ASOIAF: Religion & Regression ("A Song For Lya", Preston Jacobs & Stannis as Anti-Hero)

those themes are I think beautifully and
brilliantly expressed the ethic of command and duty and honor and social inequality in the dunk and egg novels in a form that's not yet so big and noisy and magical doesn't have any dragons doesn't really have much magic to speak of and with it's going to draw in readers who think I'm too cool to read a fantasy novel that has dragons in it and a lot of us who are fans of the books today we thought that at some point so why would I read a novel of a that has dragons in it you know forget that huh that new yen this is a very unusual video in many ways most of my song of ice and fire videos so far have been really long format I think this is going to be relatively brief if it's too brief I might wait and attach two or three videos together I'm recording this actually with no electricity natural sunlight coming in running on battery power we just had the power cut out here I thought it spontaneously come on camera and do some talk I'm going to cover a few different issues but I'm actually all my videos are unscripted but in this case I don't even have a bullet point lift I have since the last video I made about A Song of Ice and Fire done a reread of feast dance feast for crows dancer dragons and I used one of the funky new chapter orders you guys know about this there are people who want to reshuffle the chapter orders it's not it's not worth it guys you keep it's taking you the original authors chapters I also I guess I can say I get a reread of Duncan egg as audiobooks i listened through a second time those protists I was really encouraging my girlfriend I have a new girlfriend too to just do the Duncan egg not to do the whole you know a song by certifier you know opus but I was talking to her about the fact those really are kind of really useful key to the series I got some fan mail from of you or somebody's watched online Song of Ice and Fire bids asking me about don't connect and it's interesting there are people who roll with the series heavy people who are really serious fans would have never read to Duncan tag novels and that's a huge mistake that is a huge mistake other things in my mind here you know apropos Duncan egg I notice that the boiled leather audio our that's a Podcast Boyle leather they put out their first really critical discussion of the first novel of Game of Thrones and you know I'm not saying that as an insult it's critical in that they actually do criticize the quality of writing they talk about the extent to which in Game of Thrones the book is not a flawless masterpiece I kind of felt like boy I wonder if this is going to go sure in a new era in the fandom of people really talking about shortcomings in the writing not just in the organization of the text and not kind of minor things like people don't like Dark Star but some specific specific seeds but they were they were really getting to grips with shortcomings in the design execution the book as a whole uh what the reason why I mention that at this moment is that it seems striking to me that uh it seems triking to me that George came out with these prequels in the way that he did and in my reread of them I really felt like the Duncan egg trilogy so far the Drunken the Duncan egg short stories they weren't attempts to revise the problems with a game of Thrones with the first novel by giving you an alternate way to commence the series and again so I would broadly agree the first novel Game of Thrones I'm not going to say it's poorly written some parts are extremely well written the prologue is beautifully beautifully written you guys may have lost touch that but the books they're so massive they're not at a consistently high literary standard but that prologue the description of the trees swaying in the wind like fingers against the sky the description of the equipment being carried by the men and the way that relates to the overall you know critique of feudalism that's found throughout the books there are many many ways in which it's incredibly carefully incredibly well written that prologue but in looking at a game of Thrones the first novel not the TV show in looking at that is an introduction to the political ethical themes and in terms of world-building even introducing a series of all it's quite poor it doesn't work that well we're thing the extent to which the whole series is really improvised I thought it was telling that when instead you start from Dunkin egg if you treat that as volume one its volume zero if you start with the prequels that in a very carefully a very shrewd manner introduces you to the major political themes the major magical themes and the rules based system by which the fictional world operates none of the things that very very clearly introduces you to the fact that dreams have a special significance in this world the nature of dreams and dreaming is handled extremely well in those prequels and also gets you ready to look at hosts targaryen as a house that is all too human is deeply flawed and yet in some sense magical if you start with the Duncan egg novels it's kind of impossible to have a standard fantasy novel view of House Targaryen all the figures including you know the drunk in the bar who we find out later is kind of responsible for egg you know an egg seems to be just a stable boy but terms it isn't you know this this whole scenario all those figures and that drunk in the bar is having you know dreams that are of symbolic significance and so on you really get introduced the mechanics of the world in a beautifully planned way and when it starts you off in the very first novel there's barely any magic this is largely a kind of very believable very historically real a medieval reality or even I would even say early Renaissance reality but you know for a reader who's skeptical for a reader who's interested in the kind of political content or social commentary or whatever someone who's not looking for high fantasy dragons and what-have-you it's certainly drawing in that broader readership