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A Read of Ice and Fire: A Dance with Dragons, Part 9

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A Read of Ice and Fire: A Dance with Dragons, Part 9

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A Read of Ice and Fire: A Dance with Dragons, Part 9

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Published on February 5, 2015

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Welcome back to A Read of Ice and Fire! Please join me as I read and react, for the very first time, to George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire.

Today’s entry is Part 9 of A Dance With Dragons, in which we cover Chapter 14 (“Tyrion”).

Previous entries are located in the Index. The only spoilers in the post itself will be for the actual chapters covered and for the chapters previous to them. As for the comments, please note that the Powers That Be have provided you a lovely spoiler thread here on Tor.com. Any spoileriffic discussion should go there, where I won’t see it. Non-spoiler comments go below, in the comments to the post itself.

And now, the post!

Chapter 14: Tyrion

What Happens
Griff has cut Tyrion off from his wine, and Tyrion has suffered days of the shakes as a result. He rises before dawn and speaks to Griff, who is annoyed that the owners of the Shy Maid, Yandry and Ysilla, refuse to travel by night as well as by day. Tyrion thinks that Griff reminds him of Bronn, but without the sense of humor. Griff goes to bed, and Septa Lemore comes out for her bath in the river. Tyrion lusts after her openly, which does not seem to faze her, only amuse her. Young Griff and Duck practice swords after breakfast, which ends with Young Griff knocking Duck into the river.

Tyrion jests at Duck for this, and Duck throws him in the river in retaliation. Tyrion tells him he is not the first to try drowning him, and turns a cartwheel to amuse them. He tells all manner of lies about his upbringing. He remembers that it was his uncle who taught him tumbling, and how Tyrion had loved it until his father returned and put an end to it. He dresses in the makeshift motley Lemore had helped him make, and takes pleasure in the thought of how horrified his father would be if he could see him in it.

He writes for a while on dragonlore, wishing for various historical accounts that have been lost or destroyed or hidden away, and later joins Young Griff for lessons with Haldon Halfmaester, learning the language and history of the Free Cities and Volantis in particular. After Young Griff leaves, Tyrion and Haldon play cyvasse, at which Tyrion has been losing badly. He tells Haldon this is obviously Haldon’s fault for teaching him badly, and Haldon laughs and comments he will be sad when the pirates cut “Yollo’s” throat. Tyrion comments he has yet to see a glimpse of these legendary pirates.

He offers a wager on the game, with “secrets” as the stakes. Haldon declares that the day Yollo beats him will be “the day turtles crawl out my arse.” After, he goes on deck; Duck asks where Haldon is, and Tyrion tells him he is in discomfort, as “there are turtles crawling out of his arse.” He thinks of Tysha and wonders where whores go, and whether she might have ended up in Volantis. He wishes he could find her and apologize for what happened and go back and live with her in their cottage.

They pass the ruins of a city Tyrion realizes was Nymeria’s, and Lemore tells him about the vastness of the river once all its tributaries have joined it. A giant turtle surfaces from the river before the boat and bellows a deafening roar. Ysilla weeps and says they are blessed.

“It was him,” cried Yandry. “The Old Man of the River.”

And why not? Tyrion grinned. Gods and wonders always appear, to attend the birth of kings.

Commentary
Oh, good, MORE MYSTERY. Just what this story needed.

Sooo, apparently whatever secret Tyrion conned out of Haldon led to… a king being born? Metaphorically, I assume, since I’m pretty sure it would have been mentioned if there had been a woman in labor on board the ship. And… yeah, I don’t know what that means.

Unless he’s just talking about how they’re getting Young Griff all edumacated and king-ready, the better to implement the plan that may only exist in my head about having Junior woo and marry Dany? Which, okay I guess, but I dunno, that seems a little weird, especially considering how pleased Tyrion seems to be about his thought. Because, yeah, he’s part of the Griff crew (ugh), but I wouldn’t have thought he was that invested in seeing Junior marry himself into a crown.

So it probably means something else, but what that is, I have no idea. Brain no worky today.

