Dammit Preston I was rooting for you
Not that far into the vid but doesn't he (and many more asoiaf creators) pretty much do it all the time?
@@blaubeer8039 I am more concerned with the textual evidence about Targaryen consideration of dragons and prophecy. Targs in love is not a very compelling reason for me.
26:00 - Having colonies all over the world actually dosent logically mean that entire noble families will be multiracial. There were not black noble houses in Rome, there were not black, indian, australian, or native american noble houses in europe, just because of colonisation.
Valyria existed 5000 years. Rome controlled North Africa for a few hundred and European colonization was for a few hundred. There would be nothing illogical about a black Valyrian house.
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin I guess if it existed for 5 times longer than the longest empire known in the real world, then anything is possible. However I do point out that Valyria the country was founded 5,000 years ago, so the imperial stage would begin later in its history. However, all we do know about the people of Valyria is that they were so obsessed with blood purity they married siblings. Therefore I really dont see them ever interbeeding with the people from the conquered territories, or even countencing the ascention of nonvalyrian race people to a noble status. I could well imagine Valyrians having sex with slaves, and then over a few centuries there would be a good chance that some people born as slaves would posess dragon riding capabilities, which may allow them to earn status in Valyria and become noble. That means that this population of people who have a non-valyrian phenotype but do have dragon-genes and therefore become noble would have a mixed race appearence (since the slave population would be extremely multiracial) and would not look as clearly and homogenously african as the Velaryons do in the show. The real world analogy of this is the Coloreds of south africa. However, the Coloreds of SA only started to gain standing in SA after the British abolished slavery. But give it 5000 years and anything could happen.
Come to think of it, Valyria didnt have a colony anywhere where black people live. On the wiki it says that Summer Isles were 'raided by slavers' from Valyria, I suppose that's sufficient. Really, the possibly Valyrian descended house they should have made black is the Hightowers, since the Hightowers were the kings of Old Town, which was apparently founded specifically as a trade port with the Summer Islanders, Valyria and Old Ghis. Old town would logically have an increased black presence historically due to this regular trade, whereas Driftmark would never see any trade or travel of the black summer islanders, making it unlikely that their looks would be preserved for this long, unless they practised more extreme incest than the Targaryens.
@@umwha Dude, the Basilisk Isles were part of Valyria for thousands of years. And we only hear that Targaryens worried about blood purity (perhaps because they were dragon riders). Clearly the other Valyrians didn't care that much as they married into the people of the Free Cities.
You're really trying hard to have a problem with something.
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin Correct me if I'm wrong but we've never heard what the indigenous population of Basilisk isles look like - of if there is an indigenous population at all. Additionally, there do not seem to be any native humans on Sothoryos, only Brindled Men. All black people on known planetos must ancestrally come from the Summer Isles.
@@umwha Dude don't question what is clearly an ESG-influenced casting choice, or Preston will passive-aggressively call you an anti-sjw robot in his next video. Funny how "anti-wokers" are unthinking bots while Preston and Carmine are more than happy to insult and name-call their own viewers for having the gall to express an opinion that goes against their worldview
Bartimos Lord of the Crab Rave 🦀
CONFIRMED
Talking about ancient myths and misconceptions, vomitorium isnt a place to vomit, it's a mass exit area out of a building. Like a Colosseum, which isn't called Colosseum, but Flavian Amphitheatre. Colosseum is the place where it is built, bcs it used to be populated by big statues (colosses).
He was wrong about how bloody games in colosseum were. Gladiators didn't commonly kill each other. But gladiator games were hardly the only games there. There were games were gladiators killing criminals and slaves. Animals killing slaves and criminals and animals killing each other.
@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl I did not dispute any of those things. Just adding about the vomitorium thing
Love the way presto low key threw some shade on the British monarchy by calling them out for being useless 😂
Instant thumbs up for this video
33:00 - Really interesting about sigils. All I can say is that in the UK, there have been many times Ive seen a host of shields with sigils on, as they adorn many public buildings. I find many of the designs small, indistinct, and hard to identify from far away. Most sigils seem to be halved or quartered, and in each quarter has another typical symbol of a repeated pattern of symbols. Would be very hard to see from far away. The same symbols are used over again, or mashed togehter, into artistic abominations, with multiple animals around a crest which itself is quarered, with a crown held by doves, and a heart pierced with an arrow, and a banner with a latin quote on it - Thats just a typical crest XD.