and saying hey this isn't a dorky story about wizards and warriors look it's starting you off in the shallow end in terms of the religious and magical themes which you know by the end of the series in terms of the books that are currently extent the religious element that the jihadist element really grows wildly out of control as the series progresses you know in the Iron Islands King's Landing in Essos the religious themes become larger as well as the supernatural themes so I really I just say broadly speaking I sympathize with the sort of critical direction the bold leather audio hours taken now and looking back the book their discussion of it kind of all over the place it's how most of their podcasts go it's by no means a kind of thorough critique nor as the critique even take on a direction but it was refreshing to hear people who love the series sit down and talk about the shortcomings in how it was written and ultimately we all of the face of the fact that this book was not written against a plan it was not written against note line this is a series of books that are really a grand experiment in artistic improvisation so much so that as you guys know it's documented some of the prophecies were changed we know one way or another there was a version of a chapter of the prophecy in it and then George the author went back and adjusted the prophecy to reflective you know later changes to the plot so you know they're they're giveaways like that but George is pretty open about what his writing process is and how it all works okay so that I think of cost off my list of things to do although again there's a super spontaneous video I'm not really working against a a written list one of the big big themes I had in mind in my last reread was the issue of whether or not revenge really is the kind of key to the morality of the book series as a whole quite a few people including Sean T Collins but others to point to the significance of vengeance and kind of claimed this one great speech from ilaria Sam your approximate name the widow the grieving widow of Oberyn Martell the grieving widow of Oberyn Martell is this one speech dealing with vengeance and the cycle of vengeance and how it's kind of bad and sick and evil in its innocence the poison destroying this this medieval world that is one position to take on the novels but in my last reread so again in feast dance you know if you really look at for example the case that Davos has to make when he's on the East Coast when he's talking to the mermen God what's their house name again sir when he's in the east coast of North he's taken prisoner he's putting he's put in jail he's let out and so on sorry I'm forgetting the host name out there but anyway we have this series of very peculiar politically charged dialogue and when Davos is asked what his case is what it is that Davos and Stannis can offer in trying to recruit these northern houses to support Stannis's cause the answer he gives is vengeance that's the only answer he can give he can't offer them money or land or you can't offer them much of a hope of victory what he is offering in the wake of the red wedding he is going around the north trying to recruit people to stand aside and the only thing he can offer them as vengeance he can't offer them much of a navy look he can't offer them you know and he can't even offer them honor you know in terms of a war being defined with honor which is certainly another major major deal ago this is ultimately a dishonorable and treasonous plot that he's trying to enroll the various houses in but the one thing he can put on the table in these negotiations is revenge revenge for what happened to red wedding and etc I saw that episode alone I mean you could raise others that have contrasting views of revenge to the books but I think actually even if we just look at that episode there is a real reason to question this approach of seeing vengeance as the dividing line between good and evil in these books I mean I think you could have a very coherent kind of semiotic analysis of the books that really looks at them first and foremost as a critique of feudalism instead that this is really an attack on the fuel system and talking about the inevitable internation violence that's created by feudalism now maybe that's a little bit too broad but I mean it is interesting in broad brushstrokes I don't know why the people kind of avoid this he gives us a world that very much like the historical Europe it does contain democracy but democracy is linked to slave which is of course true in ancient Greece in Athens they had democratic system but was it was a slave society with democratic elements I would also say you know Venice is really not given enough credit in history of Europe these days then as for many many long centuries did have a meaningful democracy and that included actually women could vote if they were the head of the household which they frequently were because men would die in war and never be a senior female representative the household so not everyone could vote in Venice the heads of households so a certain class of people were voting and involved in a parliament in both the democracy in Venice but Venice did represent a meaningful form of democracy with democracy for many many centuries I guess they'd say in the medieval world imperfect but also since Marx remember it was but it was it was a huge inspiration to people living in you know far-flung parts of Europe like Russia and England that at that time were just straight kingdoms and what-have-you many of them looked up to Venice but Venice also was a slave society they were at war with other slaveholding empires and slaveholding kingdoms and slaves were traded there and so on so you know a okay I'm simplifying history the real history of slavery and Italy's involvement of it and the changing position the papacy is incredibly complex please composites and people think but don't you know about this people edict yeah I do actually but it was all those complexities that aside a sauce is a side of the world of politics the human experience