Baelor Breakspear (part 1)

Prince Baylor Targaryen, AKA Baylor Break Spear. A hero, a legend, beloved and accomplished, and all the more memorable because he died well before his time. And that death left a huge hole in the Seven Kingdoms. Though his father was a good king, he was called Deron the Good, after all. The realm looked forward to the day when Baylor would take his place. They weren't, you know, eager for Deron to die. But the outlook for the Seven Kingdoms had rarely been so

upbeat. The future was very bright. There was a sense of optimism knowing he was next. You have a good king, followed by someone else who seems to be able to fill his shoes well. 2 kings in a row of good quality, maybe even a good one followed by a great one, was what some people saw coming. Rarely have we seen such a

thing, if ever it was needed. Following the terrible rule of Baylor's grandfather Aegon the Unworthy, and the strangeness of his own namesake, Baylor the Blesseds time not long before.

Not to mention Baylor the Blesseds older brother Daron the First, the young dragon who had led the realm into failed wars with Dorn. Baylor breaks Beer, on the other hand, had gained a reputation in the first Blackfyre Rebellion, as a defender of the realm, as a victor over rebels, as a man who helped turn the realm to peace rather casting it into war. By the way, it's awfully confusing that we have Deron, Baylor, then Deron, and then Baylor.

They're basically Yikes. I had to check my notes several times, yeah. Yeah, it's no wonder these characters always have their nicknames included, because that's what you wouldn't know which one they are. But the era Baylor was born into is 1. We've said many times it falls amongst the most interesting created by George for Westeros with the Dance already on TV along with the Song of Ice and fires those versions.

It's arguably the most well developed era that isn't yet on TVI say yet because, well, at least some of it will be on TV through the Night of the Seven Kingdoms adaptation. So we will see Baylor on screen. Of course, that will only be a small snippet at the end of his life, and he deserves more. So today we will cover his early life.

Think of how beloved he was, how terrible his loss was throughout the realm, how deeply that was felt, and realize to have that reputation, for that loss to have been felt so greatly. He must have been quite a guy to have all that regard in the 1st place. But not everyone loved him, though he was a great warrior. He favored peace like his namesake. But peace isn't always popular in Marshall Westeros society and some people don't like too much perfection that can engender jealousy or envy.

Well I guess jealousy and envy are pretty similar. Others just misliked how Dornish he looked though. So popular but also hated. A perfect Prince but also one who faced racial animosity. Charismatic, but also someone who may be engendered jealousy here and there. Other people wanted to be like him. Other people wanted him to die. So you know, a lot of dichotomies here. And we'll explore all that and more on this episode of History of Westeros podcast.

Hello and welcome everybody back with another fun historical character study today. You excited for this one, Sean? You got a beverage ready for you. Look at that brands. You get the Branzig shirt on last week you said you forgot to wear it this week. Here we go. Yeah, trying to make up for it. It was more fitting for the the Ned Stark, Ned Stark youth episode, I think, but I don't think I've worn it on stream yet. So here we go and I am excited.

I do have a beverage here. I found a bang. I found a Blue Raz bang at the grocery store. So I snagged it up, mixed it with the Raspberry sparkling ice and the protein make drink so you could. Say we're razzed today, huh? It's a purplish drink, which I think is fitting for Targaryens. It's like the, it's like their eye color, you know, there's a variety of purples that come in their eyes and I'm not sure what purple that is, but it's more of

a medium purple. I think about a pale purple, so I didn't want to interrupt your your intro, but I had a couple thoughts, a couple shapes or whatever it is the. Course of it, yeah. Yeah, at the beginning you said that his death left a huge hole in the Seven Kingdoms. Also left a huge hole in his head.

True, a little more sentimental, though, I want to point out that the feeling of loss that you point out that the Kingdom had, you know, that this sort of like optimism that people had for what a great person and leader and everything that he was and a terrible loss that was to individual people close to him, into the realm as a whole, but also to the reader. When you read that scene, it's so devastating.

I was to me, I imagine most people were really one of the saddest moments in the whole story. So I I think it that's worth noting too. I don't know if that's like a worst level or a metal level, but but a level I think that's worth considering. I agree. I mean, that's why I. Thought, I thought. It was worth mentioning right away, even though we're not going to get to that part of his life in episode 1, you know, but it's the, it's spoiler alert.

It's the right way to start because, you know, his tragic death is is, is you're right. That is part of why he's so remembered. And the way George wrote it is particularly memorable and hits hard. So yeah, that's part of why I think he's a he's a big part of why he's compelling figure. The way he died just kind of permanently sets it in stone like that. So yeah, everybody welcome. We're as I just said, this is a two-part episode. We're going to take plenty of

time describing him. The early life is very full. We're going to get to up about the point where he earns his nickname. So it's a pretty apartment place to stop. I think it sets up the Black Fire rebellions later. Good shout out to our friend Good Queen. ali.tumblr.com is her blog. That's Anina's blog of course, and we usually shout out the most recent post, but we shouted out the most recent post a few

days ago. So I'm going to go back and point to 1 before that, which is a cool what if question. What if Jamie had discovered some of the ways that Robert had been treating Cersei and his lost his temper and and killed him? What would have happened? Would Tywin have been able to protect him from those consequences as he was protected from the consequences of killing Aries, which you know, the double king. So he's like, look, he's already double king.

So he can do that. That's who is his name, right? He can do that. So if anyone could save Jamie from those consequences, it would be Tywin. So that is an interesting question. So you'll have to check out good queenalley.tumblr.com for Nina's take on that. This episode was voted on by patrons. Baylor got 39% of the vote. Visenya got 30%. Lyman the Sea Lion, the Last King of the Hightower got 16%, and so did Maria the Yellow Toad. So you want to join Patreon and

get involved in the voting? Well, I highly encourage it as well. As usual, if the episode ends and you are still feeling like you want to stay in Westeros, you still want to be where you've been here and enjoy further stories, Well, we've got you covered with suggestions for topics related to this one. That'll be at the end of the episode along with the answer to this trivia question, which is George loves alliteration and nicknames. It makes sense. Alliterative nicknames are more

memorable. That's true. In real life, sometimes you get a nickname and doesn't stick because it's just not snappy enough. But some names that they're fun to say, that they're memorable, well, they stick. Baylor Breaks Beer is a good example. His namesake, Baylor the Blessed, they have the Double B sound. Or Baylor the Blessed's alternate, less flattering nickname. Baylor the Befuddled. Baylor Breaks Beer didn't have a mocking name that I know of.

That just goes to show it says a little something about him currently living. A Song of Ice and Fire character is named Baylor and they also have two nicknames. 1 is compliment, one is mocking just like this. What are those nicknames? Yes, yes this has been a long time coming. It's always been a bit of a missing piece from our long ago created Black Fire series, which focused on the Black fires, but not entirely. We did one episode on Deron himself, Deron the good Baylor's

father. So this is probably almost certainly the most important character from that time period that we didn't give a dedicated episode to. And now we're going to make up for that lack by doing 2 episodes on him. And that's fitting because there's that much to say, which further highlights how much he's deserved an episode for a while. And in terms of tone, this episode will feel a bit like the Eamon episode, which is also two

parts. A lot of talk about his early life because the time period he grew up in was so interesting. This is about 30-4 years later. That's Eamonn and Baila were born 34 years apart. We talked in the Eamonn episode about how he would have been a inspiration, a figure for other boys of martial nature, especially other Targaryens, to be like. And arguably Baylor is the one who most succeeded in being like the Dragon Knight. I say that with a few caveats because we don't fully know what

the Dragon Knight was like. In some ways, there's a lot of unknowns there, and the same goes for Baylor. But what we do know is very positive. It's, it's something I have to remind myself sometimes that I think of this as just being like a completely different time period, you know, this Dunkin egg time period. I think it's completely different from the Game of Thrones, you know, the main series time period, and each of them are completely different from the Dance of Dragon time

periods. I think of them as just being completely removed and separated from each other. But there are contiguous characters. It's not that far removed. You know, it's neat. It's it's weird to think about that sometimes. Yeah, and of course this is just like the Eamon episode as well. We don't have Fire and blood to help us cuz Fire and Blood covers the period right before that. In fact, as we mentioned at the time, Fire and Blood basically ends with the birth of Aegon and Amon.

So let's get started here. His birth was in 170 during the final year of Baylor, the Blessed reign. Technically Baylor reign into 171, but it was literally like a week or two into the year that he lives. So basically 170 was his final year. Technically 171 was as first born to King Dara or Prince Deron, later King Deron. He was immediately pretty high

in the line of succession. Baylor the first was King, his uncle Viserys was next, then Aegon who became Aegon the Unworthy, then Deron, then baby Baylor. That's a straight line right? That would only change if Baylor had kids. But Baylor died really soon after our Baylor was born. By the time Baylor was 2, he would have already moved from fifth in line to third in line because Baylor the blessed died. And then Viserys, too, ruled less than two years. So things change pretty quickly.

So among other things, he was expected to be a king one day from very early on, Nina says. Although I don't know to what extent the succession question was certain at the moment of his birth that King Baylor did have the three sisters. And while the dance hadn't exactly validated that a woman could rule as queen, it wasn't also exactly settled either. Maybe it became settled over time. As more and more time passed and more and more women have been

passed over. It's arguably still not settled. I mean, these, these are Rainiers grandchildren we're talking about here. So it's it's we can't assume that everyone had just been OK. Women don't get to inherit anymore. That's it, period. It probably probably was not the sentiment, even if some people did feel that way, even if a lot of people felt that way. Nor do we know what Baylor himself had intended for the succession because he knew he didn't have any sons or

daughters. What did he want? It was never known. Or maybe it was hidden by Viserys after his death. After Baylor's death, maybe they kept his his will on the down low. Maybe a little something like what Cersei tried to pull off. But but in this case it would have been more successful in terms of keeping it under wraps. Either way, we don't know what Baylor would have wanted and if it would have gone the same way. So it's the point being we can't be entirely clear on what the

discussion looked like. But no matter what, Baylor would have looked like a strong candidate, and even more so after Baylor and the saris were dead. But I remember talking about the idea that because it seemed like Ned and branded his brother Rickard, we're kind of progressive. They were doing some some very non standard things given the tradition of of the time that that starts especially. But the quote UN quote traditions of the Targaryens in this more modern time are even

less established. And there was even the point I think we're making in that episode was that there have been a lot of other changes recently, just the Dragons being gone by itself, like some precedent that might have been set in some some council a few years ago. You can't really expect that to hold true when the Dragons go away and it's all the other changes that have come. Maybe is a default that that certainly seems to be how it went.

But, but I, I, I agree with you at that time, it's it's not an absolute by any means. And of course, there had also been the gradual shifting within the Targaryen family culturally towards more matters of the Faith, partly because of King Baylor and a few others. Daron himself the father of Baylor Break Spear was was very pious. And joining with Dorn who don't have this first son birthright thing going on, which is another angle of shifting that can

happen. Yeah, and the joining with Dorn is a big part of what's going to happen in this episode today. That, that whole way that plays out during this as well as on top of that, we have the, the fact that it's not just a cultural shift because the Dragons are gone and they're getting more into the matters of faith. It's also a power thing, as we discussed in the Eamon episode as well. That's they, they leaned more into that. For someone like Eamon, it was

more heartfelt. But for some Targaryens, it was just a matter of maintaining power. Like what we need to be cozying up to the faith more because we need their, their power, their authority level that we no longer have with the Dragons. We need their endorsement more than ever. And that means playing along, being part of the faith, being the Champions of the faith, showing that they're at the top of that ladder. And Daron was a big believer in Baylor the Blessed's faith and

virtues. So he very likely passed that on to the son he named after Baylor, the Blessed, right before Baylor was even dead. So, and recall much later at the end of this episode, we're going to get to this moment. Daron's going to say, Baylor, your work is done like in front of the crowd very memorably when Dorne officially joins the Kingdom through marriage. So he really sees himself as

carrying on Baylor's works. And of course, he's going to impart a lot of that to the son he named after that very king, right? That seems very straightforward. Darren's wife, of course, was a Martel, Mariah Martel. That's important, too. They're bringing Dorne into the realm. This is his wife. And of course, Baylor is half Dornish, so that's huge, but also part of why people didn't like him. Some people didn't like him because he was Dornish.

Now it was also this peace treaty that King Baylor made in the 1st place that allowed this Prince, the Prince of Dorn, to make these arrangements in the 1st place. And then the later second marriage between Darren's sister Daenerys and Maron Martel himself. So this first marriage between Daron and Mariah set up the second one and all these other things in between made that even stronger, Nina writes. It's maybe a little bit of an insult or push back against Aegon the Unworthy.