This is a later development of heraldry, when it started in the 12th and 13th centuries they were usually single designs that were easy to see. Quartering came later and was a way to show you ancestry off, by the 19th century it’s ridiculous, the best example is George Nugent Temple-Grenville, it’s utterly ridiculous.
This is a fairly small subject you guys cover in this but just to clear matters up it seems fairly obvious that Targaryens seem almost magically or perhaps pheromonally attracted to one another. This is illustrated multiple times, from Jaehaerys and Alysanne getting married against the wishes of their mother, to King Egg's kids Jaehaerys and Shaera hooking up despite the wishes of Egg and their mother Betha Blackwood. This could also maybe explain why Jon and Dany may perhaps find themselves somewhat magnetized towards one another when they meet (along with them just being very attractive people). So, I think saying "oh, Alyssa and Baelon probably weren't into each other" even though by all accounts they very much were because brothers and sisters just aren't as a rule is a little ignorant of the reality the author is trying to illustrate.
9:00 - It's funny, for a very long time I didn't read Dunk & Egg because I thought they were comics. Eventually I learned that there were also regular written versions and I then bought "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" and I absolutely loved it.
A clash of kings is great…
So the first two seasons on hotd is just incest? I’m glad I skipped it. It’s too much.
Also my baby’s mother totally has purple eyes.
For me from favourite to least favourite probably:
1. A Storm of Sword
2. A Dance with Dragons
3. A Feast for Crows
4. A Game of Thrones
5. A Clash of Kings
I'm not going to quote a professor Vernon Bogdard or claim like I even got the last name spelled right but to quote paraphrase 'anything that is tempting in this world is offered to a prince of Wales'
My second (and last) post on r/asoiaf was on my love for AFfC. You would have thought I had explained the flaws of net neutrality.
Also, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” audiobook is read by Harry Lloyd (Viserys) and is well worth your time. Sometimes you can find it on TH-cam or, better yet, PJ’s audible link
I listen to Feast and Dance over and over
In a valley girl accent: "UM, IT'S ACTUALLY VOMITORIA! WITH AN A!" I'm kidding, but i couldn't help myself.
I‘m a bit confused by Prestons remarks about Rome. They only changed like 100 years before the fall to Christianity but they are already around for 1100 years. I don’t really see why this means that they weren’t decadent.
Edit. Thank you for your answers. It’s much clearer now.
Yes, and it was a quick change. The state religion was Christianity by 380. Edward Gibbon actually caused quite a ruckus claiming that Christianity led to Rome's downfall rather than decadence and polytheism.
Hes saying Ryan wanted to bring "Roman decadence", which he clarifies is largely myth.
He actually goes into some of the interpretations of Romes history from later writers in Europe.
If you read about Roman history tho you'll note that the idea of decedance was actually invented by Romans sudo historians quite a while before the western half of the empire fell.
Interestingly you can actually read the writings of some Romans who criticize this idea that Rome is or has become embroiled in decadence and it has brought the Empire to its knees.. again they're writing about this perceived decadence like hundreds years before the Empire falls (as I recall, im not a Rome expert tho so I'd still recommend looking it up more)
A lot of it has to do with a perceived loss of social power to other groups who had long since been integrated into Roman society.
(You probably recall the senatorial debate about allowing Gaelic citizens to come live in Rome and partake in the Roman government. I forget the emperor's name but he was pretty historically literate and he argued that Rome had been integrating people into its society for a long time and so it wasn't a mark of decline or Barbarian encouraging to do so)
The writers in the Roman times who spoke of the decadence and decline also spoke of the alleged loss of power of the paterfamilias in the family, which was really important in traditional Roman life and something seen as a sign of womanly overreach and social decadence)
Like proto incel red pilled behavior there I suppose 😂
@@randominternetguyoffical the emperor you are talking about is Claudius
10:40 - I actually tend to struggle with this. I have to say, on a pure enjoyment level I do actually enjoy the Dunk & Egg stories more. That being said, the main novels have a depth in the amount of world building and theories you can think of and mysteries and whatnot that just doesn't exist in those short stories because... well, they're short stories. So I struggle to say which one I prefer here. But I have to admit that just purely looking at enjoyment level, I do probably enjoy the Dunk & Egg stories more.