But in the meantime, this was a nice slice-of-life-y chapter, where nothing particularly terrible happened to anyone and the snappy banter was plentiful and Tyrion’s self-loathing was actually at something of a low ebb, at least comparatively. I may not like Griff’s name, or his personality (or rather the lack of it, so far), but I think he did a very good thing in forcing Tyrion to dry out. Though I am fairly certain Tyrion himself emphatically disagrees.

“You have a gift for making men smile,” Septa Lemore told Tyrion as he was drying off his toes. “You should thank the Father Above. He gives gifts to all his children.”

“He does,” he agreed pleasantly. And when I die, please let them bury with me a crossbow, so I can thank the Father Above for his gifts the same way I thanked the father below.

Well, I said Tyrion’s angst was at a comparatively low ebb. I think an actual angst-free Tyrion is a mathematical impossibility. But I have to say, he’s one of the rather few characters I’ve come across who have managed to make crushingly depressing emotional and physical trauma genuinely amusing to read about. It’s sometimes a little alarming how much shit I will put up with as a reader if it comes with witty banter. Which I guess in a weird way may have been Lemore’s point?

But where did this Lemore person come from, anyway? Why is she there? I mean, apparently she’s there to teach Mini-Griff about The Lawd, but that seems sort of a skimpy job description. I’m betting there’s more to her than it seems, but then, that observation applies to nearly everyone on the ship, Tyrion included.

I know that Tyrion is sort of happy about the fool’s role he’s apparently going to play, but it made me sad when I understood that it was motley they were putting on him. Tyrion deserves more than to be a clown. But then, it seems to mean Tyrion will get to return to something he loved as a child, so that’s good, I guess? (Although, I’m betting tumbling as a six-year-old was a hell of a lot easier than it will be for him now. Aging and gymnastics are mutually opposing activities.)

I can’t remember if we’ve been introduced to cyvasse before (we probably have), but from the description it sounds kind of hilariously D&D-like. A small kind of shoutout to his fans, perhaps, a large percentage of whom are quite likely to be into tabletop games?

“And what lesson can we draw from Volantene history?”

“If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.”

Tyrion could not help but laugh.

I LOL’d too, honestly. Though Dany is currently demonstrating that having dragons is hardly a guarantee of global domination, or even regional domination. But yeah, as a general rule I think they’d be very handy for that particular endeavor. Especially in a world that probably hasn’t invented surface-to-air missiles just yet.

Also, turtles! Turtles are awesome. Even the mean bitey ones. The only thing more awesome than turtles is giant turtles.

I had no trouble whatsoever accepting that a giant turtle could have great symbolic import either, because that is apparently A Thing. Which I already knew because of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels and also because of the Avatar: The Last Airbender TV series (both of which are awesome things you should immediately consume if you haven’t already), but apparently neither of them were just pulling the cosmic significance of turtles out of nowhere. Which is pretty cool.

Also also, the word “turtle” has now ceased to have any meaning whatsoever in my brain. Turtle turtle turtle turtleturtle


Aaaaand this is where I stop. See y’all next week!

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Leigh Butler

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o.m.
10 years ago

I don’t think I tell spoilers if I say that I think of Cyvasse as chess with variable starting positions …

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10 years ago

The turtle moves!

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DougL
10 years ago

I can’t wait until this series is over and Leigh is free to jump into a full discussion with the community like back on the newsgroup. Ah well.

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10 years ago

My thought at this point in time, was that because of what Tyrion learned, he thought he’d be able to circumvent Griff’s plan to make Young Griff a king by wooing Dany, and supplant himself somehow. That Tyrion is the king being birthed.

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Subbak
10 years ago

Cyvasse has been mentionned in the Dorne chapters of the previous book. It’s basically this universe’s chess, like Stones in Wheel of Time or Thud in Discworld.

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Black Dread
10 years ago

@1 – Yes, I always imagine a cross between chess and Stratego.

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Cass314
10 years ago

Leigh, Cyvasse is what Doran and Arianne were playing in the last book.