that does offer different interesting flawed models of democracy but those democracies are linked to slavery and Westeros has zero democracy but also has zero slavery and again I think that is very much a dichotomy that late medieval Europe put it this way those are those are themes that emerge in the study of medieval Europe although of course there's no perfect representative of either side I remember there's a comment in Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes that you know the study of ancient Greek had inspired so many rebellions and treasonous plots and civil wars in England we just not even all of Europe that he said you know we can truly say now you know no other civilization has bought the learning of dead languages and literature at so great a price I think he said that's so great a price in blood those ideas of democracy from Athens and again to some extent from proximate examples like Venice you know many centuries later those did inspire and guide revolutionaries and dissidents in the long you know in the Dark Ages so to speak and in the Renaissance and what-have-you despite very very obvious flaws those societies presented even a cursory glance even if you're just reading Aristotle you take a look at Aristotle's constitution of Athens you know it doesn't take a genius to see that this doesn't represent an ideal this was an all too human set of compromises cross station of Athens by the way you can see very clearly the tribal element of government that's almost always removed so this brings me to another one of the teams I want to talk about here in addition to the rereads I've just mentioned and again I'll just restate I do think it's really important to read the Duncan AG novels they're an integral part of the corpus as it now exists they're canon and they are better than Game of Thrones as an introduction of the world as a first nerd that's why I was encouraging my own girlfriend to read them I really feel even though they're redeeming qualities are subtle they really have like redeeming qualities I've also been reading some of the Thousand worlds books God you know let me tell you that saying from george RR martin that his only interest is in writing about the human heart in conflict with itself that is true but we can say that it is true to a fault i mean a lot of it science fiction stories a lot of thousand worlds stories they are just about human sentimentality and nothing else like there's nothing out there the story is just sentimental it's just about human feelings and the conclusion of the plot if there is a plot in some cases there's no plot there's just an aesthetic and wallowing in some emotions and some emotional purple hell and then it's over that it Peters out like wow this is a really sentimental author and I'm glad he evolved past that in more some of the stories document like 1979 so he has improved as a writer but boy they they're really to a remarkable extent where other science fiction writing is not plot driven and it's not even politically automatically driven it's just about as he says the human heart in conflict with itself so very very strange to examine um one of the themes that Martin is really interested in consistently through from his science fiction through Song of Ice and Fire is this idea of devolved races devolved species and some of you watching this video now will have first encountered my channel because I made the claim that Preston Jacobs had not interpreted a certain story correctly that he had not interpreted in seven times to never kill man correctly so that's not what summarizing but that is a science fiction story always saying no the main turning point the main kind of kink and applause the unexpected irony that the plot is playing with is that the people perceived as aliens are not aliens they're devolved human beings now quite a few people wrote in to me to complain that this was impossible and it's not impossible go back and read the text carefully as I said there's quite a few hints dropped in it and if you don't accept that then a lot of things in the plot or meaning once they're kind of there for no reason when you do accept I see okay so this was a subtle little poke in the ribs to the reader well guess what if you read a song for laia which I had not read time I made that video a song for liya is based on the same trick and the the so four thing in something like it's not so subtle it's explicitly stated you that the people they perceived as aliens are in fact devolved humans humans who are somehow cut off from civilization and in both stories in both a song for liya and seven times never kill man in both stories the the timeline is admitted to be incoherent like it's admitted to be somehow impossible so in a song for liya we're told that this alien species years to be older the human beings to have lived on the same planet continuously I think is a 13,000 years like that they have a civilization that's so old they couldn't possibly have been colonists from Earth cut off from Earth and likewise some people were at intermediate complain that seven times never killed man the alien species in that if you actually read the whole thing carefully in the thousand world's cosmology it doesn't make sense that they could they could have been colonized from Earth and then cut off from Earth right both not both book novellas are both short stories they're going to say both play with this eight and it's probably just because George was interested in toying with that idea I'm sure one of the other novels of forgetting the name now it also talks about the fact that most of the crazy theories and rumors in this fictional universe of far-flung colonies being cut off in there didn't make sense and we're impossible that it wasn't possible for colony ships to reach that far within so many centuries and so on and so forth and yet those rumors persisted so that should been told in many different stories in a thousand world corpus that the chronology of how different species ended up in different places doesn't make sense or is mysterious or self contradictory