#hobaw

The day looked to be a rare one, crisp and clear and bright. Braavos only had three kinds of weather; fog was bad, rain was worse, and freezing rain was worst. But every so often would come a morning when the dawn broke pink and blue and the air was sharp and salty. Those were the days that Cat loved best.

First of all, I really love this description of Braavosi weather but it also contains some references to Arya’s past. Pink and blue are the colors of house Bolton and house Arryn respectively, and the first claims to have ‘Arya’ while Sansa, Arya’s sister is in the Arryn castle. And george probably inserted salty cuz of her previous moniker.

Later, we get these two lines with some space in between:

The Long Canal took Brusco's boat beneath the green copper domes of the Palace of Truth and the tall square towers of the Prestayns and Antaryons before passing under the immense grey arches of the sweetwater river to the district known as Silty Town, where the buildings were smaller and less grand.

I know the bookseller Lotho Lornel sleeps in the house of Tradesman-Captain Moredo Prestayn whenever the honorable tradesman-captain is away on a voyage, and moves out whenever the Vixen comes home.

This could have some importance in future Braavos plots, the current Sealord is an Antaryon, so maybe this was a hint that the next would be a Prestayn? Also the kindly man offered to give Arya passage back to Westeros on one of their ships before.

The septon who sometimes marries the Sailors to the Sailor’s wife is called Eustace, wonder if George remembered that when he made Septon Eustace.

You will be no one's daughter, no one's wife, no one's mother. Your name will be a lie, and the very face you wear will not be your own.

I rather hope Missandei will have a more important role to play than simply dying and availing her face to a would-be assassin. In my opinion, she is a lot more complex than just being a loyal little scribe.

I would also suspect that Arya stabbing Dany in her sleep is a rather anti-climactic ending. There's no sense of confrontation or tragedy to it. She's a bit more prominent than a character like Pate of Oldtown.

If (big if) Arya uses those skills to end Dany, GRRM would play it up as a double tragedy. The HOBAW is a corrupt organisation, a money-making amoral death factory, and they send children to do their murders. Arya using those skills, including the faces, would be a concession to evil, it would give justification to her having been trained there to murder efficiently on command. It would have to happen in a way that hurts Arya, too, that reverses part of her arc or came at great cost to herself, perhaps by wearing the face of someone she herself cared about. Something that shows that this way was a horrible way, made necessary only by the even worse alternative of letting Dany live.

Let’s start with this quote from the kindly man:

Then you do not belong here. Death holds no sweetness in this house. We are not warriors, nor soldiers, nor swaggering bravos puffed up with pride. We do not kill to serve some lord, to fatten our purses, to stroke our vanity. We never give the gift to please ourselves. Nor do we choose the ones we kill. We are but servants of the God of Many Faces.

The bold part is very similar to the NWs ethos about guarding and serving the realm not some lord.

She seated herself in a weirwood chair with a face of ebony.

Anyone know of some good analyses of what the weirwood-ebony duology means? I think it shows up in Harrenhal or a Ned chapter in agot too. Of course Jon also takes his oath in front of a weirwood, but unlike Jon who went from being alone to having a bunch of friends, Arya has gone from starting her journey with a big pack to basically being alone by herself.

The old man's hands were the worst thing about him, Cat decided the next day, as she watched him from behind her barrow. His fingers were long and bony, always moving, scratching at his beard, tugging at an ear, drumming on a table, twitching, twitching, twitching. He has hands like two white spiders. The more she watched his hands, the more she came to hate them.

Similar to how the chapter where Jon takes his oath ends with a death, so does this one, and here we have an indirect reference to the others through their white spiders even though Arya doesn’t even know they exist

He never looked at the coins. Instead he bit them, always on the left side of his mouth, where he still had all his teeth

Kind of a subtle clue to the insurer dude’s evilness considering that the left side is often associated with evil in many cultures (much to the detriment of lefties like me lol)

The facetaking is where Arya finally starts her initiation and similar to how Jon and Sam and the other non criminals are told they can leave, so the kindly man tells her it’s not too late:

"Do they frighten you, child?" asked the kindly man. "It is not too late for you to leave us. Is this truly what you want?"

And similar to Jon thinking he has nowhere to go, so thinks Arya.

Then this:

Hands closed around her throat, hard as stone, choking her. Her own hands shot up to claw at the arms of her attacker, but there was no one there. A terrible sense of fear filled her, and she heard a noise, a hideous crunching noise, accompanied by blinding pain. A face floated in front of her, fat, bearded, brutal, his mouth twisted with rage.