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tg12
10 years ago

Re: Turtles, and firmly in the category of “meta”, I think it’s also pretty well documented that GRRM has a long-standing love of turtles: for instance, there’s his character contribution to the Wild Cards series, “The Great and Powerful Turtle”; and in recent years, he’s always photographed at posh events (and sometimes less posh ones as well) with that bit of turquoise-and-silver turtle jewelry that he has…

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10 years ago

Tyrion comes back to full form in this chapter, even if he is in miserable withdrawal. We get so many great Tyrion quotes here, including “only if we pray in the fahion of the Summer Isles”, “Being randy is the next best thing to being drunk”, “I missed the ridgeback” I was busy watching the naked woman , and of course the line Leigh quoted about thanking the Father Above with a crossbow.
I can’t say much about Tyrion’s thoughts regarding the “birth of kings”. I’ll just say that I read it as relating to whatever the secret was that he learned from Halfmaester. Beyond that, I guess we just have to wait and see…
A lot of the background slices of life in this chapter come from the Dorne chapters in last book. We encountered Cyvasse in Dorne, where Princess Myrcella had learned to play it and played against her betrothed Trystane. Later, when Arianne was imprisoned, her father left her a board, which she didn’t use since she had no one to play with, and he counseled her to try playing against herself to test her mind. Cyvasse itself is from the Free Cities, but the Rhoyne is still linked to Dorne, since they are descended from Nymeria and her people, who fled this river that Tyrion is now riding down. And the Old Man of the River was mentioned in AFFC, as well, when Arys Oakheart said “I had heard the Dornish worshipped some turtle god” (not an exact quote).

stevenhalter
10 years ago

Chapter 14 – Tyrion:Kind of a lazy journey on the river chapter with some info dumping inserted along the way. I’d really like to see the bloody book on dragons in the Citadel. Maybe Sam will someday. Tyrion continues to be horny but not drunken and that is probably a fine exchange.
Young Griff does seem to be getting a lot of education for a common sellsword.
I’m not really sure what to make of the cryptic
Gods and wonders always appear, to attend the birth of kings.

Could be an metaphor, but it is probably related to whatever secret Tyrion learned from Haldon.

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AeronaGreenjoy
10 years ago

Agreed; this is a delightfully witty, idyllic, and informative chapter. I very rarely envy ASOIAF characters, but on this wintry day, I want to be on that boat in a swimmably-warm river amid turtles (yaaaay I heart turtles!!) and wading birds and lessons and biscuits. I especially like Lemore’s poetic description of all the Rhoyne’s “daughter” tributaries. Though it was a bit insensitive of her to tell Tyrion he should “glory” in his body as a gift from the gods.

Also, Discworld is The Best and A:TLA is an exceptional show.

Kyle: “Does anyone else feel like these Tyrion chapters were written by Mark Twain? Polin’ down the river…” *hand motions*

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Sophist
10 years ago

If it’s any consolation, nobody knows who Septa Lemore is or if there’s some hidden reason why she’s there. Lots of speculation, but I won’t mention that unless you want it.

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10 years ago

Where does a Volantis Turtle keep their Donkey?

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10 years ago

Turtles all the way down.

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10 years ago

Mmm, I forgot about Tyrion’s thought and the secrets he learned.

I also assumed cyvasse was a vaguely chess-like game. Which is kind of a trope in and of itself in fantasy worlds :)

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Lyanna Mormont
10 years ago

Ah, the chapter where Tyrion sobers up and becomes a fool-slash-librarian. I want those books. I seriously want those books, all of them, but especially I want anything written by Septon Barth.

Also, Tyrion, please stop thinking of Tysha and “where whores go” in the same sentence. She wasn’t a whore. Tywin wasn’t giving you some secret clue, he was just insulting her.

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10 years ago

No love for Gamera?

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10 years ago

Secret ? Query what Griff will have to use as a sales pitch if he gets to Meereen. Likely to be relevant then.

Cyvasse? I like the chess plus stratego description. Not D and D, I think.

Septa Lemore is fascinating. Trusted friend of Griff or (dun dun) something more??? (Such as Griff’s mother? Someone else’s mother?)

Young Griff is being impressively trained. What up with that? (dun dun).

Love the general backstory about Essos we are getting along the river trip, including how big the Rhoyne is compared to Westeros rivers. Opens up the story quite a bit.

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10 years ago

Hm. I’m not sure that because Tyrion is grinning he is necessarily happy about the “birth of kings”.

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lfb
10 years ago

@3 – Methinks you’ll be waiting a while….

@5 – I always thought of it as more like Go, myself.

@8 – Maybe it’s a nod to how long its taking to finish the books?