whether or not that's because he was interested in time travel or some loophole or just something you wanted to play with or if is just part of this overall sense of keeping the reader kind of off balance the guys at boiled leather they've commented that George's writing style in some ways resembles film noir in that he wants to pull you into a world where there's tremendous complexity and kind of incoherence of information you know you get the sense of political complexity you get the sense of plots and intrigues all around but as in a film noir where it seems like there are so many plots going on there's so much corruption you know you have the kind of ostentatious presence of police enforcement in a conical film noir to our story but at the same time you have this sense of anomie of lawlessness of aimlessness of a you know world and a plot that's moving off shelter at the same time that's certainly slight in both the science fiction and I'd say in the first half of the Song of Ice and Fire series as we have now now I am not saying that he does this to make puzzles that are impossible to unravel I think aesthetically it's giving you the reader the feeling that there is so much to unravel in every direction nobody can know it all and he has said that he said it explicitly I remember one of the story lines where he's talking about the fact that there are so many space aliens there's so much that's unknowable the what's the one about the hub of planet where this guy gets abandoned zone quite a quite a few of the stories play with that it's you know there's no point quoting this stuff chapter and verse we're just talking about general thematic concerns em in any case in in looking at this story a song for Leia it's not so mysterious here in a song for liya these telepathic protagonists the two main characters arrive and they're introduced to this alien race as aliens and they conclude openly this isn't in the subtext so unlike seven times over come on it is very explicit in the text they say this is a group of human beings who have rests this is some kind of colony and they compare it to they say this is like a colony of human beings that was cut off from Earth and then their level of civilization and maybe even their biology and their brain development arrests that somehow these people are human or there are there are subspecies of human or they're a deviant group from humans but you know they're not truly alien so I'm poking in this comet after the fact many people want to speculate that somehow the children of the forests represent a species of reptiles something wildly alien or wildly magical although that is possible in A Song of Ice and Fire if we're basically taking the view that Georgia's past experience writing thousand worlds predicts the type of themes he wants to play with in A Song of Ice and Fire then we should expect the exact opposite because again and again people who are apparently alien get revealed as human all too human and that even includes balloons by the way so in bitter blooms the female temptress character Morgan eluding to Morgan la Fey she's apparently an offworlder at the start whether that's just a human from another planet or some kind of other species or we wonder if maybe she's an immortal or something very long-lived alien and it's in there just one line but it's revealed to us an inclusion a story that no she's a local native of that planet because she says the protagonist I wanted you to believe this was real she presents with these loose I wanted you to believe this is real the same way I thought it was real when I when I first came here and it's clear from that line that she's a local person she's from that planet who somehow took over that spaceship and can't use it anymore but his spaceship can no longer leave the planet whether that's because the person immediately before her was a true alien shook it over or perhaps you replaced her she's the next in a succession of local peasant girls who somehow took over the spaceship in this medieval world but the point is if we're trying to pin down a pattern or a thematic approach here the thematic approach again and again in bitter blooms in seven times never come an and absolutely explicitly not as a matter of subtext in song for liya is that he presents us with seemingly alien and seemingly magical groups that turn out to be human not just human biologically you know human rather than aliens but they turn to be human in their psychology in their motivations in the explanation for the mystery explaining why their society is so different from ours in every single case all of them the purpose of this trope is a condemnation of religion religion in general but specifically above all else the role of the Catholic Church in forcing the regression of modern Western society so yes it's faith in religion in general in A Song of Ice and Fire something that could apply to Islam or you know theory could be applied to Hinduism but yes clearly above all else that's the thematic focus and the political purpose and I can't even say there's a link from thousand worlds to some of us and fire this way it is the same theme it is the same group of the author's tricks with absolutely the same message for the reader to pick up on in seven times never kill men that same theme is played with but in a manner that is so subtle you can miss it but what do they have in common in both a song for liya and seven times never kill man very very clearly the reason for the regression is religion period oh they're different science fiction religions both involving I guess something like telepathy I don't want to get do too much detail in seven times never come man there is a religion that provides this alien species who are again really secretly developed human beings provides them with peace order good government they have no war as far as we know nobody is starving but they have a very simple utilitarian culture they never achieve the great things that humanity achieves instead they've progressed into these kind of simple-minded you know culture and also even there the