Daron's naming his son Baylor is choosing the figure that is so much unlike his own father. And this is relevant in a lot of ways because Aegon, of course, spends so much of his reign trying to undermine Deron, saying, oh, you're not really my son, you're the son of the Dragon Knight trying to under which of course is very relevant today because trying to cancel Deron's inheritance would be cancelling Baylor's as well.

Now, no one calls Baylor a bastard because there's no question that Deron and Mariah were married. That was a huge public marriage and there's no question about their parentage. But if Darren's cut out of the line of succession, then Baylor would be too. Even being true born now, the event that actually sort of quote took King Baylor's life was when Damon Waters was born, AKA Damon Blackfyre. He was of course born to Dana the Defiant, who would have been Baylor King Baylor's wife had he

not set her aside. Technically, as I said, he died in 171 because he fasted in response to Damon Waters, his birth. And that fast, which was 40 days long, spanned the end of the year into the beginning of the next year. Now, of course, there's debate other whether the fast killed him or whether Viserys actually poisoned him for making crazy decisions about attacking the North and the Iron Islands and things like that. So it was a pretty big deal. And either way, the timing was

important, Nina says. I wonder what King Baylor thought of this infant name saying he didn't have much time to think about it because he was only alive for a few months. Was he glad to see the peace peace plan coming into into play? Because they needed these marriages and these children to be born in order for this to work. Like if you have a marriage to Dorn and it produces no children, well, it's not going

to work nearly as well, right? If you have a Dornish, half Dornish, half Targaryen Prince that ascends to the throne, that is a much better result for this plan than just a marriage that produces no children. And then maybe you're back to square one because no longer a marriage, the marriage is no longer like holding things together. If you have children and a family, well, that's a big deal

to hold the peace. So he probably thought pretty well of that, but then immediately became disappointed or sad or whatever the emotion was that led him to fast for 40 days and then die. I can't really put myself in that headspace so I'm just like, your guess is as good as mine y'all? Whatever he thought at the beginning of that fast would not have necessarily been the same or rational after 20 days, you know? Yeah, that's true. Regardless, this is quite a

setup. You have Baylor, an infant basically are very young when his namesake died, so he never really knew him but certainly lived in his shadow. And Damon Blackfyre, who I, you know, joke about as being the killer of Baylor the Blessed, killing baby, killing kings as a baby from the cradle. He's born only like a couple months after. These two were just constantly

compared throughout their life. And this is part of why they're born at the same time, basically in the same era, at the same court, with a lot of the same influences. Around them and yeah, and it just goes from there. So what a great start. What an interesting start. And they're the only two that can measure up to each other in terms of genetic lottery because they both just hit the jackpot with being big and strong and smart and really good looking.

And of course, Baylor's birth was even better than Damon's. But they both had really high birth, excellent, near perfect Princess, born within months of each other, but with a lot of contrast, despite the high quality, quote, UN quote of both of them. They're both physically great, but they're pretty different. Damon actually had the silver hair and purple eyes. Baylor looked more Martel.

And yeah, even though they're both Princess, I don't know if you you would, they're still pretty far apart in terms of the line of succession and the way they're viewed because of their upbringing. Like 1's a bastard, but one's got 2 Targaryen parents, the same one who's the bastard and the on the other hand, the other was higher in the line of succession, but he looks doesn't look like a Targaryen. And yeah, so it's a lot of just comparable extreme qualities

here. It's pretty interesting. You can see why it would get competitive or maybe not. This is probably too complex of a question. How far apart were they in the line of succession? How far down would it have to go? That would be a lot of true born Targaryens would have had to die. And since Baylor ended up with a lot of brothers and then his kid, he had kids and then his brothers had kids. I mean his youngest brother with Makar, and that's where Egg and Eamon and another Deron and an

Areon all came from. So yeah. Even before that, I don't know if it makes it more or less complicated, but like at birth, how far separated was Damon? Well, Aegon, it's super. It is complicated because Damon wasn't acknowledged as Aegon's at first. Dana the Defiant wouldn't admit who the father was until much later. So they wouldn't have seen him in the line of succession like, at all necessarily.

And that's like he was the only one, literally the only male of Targaryen blood left potentially even then, because even because of like a year later, Agor was born. Now, Agor is younger than the Damon. This is bitter steel we're talking about. Whoever he knew he was a Aegon the Unworthy son. Even though Damon was older, Agor was the one that would have been in the spotlight because he was the oldest acknowledged bastard son of Aegon when that that state of affairs was for

several years. So yeah, so it is complicated. Like maybe again, still probably complicated, but say at the point that Aegon legitimize the bastards. Yeah, then. He all the brothers wouldn't have been born yet. All the sons and brothers wouldn't have been born yet. But even still it would have

been like 5 deeper, 20 deeper. It's tricky too, because when you legitimize someone, do they just come in line as of where their age is or do they fall to the back of the line or the of the ones who were born Targaryen? It's it's that's unclear too, because technically he was still born after Baylor by by like a couple of months. So he would still have been behind Baylor.

But if you want to get it down to that level, if he was legitimate and the legitimatization counted, he would be right behind Baylor until Baylor had kids of his own right. So he would have come before Baylor's younger brothers, Aries and Regal and then Makar, two of whom did eventually inherit the throne. So yeah. So maybe more of a claim. Not that Robert Brathen ever tried to make this claim, but he would have had more claim than Robert had as a Targaryen right.

Maybe, yeah. At that point, at that point, yeah, maybe less down the road. Once all the kids and brothers are born, then he has less claims. Yeah, I guess that's true because because Damon, if we're still saying he's legitimized, then yes, he would be ahead of someone like Robert who's got a cousin relationship, just in cousinship. Yeah. So yeah, Yeah, it does get tricky and see why these things often get decided by sorts instead of and why they want the

suggestion to be clear. It's like, well, we can't even have questions. Yeah, so. And of course, who caused so many questions? Hang on the unworthy. He made he. Instead of making the line secure, the king himself set it up to be unstable. Not just by questioning his own son's parentage, but by bestowing black fire on his bastard son Damon, and setting all that up. But but we're not to that. Having a bunch of bastard sons in the 1st place. Also. He just did it. He just.

The smorgasbord of things you're not supposed to do this game. He did them all. He was really good about doing the the most of the worst things possible. Is the worst best king? Best, worst king. You got to be proud of something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's the winner. Yeah. So as much as we're making comparisons to Baylor and Damon here and how easy those comparisons flow, you got to think they were being made in world, too. I mean, we talk like people love

to gossip. These are the two most famous Princess. Maybe not when they were first born, but even this to the stories of their birth would be worthy of gossip. Like you hear the new Prince was born and the king starved to death over it and the other ones named after him like whoa, you know all. But did you hear his hair is brown?

You know, it's like, oh, you know, and the other one, we don't know who's dad is they won't admit it's probably Aegon, but we, you know, could be someone else, you know, So people already gossiping about them when they're babies, like this is how their life started. So these are in terms of comparing the lives of like human beings to other human beings. These, these, these people are very incomparable because except to each other, because there's just very people have lives like this.

This is like having a family that's already famous, it's already on TV all the time, and then you have babies on it with strange circumstances with drama surrounding it and death surrounding it. And like, yeah, people are going to talk about that a lot. So a huge open question, though.

And this is something that we just can't possibly know until maybe some screenwriter or George or something, someone decides someday if this ever hits the screen or is is more stories are written about it. George May writes about this in Fire and Blood, for example. That's perhaps one of the most likely. Fire and Blood, too, that is. What did Damon and Baylor think of each other?

We know that plenty of people would pit them against each other through gossip and and through expectations and just through being similar. But what did they actually think? Were they competitive of each other? I ask that now, even though they couldn't have possibly felt that way when they were babies, but since they were already set up this way when they were babies, it was like the world they were born into.

Or maybe almost expected them to be competitive, or maybe to expect them to work really well together. I'm not entirely sure. Ultimately, it would come down to them, even though there would be other people, whatever other people say and whatever they gossip about, the lots would come down to how they actually felt about each other and how they behaved in public toward each other, which is not necessarily how they really felt because they were both known to

be very chivalrous. So if they sort of hated one another, they might not have shown it. They might have kept that under wraps, you know, because it's this is an era where you're supposed to like behave really well towards your opponents. And chivalry was particularly high on the list of of how to behave. You know, it's always been relatively important in the time of the Targaryens, but more so now because of the increased impetus on piety and following the Seven.

So that is important set up, even though a lot of it doesn't play out till they're older. Let's talk about what it was actually like the year they were born, the Red Keep circa 17171. Because as impressive as young Baylor and young Damon and eventually Agor and Brendan, who were born not too long after this, it was Amon the Dragon Knight who was the one recognizes the finest knight in the realm. He would be the road map, the guy to emulate.

And this is kind of towards the end of his career because he's going to die young ish too. Amon died around 4344. So yeah. So Amon would have been about 10 years before that now, so about 3433 peak of his prowess before he started to get older. And while his legend is still fresh, he'd been to Dorn. He had, you know, he had his fancy helmet. He had been given Dark Sister. He had his knighthood from a young age. Yeah. No, there's pretty much no

doubt. This was the guy that they want to emulate, especially because Baylor's namesake was rescued by him from the pit of Vipers. I mean that story they would all grow up here in that one amongst like that's like a top five story they grew up hearing. I could I'd feel confident with that guess because what a great story and it was recent. I mean, let's be honest, that's crazy.

That story. It's amazing and it's kind of interesting, right, because Baylor and Damon seem chivalrous, as I say, but agor bitter steal. Nah, not so much. Not very chivalrous and neither did Brendan blood Raven. Not very chivalrous either. Not like a bad guy, but not not a chivalrous guy either. And so that's kind of interesting. Maybe the guys who were a little closer to the legend of Eamon, or maybe just for other reasons, story reasons, random reasons.

But it is interesting that the ones who came along a little bit later didn't have this quality while these ones dead. Yeah. And they were the ones closest to achieving Eamon's both level of fame and skill. And again, the warrior culture aspect was at a high point as

well. It wasn't just a piety that was at a high point, it was the proving that they could still rule without Dragons. So it's really important for them to showcase their Marshall abilities like Darren the young dragon tried to do by invading Dorn, which he brought Eamon along with him. Smart choice. I mean, kind of an obvious choice, but it made a big

difference. Worth noting that Baylor and Damon were such good warriors it might over shadow the fact that Brendan and Bittersteel were pretty good warriors too, right? They weren't like the greatest, but, but they just happened to be competing with the greatest. And they were, like we pointed out with Ned and Brandon, doesn't matter. Like you're a little bit younger and that means everything at that age because one or two years is a big deal when you're

that young. Like the difference between 12 and 10 is huge in terms of your physical development, especially when you have two guys who are developing faster than normal. So they're like, yeah, like Agor did develop faster than normal too, but those other guys had a two year head start and they were probably a little better at the finish line anyway. And Brendan was a little small, but he wasn't a big robust guy. He was good at fighting, but he was more quick than strong.

Now the saris the Second probably had a relatively smooth transition to power because he had been Hand, but of course that short period of stability would be so. It was so early in Baylor break Spears life that he would hardly know about it, hardly remember it, nor would he actually remember much of King Viserys the Second, his great grandfather, because he died when he was about two.

Nina wonders whether his mother, Mariah Martel would have had opinions on the accession of Viserys the Second on on one hand, Viserys becoming king put her husband and now her son on the path of the throne. She was now on track to become queen, which is a good development for the Martel's, you would think. And from Dorn's political position. However, to become king, Viserys had to disinherit his nieces, right? Which as we just said, maybe wasn't a settled way of doing

things just yet. And so that rankles if you're from Dorn, where women aren't passed over at all. So that's like a big kind of a big deal. She may have been expecting that, but it may not. Another wrinkle to throw into this whole matter of succession and and women inheritance is that we have garnish mixed in here now and they expect women to inherit and they might push for that rule to be re established or say, hey, we like it's worked for us really well. Why not have y'all do it here?

