History of Westeros

Blackfyre Rebellions: Part 8 – Bloodraven 2

The second of THREE Bloodraven episodes and part 8 of our Blackfyre Rebellions series. This one covers Bloodraven’s time as Hand up to the point where he takes the Black. A full accounting of the reigns of Aerys I and Maekar, plus Aerion Brightflame, Daeron the Drunkard, Egg, Maester Aemon, Blackfyres and so much more including the discovery of the Prince That Was Promised prophecy. Big thanks to Camille Stoner and Valkyrist (who you can catch on the Vassals of Kingsgrave pod) for the voices, and to all the art contributors, particularly Klaradox for the maps, as always.

Bloodraven proved to be a capable Hand, but also a master of whispers who rivaled Lady Misery, and there were those who thought he and his half sister and paramour, Shiera Seastar, used sorcery to ferret out secrets. It became common to refer to his “thousand eyes and one,” and men both high and low began to distrust their neighbor for fear of their being a spy in Bloodraven’s employ. Yet Aerys had need of spies, given the trouble that followed the Great Spring Sickness. Summer came, and with it a drought that lasted more than two years. Many blamed the king, and many more accused Bloodraven. There were poor brothers who preached treason, and knights and lords as well. And amongst those were some who whispered a specific treason: that the Black Dragon must return from across the narrow sea and take its rightful place. – The World of Ice and Fire.

Blackfyre Rebellions: Part 7 – Bloodraven

The first of THREE Bloodraven episodes and part 7 of our Blackfyre Rebellions series. This one covers the time from his birth until the death of King Daeron II.

Six years ago in King’s Landing, Dunk had seen him with his own two eyes, as he rode a pale horse up the Street of Steel with fifty Raven’s Teeth behind him. That was before King Aerys had ascended to the Iron Throne and made him the Hand, but even so he cut a striking figure, garbed in smoke and scarlet with Dark Sister on his hip. His pallid skin and bone-white hair made him look a living corpse. Across his cheek and chin spread a wine-stain birthmark that was supposed to resemble a red raven, though Dunk only saw an odd-shaped blotch of discolored skin. He stared so hard that Bloodraven felt it. The king’s sorcerer had turned to study him as he went by. He had one eye, and that one red. The other was an empty socket, the gift Bittersteel had given him upon the Redgrass Field. Yet it seemed to Dunk that both eyes had looked right through his skin, down to his very soul. Despite the heat, the memory made him shiver. – The Sworn Sword

Outline

Blackfyre Rebellions: Part 6 – The Golden Company

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhmRi1U6Eyk


Steven Attewell of Race for the Iron Throne returns, we discuss the 3rd and 4th Blackfyre Rebellions, the Golden Company, and a lot more Bittersteel.

Credits
Our introduction, the Essos map, and the Bittersteel and Golden Company images were created by Michael Klarfeld (Klaradox), with the cyvasse pieces created by dutchmogul. Check out the episode on YouTube or the Acast player below to see those images, as well as art by Ed Scheer.

The primary topics in this episode:

Part 1 – The Life of an Exile
Part 2 – The Blackfyre Dynasty ~212
Part 3 – The Golden Company
Part 4 – Third Blackfyre Rebellion
Part 5 – Fourth Blackfyre Rebellion
Part 6 – Bittersteel: Death & Legacy
Part 7 – The Golden Company Then & Now
Outro

“At first the magisters and archons and merchant princes were pleased to welcome the last Targaryens Blackfyres to their homes and tables, but as the years passed and the Usurper Falseborn continued to sit upon the Iron Throne, doors closed and their lives grew meaner. Years past they had been forced to sell their last few treasures, and now even the coin they had gotten from Mother’s crown had gone. In the alleys and wine sinks of Pentos Tyrosh, they called her brother “the beggar king.” Dany Calla did not want to know what they called her.” – AGOT, Daenerys I

My mother was a lady of Tyrosh. I dye my hair in memory of her.” – ADWD, Tyrion III

“He has been trained in arms, as befits a knight to be, but that was not the end of his education. He reads and writes, he speaks several tongues, he has studied history and law and poetry. A septa has instructed him in the mysteries of the Faith since he was old enough to understand them.” – ADWD, Epilogue

“Bittersteel gathered exiled lords and knights, and their descendants, to him. He formed the Golden Company in 212 AC, and soon established it as the foremost free company of the Disputed Lands. “Beneath the gold, the bitter steel” became their battle cry, renowned across Essos.” – TWOIAF