The current velaryon sigil is basically a capricorn
When you look at Elden Ring there are a couple characters with "fire-giant" ancestory who have dark skin and red hair, kind of like a Ganondorf type look. When I saw those characteristics I figured that's what George was thinking about when he imagined dark valyrians.
Sibling's attraction is observed quite often in deeply dysfunctional families. It may be said that beeing part of the royal/dragon family doesn't help in this area.
Imagine you are a dragonrider and only your family has dragons. In your world there's constant abuse. So how to cope? When we find ourselves attracted to our siblings, we might make sense of our attraction in terms of the most logical category available (superior dragonraiders/dragons) and feel that what is desired is sex with another dragonrider. Another similar person in similar situation. Tricks on the mind: attraction/love/power/safety. The incest taboo and it's limitations is a vast and interesting topic.
Sorry do you have proff that sibling attraction in dysfunctional families?
@@MohamedRamadan-qi4hl my response vanished, mayby bc I edited too many times and added links. Sorry for that.
Try googling for example article:
Etiological Risk Factors
for Sibling Incest: Data
From an Anonymous Computer-Assisted
Self-Interview
Karen Griffee, Sam Swindell, Stephen L. O’Keefe,
Sandra S. Stroebel, Keith W. Beard, Shih-Ya Kuo,
and Walter Stroup
@@LNawka thanks. I will look into it
I love it when Preston slips into his "Chad" voice.
I wish it was you who got to interview Ryan Condal, Preston.
I hate that Linda and Elio act like the ASOIAF gatekeepers and ultimate authorization of the I.P.
This is incorrect. As someone who does asoiaf content and knows just about everyone in this community, they are the least "gatekeeper"-ish people around when it comes to this. And this is coming from someone who isn't a fan of them but yeah your comment is just not true compared to the other actual gatekeepers in this community.
@@OfficialRedTeamReview thanks for the insight. They’ve just said and done some things that really rubbed me the wrong way. But I’m going to trust you on this.
@@dx3cannons It's mostly Linda and her idiotic takes. I'll always dislike her for spoiling the Stannis story in the show because she got upset
I love you guys
plot twist Bartimos Celtigar will be played by an actor of asian descent.
Is this a snippet of a podcast or something? Or does Carmine always want to end them turbo early. This was a hair over 35 minutes and I could listen to an hour podcast of y’all easily.
Or maybe Preston had the new baby to tend to….?
I dunno, point being is to make them longer guys. Good stuff.
Snippet of a longer one that I've cut up into pieces. Oh and I don't "turbo end" anything early, my dude. Both of us have lives and can't really do a long form 3 hour podcast like Rogan does.
@@OfficialRedTeamReview Maybe you can’t, but it’d be cooler if you did.
And you totally love to end, my brutha from anotha mutha. Where is the full podcast? I’m subbed on the app.
@@OfficialRedTeamReview 3 hours? Fuck no i have shit to do pls keep it 30 min to 1 hour...not everyone is as bored as that other dude 🤣
@@gogozeppeli9267 good man
According to a documentary they make Prince William seem like he was very close to making some of those mistakes but had some decent people watching his back I guess but interesting analogy
The Qing Dynasty/ Manchu never truly integrated with Chinese society (after almost 300 years), neither did the mongols
Well, that's arguable, but it's a bit different when there are thousands of your own people around you haven't really moved very far. The Targs are a handful of people, isolated.
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin sure, but they also have giant flying fire breathing reminders that they are Different from Everyone and it's pretty reasonable to assume that would influence their perspective on assimilation versus cultural independence
@@PrestonJacobstheSweetrobin As some other people pointed out elsewhere, the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt are probably a better parallel. I'm no expert but my understanding is that they didn't really integrate at all with the native Egyptian people, spoke a different language and considered themselves 'other', at least for a few centuries.
There was unimaginable brutality in pre-Christian Rome, particularly for slaves and non-Roman citizens. There cross used to be a symbol of Roman cruelty and stuck fear in people's hearts. You could make a joke that it will does, but that ignores the authentic cruelty of their society at the time
George is pretty clear in a LOT of interviews that Westeros under Targaryen rule isn't supposed to be a depiction of Rome, its Medieval era Europe. Valyria is his closest Rome-insert..
