#unsullied

Kraznys smiled again when he heard that. "Tell the old man that he smells of piss, and needs a stick to hold him up."

"Truly, your worship?"

He poked her with his lash. "No, not truly, are you a girl or a goat, to ask such folly? Say that Unsullied are not men. Say that death means nothing to them, and maiming less than nothing." He stopped before a thickset man who had the look of Lhazar about him and brought his whip up sharply, laying a line of blood across one copper cheek. The eunuch blinked, and stood there, bleeding. "Would you like another?" asked Kraznys.

"If it please your worship."

It was hard to pretend not to understand. Dany laid a hand on Kraznys's arm before he could raise the whip again. "Tell the Good Master that I see how strong his Unsullied are, and how bravely they suffer pain."

Kraznys chuckled when he heard her words in Valyrian. "Tell this ignorant whore of a westerner that courage has nothing to do with it." (A Storm of Swords - Daenerys II)

~

"He will not come," Kraznys said.

"There is a reason. A dragon is no slave." And Dany swept the lash down as hard as she could across the slaver's face. Kraznys screamed and staggered back, the blood running red down his cheeks into his perfumed beard. The harpy's fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash, but she did not pause to contemplate the ruin. "Drogon," she sang out loudly, sweetly, all her fear forgotten. "Dracarys."

The black dragon spread his wings and roared. (A Storm of Swords - Daenerys III)

And the fact that the liberation of the Unsullied takes place in the Plaza of Punishment:

The Plaza of Pride with its great bronze harpy was too small to hold all the Unsullied she had bought. Instead they had been assembled in the Plaza of Punishment, fronting on Astapor's main gate, so they might be marched directly from the city once Daenerys had taken them in hand. There were no bronze statues here; only a wooden platform where rebellious slaves were racked, and flayed, and hanged. "The Good Masters place them so they will be the first thing a new slave sees upon entering the city," Missandei told her as they came to the plaza.

[...]

Then the Plaza of Punishment blew apart into blood and chaos. The Good Masters were shrieking, stumbling, shoving one another aside and tripping over the fringes of their tokars in their haste.

[...]

"Dracarys!" they [the Unsullied] shouted back, the sweetest word she'd ever heard. "Dracarys! Dracarys!" And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire. (A Storm of Swords - Daenerys III)

Their discipline is actually fairly remarkable in pre-professional army times. Couple that with their remarkable defeat of the Dothraki (who stupidly charged upon the thicket again and again), it's unsurprising that, with a little authorial fiat, that they would be esteemed so highly.

If I were a Westerosi commander, I'd pin them with infantry and sweep their flanks. If they formed a ring on high ground, I'd surround them and pelt them with arrows until their formation lost cohesion.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

The Starks. Gods, I hate show Starks so much. They have literally turned into the Lannisters and they can't even see it. Only wanting to trust themselves, their "family" and practically having no allies. Literally just like the Lannisters. Cersei stated only she and Jamie could be trusted and that is no different than the Stark's mentality at the end.

And then there's Sansa. She's the worst of the Starks. She is pretty much what all her stans are like - so jealous of Daenerys. She can't stand the thought of not being queen. And Starks don't do well in the South, but sure let Bran be king, living in the South. And Arya and Jon leave. Make it make sense.

Idk why Dany is seen as such a mad queen when her instincts were right on everything. She knew that the misogyny would win if everyone found out Jon was half Targaryen. And yup. Ofc, everyone would want him because he's a male. Varys admitted it in this ep.

Plus, the North and the 7 kingdoms are xenophobic. We've seen it time and time again at how Northerners looked at Grey Worm and Missandei. Even when Missandei smiled politely at young children. They just stared at her like some thing and walked away from her.

Tyrion and Varys act as if Cersei can be reasoned with. Oh, but "the people." Bitch, Cersei doesn't care about anything other than maintaining power for herself. They knew full well she was just using the people to shield herself from fire and blood. Sure, let's talk to her so she'll release Missandei. And look how it all turned out.

The asshats of Dany's advisors want to "avoid" bloodshed, but they just cause more of it. Because of them an innocent died in chains. Chains she had been freed from.

If Dany had attacked King's Landing back in season 7, everything would have been different. Literally, all that needed to be done was just fly to the Red Keep and get Cersei's ass. Drogon can fucking fly over the city. Be so fucking real. There was no fear of him burning any city down. If there had been any scorpions or whatever to take drogon down, those would be attacked first. Those weapons weren't even anywhere near the people in King's Landing anyway when Dany did attack King's Landing in the show next ep. So, again. No danger to the people at all.

But no. Have to make Dany look so insane for wanting the Iron Throne like every character on the show. Make Dany look insane for rightfully being angry at watching her long time friend die in chains and grieving said loved ones she has lost. Make Dany look insane for being upset at not receiving credit for bringing back dragons after hundreds of years and everyone appluading Jon when SHE was the first dragon rider in hundreds of years. Make Daenerys mad queen because she believes in destiny when it is confimed in show that she IS the Prince that was Promised, destined to fight the white walkers. She who without everyone would have died. Make Dany look insane for not wanting to wait and wanting to attack before her enemies had a chance to strike back. Again, Dany had all the right ideas, but nooo. Her advisors are so "smart" and "right" and self righteous.