reproduction is is controlled by this religion there are sexual urges they don't overpopulate they don't have problems resulting from from overpopulation they live in in an unnatural balance with nature okay in a song for liya very different scenario because the relationship between the the religion and the believers is predatory that the the God in quotation marks this religion actually does devour the believers when they're about fifty years of age and it's explicitly stated in the text again this is not subtext not interpretation it's explicitly stated in the text that they have no war and virtually no crime they have very little crime very little murder but it's said almost jokingly they have a 100 percent suicide rate that everyone in the culture aspires to at some point after 40 or of age normal around 50 years of age to give themselves over to this religion so both are very clearly toying with the same horror anti religion philosophy that he espouses now there are other science fiction writers who are seriously interested in this I have not read it at all but the Golden Compass series the Golden Compass is a series of books and the first part was made into a movie I saw that movie I wasn't paying that much attention I was my girlfriend at the time was paying a lot of attention to me I was literally off the couch with my girlfriend with that movie play it's a long time ago doubt but oh by what I was kind of trying to follow the movie because the one thing that was interesting there was oh here's a science fiction story that is really seriously denouncing the Catholic Church the role the Catholic Church in the history of Europe now likewise I do think we can say that one of the major themes were George in these thousand world books and to some extent in Game of Thrones but less so in Game of Thrones than in those stories of his measured thousand world George does have this view that the significance of the Catholic Church in medieval Europe was the regression of civilization was the that civilization devolved in that period as interesting this this features and I think all of his political and moral and religious teacher thinking George you guys may have already noticed I don't in general like to make predictions about the book I just think it's not a great use of our time and intellect in offering this kind of analysis however I'll poke in here a lot of people would like to forget that they made videos or wrote articles interpreting the text as if the direction the story was going in was that Stannis would save the day that the religion of Stannis this bloodthirsty monotheistic religion that burns people at the stake was going to be the savior for Westeros to some extent and if you've read these thousand world's books that so clearly have this very very strong anti religion message anti medieval Catholic message especially you have to know that is not possible for our author the progress of the TV show has left all of us wondering what is going to happen with Stannis's plotline we have no idea really what happens next with Stannis in the year 2017 as things stand however it is completely impossible that the moral of the story is that people should rally around the religion that the author quite literally demonized this and that his whole corpus of works prior to a Song of Ice and Fire makes makes very clear the moral this story can't be that for everyone to support Stannis and his monotheistic religion as the answer on the contrary it seems inevitable that just like a song for Leah he's going to tell us that religion is bad and wrong and evil even when it really can offer you happiness even when it really does have magic even in these impossible hypothetical science fiction scenarios even even when religion actually does offer you an afterlife and actually does offer you happiness in this life which is what we see in a self-reliant still he wants to argue that religion is evil and in parallel to that in seven times never kill man even if religion could offer peace and harmony for all society which it doesn't in our world in the real world doesn't at all but he creates a science fiction world where it actually offers peace and harmony still religion is bad and wrong and evil still it leads to this regression devolution mental deadening of man and you know the regression of human beings to something more despicable than an ape that that's again that's not subtle those are two stories that come down so heavily on that side so whatever the final commentary isn't on religion these books we've already seen it with the religion the seven the religion the seven started out into the novel seeming so harmless and charming it's not harmless it's terrifying the danger that's lurking there in belief is shown to us by the point where the Atman novels now the fact that no you know we may see it earlier on from the perspective of Sansa Stark as just so many charming songs and what-have-you her education around fireside yeah well there are a lot of things that teenage girls don't know and don't want to know the organized religion and what aspects of human nature it exploits and then we get to see that when the streets of King's Landing are running red with blood you have this major religious uprising and the whole you know bizarre plot between Cersei Lannister and the new head of the faith uh we've already seen that play out with the religion to seven I think it's quite likely we will see a similar subversion of you know the red god of Stannis is religion and quite possibly of every other religion storyline will get this same harsh treatment if we're going to look at Georgia's pass work as a predictor of what he's going to do in his present future work and to some of you other YouTube channels who actually had videos up arguing that Stannis is going to be the one true king and we're going to resolve the plot I'm laughing at you you know who you are Darrell I think he subscribes to the view that Athens in Rome had this very very high level of civilization before Christianity and that all of civilization progressed and devolved and people