@14 – Is it? Or is this just the Turtle on the edge?

@19 – I too had that same thought. We shall see…

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lfb
10 years ago

On second thought, maybe it IS just turtles all the way down… I get confused.

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10 years ago

I’d like to point out that George RR Martin was actively involved in organized chess in his youth as a player and tournament director. His short story Unsound Variations is about a chess match between two college chess teams: University of Chicago vs. Northwest University with fantastic elements added. Also, some descriptions of cyvasse play in these books contain easter eggs for chess-initiated.

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Branded
10 years ago

@16: Yeah, I’m annoyed that Tyrion seems to treat his Father’s cruel quip as some kind of prophecy!

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10 years ago

On GRRM’s love of turtles, he also used to have them as pets when he was a kid. He named those turtles and made up stories about them, involving knights and princesses and stuff. One of those turtles was called Barristan the Bold, for example.

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10 years ago

Tywin wasn’t giving you some secret clue, he was just insulting her.

Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? The maddening thing about it is the stretch. I mean, Tyrion’s a smart guy. He knows that Tywin was really saying “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” So why does Tyrion make it such a mantra for sooooo friggin long? Ok, he’s in shock. Ok, he goes into a combination of depression, drunken stupor. Ok, he’s got as fine a sense of irony as anybody in the books. But do you really want me to believe that he would hang onto those words for THAT long? You’re asking a lot of me. It’s remotely possible, I’ll give you that. I’ve never been Tyrion, and I’ve never been through anything like what he’s been through. But still, it’s a stretch.

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Annara Snow
10 years ago

@26: Maybe he desperately wants to think it’s some secret clue, because he has no way to know or even try looking where she is. Otherwise, it’s really hard to understand. If he were in his right mind, he would no doubt realize it was nothing more than a dismissive insult – just as he knew it was when he first heard it and reacted by killing Tywin, rather than asking him to tell him more.

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10 years ago

Tyrion has a brilliant mind and is always spinning. I think he believes that if he keeps working at it, he can puzzle out what might have happened to Tysha. His father had his castellan turn her out as a whore, so Tyrion is trying to figure out what would have happened to her next. She wouldn’t still be in the area, since lots of people know who she is, and believe she is a whore. Where do “whores” go? Where would she end up?

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10 years ago

@27 – great name!!

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NickH
10 years ago

My reading of “wherever whores go” is that while, of course, Tyrion knows perfectly well that those words simply mean “I don’t care” and Tysha is probably forever lost for him, he is still absurdly hoping to meet her, so in his dreams he kind of likes imagining that there might be some hidden clue.

Andrada
Andrada
10 years ago

@12 that’s a spoiler (roll over for the reason)

You’re basically telling her she won’t find out who Lemore is throughout this book.

Andrada
Andrada
10 years ago

Moderators, whiting out text doesn’t work, so why do we even have the option?

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10 years ago

@31: Presumably because you can by taking the black.

Edit: Quick reply worked fine with whiting out. Previewing the comment, on the other hand, gets rid of the colour, so you have to post it directly (or re-edit in the preview).

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zaldar
10 years ago

I hope I am doing this right but if not someone else please white it out for me. It is high fantasy trope so we are possibly being set up here but I always though Tyrion found out here about Johns parentage.
Moderator note: please note that the spoiler thread is open for this type of discussion.

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10 years ago

There have been a bunch of attempts to make a playable Cyvasse. /r/ASOIAF has an online version http://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2vhgh0/no_spoilers_cyvasse_is_complete_and_online/

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10 years ago

and Lemore tells him about the vastness of the river once all its tributaries have joined it.

It is Yandry, not Lemore, who tells “Yollo” about how big Mother Rhoyne is, and how she grows larger as she gathers in her daughters.

Nice of Haldon to sulk in his cabin after getting whupped at cyvasse by Hugor Halfwit.

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10 years ago

Ah, I searched this chapter out … because of the fact that nothing really happened in it.

Seriously though. Sitting in a boat, playing board games, watching turtles, pissing into a river, going for a short swim, flirting with women . . . this seems more like a documentary than anything. Relaxing, yes, but a bit … monotonous. Even less happened here than in Daenerys’s chapters. So give me more Jon or Reek or Davos, anyone.