It also has prevented a lot of civil war because it isn't just about gender equity. It's about avoiding war because the line of succession is a lot clearer when you don't skip people. So there's a lot of possible feelings and attitudes that could have that could be thrown into the the mix to the the blender of of court feelings these days and what attitudes were being espoused by different

people. And this is what Daylor and Damon would have grown up in. It's very important to consider because later Deron's proximity to Dorne and Daylor's Dornish blood will be a huge point of fixation for the opposition. The rebel party that forms that eventually becomes the Black Dragons of this era. Not to be confused with the

Black Dragons of the Dance era. They don't have anything in common other than that color and the fact that they were competing for the Iron Throne. That's a pretty big deal. So much of this early upbringing came during the reign of his grandfather, and the Princess in the in the Maiden Vault would have been freed upon the death of Baylor 2. So those three would also have been around during Baylor's upbringing. And those are his ants.

So they would, you know, talk to him, help be part of the village that raised the child sort of thing. They might have liked him because he's, you know, next in line or or eventually in line. And who knows what they thought of him. There's three very different women here. Dana the Defiant may not have liked him because she's the mother of Damon Blackfyre and looks at him as someone that took her place in the line of succession. But and her sisters might have

felt similarly. On the other hand, Rayna was were very pious and they have favored the the pious faction of Targaryens rather than her side of things. But these are pure guesses and probably didn't have a huge impact on Baylor all together, but just worth mentioning. Sure. A couple thoughts here. In the same way you were wondering earlier about and maybe we're constantly wondering about what relationship Baylor

and Damon had with each other. You know, it's also interesting to think about how these women or other characters, you know, we're talking about these women at this moment, you know, being freed. How how do they feel? And how would they communicate that to Baylor and other people? Like they were just put in jail pretty much just because they

were women, right? But the person who did that to them was on some level trying to do the right thing and starved himself to death doing so. So do they come out of that like angry? Do they want vengeance? Do they find understanding? Do they think they got vengeance? Do they forgive him? Do they preach forgiveness? Do they?

It's weird to think the types of different reactions and, and, and lessons that someone might learn from that and how Baylor might take it. And I feel like as a default, he's a forgiving guy. He's a merciful guy. He's not looking for vengeance. He's not looking. You know, I wonder if they felt similarly and that rubbed off on him. Maybe other people too. Not true. Yeah, it's it's tricky. Yeah, you it's it's hard to say you're right.

Like with such a wide variety of personalities and such a double sided scenario, or you're right, Baylor, the blessed, he was clearly believed in what he was doing, even though they they wouldn't, couldn't, they couldn't have liked being locked up too much. Although maybe Reyna wasn't so so mad about it. Yeah, I mean, that's The thing is they probably all had slightly different reactions that someone might have been depressed about having gone through that, and some might have been angry.

And yeah, Reyna might have been like, oh, it was for it was for the best. It was right. It was it was it. Was for the realm, yeah. You know, they all might have had a very different reactions. But and Elena is the one we haven't even barely mentioned. She's the one that had the longest life. It sounds like the most interesting of them. She had so many different jobs and she was highly intelligent. She's someone that would have been around. She I mean, she outlived Baylor breaks beer.

Of course she outlived Baylor blessed all of those guys did. But she someone will have to reconsider in Part 2 because she would have been an adult and kind of a power behind the throne running running master of coin through her like her husband was master of coin, but she was the one who had the skills. It was one of those like he's the cover story. She's the one who's actually doing the job. So Baylor, the breaks for his hand to the king in that, you know, up until he died.

So very likely he was aware of Elena's competence, and they would have had a lot of doings together, you know, as family members and all. But it's entirely unclear what those dealings were. Anyway, let's talk about Aegon the Unworthy. He was named for Baylor, the Blessed Aegon the Fourth was his grandfather. So that's not the best thing to have this guy as your grandfather. We had a good father, Darren,

the good, but a bad grandfather. Aegon ruled from 172 to 184, which would be for Baylor and Damon Blackfire, their age 2 to 14 range. So a huge number of important characters were born in this decade following Baylor and Damon. It's like they kicked off the wave of really important births in the year, in this decade of 170 to 179, the same year as Agor was born, which is 172, Baylor's aunt Daenerys was born. Yeah, kind of weird to have your

aunt be younger than you. Not that weird for the Targaryens. Nowhere near the most unusual family relationship he'd have too, because, I mean, his grandfather just kept having children, you know, with bastard children. So. Yeah. So Agor Brendan and Damon Blackfriar, those are his uncles, technically. Not like they're more like brothers, but in terms of actual family structure, they were his uncles. So he was also older than all his uncles and his one aunt there. Yeah.

Very strange. And Baylor's brothers were born over the next seven years as well. We don't know exactly when, but in a fairly short period, because seven years is pretty narrow for three births. You know, Aries, Regal and Makar, right? And in 175 S kind of in between that seven-year period, I guess was when Brendan Bloodraven was born. A huge number of important characters, huge number of interesting characters, all within a short period of time. At some point, you become aware of this.

Baylor's a young man. He's a young boy, a toddler. At some point he's going to become aware of the fact that his father and grandfather are constantly fighting. And at some point he's going to learn and understand what it is they're fighting about, right? He's not going to be able to perceive that as like a three-year old. Like, what are they? Why are dad and granddad always arguing? He's not under.

He's not able to get it yet, right, but by maybe age 4567, he's going to understand on some level what's happening. And you got to figure that other kids his age would be able to perceive it around the time he is. Damon Blackfyre again, being one of them, although he's still

Damon Waters at that point. So you have Aegon of course, constantly trying to undermine Daron and Daron trying to curb his father, the King's worst behaviors, especially towards Queen Naris, Daron's mother, which would be Baylor's grandmother. So while his grandfather was a crappy guy, his grandmother was excellent, very pious, very sweet, very gentle, so someone he may have felt protective over. So you could see pretty easily, especially given how his personality comes out.

If he took sides at all as a young boy, it would take it would be take his father and grandmother's side, especially with Eamon the Dragon Knight, the heroic man, also taking his grandmother's side. It's pretty easy to see who the bad guy is, even from a young boy's perspective. I wonder if he remembers Missy Blackwood. Melissa Blackwood leaving around age 7 or 8 for him. That would have been when that happens.

She was very popular and well loved at court, so her departure might have been cause for, you know, him to. I don't suppose he'd cry over it, but he might feel sad to lose her. Even even nary's like her he

would be able to perceive that. So she was very popular at court and of course it would be very hard for him not to have remembered the ensuing incident with the next mistress of Aegon the 4th, which was the Terrence 20, Bethany Bracken double or triple execution and torturer scenario. Still, Aegon throughout this this decade off and on tried to disown Deron. Now that's the thing that would really. As Baylor as a kid, he might

almost be a little confused. He's like, wait, they're trying to argue that that dad, that you're the son of the dragon knight, isn't that good? You know, he's like, well, actually son, that means I would make me a bastard and mean that I'm no longer in the line of succession to be king. So it's not good in that sense. He's like might be a little torn as a 7 year old trying to grasp that like, but but he's the dragon knight. Like you want to be his son,

right? Like isn't that isn't that even better? Like, it's like, well, son, I see where you're coming from. However, you know, the seven look very unkindly. It's another tough, difficult conversation to have about children born out of wedlock and using his grandfather, for example, look at all the harm, look at all the problems our grandfather. And this is before the legitimizations, before the

problems got really serious. Like, this was more like an ongoing nuisance where as later it was like a legitimate threat to the safety of the Kingdom. So yeah. So there's a lot of things that had to be explained to Baylor, a lot of things that you normal 6 and seven-year olds aren't having to learn about. So yet another example of how his upbringing was really the type that would make you grow up

quickly. You know, it was privileged for sure, but also very like big on responsibility in in adult scenarios. And may also have motivated him to be a all around good person. He might have realized, like I have a lot of challenges out in front of me. You know, even these other great powerful, you know, people, whether their positions or their ability as a night or whatever, they're struggling. I've I've got to be at least as

good as them. You know, like there's going to be some time when especially some of the things he's witnessing, he thinks are wrong and maybe feels like someone should have stopped it like that. That's like maybe the fault of the Dragon Knight Amon the Dragon Knight, right? That sometimes just he maybe chose the wrong loyalty or whatever, right? That if we're going to fault him, that's what it would be.

Baylor might have witnessed that and might have realized, like, if I want to step up and stop the thing that I think is wrong, I can't be a skinny little boy. I've got to be a big, strong knight, you know, I can't have any character flaws for someone to attack. I need to be fully righteous. He I think he might have realized that I need to hit every base if I'm going to fulfill the position that's in front. Of me. I like that. I like that idea a lot, Sean.

That's really good. Yeah. And it fits as well because maybe more so than a lot of courts, the the good guys and the bad guys would be clearer. Yeah, some people it's not so clear with. But like, when you compare Aegon the Unworthy to his own father and his own grandmother, it's pretty clear who the good guys are in this situation, right? Even for a young boy. So he would emulate their behaviors and look at whatever Aegon the Unworthy is doing as bad behavior, even if it's even

some of it's just stuff he did. And so he associates that as bad behavior. The the big things like sleeping around and drinking a lot, those would be the things that Baylor would be most keyed in on. Those are the negatives. And yeah, in some level, in some ways that sounds literally straightforward. But we're talking about a child and what they're learning as a child. And and it's not so obvious. It's not so clear when you're

when you're that young. And also things that maybe are not as like maybe slipping around isn't inherently bad, but it's bad for a king, you know? But being vindictive like Aegon was, that's something that universally anyone in any position shouldn't be that way. But when the king is that way, what do you do about that? You, you, if you're going to do something about it, you really have to be a strong person all. Around That's a great point, Sean, because one thing Baylor

was known for was his mercy. He was known to be lenient towards his enemies or some wouldn't, some wouldn't call it lenient, but some like hardliners would call it lenient. But he was known to like think of forgiveness first and peace first, which is very similar to his namesake and his father who followed in his namesake's footsteps. So yeah. So that's a really, that's a great point, Sean, because that is super important to his development and it is how he

came out. So it's likely that this is when he learned all that when he was young, when he was most influenceable, when he was just a young boy. Yeah. And his mother's reactions would be really interesting too. When Aegon's undermining of this part of his family, his main family, got to the point where he tried to invade Dorn. That's his in laws country. Like, what a strange thing to have your grandfather start a war against half of your own family, right?

Like, he just launches an invasion. It's like, that's my grandfather down there. You're invading my granddad. Like, granddad, why are you invading my other granddad? You know, what are you doing? Of course, it was a disaster of an invasion, which that wasn't great for the soldiers who were sent down there, but it was great for keeping the peace in the long term.

And yeah, like how strange Nina writes, especially because part of his antagonism was expressed in Aegon's attempted campaigns against Dorn. While Aegon likely and correctly saw that explicitly disinheriting Darren would provoke a declaration of war from the Prince of Dorn, he probably also decided that marching against Dorn would be a neat way of doing an end around on that.

Like, well, if you're going to bring Doran against me, well I'll just take Doran out first and then maybe I can disinherit you later. That may have been his longer term plan, although it might be too much to think that Aegon the Unworthy had long term plans. He may have more like been reactive and not think that thought that far ahead. There certainly are examples of that that we can point to, but either way, he was shooting himself in the foot.

Didn't work. Whatever his plans were, it backfired horribly and it certainly would have consequences later. It would be remembered by the Dornish, but they would still ultimately rise for the Red Dragons. And Baylor breaks me here was part of why. So he clearly managed the situation well later, despite the damage his grandfather tried to do to it. Now, of course, his own, his own father, the king Darren probably did even more to re establish

this piece. He's the one that that really settled it and made the final moves. But Baylor would have been right with him there all the way. He would have been at his side when these things were done. Baylor was a bit older. So we'll get to that as we're going along here. And this too, like how would all of this impacted the talk of human Damon? Because Aegon the Unworthy was threatening to name one of his bastard sons King. He never did it.

But to put him ahead of the line of session ahead of Garon by eliminating Garon instead. So what is young Damon Blackfyre, Damon Waters and Agor and and Baylor? They're all like maybe hanging out of court together at this point. Maybe Agor had been sent home by this point. He would have been back later, but how would this perceive the discourse around them? Like, oh, you might get disinherited, you know, because your father isn't maybe really who he says he is.

He might be the son of the Dragon Knight. There would have been weird. It's a weird stuff for six and seven-year olds to be to have thrown at them already. Damon's being taught that he's a bastard, so he has to, you know, live with that and learn to live with that. And Baylor has to learn what that means too. And they have to learn about these differences that's set up between them when they're when they're three and four.