14:30 Your conversations about assimilation are a little silly. You're comparing colonists with Rulers. The Targ's are rulers, and ruling classes have always had wildly divergent values than those they rule. Think about how long it took for Vikings to properly assimilate into British society, and other societies in Europe. Or Mongols in Russia. Or the Normans in England. It can take some time. And when considering fictional psychic dragon riders who take exceptionalism as part of their family character it is no surprise to me that they would have wildly different ideals than those that they rule.
People also take the fact that women sleeping around being less acceptable than men doing it, to mean that men could just sleep around in the middle ages. That was really not the case
I do have thoughts about the two legged four legged dragon on the banners. First thing to keep in mind is that in medieval times there wasn't a printing press nor the internett, so standardized designs for heraldry and banners was basically impossible. Like lets say there is a sigil with a black hand on a bloody field, simple enough to design. But then things start getting a bit messy, which hand is it? Left or Right? Is the hand in a fist or not? What are the length of the fingers? When you say the background is a bloody field is it just red or a mix of red and green?
Since there is no printing press you had to craft the banners and heraldry by hand, and even if you had a group of artists with a unified idea of what it should look like you will still have subtle differences in style. And since there is no internett to search what the flag should look like you have vastly different designs over bigger distances.
So in conclusion, who gives a shit about the number of legs the dragon banner has? Remember that not everyone gets to see a dragon, maybe most of the artists designing the logo. Of course some would have 4, heck I imagine in places where there aren't dragons there might be a lot more dragon banners where they have four legs. Heck by the start of Game of Thrones dragons have been gone for generations. Of course there are gonna be four legged designs.
American immigration is super new and it’s a cultural monolith for the most part. In parts of the world with a longer history of immigration, social integration isn’t equated with cultural assimilation and so people tend to maintain their cultural values for hundreds of years while still socially being a part of the greater nation. So the Targaryens being this culturally diluted is actually more American than following with global immigration patterns going back a thousand years
@preston Jacobs ,the decadence myth was absolutely bunk.
But the Romans DID have a lot of pornographic art to be fair;)
I’d disagree on it being absolute bunk. I think there’s a prime case to be made that the Crisis of the Third Century was brought on partially through decadence, especially with Commodus’s rule directly preceding it, and that the Crisis is what truly doomed Rome. After all, by the time Christianity had become the state religion, western Rome was quite different than what we think of in regards to The Roman Empire: de-urbanization, decentralization, the slave based economy moving into what was basically proto-feudalism, the marginalization of Central Italy in favor of Northern Italy (Rome had become just another city by that point, with cities like Milan and Ravenna being more important and oftentimes capitals), etc.
This all being said, the idea of post-Crisis Rome being decadent is nonsense. Christian Rome was a relatively pious realm, and its eastern half lived on (and often flourished) for another thousand years.
@@PaulWHall Are we not applying our modern cultural standards to a pre modern society here though?
I mean,it's understandable to the degree the Roman empire was a first attempt at modern society as Mary Beard puts it.
Does Ryan think that ASOIAF is supposed to represent Rome not the middle ages?
feel like they made the valeryons black to make the bastard stuff stand out more. probably just wanted to be able to cast a more diverse cast too plus the white dreads look sick
Its odd to invoke Roman Colosseum brutality in a world based on Chivalric values in the Middle ages. Its why that scene was so jarring.
30:00 A half horse half sea creature/fish is what a Seahorse means, heraldically (real seahorses are described as "Hippocampus", which yeah, is kind of backwards).
Description being "a seahorse" is not proof one way or the other that it is a natural or a myhological seahorse.
The Velaryons being black doesn't make any sense. Valyria had colonies, yes, but Velaryons aren't from the colonies, they are valyrian. They have common ancestry with Targaryens. Given that whites and blacks have tens of thousands, if not hunderds of thousands of years of different ancestry, there is no way black Valyrians can exist. Also I'm pretty confident that Velaryons and Targaryens interbred before Rhaenys and Corlys, so even if you accept the impossible premise of black Valyrians, they wouldn't be pure black Velaryons and pure white Targaryens.