in effect became stupider and the quality of life declined and so on everything became more brutal and simplistic under the influence of what was for centuries an incredibly powerful form of Christianity that dominated the European mind economy soul what have you now it's interesting I do not believe in the theory of devolution in this sense I think it's an appealing kind of cultural justification that many people subscribe to and I've met many people with PhDs who care about this issue passionately and webside with mystery of Asia too in a very different way by the way we absolutely if you look at Sri Lanka you look at the apogee of Sri Lankan civilization and then a period of decline and devolution afterwards there are many different civilizations around the world that had a period of self evident greatness and it's self evident frankly because of architecture in most cases there's great architecture great stone temples Buddhist temples or you know in Athens great monuments left in stone or in Egypt and then you have a presumed Dark Age following after words of decline devolution what have you now there is one professor in particular at University of Victoria who I met and spoke to face to face a couple times and he has a PhD in ancient Greece and Rome you know but he does both classics but he really believed that ancient Athens was paradise and I had done enough reading I've read basically all the classics I've read Aristotle and Plato and Thucydides and Herodotus you know it's not my expertise do I have read heavily in that you know upset as I was guys like yeah well I mean I see why you feel that way but oh and he was so deep this professor he was so deep into this illusion of the lost greatness of Athens that you know he refused to accept even that slavery was a problem and except there any trenchant lead offending oh no no that's all a misunderstanding you know you have to look at this particular paragraph from Arizona know this later he was really claiming that the slaves had a good quality of life and that slavery wasn't like that at all yeah and he was really really a deep believer and he actually claimed I saw him saying this in class he claims that in ancient Athens people had a higher quality of life than we have today ridiculous he was basing this on on archaeological remains of the houses people lived in like the size and quality of housing it was normal and I'm like aha you know what else is really great is soap you know doesn't really great is not dying of cholera but I mean this professor was really really deep into this to my mind science fiction view of Athens in Rome as having achieved it's fantastically high quality of life and levels situated civilization and then the Catholic period seems like this tremendous decline now I've already for shouted my view of this is not is that it's not true at all it's very easy for me to see how people construct that narrative in their own minds for one thing the narrowness of just looking at the most grandiose city block of Athens just looking at the most privileged class in the most privileged city effect in that period of history is already misleading right yeah well how was life in in what would later become Prague in this same theory how was life in what would later become the Czech Republic during this period ends do you know when you look at this when you expand in terms of the social classes you're considering looking at the slaves and not just the aristocrats looking at many cities not just one looking at the countryside the sense of the regression really changes now of course I also I mean I share you know George RR Martin's sentiment that it's very regretful it is it is something to be regretted the European civilization declined in this period of piety and piety in a religion that I despise I mean I think that when you pray you're talking to yourself I think the Catholic God does not exist and that many of the things that Catholic Chur did both in the name of Empire and in name social order are frankly evil sure and I would have preferred if during the Dark Ages it can imagine how much better it would have been if instead Europe had been conquered by tera vaada Buddhists Buddhism is not a perfect relationship and stretch the imagination it definitely has its own its own problems but in terms of sexual freedom intellectual freedom personal responsibility and indeed ethical issues like vegetarianism the treatment of animals indeed the attitude towards war the attitude towards torture torture is a huge feature of Catholic society but again torture was a huge feature of Roman society ancient Rome look at the protocol for torture in Rome they would torture you before you even questioned you were tortured not nun even to prove you were guilty you were tortured prior to questioning at the first stage there was an initial round of torture before we even talked to you so anyway um and uh whether you were beaten with steel or wood in that first round of torture was actually determined by your social class player placed in that social hierarchy so if you were a man of high standing and high education you could request to be beaten with wooden rods instead of steal nice bunch of guys anyway I ate ancient rope pardon me ancient Roman each an acid is definitely their own sense of barbarity so just say broadly speaking George RR Martin's subscription to a kind of post-apocalyptic view of you know the lost grandeur of a prior civilization very clearly a huge theme in the Thousand worlds book series and a significant theme in a Song of Ice and Fire a significant theme the Preston Jacobs has expanded on considerably this serves kind of two or three functions one very clearly in thousand worlds less so and so as fire it's part of his depiction of religion as evil keep it at that really as part of his evaluation of evil and as part of his evaluation of medieval society as such um I'd also say it serves a very peculiar political function throughout you know what does it mean to the people of Sri Lanka that they think of themselves as living in the aftermath of a kind of