They, I, I figured this decent chance they got along, unless their parents were already like telling them to not like each other or something like, oh, you don't want to like him, don't be like him. But as the world took shape around them and they realized the very different places they were in terms of the line of succession and cultural beliefs, and those differences would have gotten larger. And again, the drag, the personal proximity and legend of

the Dragon knight comes up big. Because remember, one of the ways this culminated, one of the culminations, climaxes of the Aegon trying to disinherit Deron was the formal accusation that he made that was settled by trial by combat. Sorry. The formal accusation made by his cat's paw, Sir Morgill Haystwick, that he never admitted was his cat's paw. But we're pretty much all 99% sure that is. That was totally through Aegon, who stepped up to beat Morgill Haystwick.

It was aiming the dragon knight. So from Baylor's perspective, young Baylor's perspective, aiming the Dragon Knight won the duel that proved his line of the family was legit, so that he saved his family's branch from being disinherited. That's a he was already a heroic figure, like the biggest heroic

fear. And then it became even more personal when his heroic legend was used to save his inheritance and his his father from being declared a bastard and his grandmother from being declared, you know, cuckold or heard cuckold of the king. These would have been terrible had Morgill defeated Amon or heard one whoever he against someone else if Amon hadn't stepped up and it would have been something else. So and then people would make sure that he was aware of the gravity of that result.

Then Baylor would know quite well. He probably even witnessed the duel. He may have been old enough. It's people are seeing executions when they're seven in this world. So duels of this import when you're on a track to be Crown Prince anyway, Yeah, you're probably getting exposed to this at an early age, especially when your own fate is hanging in the balance. What a thing to see at age 7. Your own future depends on this dual. Wow, don't. Know how to process, you know, a

couple of thoughts about that. By the way, sometimes it's hard for us to to put ourselves in their shoes of, of this type of trial by combat, you know, this belief that God is or a God or whatever is causing or deciding the result based on this. But that I mean it. I mean, I suppose in modern times, there's still people that have that same sort of devoutness or whatever. And but for a large portion of history of for a large portion of the world, it really was a

genuine belief. You know, I'm sure here and there there was some like some cynical people taking advantage of the system, just trying to manipulate the crowds or whatever. But the crowds really believed it. You know, they really believe that God said this thing, that this was a sign, etcetera, etcetera, and it especially a six or seven-year old boy growing up being taught this stuff, of course he's going to truly believe it. You know you're.

Right. He's not going to see it as like, you're not going to have the cynicism that older people have. Like, yeah, maybe the gods aren't really. This is something we talk, but it's something we say. No, you're right. The seven-year old who was raised like he's Baylor's namesake. Yeah, his father was pious. You're right. Like, he would have really taken the result to Hartman, Like, oh, this really proved it, you know?

My other thought is once again, we've sort of wondered about the realities of the day-to-day life and interactions, different

characters. One model we have for this is House of the Dragon. Seeing how Ammond and and Jason, Luke and all, you know, all those interactions and, and even the the the idea like if if it ever had happened, that if Harwin had ever had a fight with the, you know, if someone had found with someone trial by combat, like how they would have witnessed that, how they would have played out depending on who

won or lost, you know. Yeah, maybe not perfect parallels, but a good model how it might have been, you know? Like 2 households growing within one. Like 2 exactly, but they're relatives. But they're separate branches of the same royal family, have similar ages, and there's lots of them, yeah.

There might be some phases or some couples that get along well or understand or aren't ambitious, but there are some who are going to be vindictive or angling or night or and there's violence or whatever else. There's this sort of same, like, arguing over what is bastard status Really, like trying to change what it means or ignore that it's real in the case of the Dance of the Dragon. So yeah, it's like, yeah. But Damon's a different bastard.

Yeah, but Jace is a different sort of bastard. Yeah. Like, no, he's not a bastard at all. Yeah, he is, but he's a different. Yeah. So it's. It's kind of like that. By the way, that's a comparison here, too, that that should be made as Jace's look, he doesn't look Targaryen, right. Same as Baylor doesn't look Targaryen. That would have been a factor for Baylor, yeah. So that's something we can make a loose comparison on.

And Speaking of them being used and all that, and rather than witnessing fights, they also start early, especially in this setting, especially given their way to responsibility and what what's expected of them in their future. So yeah, a lot of boys start training with sword and shield and getting used to the weight of armor as soon as they can. As soon as you're able to put that on, as soon as you can lift that sword and shield, you're pretty much doing it.

It isn't age so much as just when your body can physically do it. You might be 3, you might be 6, I don't know. But we're pretty sure that Westerosi Marshall culture puts them at it as soon as possible. So Baylor. Baylor and Damon were likely very early starters because they both seem to be physically gifted. They both seem to grow up

quickly. And I mean, Damon wound up being literally the earliest knighted in the history of the Seven Kingdoms. So when there was training between the two of them in terms of swords, Damon probably won more than he lost versus Baylor, but Baylor probably exceeded him in other areas. Horsemanship is a strong contender for being something that Baylor was better at. Baylor will defeat Damon in the finals. Attorney that we're going to talk about very famously at the

end of this episode. There's also clues that he's better in other ways, like in planning for consider what he does in the hedge night where he's like, let's use turning lances because they're longer and they're like, oh, but that's dangerous because his lances aren't as good. He's like, yeah, but but we're good enough to pull this off. Like you need to be skilled for that move to work. Otherwise you're it's going to backfire horribly. And you've got like weak lances against real lances.

So if you don't do it just right, then you've screwed yourself. And we know of other times that Baylor has won tournaments. So he's clearly not just a winner a couple times here. Like there's that whole scene where Dunk refers to hit Arlen breaking 7 lances against him and Baylor's like actually it was only four. But don't think anyway. Like, you know, the tail grows in the tail. He's again showing.

His man, he's still alive, Yeah. He's he's still magnanimous about it. Then that's that's something we should keep in mind that Baylor, he's always doing that sort of thing. He's always like trying to be humble. And it's kind of hard to because he's just so great. It's like when these guys, it's like, yeah, you're not, you're trying to be humble. I appreciate that. But you're great. Yeah. Your greatness exudes from you wherever you walk, like your charisma, your your ability or

high birth. Like, yeah, we appreciate the humbleness, but there's you're not actually. Yeah. So Fireball the Redkeep master at arms who was said to have trained all the great bastards. Would you have trained Baylor as well? I think so, at least in part because he was the Red Keys Master Arms, not the great bastards mastered Arms. His position was Red Keep mastered arms. But Gaylor would have spent a lot of time on Dragonstone because his father was Prince of Dragonstone.

But we don't have to assume that just because you're Prince of Dragonstone, you spend a lot of time there. That's the trick here. How much time did Darren spend at court trying to stop his father from doing crappy things? We I feel like it was a lot. I feel like Darren stayed at court quite a bit because of this and because of other reasons, but it's possible there were long periods of time where they were just on Dragonstone kind of out of it.

I can also imagine, especially if you got these young, growing, boisterous, excited Princess, if they like Hey, Fireball, come to Dragonstone with this. Hey, we want to train on Dragon. Hey, so and so's and Dragon. So let's go visit him. You would probably not have much choice about it, right? Yeah, it's. True. Yeah, it may have been kind of. More of you might even be excited to do it. Yeah, Dragonstone, I'll train you guys. Yeah, it's, it's, you're right.

We should look at it as like a fluid situation. Just again bringing up the blacks and greens, the dance hair, like they were there a lot. They were there. They were back at Dragonstone a lot. There was some back and forth. Now there was more reason for those two groups to be separated because the Sun started fighting so much. They had to be sort of for for reasons of potential violence. They needed to be separated. We do not have that indication

here that there's need. They needed to be separated. So that adds to the possibility that they spent more time together. In fact, you would want them to spend time together if they're not fighting each other, if they're not violent for each other, because they're all going to, They're all of similar rank and you don't want there to be

animosity between them. And if they're hanging out and otherwise not hating each other, then that's probably good, you know, as long as no news is bad news or no news is good news in that sort of scenario. Now, in terms of Baylor's brothers, Makar would have been eventually part of this group as well, even though he was a bit younger. But probably not the two middle brothers, Aries and Regal, because those two were not Marshall at all.

Aries was bookish. Regal, well, we just don't know much about Regal. He's the real unknown of this for a group of four here, for sure. I suspect Aries, he did come to the Red Keep sometimes though, because of the library there. He was bookish and the Red Keep had a great library, so he would want to he would have plenty of incentive to be there, but he wouldn't be paying attention to

much else. You know, as worth noting in the mystery Night Egg says Fireball taught my father and my uncles how to fight the great bastards too. So that does pretty much confirm that. He may not have trained them their whole lives, but he he started them off right. If Baylor left later for more time at Dragonstone, then that would apply as well. But that clearly he fireball was there early on. Now again, because Bitter Steel's mom was sent away. He was proud he was sent away too.

We're later told that Aegon the Unworthy at least one point visited Aegor at Stonehedge, which means he was at Stonehedge, not at court. But clearly Aegor came back to court at some point because again, Fireball Todd is the great bastards out of fight. So bitter steel had to have been there for part of that. Plus eventually Agor's constantly pouring bitterness and poison into Damon's ear, which he had to do in person. Like I don't think he's just constantly sending him letters, is he?

That doesn't doesn't sound very convincing like that good of a writer that he's just that convincing with his word. I don't know. It's it says pouring poison in his ear. Sounds like they were in proximity to each other. And the final piece of evidence for that is that Deron was said to have kept to the great bastards close. So he kept that sound implies that they were at court where he could keep an eye on them, not back at their respective home castles.

So even if Agor wasn't around in Baylor's early years, he was around later when they would have been in court together when they were maybe teenagers as well. I wonder Dragon Knight probably got in there with some lessons, some training. They would have loved to get some teaching from him. You might have Aegon not happy with that. The king might have been like no, you can't do that. He might have been petty about it and they'd the dragon knight stay around him or give him like

humiliating duty instead. But this might have been beneath his notice. Such a small thing, training the young Princess at sword fighting. He might not have cared about that, but if Baylor did train with Eamon, it might fuel the rumor mongering that he's his grandson. He's like, yeah, see, yeah. That's like father, like grandson. That's proof. So there may have been some, like, optics reason to not let them be around each other so

much. Kind of like Harwin in the training yard trying to pretend he's like, he's at the opposite of that because Harwin really is father. Where this is like, I promise that is not my grandson, you know, sure. Dragon Knight. Sure. It's like, so will you believe me? I'm the pious dragon knight? Yeah, but but you're you're dishonest. Brother said otherwise. So I got to believe him. He's the king. I'm feeling it. Not many people really believe that it.

Some people might have like pretended to believe it for the sake of some political positioning. You know what I mean? But I don't think they really believe. I don't think they really. Believe it also to keeping our timeline straight here aiming the Dragon Knight died probably when Baylor was only about 10, and so Damon would about the same age. So there's not there couldn't have been that much training

from him in their upbringing. Oh, there could have been a decent bit, but it definitely wasn't happening later in life. And let's talk about that. The death of Amon is our next bid subsection here. It would have been a very sad day at court indeed that he was the living legend for this generation of royal youth. And it asks the question like,

who else were they idolizing? You know, there would have been a lot of figures from recent history that they possibly could have idolized or maybe would have looked at as controversial. Prince Damon, writer of cracksies most martial figure of recent times other than who had been dead before their time. He'd been dead for less than 40 years. So this isn't this isn't just memory here.

He was very famous, obviously. And of course, Baylor, technically Prince Damon, writer of Craxies, was his great, great grandfather. So that's, you know, it's a family connection too, a bit distant, but still there. Now, I could see Baylor looking at Damon as a bit of a cautionary tale, though, Like he's because they he's not.

He didn't emulate him except maybe in Marshall skill, but not in terms of decisions making, personality, attitudes, just very different in terms of temperament and all these other things like they're, they're opposites in a lot of ways. So a lot depends on what kind of stories he was told. Maybe there's the stories told about his great great grandfather were sanitized a bit, you know, And of course there's just things that you can't emulate, like being a

dragon rider. Jaharis and Aegon the Conquer seem like more likely idols or figures to emulate. Jairus was so wise and ruled so long and did so many, built so many things that were still in use. They would have revered him. I don't think the the shine would have worn off wouldn't have worn off on him even though we're talking in like 100 years before. And of course, the Conqueror, they're never going to forget him because like, yeah, back to Jaharius real quick though, like

Jaharius is the conciliator. And there's we were just saying like there's absolutely some conciliator, if not a lot of conciliator in the personality of bail or break spirit. This is the guy that we just got from saying is all about forgiveness and mercy and trying to like reach accords rather than I mean, it's like that old world's most interesting man commercial for for Dos Equis for the like. He's a lover, not a fighter, but he's also a fighter.