This critique is completely independent of the "anti SJW" critique (which is valid to some extent too).
I think making the strongs black would make more sense but I’ve liked the velaryons so far
I don’t really get the no good guy complaint. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel I don’t need to be cheering for or identifying to a good guy to appreciate entertainement.
And judging by the number of fictions and documentaries on serial killers and psychopaths and their popularity, it seems to me a lot of people don’t care about having an obvious good guy character
There are lots of examples of royal courts using a prestige language that the majority population didn't speak so I think the idea that the Targaryens maintained some weird Valerian customs is not too far fetched
Do people really need a good guy to root for, or is having compelling characters enough? What about something like Breaking Bad? All the main characters are extremely flawed and morally quite reprehensible, yet people loved that show.
It's kind of sad that a lot of book readers haven't read Dunk and Egg, they're unironically more enjoyable
The three heads on the Targaryen sigil have a symbolic meaning. What meaning do 4 legs have? Still waiting on Condal to give an in-universe explanation.
I feel the opposite about Daemon and Rhae. It seems more like Rhae is doing it out of duty and protecting the throne. She seemed less passionate than him, but idk. Daemon seemed ready to go back to Pentos before she gave him the plan.
Yes Preston, I would except Prince William to go to a brothel at 15.
I agree that the show is actually not woke and that every character still alive is sort of grey to dark grey. I think Rhaenyra is a worse person than Alicent, I like Alicent a bit more because she is more dutiful and responsible and understands that what she does has implications for the realm. Rhaenyra is more selfish and also probably more honest, but through her actions she is dooming the kingdom to a civil war. Why? Why does she even want the throne other than selfish reasons. She could just tell Viserys to make his sons heirs abdicate the throne and there would be peace.
Rhaneyra is arrogant and Alicent spiteful. Neither is a very good person, nor bad.
oh wow!!! can we have elio and linda on a podcast with you? or even a live? to ask various questions ??
it's gonna be super easy to downvote me for this, but regarding the Velaryons being portrayed by people of color, I would want to know how Preston reconciles this with how intermarried the Targaryens and Velaryons are at this point in the story? How do they look so different when Aegon I's mother was a Velaryon, and there are several intermarriages between then and the time of King Viserys I
Where can I find the interview?
The hedge is only better word for word becuz they are complete, the best part of asoiaf is the complexity
They aren't complete until we get a pov of summerhall.
@@degotas the knight of the seven kingdoms maynbe, the hedge knight is a single novella with a beginning middle and end. Unlike asoiaf which is def better even if the ending is trash, but he didnt say so because there is no ending yet so u cant say so.
Alicent is definitely not pro incest, so why did she allow her own children to marry each other? Because she didn't want Rhaenyra's child marrying Helaena? Wouldn't it have been more beneficial to strenghten alliances with other houses by marrying into them?
Sure for the morals of our time Daemon is an evil character but for the morals of the time in the show I think he’s a good guy. Even the best people have done bad things in their life even if they didn’t mean to.. As for who to root for right now I’m rooting for Viserys (even though I know how it ends I still can’t help but want the best for the guy), Corlys and the Queen who never was. They seem like good people just trying to make a name for themselves in a otherwise horrible world. Corlys really won me over this past episode when he didn’t want to disinherit Laenors kids for Laenas which would’ve technically benefited his bloodline or try and blame Daemon for something that was really out of his hands. When Rhenys was saying she knew they were bastards I just kept thinking yeah but your son not only accepts them but wanted them and claims them as his own so can you really blame Rhaenyra or the kids and try to claim they’re not your grandkids. I mean you can but what a horrible thing to do imo
Within the show, nobody seems to mind highborn murder either, so he's fine on that account
True lol but I’m not really sold he pushed the horse over like Preston claims he did. He could’ve just as easily been reaching for the reigns to try and steady the horse imo but I guess we all see what we want to see in these scenes lol
Yes, Prince William would... he just had Harry to cover it up.
Daemon was the only one who paid any attention to her, as a person. Why wouldn't he hold sway?
please
no more carmine of red team review
They've been collaborating longer than not since 2017 and if it wasn't for Carmine we wouldn't get nearly half of the content we've gotten so cry harder lol
@@dummyaccount4036 ngl i would rather not have that content
@plan man damn that sucks 🤡