“Bittersteel saw the strength of House Blackfyre scattering to the four winds, so he formed the Golden Company to bind the exiles together.” – TWOIAF

“Ser Aegor Rivers was sixty-nine years of age when he fell, and it is said he died as he had lived, with a sword in his hand and a curse upon his lips. Yet his legacy would live on in the Golden Company and the Blackfyre line he had served and protected.” – TWOIAF

Blackfyre Rebellions: Part 1 – Aegon IV the Unworthy (spoiler free)

This episode covers the life of Aegon IV the Unworthy, the man who fathered the Blackfyre Rebellions. A King who used the Iron Throne to serve his needs, caring little for the realm. He made life miserable for his sister Naerys and brother Aemon the Dragonknight while siring Bittersteel, Bloodraven, Shiera Seastar and Daemon Blackfyre himself.

“Aegon the Fourth legitimized all his bastards on his deathbed. And how much pain, grief, war, and murder grew from that? I know you trust Jon. But can you trust his sons? Or their sons? The Blackfyre pretenders troubled the Targaryens for five generations, until Barristan the Bold slew the last of them on the Stepstones.”

“…no king before or after would practice so much willful misrule.”

“Treason . . . is only a word. When two princes fight for a chair where only one may sit, great lords and common men alike must choose. And when the battle’s done, the victors will be hailed as loyal men and true, whilst those who were defeated will be known forevermore as rebels and traitors.”

He was the son of a common blacksmith and had been given to the Faith while young. But his brilliance made itself known, and in time he came to serve in the library at the Red Keep, tending the king’s books and records. There King Jaehaerys became acquainted with him”

 

“…his body so swollen and obese that he could no longer lift himself from his couch, his limbs rotting and crawling with fleshworms. The maesters claimed they had never seen its like, whilst septons declared it a judgment of the gods. Aegon was given milk of the poppy to dull his pain, but elsewise little could be done for him.”

 

“His last act before his death, all accounts agree, was to set out his will. And in it, he left the bitterest poison the realm ever knew: he legitimized all of his natural children, from the most baseborn to the Great Bastards—the sons and daughters born to him by women of noble birth. Scores of his natural children had never been acknowledged; Aegon’s dying declaration meant nought to them. For his acknowledged bastards, however, it meant a great deal. And for the realm, it meant blood and fire for five generations.”

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Book Discussion: World of Ice and Fire Overview

In this discussion episode, we give our first impressions of The World of Ice and Fire. We discuss all of the immediate revelations, and the latter half of the episode contains discoveries more related to the ‘current events’ of the series.

Special attention is paid to the Kingdom of Sarnor, other ancient cultures, and the mysterious oily black stone that keeps popping up. There is, of course, a lot of discussion on House Targaryen as well. We also talk at length about the sections on Dorne. The mystery of Asshai’s children is also debated.

“On the Isle of Toads can be found an ancient idol, a greasy black stone crudely carved into the semblance of a gigantic toad of malignant aspect, some forty feet high. The people of this isle are believed by some to be descended from those who carved the Toad Stone, for there is an unpleasant fishlike aspect to their faces, and many have webbed hands and feet. If so, they are the sole surviving remnant of this forgotten race.”

Such questions abound even to this day. Before the Doom of Valyria, maesters and archmaesters oft traveled to the Freehold in search of answers, but none were ever found. Septon Barth’s claim that the Valyrians came to Westeros because their priests prophesied that the Doom of Man would come out of the land beyond the narrow sea can safely be dismissed as nonsense, as can many of Barth’s queerer beliefs and suppositions.”

“For scholars and students of history, the fall of Sallosh by the Silver Shore was especially tragic, for when that City of Scholars burned, its great library was not spared, and most of the history of the Tall Men and the peoples who had gone before them were lost for all time.”

“Florys the Fox, the cleverest of Garth’s children, who kept three husbands, each ignorant of the existence of the others. (From their sons sprang House Florent, House Ball, and House Peake).”

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Plots: Varys & Illyrio (spoilers)

In this episode, Aziz, Steve, and Ashaya continue their series on Varys and Illyrio. This is the spoiler filled installment in which their origins, motives, and “Young Griff” are discussed.
When Maelys the Monstrous died upon the Stepstones, it was the end of the male line of House Blackfyre.

Young Griff, the boy is called. There never was a nobler lad.

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