So watch yourself. So that's that's Baylor like he he's a peaceful guy, but he'll throw down and he's good at it. So which is also Jaharis, like Jaharis, that was the was the attitude Jaharis had to it towards a lot of his Lords. He would fly to these castles by himself without his protection on Vermithor, a huge dragon. So you're like, yeah, look at me, I'm brave. But if you mess I'm and I'm

coming here in peace. But don't forget about this huge beast behind me. Now, of course, Baylor can't exactly go about it that way. He has to be. There's no dragon backing him. But he still is formidable. And I feel is tactful too, like he he doesn't necessarily even have to use those threats right? But like it maybe either it's known that they're there, but I feel like his wisdom and logic are strong enough to solve a lot of stuff without the.

Maybe the threat in the background helps, but without having to go. There and the respect he carries and yeah, and the threat is there. Like you say, if you go against him, well, you're going against his popularity, which is substantial, which means a lot of people are going to follow him. So whatever decisions popular guy makes, well, you're if you're going against that, you're going against all those people supporting him. And that's that's a lot of

weight. Nina had a great take here as well. I really like she suggested not just Damon, writer of Craxies, but his father Baylon, almost the same name, who was also a hand of the king and heir at the same time, which Baylor will eventually be. And he was well regarded both as a warrior and as a statesman. And yeah, and that's only one generation back farther. So that's a that's good. Sadly, they also both died while hand. Baylon lived only five years longer than Baylor is going to live.

Baylon died at age 44 and Baylor died at age 39. So. But of all these heroic figures, we just named all these ones that maybe Baylor and some of these other ones could have idolized, Dragon Knight is the only one that didn't have a dragon. And of course, he's the only one that they lived to see his passing. They would go to his funeral, whereas the others, they would maybe just see their tombs or

the hear their stories. So there's it's undoubtedly more personal and more momentous in terms of a life event. You almost figure like, remember what Rob did when he heard about what happened? He like draws his sword and the gods would is like, I'm going to get here. I'm so mad. And the saris does the same thing with Danny's brother when he's like, I'm going to go kill

Robert myself. You know, this just ridiculous, like drawing their sword and Rodrick Cassell's like, don't draw your sword unless you mean to use it. Boy, You know, I almost figured this was a moment like that where like Damon or maybe even Baylor or stuff are like drawing their swords. Like those toynes, they killed

the dragon knight. Like, oh, we're going to go get them, you know, And then the Knights 1/4 like, all right, chill, 10 year olds, come on. We appreciate the the courage here, but you're going to have to let the adults handle this one. Speaking of Jon Snow has that memory of him and Rob yelling out the names of their heroes. Speaking of like idolizing figures when one of whom was the young was King Daron the young dragon, right.

So that would be another one that I didn't mention that one. That's one that they might have thought of as a hero. So John thinks of how they would do that all the time. And then one day Rob's like, you can't be Lord of Winterfell. You're a bastard, you know? And it's like the weight of reality just hits him like cold water. Like, Rob wasn't trying to be me. He was just like stating facts, like, but you can't be, you know, It's like, yeah, you can't be the young dragon either, Rob.

Like these are all, this is all fantasy, you know, and it was the young dragon, but never mind. But so this is what I was saying earlier with these divisions, they would idolize people, but even who they idolize might come up as as a wedge to who they could really be, who they're

allowed to be within society. And it's just a really interesting thing to think about, like how no matter how innocent you are, no matter how you're trying to be a kid, this this royal culture is just like telling you what your place is and all your friends too, or who people who might be your friends. You know, this might be a little bit of a tangent, but it's I still think it's the same

concept. Imagine growing up a young black girl in America anytime before, I don't know, the past 10 years. Like who are all the idols? Who are all the leaders? Who are all the presidents? Who are all the center business? It's all white men, right? Like, what do you think is a young child if you're not a a white boy? What are you? Who are your idols? Who are you allowed to be? You know what I mean?

Like if you try to pretend like you're president, you're going to get scoffed at. You know, that's a good point. Yeah. Let's talk about competition, jealousy and swords. That's the next section here.

This raises the question, questions like this, like jealousy and these divisions and, and how the children would handle it. One example that I think is very visual that that maybe wouldn't have occurred to y'all that I thought of when we were thinking about this episode is that the Kingsguard would be around Baylor a lot because he's in the line of succession. They would be protecting him as one of the crown, eventual inheritors of the throne.

Damon Blackfyer would not have that protection. He would have Kingsguard following him around all the time. He's a bastard, right? And he's not. They're not. They wouldn't be thinking of him in those terms. They would have respect for him because of his martial prowess and his bearing and his skills. But he wouldn't be someone they need to protect. You know that he's not like an important figure that must be kept alive. So, you know, that kind of thing might rankle.

And that's the kind of thing someone like Bitter Steel would maybe point to to be like. Look at how he's getting more regard than you like the kind of thing that if you're trying to draw drive a wedge, you're trying to start something. You would point at these little differences and try to make them about your pride and just the devil on one shoulder whispering and why you should be upset. Kind of like a lot of modern media, like telling us what we should be mad about, you know,

like outrage media. Like you should be outraged. Baylor or Damon, rather. Look at what he's getting. All these things that you deserve, you know. Yeah, Very similar to that I think and now again, so. Shocking news about Damon's sword. And so again, so much hinges on what they actually thought of each other. Did they get along? Did the possible wrangling of their own factions, you know, work and get them to dislike each other? Or did they kind of rise above that?

Do they respect each other? No idea. So, but it's a very compelling question. Somewhere around 181, when they were about 11, Chiara Sea Star was born. Her mother Sereni died. This is when Aegon had become grossly overweight and diseased. So he wasn't very mobile anymore. Now we're guessing Chiara and Daylord didn't have much to do with each other throughout their lives, but they would have had something to do, kind of like Elena. She was around court a lot. So is Chiara.

I mean, Chiara would have been at court while Baylor was Hand and Baylor was Hand for 13 years later. So that's maybe we'll come back to that in Part 2 if we have some ideas on it. But also around the year 181, maybe 182, that's when Nerys died. So that would, although it could have been as late as 183. So that's his grandmother and that's also the queen. So this is a pretty big deal because let's not forget the quirk of incestuous dynastic marriages.

Sometimes you only have one grandmother and one grandfather. So yes, this is his one grandmother that passed. So that's kind of like, Oh yeah. And he? All half the grieving that that silver lining of incense. Definitely looking at the bright side, Sean. Yeah. So he also only had one great grandmother. Yeah. If you go back far enough, you know, he's got the lysine. The lysine. Great, great grandparents or

what have you. Anyway, so Nary's also was one of the few remaining connections to the Dance aftermath. She was born about five years after it ended. So she was one of the few people that lived around Dragons that was still there since AIM and died first. One of the few left at this point was Aegon the Unworthy, who outlived his younger brother and sister despite his ill health. In 182 came the famous Squires

tournament. The Damon won. This is it's when he got his unusually young knighting, which was probably done in part by Aegon because it was scandalous and noteworthy. Part of why he did it. Maybe also because he might have had a rare moment of of realizing his own life wouldn't last much longer given his health and he was also just known for ignoring traditions and things like that. He floundered them constantly. Did Baylor participate in this choirs tournament?

No idea, but seems pretty likely. Definitely not a guarantee. He might have been on Dragonstone or something. Maybe his father didn't want him competing against these boys, but that doesn't seem likely because he did later in other tournaments. So I think that's important. Something else to consider though, the sword Black Fire was given to Damon as part of his prize for winning this tournament. That was going to be Baylor's sword.

It would have passed to him. Did Baylor care or was he like, hey, that was going to be my sword? Now, Daron didn't wouldn't have cared. He, I mean, he might have cared in terms of the symbol, but he wasn't going to have used the sword himself or else he might have already had it. But he was the heir, although his father didn't give it to him. But it would have been Gaylors one day had it not been given to Damon because he was a warrior. And that's just typically how

it's used. If you're the king and you're not a Marshall guy, you often give it to your heir. This son there who is Marshall and let them wield it and be the family is stronger for it. So interesting. How old? About how old were they at this time? 12 12 Both. Of them would have been. 12, yeah, 12 seems pretty young to give him that sword. Yeah. And I, I was also wondering if maybe Baylor would have been. Maybe that tournament made him realize he needed to be a better

night. Maybe he was in it and didn't do well and realized he needs to get better, you know? But even if that's the case, it's still how good could damn it have been to get this sort of age, 12? I don't know. Well, you hear how Sir Eustis talks about him, But I mean, Eustis is a little, you know, in love with the past, but still like Damon was maybe, yeah, maybe was the best warrior since AIM in the Dragon Night.

I know that. Not that that was that long after Aim in the Dragon Night, but still, a lot of people put Damon Blackfire in the top five of all time warriors. That's kind of a, I mean, that's really a matter of opinion. There's no way to really know. But yeah, now Baylor, again, we talk about him being chivalrous and graceful. So I don't think he would have like he'd, I really doubt he like made a scene or anything like that or got publicly upset.

But in private, he might have been kind of upset about it. And his father as well might have been upset about, his father would have definitely been upset about the symbolism of it and what it might mean in terms of just besides the sword itself, in terms of what his father was doing. Like, oh, here my dad goes again with trying to undermine our side of the family. You might be worried about what

would come after that. And he would be right to be because two years later came the deathbed proclamation of legitimization of all these fellows. So, yeah, so there would have been some discussions in private at the very least about what this might mean. And Baylor himself might have been asked to wait. And he's like, well, father, I don't. I don't want to cause a scene. I don't want to have this be a problem on my back. He's like, OK, well, that's good

of you, son. But it's more than that. It is bigger than just the sword, right? It might mean the sword is a symbol of the Conqueror. And, you know, we've seen him try to undermine our line before. This might be a prelude to another attempt to throw us out of the line of succession, which it kind of was, wasn't fully, but it kind of was. So, yeah, Baylor would have probably been if he didn't realize the implied threat to his own place in the line of

succession. He would have had it explained to him. And I think he probably did because he was wise beyond his years. Most likely, given everything he was faced with from young age on, he just was expected to have all these adult responsibilities and he took to it. So I feel like he would have seen this. He would have understand at least some of the significance. Yeah. This is public. Let's not forget this was a

public gift of the sword. It wasn't like in in private, you know, you've earned this sword, kid. You know. Here you go. No, this was in front of everybody who watched the tournament. Big public courtly thing. Yeah. The whole realm, what I heard about it, like right away would have been the subject of gossip. Just like their bursts were just like some of these other things that happened along the way. The whole court, the realm.

Talk of the talk of the week or the next few months or whatever, and then then beyond that as it, as the situation continued to evolve. I definitely feel like it was AI don't know political optical move or whatever more so than they do. Just like just like time when making Jamie on a hands guard. Maybe they there's some ostensible reasoning behind it, but that's not really what it was. If that's what it really was, it

could have been done in private. It could have been done in a bunch of other ways, but the fact that it was done in public, I think that it was a strategic move. Yeah, now Darren. Spiteful move, yeah. Darren might have counseled, you know, just let's roll with the punches here. You might have said things like, well, like a non sarcastic Stannis. You could have said, well, let's just pray harder about the situation, you know, let's not get violent.

You know, and Nina also adds a great point. You could have counseled Baylor if Baylor was feeling jilted or like he lost something. He's like look man, look son, yeah he got the sword you're going to get the Kingdom you know you're going to you, you have more than him. You're ahead of him you know be gracious about it. You know he he still has less than you and that might have that might have worked that argument might have worked.

Nina says. We also think of the arguments Egg uses in the sworn sword when Eustace Ozgre explains his allegiance to the Black fire cause the Damon was simply the best swordsman and the gift of black fire was just an expression of that. You're the best swordsman you get the best sword. It doesn't mean anything more than that it doesn't mean you you should be king. Although absolutely some people did see it that way later.

This is in the immediate aftermath of the gift and and before anyone knew the full consequences of what it would mean. Darren could also remind his son lots of Targaryen warriors were great without wielding black fire. Magor was giving was given black fire by Amis and there was no disinheriting his own children of that. Now Magor did usurp Amis's children, but it wasn't because of the sword, it was because of other factors. And it was, it wasn't done with

the sword either. That was more about Valerian. That's certainly had more to do with it. And of course Amon, not Amon the Dragon Knight, but Amon's son of Jaharis and Alsan, the first born son of theirs, who was father of Raines the Queen who never was.