national failure that they look back on these beautiful stone monuments and which are fabulous by the way I mean genuinely the ancient monuments of Sri Lanka are much more beautiful and much more impressive than anything I ever saw in Europe I've seen a lot of ancient monuments in Europe really they have these fabulous fabulous remnants both Buddhist and just aristocratic just you know palaces for the aristocrats how how does it shape their national consciousness indeed their sense of ethnic nationalism even their sense of racism to look at themselves as the children of a once great civilization that laughs into decadence that's that's a powerful powerful historical negative historico narrative the cheeks how people see themselves shapes how they see other nations and indeed shapes how they see the role of religious ideology and the political ideology in their history and I mean likewise you know I do think that George is setting us up for some payoff in that respect whether it's a commentary on the politics of the real world or just a commentary on the politics of Westeros president Jacobs has certainly drawn attention to some incredibly subtle strands you know in the sense that there's a lost civilization of Valyria but even the sense there's a lost civilization of Crowe Ain the sense that there's a lost civilization of the Iron Islands you know they're all these fundamentally conservative backward looking nation-states the Iron Islands is absurd but it's very sincere those people see themselves trying to get back to the old way and there's several different versions the old way that's the kind of complexity built into this world right several different competing visions of what their lost glory was supposed to be and how they're going to recapture it the sense of political leaders now being in the shadow of a once great civilization that they they have to resume certainly a major major theme and one that it's a rare case when I can say I really do not sympathize with George's approach actually actually I'm hostile to that reading of you know modern Western civilization or real Medieval and Renaissance history Kay wrapping it up I covered maybe three major topics in this video let's ask the question do any of these really matter third things first yes this issue of the lost greatness of a past civilization really matters it's huge and you see it even in the drama surrounding the faith of the seven in the capital city and this notion of them trying to get back to their roots and try to revive something for the past I think if you made a flowchart of all the players in the game where we're at right now in the novels how many of them are fundamentally backward-looking I mean they're already in the dark ages and they just want to make it darker they're not looking forward to something progressive and positive in the future that's better they're looking back to a past historical appeal again west hurts the islands or the faith of the seven in the capital city this sense of a a restoration and chasing after the spirit of the lost greatness of their fallen civilization we see that from so many angles I think there are very very few players that actually have a progressive or forward-looking ideology of any kind now again the exception you can look at someone like Daenerys Targaryen I think everyone okay not everyone the majority of people seem to miss the extent to which the later books are an indictment of Daenerys and we're not shown Daenerys The Liberator or shown Daenerys who as soon as it's convenient as soon as she feels uncomfortable is selling of her own principle she says she can elaborate the slaves and she allows them to be sold back into slavery she makes these terrible compromises she makes the wrong decision at every turn make a flowchart of the decisions Daenerys makes it's like every single one is the wrong decision you know you know teenagers shouldn't be tyrants so at an earlier video but I think it can be questioned of my way we don't know yet is Daenerys actually representing something positive and precedent new or is she offering something regressive because in the at the end of the novel's we have them right now this is recorded in 2017 we don't have the next book yet Daenerys ends by resolving that she's going to go back to her house words to fire and blood I mean okay she makes this resolution when she's uh you know dehydrated and hallucinating in the middle of the desert and you know she's got dissing amoebic dysentery or some other illness like that we don't really know what she's decided at this turning point we have this major turning point it may be that Daenerys decide that her her function is to restore the grandeur of hoster Garion or to restore the grandeur of Valyria we don't know she may now take a fundamentally backward-looking restoration aesthetic I'm trying to get back to that grandeur in part because her one progressive thought the abolition of slavery in the creation of new forms of government which included also in the lesser City she conquered you know before marrying that she tried to set them up with a new form of government you know she said okay I'm going to assign these three people to rule in a triumvirate it's going to be a little bit more democratic and equal and then that collapsed and they had civil war and they ended up with a dictator and then plague broke out you know all of her experiments with new forms of government general oppressive forms of government the smaller cities you conquer those end in failure so maybe she now will basically becoming backward-looking fascistic conquer also we don't know but most of the players in the game most of the civilizations do indeed seem in this way to be trying to restore some sense of lost greatness so does that matter yes it really matters and is Jorge critical of it well he is using it definitely as part of his critique of religion and there is no doubt that as these books have progressed religion has become a greater and greater theme does the theme of devolve humanity matter yes to a massive extent I think basically what we're