You know who else was fat and bearded and could be brutal when in a rage? Robert who’d probably have wanted to kill Jon if he knew bout RLJ

That was some other girl. I am no one, and my only brothers wear robes of black and white.

Similarly, Jon reminds himself that his only brothers wear cloaks of black

“She asked the gift for herself, not for her father."

You should have killed him.

He must have read her thoughts. "Death came for him in the end, as it comes for all men. As it must come for a certain man upon the morrow." He lifted up the lamp. "We are done here."

I feel like this thought process of Arya’s is definitely a direct parallel to Jon’s feelings about the NW allying with Craster which I think’s further supported by this

She saw old faces and young faces, pale faces and dark faces, smooth faces and wrinkled faces, freckled faces and scarred faces, handsome faces and homely faces, men and women, boys and girls, even babes,

And finally she gets her cloak robe and starts her watch becomes an acolyte in the end of the chapter:

They brought a robe for her as well, the soft thick robe of an acolyte, black upon one side and white upon the other. "Wear this when you are here," the priest said, "but know that you shall have little need of it for the present. On the morrow you will go to Izembaro to begin your first apprenticeship. Take what clothes you will from the vaults below. The city watch is looking for a certain ugly girl, known to frequent the Purple Harbor, so best you have a new face as well." He cupped her chin, turned her head this way and that, nodded. "A pretty one this time, I think. As pretty as your own. Who are you, child?"

“No one," she replied.

🤣🤣🤣 how I would dress the acolytes of the HoBaW if I had no restaint - part 1

An acient, rich and powerfull order deserve fancy uniformes. Who cares for what is pratic?! Not me 😈

It seems to me that the fandom often sees the FM as glorified mercenaries, but they are first and foremost a religious order. Of course they will have their interests, but I believe most of their contracts are accepted or not depending on how they relate to their theology.

Let me explain: let's look at the story of the Waif, regardless of whether it is the truth or not, it can tell us a lot about the type of payment that is requested by the order.

Her stepmother wants the Waif dead so that her child can inherit. So the stepmother goes to the FMs and they ask for her child as payment. She refuses. The Waif's father finds out what his wife has done and so he goes to the FMs. The father gives his daughter to HoBaW (along with money) in exchange for the death of his wife.

The reason his sacrifice is accepted and the stepmother's is not is that the exchange of life and death must be of equal value. They don't kill your stepdaughter if you're not willing to pay with your child's life. It is not a simple monetary exchange, it is a religious sacrifice. In this case a death in exchange for a life of service (valar morghulis, valar dohaeris).

The story of the second FM is similar. He wanted his master's death and paid for it by sacrificing his own life at the service of the Many-Faced-God.

Even the one between Jaqen and Arya is a balanced exchange, not mercenary: three lives for three lives.

Then there are cases in which we don't know what the sacrifice/payment required was, such as that of the insurance man.

There is also the case of Euron, which is not confirmed. The theory says that Euron gave a dragon egg for King Balon's death. This is a very high price: Mormont claims that the sale of Dany's eggs could make her a wealthy woman for the rest of her life. If this happened it means that the faceless men demanded one of the most precious things that Euron possessed as payment. Maybe even forcing him to change his plans if he intended to try to hatch the egg.

The only character who refers to FMs in monetary terms is Baelish. He argues that hiring a faceless man costs twice as much as an entire mercenary army, and that's the price for a merchant's death, who knows what they might ask for Daenerys Targaryen's life.

But this is not true, we know that there is no similar tariff, the 'price' is always different and must be negotiated with the FMs. And it seems that they always tend to ask for the maximum that the client is able to offer.

It may be that Baelish has a somewhat distorted idea of how FM works. He is the only Westrosi who seems to be familiar with them, probably because his family is from Braavos. But by now they have lived on the Westeros for more than three generations so it is possible that the cultural context surrounding the HoBaW is lost on Petyr.

Do you agree with this view or you are more on the expensive hitmen train? Are there any examples from the FM mission in the books that can tell us more about their philosophy?

Here are some cool lore videos that were made as special content for the show. They are only semi-canonical, but they are interesting, I recommend them:

The Facelessmen narrated by Tycho Nestoris

The Many-Faced-God narrated by Jaqen H'ghar