He was master of laws and Prince of Dragonstone and a great warrior, and he didn't wield either Black Fire or Dark Sister. So, yeah, there's just, there's some good examples, historical examples Darren could have pointed to. And Baylor probably had, you know, enough of an education to have already known about these

figures. So it would just be like a reminder, you know, like, you know, think of your great, great, great, great grandfather this, who did this and that, you know, And furthermore, Darren again, using the path of least resistance, using the path of peace, using clever moved, subtle maneuvers rather than violent, you know, public displays, things like that. Darren would devalue the ancestral swords in general by giving Dark Sister to blood.

Raven is sort of further suggested that these weren't that big a deal. So it kind of devalued Black Fire by giving Dark Sister blood. It was pretty clever. Now we don't know when that happened, but it was at some point, you know, blood. Raven was only 7 at the start of the Squires tournament, so it wasn't that early, but of course he couldn't have done it when Aegon was still alive anyway. But so this came at some point later and Darren would also start giving.

The the sooner he does it though, the sooner it has the effect right, the more clear it is to to that it's meant to have that effect, the the quicker it does have that effect that I, I feel like he probably did it like so if he's 7 at that tournament and and Aegon died two years later. I think he gave the sword of blood Raven when he was like 9 or 10 years. Old.

That's what I think, yeah. Now, there's also the opposite side reactions where there may be Baylor's close relatives would be, you know, having their own reactions to the Black Fire incident. But what about Damon's people?

Like if Dana the Defiant was still alive, she'd be like, yeah, he deserves that, you know, and he she might even be outspoken about it. And that might rankle some feathers even more because it's it's a public discussion about things like this that maybe you're better kept private. So it's just everyone's gossiping and all that. So the whole discourse is a little loud perhaps, and it might be it might offend some people.

She might be saying things like, oh, he's does he if she says he deserves this and people take that to me and he deserves to be king, you know, public statements. So one of the problems with them is they can be misinterpreted by people. You can you can read things that aren't there. And in the world like this, where most of the information is second hand anyway, you got people inserting their own biases in these statements in the game of telephone is all the more toxic.

So that could have really gotten back to the Red Faction, which wasn't the Red Faction yet, but the people that would eventually become the Red Faction. They might hear all this talk about how oh, look at them uppity. Well, they wouldn't be the black fires yet. They just got the sword. But this whoever here, they would be referred to at the stage they like, oh, that look at them stepping out of line, you know, this kind of thing. So. Yeah, it's very interesting.

Now, maybe Damon, maybe Dana, the Defiant wasn't even alive at this point. So this this might not have even happened. But there would have been some fans of Damon, you know, he would have had his entourage or, or whatever, and they would have been all for it. So that the bottom line is still there. The question for another time. I don't think we asked this in the Damon Blackfyre episode. Would he have gotten a dragon if they were still around? Is someone does?

Does a bastard, a double Targaryen bastard, get a dragon? Does that? Like who qualifies for Dragons and who doesn't? You know? I think he would have been allowed to claim one probably given how popular he was, but it's interesting. Could they have stopped him? Good question, too. Yeah, well, Amen. Just pick one, right? Yeah, what if they just say no, you can't have one or just banned him from trying? But what if he got one anyway?

Would they make him give it up? I mean, yeah, I don't know. Once he's. Bonded to him. How can they make them? Yeah. Can you make them give? I think one way or the other he would have got one. That's right. Nina points out Damon tried to give his own mistress a dragon egg. They made him.

They made him give that back. But still, like if if that was even remotely on the table, then I think Damon Blackfriars several levels higher in terms of like he's at least got the Targaryen blood like Mazaria did not. So that's not a question for Baylor. He definitely would have gotten a dragon, even though he looks Martel like, yeah, that wouldn't matter. So and would he who would he have married to if he if he if it wasn't for the incest marriage is being kind of out of

fashion in this era. Interesting to point out for another discussion for another time. The incest marriages came back pretty quickly after this era, like off and on. But this is the era when they were pretty off. He might have married his aunt Daenerys. That's my best guess. The one that married Maron Martel. But then who? How would they have united the realm then? So yeah, maybe not, I don't

know. But very likely not the person he did marry, which we'll discuss in the second-half because this marriage was a very unusual. And we'll also discuss Damon's marriage and a few other things. Our midway point in the episode is here. The year 184, Aegon has passed the king, Aegon the Forth, the unworthy. But on his deathbed, he made that famous, well, infamous rather, decree legitimizing his

bastards, all of them. The man most responsible for taking care of the mess he made, not to mention the other messes the unworthy king made, was of course his son, now King Garon. And the next most important figure is our subject, Baylor. Not yet called Baylor, breaks beer, but earning that reputation, who is now the Crown Prince of Dragonstone upon the

death of his grandfather. So his responsibilities, his proximity to the throne, all these things are on the upswing and let's see how he handled it. And we come back for the second-half here. Shout out to patron Matthew Chase, who correctly predicted in our poll that this would be a 2 episode topic. You nailed it, Matthew.

You did indeed. When you said it, I was like, yeah, I commented, I responded, your comments said yeah, you know, you're probably right about that, and indeed very much so. We're a couple months out from starting Fire and Blood for Valeritas. That'll be our weekly episodes for quite a while going forward. Right before that starts will be your last chance to get in as a $2.00 a month patron. That price level will be going

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And just, yeah, go to patreon.com/history of Westeros, see the level that's right for you, and sign up to support your favorite or one of your favorite shows. Assuming that's us. If not, well, too bad for us, but enjoy anyway because we still appreciate you being a listener. I got to say, by the way, not to distract too much or maybe this is even arrogant or unprivileged, but man, I feel like $2.00 that's that's too cheap, that's too good of a deal.

Like how much do you spend at a movie? A 2 1/2 hour movie is like 15 or 20 bucks. We do 2 1/2 hour movies 4 * a month. Hey, yeah. I mean, you've got a point there, Sean, with the swirl of possibilities largely rooted in the unknowns of individual personalities, Damon and Baylor being the central example there. But there's lots of other examples. We've run into this question many times. It's compelling and we wish we

knew more. But it's also why Hollywood looks at these things and nods knowingly, seeing the potential for so much of this on the screen. They look at these relationships and these unknowns and and without specifics, they can still look at it and see a lot of greatness or possible greatness. 2 Princess who are close to perfect. Those imperfections are the source of much debate and factionalizing. Damon's a bastard. Well, Baylor is Dornish. Damon looks like a perfect Targaryen.

Baylor looks like a Martel. Yeah, Damon might have been the better warrior, but Baylor was pretty much unbeatable, except by someone like Damon, perhaps, and there wasn't really anyone else like him. And no advantage, though, is greater than birth, which is clearly in Baylor's favor. So I know we talked about a lot of those things during the first half, but I wanted to summarize them here going into the second-half. So Baylor had a lot of responsibility and pressure from an early age.

As we discussed, it never let up. In fact, it probably got more so as he got older, in part because he was not only able to handle most of it, but rise above it. An unfortunate potential side effect of being good at solving problems is that you were handed a lot of problems to solve. Like, oh, you're good at this. Well, let's give you more problems. So it started in a hurry when his father became king in 184. Daron ascended at age 30 and Baylor was 13 when this happened.

So he became Crown Prince as a 13 year old. His father started off with major reforms, which Baylor would have been hearing the logic of. This would have been part of the decisions, part of his counsel. We've seen how often the the first born is just right there with the father for all these important decision making sessions. Or not always, but often. How often the first born son? Is right there. Yeah, you're right. First born son. Yeah, that does. That does require a caveat in

the setting. First off, Daron did sack the small council, getting rid of Aegon's appointments. They were all very corrupt. He choose new, new people all around. Maybe Baylor was part of that decision making process on who to appoint. She may have had a little bit of a say they would want him to be involved. He didn't say with the gold cloaks rooting out corruption there. Took a year to settle that apparently.

Because while it's easy enough to maybe fire the people at the top, it's harder to root out corruption amongst the rank and file amongst the lower ranking officers. It's harder to like find that because while it can be a big problem, it's smaller scale that's just not as obvious when you're at the top looking for the smaller problems. Baylor himself wouldn't have been on the small council at this point, as we said, but he was being groomed for it.

He would eventually be handed the king, and it seems likely his father had that in mind already at this point. He's like, my son is very capable. And the best way to make sure he's going to be a good king is to make sure he's taking part in all these responsibilities that he'll have his own decisions to make on when he's when he's older. So that seems pretty straightforward. And he would have, of course, been very influenced by his father's demeanor.

And we can say that with confidence because adult Baylor did share a lot of his father's traits. But Baylor could pull it off better than his father in a lot of ways because Daron was mocked for his physique. Baylor was physically gifted. So that's why when we said the beginning in the opening statement in the intro talk about how people really look forward to Baylor being king in a lot of ways, because he was not just had the personality and demeanor of a king, he looked like 1.

And as we've seen in Westeros, they care about that. I don't think I don't personally think they should, but they clearly do. You mean you get that right away in the Game of Thrones when Jamie looks like a king to John and and Tyrion stands as tall as a king with it when his shadow is cast. So this is all this is just this is how people think of this office of king. It's you're supposed to look like a king, you know, and act

like one. Well, Darren acted like one, but according to their, you know, ideal model, he didn't look like 1 Daylor did, except for looking Dornish, which that was a part that was a small problem, but not for everyone. He. Might have looked like a king, but not a Targaryen king there. You go. That's a good way to put it. Yeah, I like that. But it was still, despite these small problems, probably one of the most effective father, son, king, Crown Prince pairings

we've seen. Darren may have been particularly grateful for that, given how contentious his father's relationship with him was. He's like, I can work with my son in a way I was never able to work with my father because my father was Aegon the Unworthy. I mean, I've got a good son, Baylor, to work with here. And Baylor may have also seen that because he saw how terrible his grandfather was. He's like, thank the seven that I have a father like this and not like my grandfather.

So, I mean, because again, let's repeat just how distinctly obvious it was. Like, but in some families, you kind of lose sight of who's right and who's wrong when you're so in it right. But it's just so much easier. To tell or when everyone's wrong, or when everyone's wrong. Yeah, but here it's just so much easier to tell now. A good example. This is why we talked back about who would have been potential idol figures or, or people to emulate in the Targaryen history.

Jarius worked really well with his son Eamon and then with Bailon after Eamon died. So of course, those both ended in tragedy. So they're too similar because this one will too. But yeah, still, those would be maybe what they were trying to project. Like we're the next Jairus and Ayman or Jairus and Bailon, whichever. And this point about Deron's own relationship with his father is an important one.

You know, rights. Aegon the 4th and not just hated Deron, he's specifically and publicly acted to undermine him, tried to disinherit him. This is calling it a contentious relationship was a bit of an understatement on my part. But either way, this is the polar opposite. Someone you can work with and respect. And Baylor like, wants to learn from his father and takes these lessons to heart. And yeah, it must have been just

night and day. Like there's other examples of kings not getting along well with their sons that we can point to. They're more like Deron and Egg on on the opposite end like that. Like Aries is not getting along with Rhaegar those. That was a very contentious relationship. Egg didn't have contentious relationships with his children so much as he quarreled with them over marriages.

Like they had differences of opinion there, but that wasn't the same as like them trying to constantly undermine each other. But it wasn't, those weren't great relationships, at least later in life. And Makar and his sons, those there were some, there were some struggles there too, although also not with one trying to overthrow the other. So yeah, really, Deron and Aegon was about as bad as it got. So what a refreshing not just for them personally within the

family, but for the realm. Like, ah, the king and the Prince, they're working together, it's great, right? Let's take a moment to discuss the supernatural though. I mean, given the cultural shift at court, one of the things that Darren did apart from his reforms politically and getting rid of the small council, was he brought in septons, maesters, Part of those, some of them were Dornish, which was caused some more additional consternation about the Dornification of the

court. But that's not really the point at the moment. We're more in interested in how that affected the magical discourse. Baylor's court was very pious. Derrons is pretty pious too, but clearly he wasn't against magic. Like even Baylor the Blessed

prayed over his dragon eggs. So he, even though he was all about the the pious, he still had that angle of syncretism where they wanted to sort of take the best of their own stuff and combine it with the faith rather than just throw away all that old stuff and like, let's still keep some of that, you know. So there was a little like.

Especially the Dragons. Yeah, so it's very utilitarian, very like, have it both, have it your way, you know, have it both ways, have your cake, eat it too, kind of logic. But hey, you're the king and queen and royal family. You can get away with that. Sort of have your cake and eat it too. Well, you can't if you're very infinite, but you can if you're the Targaryens, at least these Targaryens. So.