going to find is that all the non-human species then A Song of Ice and Fire or developed humans you know in a sense the White Walkers are devolved humans kind of we kind of had that revealed already they're not a separate species that evolved humans I think you know the others there are a number of other hominids that basically seem to be devolved humans throughout the book and that is a team he played with throughout the thousand world series in a major way I think it's a minor but significant theme and Song of Ice and Fire and again that's that's maybe a little bit different from Preston Jacobs emphasis on science fiction elements where he doesn't want to believe as any there's any magic but anyway whatever we'll see we'll see if Preston wins is bad when it's all sex I mean if his anti-magic perspective on this the question of revenge as a major moral criterion throughout the books is this really about vengeance is this an indictment of vengeance or is this an indictment of feudalism after my last reread I did basically conclude that the Vengeance centered model that many readers adopt now again the guys at ball leather they really championed that view that this is kind of the ultimate theme overarching these books is a kind of critique of of vengeance and cycle vengeance I find that less convincing [Music] you know I think that would be as simplistic as saying that these books are about justice are they justice is discussed in a non trivial way in a really meaningful way throughout the books but I don't know look at the plotline of Arya Stark is it really about justice I mean how much is this interested in justice and sure I'm still open-minded I feel in a very fundamental way the book the books have a lot to say about feudalism but what is it ultimately that they have to save of feudalism one of the clear themes again this is to my mind kind of a stronger approach than putting emphasis on vengeance is that he's really explaining to you throughout how land ownership and advancement the nature of advancement and land ownership of feudalism force people to constantly engage in petty acts of violence and betrayal and backstabbing and civil war that's very clear to me but I don't think vengeance is the main point there I think the main point is ultimately like to put in economic terms is actually about land ownership the structure of feudalism and the fact that feudalism literally puts people in the position of constantly happy to fight brother against brother because that is the only way to inherit land of you know vassal rebelling against their feudal lord and so on and so forth that there are there are fundamental motivations for violence built into the system because there's no other way to press there's no other way to find advancement so totally and in many cases forget advancement there's often there's no other way to even hold on to the little bit of land that you've got or the little bit of dignity is that you've got a little bit of freedom that you've got or to seek out wealth or even just to avoid starvation and it's a world where definitely as the story progresses there is a there is more and more starvation and now at the end we come back to my first name I guess and that is the really the outstanding and underrated quality of the donkey nag novels I don't really want to say much more about that in this video but I guess people already read a couple of the books before they encountered them they're used to the kind of grandeur and scale and noise of Clash of Kings and then the story and the dunk and egg novel seems small and quiet and you know subtle in its virtues so maybe it's hard to appreciate if it's not actually the first things you've read but if you've passed it up you know take a drink of cold water to clear your palate I really make the effort to appreciate the dunk and egg novels because they they are brilliantly introducing you to the themes and to the world-building and to you know the mechanics of dreams and post Targaryen and their place in Westeros many many of these one of those and and the critique of social hierarchy which is already there in the preface to to Game of Thrones the preface being thrown beautifully showing the relationship between this young nobleman who's in a position of authority in the Nights Watch even though he doesn't deserve it and this poor downtrodden peasant with his ugly black sword in contrast to the beautiful sword that the young nobleman has you know this extremely expensive store the contrasting their weapons and their attitudes and the poor man has experienced and knows what's going on and the the noble the aristocrat doesn't have that kind of experience but he has gallantry and honor and it's a sense of gallantry and honor that gets him killed that gets them all killed deep and that's all they are in that preface but in the same way those those themes the Upstairs Downstairs themes the the ethic of command and duty and honour and social inequality those themes are think beautifully and brilliantly expressed in the dunk and egg novels in a form that's not yet so big and noisy and magical doesn't have any dragons doesn't really have much magic to speak of and with it's going to draw in readers who think I'm too cool to read a fantasy novel that has dragons in it and a lot of us who are fans of the books today we thought that at some point why would I read a novel of a that has dragons in it you know forget that huh man all right guys that's enough for this video I am thinking about sitting down with my girlfriend when the new season the TV show comes out me and my girlfriend sitting down face-to-face and talking about reacting to the show my girlfriend knows the books to a far lesser extent that I do so she would have more of an disrespected to be asking questions that somebody doesn't know the books will would ask and you know I'm a jaded book reader who feels that he already knows too much to really appreciate the TV show like I don't even have a love/hate relationship with the TV show now I basically just hate the TV show I'm sure a lot of you feel that way