And again, yeah. So Darren was pro faith, you might say, well, maybe he was against the supernatural stuff, but really there doesn't seem to be any indication to that. In addition to the syncretism arguments, we have him very much trusting Blood Raven. Like Blood Raven was one of his most trusted companions in addition to being his half brother. And Chiara was apparently just allowed to do her thing at court and no one seemed to be bothered

by that too much. Aries his his his next son, Daron's son Baylor's younger brother was very bookish and into this prophet. He's the one that this rediscovers the Dragons being born prophecy. So there does not seem to be much at all. In fact, there seems to be the opposite of evidence that they were against supernatural studies and magical delving into prophecies. So yeah, now Egg mentions that

Aries discovers the prophecy. He says that in the mystery night, but he doesn't say it was just like a year ago or two years ago. So we don't know when he rediscovered the prophecy. So it might have been like 10 years before Egg makes that statement, which would have meant it came while Baylor was hand. But if it did come in the ensuing three years after the hedge night that Baylor didn't know about that, But that's a

pretty big deal. I think it's more likely he discovered it before Baylor's death. Baylor breaks Pier's death, that is then after, but we're not sure. So at some point Aries found a book that said the Dragons would come back. We don't know when that was. It might have been before the Hedge 9. It might have been after, but there's no indication Aries was a dreamer. There's no indication, certainly no indication Baylor was a

dreamer. Baylor breaks beer or dare on the good Baylor's brother Ray Girl. Well, again, there's just he's the most unknown of this whole group. We don't know much about him. He was maybe not all mentally there, which maybe is a sign he had dreams. But he maybe he was all mentally there, but they blew him off because he kept going on about these dreams. Yeah, see, he's the Helena in this scenario. If they're going to make a character a dreamer that wasn't made one Regal fits Makar.

We don't know if he had dreams, we don't think he did. There's no indication he did. But but Makar's children were the ones that Eamon said all my brothers dreamed of Dragons and killed them all or whatever. I forget the exact wording but y'all have heard that quote a few times on this show and elsewhere. Not to mention Damon Blackfyre's son Damon the second did as well.

So there were there was like this current generation, the ones born in the one 70s, except for maybe Bloodraven, there wasn't a whole lot of evidence of direct supernatural ability or aptitude, But right after them came a wave of them of potential. And if not actual. So it was, it's definitely part of Baylor's life, if even if it's not part of his own dreams. But what?

So we'll come back to this in Part 2 because the the only obvious dream or the one for sure besides Damon the second was Darren the drunkard and he's not born until 190 or 191 Right now we're around the year 185. So we're we're a few years still from that. None of make our sons have been born yet because Darren was the oldest now. And Bloodraven also just casually points out in the mystery night that it. Yeah, dreamers. Yeah. They come up sometimes in the

Targaryen family. Why not the Blackfires here and there? You just kind of casually says that. So it's pretty well known. So there's no way that Baylor didn't know about this part of his family's history. It's just like very clearly a part of their history. And if this ever hits TV or something like that, well, they would certainly draw this element out a bit because it's just a thing that would be happening. If Blood Raven had these

abilities. Well, he was only nine years old when Darren became king, so it may not have been clear. And of course with Blood Raven, was he having dragon dreams? Was he doing old God's dreams? Was he having both? It's just no wonder we did 3 episodes on him. And again, Baylor the blessed would come back to him. He prayed over his dragon eggs, but he also had visions. Were they supernatural or they just the fact that he was fasting like, like crazy and you see things when you fast, you

know, like you have. You're going to start seeing things if you don't eat for several days. Like I, I, I think I explained at the time, or maybe I didn't because we haven't actually done the Baylor the Blessed episode yet because it's on the shelf. I've personally experienced that hallucinating because of lack of food and sleep. So, yeah, I can speak to that from experience. That doesn't mean they were dragon dreams, but it doesn't

mean he didn't have them either. You know, it could be both, yeah. Like Baylor, for example, Baylor the Blessed had a vision telling him to build what became known as the Great Sept of Baylor. So, you know, that probably doesn't sound like a dragon dream, but it was. It was something, you know. It may not have been magical at

all though. It's interesting for us to speculate where the dream came from or how to name it properly, but to these characters themselves and the people they might tell, it's not like, it's not like blood, Raven says. You know, I had this vision of a usurper coming and they're like, wait, well, was that vision of Dragon Dream? No, no, no. It was front of faith.

Oh, well, it doesn't count. I don't think that's how the conversation would go. Like you had a vision, they're not going to care what the source of it was. That's true, yeah. So now we don't know how long the Great Sept of Baylor took to build. It was definitely not finished during Baylor's life. And it's one of those things where, like the Death Star, it might have been used before it was fully completed.

Like it you can, for example, Daenerys married Maron in the year 187, a few years ahead of where we are right now at the Great Sept. That doesn't mean the Great Sept was finished, but it was finished enough if they could hold marriages there. So yeah. For example, here in Denver, they're going to reopen Casa Bonita, but they're not going to fully open it before they start letting guests in, so. Right on. Now it's big news here in Denver.

Speaking of marriages, with all these characters of similar age, it makes sense they would all start to get married around the same time because these, you know, they're of marriageable age. And the way it goes with Royals is they tend to have their betrothals and marriages fairly early on, especially when you're in the line of succession, because alliances are part of that. And this is where we get something a little odd.

Somewhere between the age of 13 and 15, which is the year 184 to 186, Baylor would have become married to Jenna Dondarian. Highly unusual marriage. As I said, a future queen from a Marcher house. Never. Nothing like this has ever happened. In fact, nothing even close to this has ever happened intentionally. Now, I say intentionally because this is a really big difference when you look at who's been queen before. There's been some unexpected names because of people dying unexpectedly.

But in terms of we know this person's going to become king and queen one day. This was the first time in the history of the Targaryen history history of the Targaryen history that it wasn't a Baratheon, Valerian, or Targaryen for the Crown Prince to marry. And it was the Donderian, which is a far drop in prestige, right? And you got to think, well, why? Like, what's the deal here? Why did what goes into that choice? Part of this week's Playing in the dare on the good episode.

But to recap some of it and maybe look at it from a little bit of a different angle is that, well, the Marcher Lords are unhappy that the wars with Doran are over. This is part of what makes them it's their reason to exist, to defend the realm against Dornish incursions. And it's been that way for so long. All of a sudden their important job is gone.

It doesn't need to exist except for unauthorized raids, which would still be a thing, but it's just a big drop in their prestige because they're no longer needed for this point. And that's stinks. You know, for some people, they're like, we had an important job and now we don't. We've been we're we're no longer relevant. They don't like that, so he lifts them back up by making one of them queen or eventual queen. She didn't actually become queen, but would have become queen.

So with all that counts. Yeah, and it also, it's also important because the marchers would have been upset that the king was going to be half Nornish. So now they have their stake in it that's relatively equal because their children will be both, right? Warning pun incoming. The marchers and the Dornish were arch enemies. The Dornish would see them as March enemies though. Boom, by the way. I feel like once again, this is another example of how times

were changing. You know that it's, it's relatively new for the Targaryens to be in charge in the 1st place. And with the Targaryens in charge, it's new for them to not have Dragons backing it up. And so this is precedent setting, like not only their details of why this particular marriage was arranged at this time, but it also sets the president to marry other houses to get out of this rut of trying to maintain these certain houses that Despite that, we still have the Dance Dragons.

You know what I mean? That didn't exactly work. So let's spread it out some. We're not as worried about the dragon blood because there aren't Dragons anymore. There's all these reasons that to do this, and not the least of which, in my opinion, is to establish a new precedent. Well said. Also well said is what Nina writes here. Wedding Baylor to Jenna also served as a signal that Daron was creating a single realm. Not merely joining Dorn in the Targaryen Kingdom, but forging A

unified state. Child of Baylor and Jenna would be a microcosm of this peace. Dornish blood and marcher blood, each eternally spilled at the other's expense, would now be mingled in a single person, A future king of the unified state of Westeros. Yeah, boom. Nina's also points out there isn't a little bit of an exception to the Crown Prince is only marrying Targaryen, Valerian or Baratheon, and that's Magor. He married like six women and had, you know, didn't have any

real children amongst that. So yeah, we could forget about Magor. They like to forget about Magor. We don't talk about Magor. Yeah, it's the Enconto song. It's from Enconto talk about. Bruno Oh, yeah. OK, I do know that song. We don't talk about Magor. We'll have to work on that workshop, that one further. So the wedding itself would have been a big deal, given the weight behind this union and what it meant for the realm.

And as you say, Sean, it was a signifier of a a change, a big change in this new Westeros that was emerging. It's a big change because of how long the state of affairs had existed, especially because of how it happened. It wasn't that one side finally defeated the other in combat. It was peace, it was marriage, it was the you know, the good way. So a lot of people would have been there probably would have been a wedding at Daylord Sept

as well. Again, if it was finished enough, because this is even a little bit before Daenerys's wedding, probably there may have been people booing. It might have been people like not happy about it. There may have been some some people might have been paid to riot, you know, like maybe someone was there could some good stuff could be written about this. I think This Is Us is all very rich.

Even though it's just a wedding, which isn't always the most exciting thing, this could be pretty good. There could be some pretty good stuff happening here. I think if we get this in Fire and Blood too, I think it's got a lot of potential. Just to remind you earlier, again, thinking about the idea of what kind of relationship Baylor and would have had I I want them to have been like strong close friends that end up pitted against each other. I think that would make for the best time.

Like Rainier and Allison kind of like that. Yes. Exactly. I agree, because that worked pretty well. They might not want to do that twice, but it could be different enough, you know, because we've also already done that. They both hate each other thing plenty of time. We've seen that more in the world. You know, rivals from the beginning. Yeah, like that's that's that's more standard, but it's less

tragic too. Yeah. If they're friends and then they had like the world makes them into edit Yeah, I like that more too. That's why I like the more tragic one more. Remember when we meet Baylor in the hedge night, which is 25 years from now, we're at the time we're talking about. He's with Lord Dondarian. And this will continue to come up in other ways. It won't do This Dondarian connection isn't just a a side topic here. It's going to come back in Part 2.

Now, before King Aegon's death, he had arranged for Damon's bride to be Rohan of Tyros, But before Damon came of age, Aegon passed. Now, Daron fulfilled that arrangement. He went ahead and honored that match. And probably around the same time as Baylor's wedding to Jenna, maybe a little before, I'm guessing before, not as big a wedding because it's not the Crown Prince, but a pretty big deal, you know? And I, I'm guessing it was before because we know that they

had kids right away. In the same year, in the year 184, the twins Aegon and Amon Blackfyre were born, which implies the marriage was that same year earlier that year. Because Damon wasn't even 14 until 184. So he probably wasn't married when he was 13. He was knighted young, but he probably wasn't married young because that was up to that was up to Daron. He was a little more about traditions here. 14 is still

pretty young. Either way, that does strongly imply that he, the Damon, was married before Baylor. And unusually, the Archon of Tie Rush was paid a dowry for his daughter to marry Damon, where it's usually the woman's family that pays the dowry. But I think this is because Damon was a bastard. Damon was also given money by Daron to build a small castle on the Blackwater rush.

We're not sure where it was, but it was probably close because again, Daron quote, UN quote kept the great bastards close. And it's on the Blackwater rush, which is, you know, the King King's Landing is also on the Blackwater rush. It's probably gone now, though that keep because, you know, Bloodraven tried to eradicate all signs of David Blackfyres existed so that people wouldn't like visit the red grass field and leave flowers and, you know, leave. He doesn't want them leaving homages.

And so they would, if he had to keep, they would go there. He'd probably raise that thing to the ground, especially because we haven't heard of it at any point elsewhere. Like it's the thing that apparently used to exist. Maybe it's someone else's now. But yeah, I think, I think Brendan tore that thing down. Now, of course, another important marriage here. Much is made of Daron. I mean, Damon wanting to marry his half sister Daenerys, the

King's much younger sister. Remember, Daron and and Daenerys were brother, sister. They were born very far apart. I think it was 15 years apart in fact, so big gap in their age there. Now, Darren was not up for that. He's like, no, first of all, it's a rumor that he even that Damon even wanted this. And it's also a rumor that he it upset him afterwards. He thought maybe he could have two wives, which is also a rumor. We don't know if that's true. There's some evidence of that.

It's suggested that the Aegon was going to allow that but take and have him take two wives. But obviously that didn't happen. And De Lore may have had a say in that, like they may have discussed it with his father, may have said like, yeah, no, we we're not going to bring back polygamy. You know, no, let's not do that. Especially in an era of hewing closer to the faith. It's very much not in there under their umbrella. Yeah, They don't like that. They don't like double

marriages. They're not. They're not big on polygamy. So again, with respect to not knowing which rumors were true either way, the bottom line was Damon the married Rohan of Tairash and this very political there's there's suggestions that Aegon arranged this marriage originally to get the Tairashi fleet maybe to make more attempts at attacking Dorn. And so that's why this decision needed to be handled delicately because, well, we.

So it went upset Dorn. Dorn was probably aware of the political machinations Aegon was making. He certainly knew he tried to send a fleet against them. So he may have been looking to get a new fleet by allying with Tyraj. So it would have been a delicate scenario potentially. But Darren wanted to honor agreements and just turn them into something more passive.

He wanted to get rid of the element of violence that was lurking behind these moves and make them smoother, smooth them out rather than breaking the deal, you know? And then Baylor seemed to follow his lead on all that, which is a continuing theme. Baylor, learning from his father and carrying forward a lot of those wishes, continued to seem to work together well even at this young age.

It took a full 2 years to negotiate Marrons Martel's marriage to Daenerys, which that two year period apparently overlapped with all these other marriages because while the two year negotiation was happening, that's apparently when Damon married Rohan and Baylor married Jenna. So a lot of this new Kingdom is emerging. The alliances, the things keeping it held up, the people that are going to fight for it later, all being set up here. Very good, very good groundwork here.

Our last section of the day is called Breakspear because it is the moment where he earns his nickname. We have to call him Baylor Breakspear to avoid confusion with the other Baylor's, but he didn't earn that nickname until the year 188 or run. Wait a 7? Excuse me when he was 17? I wonder I. Wonder what they did call him up to that point? Young Breakspear or young Baylor? Baylor junior Little Bailey. Brake pair. Brakes pair. Yeah. It's like, it's like the damp hair.

Yeah, instead of damp hair. Damn fair people. Cuz people like, including myself read it as damn fair, you know? But no, this is brakes pair. Yeah, I like that. It's brakes pair. Yeah. He did not like pears. He was a Peach guy in the great Peach versus Pair wars of 189.

Many of fruit was broken. Those stone fruits went to war as Crown Prince. He was of course, Prince of Dragonstone, but again, he probably like his father, probably spent most of his time at court helping his father rule and learning from him and and working side by side. So he was probably there. Actually, let me amend that.

He was certainly there in the year 187 when his father led the procession with Marin Martel marching through the streets towards the Great Sept where they laid that golden wreath of Baylor's statue and said your work is complete. Baylor in front of probably a monstrous crowd, right? Because they wanted to show this off and announce the piece to as many people as possible. Make a as big a spectacle out of

it as possible. This is followed by a wedding tournament as there so often is wedding tournaments. So the tournament would have been giant as well, most likely a lot of people watching. And fittingly, at the end of the tournament, Damon Blackfyre met Prince Baylor Targaryen for the final tilt. Now we're not sure What built up

to this is another thing. I'm looking forward to seeing exactly how this came about, Sean, with our discussion on tournaments before, there could have been some arranging to make sure the two luminaries met in the finals, like a little arranging of the matches to make sure they didn't meet prior to that, to make sure it was at the end. But it's also possible that it was one of those ones where you get to challenge who you want. And they did it like they they

made it a spectacle on purpose. Who knows who arranged it, but it's an awfully convenient that they fought right at the final tilt. So yeah. We have in our minds this idea of like brackets, you know, like tournaments are a pretty kind of standard thing in modern society. But in in the real world, tournaments of this sort weren't always run the same way.

They didn't always have neat brackets and in Martins world clearly we've seen different formats for it like the the the specific one and and the hedge knight was not a standard racket tournament at all. So. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. They had the tapping of the shield. You get to challenge who you want. They had the 5 champions and you could pick who you want.

Which of them? You wanted to challenge, Yeah, rounds of anyone in a crowd challenging one of these five and rotating out and like a completely different from any other formats. And by the way, when Harding was injured because of Aryan cheating and Spearing his horse, they decided on suggestion that they should only have 4 champions and that the 5th champion he should be able to retire as a champion and no one should be to challenge him

because he broke his leg. Whose suggestion was that Baylor breaks Pier, the chivalrous, the honorable, the thinking of trying to think of everyone and trying to make sure no one's feelings are rankled and trying to keep the drama from developing. Someone who sees the drama develop ahead of time and shuts it down. Someone who has a lot of experience with that because he saw so much of it as a child, like so much chord drama.

He's like, no, I'm good at seeing this coming and I have the authority to shut it down and people will listen to me. And he's like his suggestion, Lord Ashford's like, you're right, Prince Baylor, let's do that. You know, it's a reasonable suggestion too. You know what I mean? There's a lot of other things you could have suggested that people might have been like, well, what about this and how about if? And well, that's not fair because but this one's like,

yeah, good idea. Like then on, there's not really any argument. Yeah, and he had to rule against his own, you know, nephew Aryan to to make that ruling too. So what, you know, he he showed that he wasn't biased against his own family there. So that was that looked really good, you know, and you're like, yeah, he's justice is justice, right? But back to this tournament. This is before Baylor was known as a deliverer of justice. He's just, you know, still a young up and coming Prince at

this point. We can only imagine the setting here, the stage, the excitement as they tilted repeatedly back and forth. And we know they did back and forth because that's exactly why he got the name break spear because it took a lot of tilts. He kept breaking lances, splintering them. Eventually, Baylor emerged the victor, knocked him off his horse.

It must have been such a moment, like a like the overtime in the finals of some sporting match, overtime in the Super Bowl, extra innings in the World Series, fifth quarter in NBA or the 4th period in NHL overtime. I forget how that works. Really exciting. The equivalent of sudden death, except without, you know, death being just as not literal in this setting for once as as it is in the real world sports. Well, yeah, right. The potential was there.

One of them could have had an could have had an accident, and it would have been really exciting, the roar, the crowd, minus the disappointment of some of them who really wanted Damon to win because they would have been there would have been some like rooting against the Dornish guy or rooting for the Valyrian guy or rooting for that. Yeah. Just they had their favorites for whatever reason. And it's more than just their favorites.

It also represented like who they thought was more worthy, which faction they thought was better. A lot of the same vibes in episode 1 of House of the Dragon season one with that tournament sort of showcasing off some of the same things here. So that was a lot bloodier and a lot less honorable. Like this was chivalrous. Like Baylor and Damon were chivalrous guys. There wasn't going to be someone Spearing the other guy's horse,

right? So as many similarities as there may have been, there were also some big differences. And this is an era where that mattered more. Dance era is where those things had kind of fallen off, where a lot of those values had been forgotten. This was an era that was more accustomed to the horrors of war, and it started to back off. Like I'll start to be so eager to get into war again. That said, they would be getting into war again pretty soon, only a few years later.

So by this point, Baylor was probably already a tournament winner. He may have maybe had already won a couple, but maybe not. Maybe this was his first big win. I mean, he was only 17 years old, and it was fantastic timing. I mean, what a tournament to win in front of everybody. With this reputation, his success as a jouster would continue to rise. The whole realm saw it after such an epic battle. I mean, no wonder both his nickname and the memories stuck with people for so long.

Maybe Damon took his loss graciously. Maybe Agor was there to whisper in his ear and say this should be you getting all the cheers. Maybe a 13 year old Brendan Rivers saw this whispering, saw this division, and started to understand where things were going. Were people already wary? Were people people already seeing where this was headed? Some few may have, but mostly I

would guess they didn't. They didn't see what was coming in about nine years after Baylor won that tournament, he probably did what most champions do. He created the crowd. He celebrated. He accepted their acclaim. He was probably very gracious. I mean, everything about him suggests that he would have been, you know, not a braggart or anything like that. He would have bowed or whatever he needs to do, like shown homage to the gods.

And his father congratulated the the the marriage, the bride and groom and all that honored why they were there. Imagine he helped Damon to his feet. Sure, sure. Yeah. And, you know, held his hands up and all that. Yeah. All the all the things that gracious Winter does. I predict that. But he would have taken his helmet off of 2 during this and people would see and be reminded of what he looked like.

And here's interestingly, you may have noticed, folks, that this episode has not had any quotes yet, but we're leaving you with one here, one that sticks out for its application here. Yet too many men looked upon Baylor's dark hair and eyes and muttered that he was more Martel than Targaryen, even though he proved a man who could win respect with ease and was as open handed and just as his

father. Knights and Lords of the Dornish Marches came to mistrust Aaron and Baylor as well, and began to look more and more to the old days when Dornish men were the enemy to fight, not rivals for the King's attention or largesse. And then they would look at Damon Blackfire, grown tall and powerful, half a God among mortal men and with the Conqueror's sword in his possession, and wonder. Now, among those cheering loudly for Baylor would certainly be whatever Dornish were in

attendance. They would certainly approve of his victory over Damon. And of course, looking Dornish would have just helped fuel their applause and their acclaim for him, at least in part. And the cheers of those Dornish might further inflamed those who were upset by this state of affairs. Those same people who looked at Damon. Blackfire growing tall and powerful, half a God among mortal men. And indeed, wonder. Yeah, many would be doing both. Some of these would be marcher Lords.

Some of these would be just fans of Damon Blackfire, who thought he was better the better man, like the Sir Eustaces of the world. As we've said before, one of the purposes of tourneys, and some of this wisdom is forgotten at times, is to prepare for battles, for real wars.

That this competition ended with the 2 greatest young Knights of the era, both perhaps eager to be the next Dragon Knight was apartment because they're entertaining spectacle would turn out to be just that, a prelude to real war. Next week, Baylor Part 2, we will begin in the year 188 cover the prelude to the Blackfyre Rebellions. The Blackfyre Rebellion. Well, just the 1.

He only lived through 1 and his time is hand to the king that followed which was 13 year reign right up until his death in the Hedge night. Lots more interesting things to come. He's going to have children, he's going to have war, he's going to have more disputes. Lots of other things we'll come up with for you. Can't wait. And whatever else y'all think because this one was recorded in the studio without live viewers.

But Part 2 will be live so y'all will have a chance to do live feedback and send in any other questions you may have. Feel free to do so. Your question may get answered live on the show. Let's have our trivia answer.

The question again was Baylor the Blessed AKA Baylor the Befuddled alongside the name Baylor Breaks beer, reminds us that George likes alliteration in his nicknames, and my question was in A Song of Ice and Fire there's a character named Baylor and he has two nicknames as well, one mocking, 1 complimentary. What are those names? Baylor Hightower is the answer. His nickname is Baylor Bright Smile. But if you ask Ober and Martel and the deceased Elia Martel, you know, I guess Ober is also

deceased. They called him Baylor Breakwind because he he farted in front of Elia when she was presented to him as a possible suitor. So that didn't work out so well. He's couldn't take him seriously after he farted, so Baylor Breakwind he was. What a miss. Yeah, what a miss. We mentioned a lot of our episodes in this one, aiming the Dragon Knight Part 1 and 2, of course, the Black Fire Rebellions, obviously the Summer Hall episode got a brief mention.

And The Trouble with Tourneys, a very fairly recent episode from the end of 2022 that discusses some of the things we discussed here in terms of how tournaments are set up for bigger things and, and opportunity for chicanery and tricks and intrigue and all sorts of symbolic developments and all sorts, just all sorts of things. We spent a whole episode on it. So you didn't check that one out.

Maybe you should. Thanks to those of you who support us on Patreon or Spotify or who send us donations through our website. Those are all ways you can support us financially. If you wish to contribute, you can follow the links to do that yourself. We would much appreciate it. Thanks to Nina for her great notes on this episode and for nearly all our episodes. She had some great insight that we were able to discuss and add to and fill out what we had already said.

So yeah, again, another win for her and for us for having her in our corner. Thanks to Joey, Jesse and Bran for the music assistance and video intro and Bran's part, What a great contribution that has been for us over the years. And to Michael Klarfeld for that, plus his excellent maps that you see behind us in every single episode. And thanks to our Benjen Ear for sound quality assistance, making

sure we sound as good as we can. Recording is tricky, and it's good to have someone who really knows what they're doing helping us out with the things that go wrong and making it all go smoothly when it does or when it does. Either way, smooth sound is what we try to deliver. Until next time, my friends, fellow historians and listeners and watchingers, whatever your preferred term is, we appreciate your presence. We appreciate your listenage and until next time, Valar re re.