23_Tormenta de espadas_Daenerys II

—¿Serán igual de ignorantes todos los cerdos de Poniente? —se quejó—. Todo el mundo sabe que los Inmaculados dominan el arte de la lanza, el escudo y la espada corta. —Dirigió a Dany una amplia sonrisa—. Dile lo que haga falta, esclava, y date prisa. Hace mucho calor. 

«Por fin dice algo que no es mentira.» Una pareja de esclavas situadas a sus espaldas sostenían sobre sus cabezas una marquesina de seda a rayas, pero incluso a la sombra, Dany se sentía mareada, y Kraznys sudaba copiosamente. La Plaza del Orgullo llevaba cociéndose al sol desde el amanecer. Pese a las gruesas sandalias, sentía en los pies la temperatura de los adoquines rojos. Las ondulaciones del calor se alzaban trémulas de ellos y hacían que las pirámides escalonadas de Astapor que rodeaban la plaza, parecieran casi oníricas. 

Prelude: Reports from the East

Early 205 AC

The first reports came from the East in fragments.

Not declarations. Not treaties. Fragments. A Qartheen ship arriving weeks late and half-empty. A Volantene merchant complaining too loudly over wine that the old routes through Slaver’s Bay had become dangerous. A Braavosi factor refusing to write certain names in ink. A Lysene trader lowering his voice before speaking the word no one in King’s Landing liked to say aloud. And beneath all of it, the stranger rumor. Dragons. Not one report said it the same way twice. One captain swore he had seen a shadow pass over the sun outside Meereen, too large for any bird. Another claimed that smoke rose from a pyramid after a woman with silver hair walked out of the flames. A third insisted there were two beasts, not one, circling above the Gulf like living storm clouds with wings.

Most men in King’s Landing laughed at that part. Dragons belonged to old bones, black skulls, dead kings, and stories told by nurses when children were too restless to sleep. Men believed more easily in rebellion, plague, pirates, and profit than in the return of fire made flesh. So the dragon rumors were copied into margins, underlined by nervous clerks, and dismissed by men who preferred the world dead in familiar ways.

Slave trade. In Westeros, men preferred cleaner phrases. Trade disruption. Eastern instability. Market irregularities. Anything but the truth beneath it. By the third raven, the pattern could no longer be ignored.

Astapor had fallen. Then Yunkai. Then Meereen.

The old masters were dead, fled, crucified, or imprisoned. No two reports agreed cleanly on how many had been taken alive and how many had been left nailed beneath the sun, but every account agreed on the shape of it. The men who had made a market of human agony had discovered that the market could answer. Auction blocks had been torn down. Unsullied were no longer sold like livestock. The Gulf of Grief itself seemed to shudder beneath the weight of something new.

The Small Council discussed it once. Only once. Rain struck the windows of the council chamber while the Master of Coin spoke of tariffs and expected losses with the solemn grief of a man personally offended by interrupted profit. The Master of Ships complained about delayed cargoes. The Master of Laws called it regrettable instability.

Brynden Rivers said very little. That was usually when wise men became nervous. Bloodraven sat pale and still beside the king, one red eye fixed upon the reports spread across the table. A silver-haired conqueror. A Valyrian witch. A liberator queen. A dragonrider, if the sailors were drunk enough to be believed.

The last title earned a scoff. “She will be dead by winter,” one lord said. No one argued strongly. The East bred saviors the way marshes bred fever. They rose hot and loud and vanished quickly. A woman might take one city through surprise.

Perhaps two through fear. Three through dragons, if dragons truly still existed.

But the dragon rumors would not die. They changed shape instead. One week, the beast was black and crimson. The next, silver. Then pale as moonlight. Then blue-winged. Then there were two of them. Then a Lysene oarsman claimed the smaller of the two was still large enough to swallow a warhorse whole, though no one could explain why a dragon would inconvenience itself with horse bones when men were softer.

Each telling sounded absurd. Together, they became difficult to ignore.

But holding them?

Impossible. Especially with Dothraki. Horse lords were useful as a source of terror, not governance. They raided. Burned. Took tribute, wives, and gold. They did not build. The council expected collapse. The slavers would regroup. The freedmen would riot. The Dothraki would turn. The Gulf of Grief would correct itself.

King Daeron said little. Prince Baelor Breakspear, already Hand of the King, said even less. But he kept the reports. That was his habit. Some men discarded warnings because they had not yet learned how to bite. Baelor stored them carefully and waited to see which ones grew teeth.

Bloodraven collected different reports. Not cargo tallies. Names. A Tyroshi cousin with suspicious correspondence. A sellsword broker arrested outside Yunkai. Volantene financiers disappearing into new prisons. Yet even those reports had begun to change. Not in content at first. In rhythm.

A message that should have crossed the Narrow Sea in twelve days arrived in twenty. A name came without the house attached. A dock number without the ship. A death without the manner of it. Some of his eastern eyes still wrote, but late, careful, and strangely clean, as though their words had learned to wash their hands before touching parchment.

Others did not write at all. Bloodraven did not need sentiment to understand why. Many of his best informants in the East had been servants, debtors, dockside workers, pleasure-house attendants, scribes no one looked at twice, and slaves clever enough to survive by selling what they overheard. He had given them coin and secrecy.

Kyarina was offering something he could not. Names restored. Wages. Protection. Law. A world in which their children might not need to sell whispers to survive. Nothing clean enough to present before the council. Nothing certain. But patterns rarely arrived announcing themselves as patterns. They arrived disguised as coincidence.

Then, stranger reports followed. Children learning letters in courtyards where slaves had once been inspected. Former servants sitting behind trade desks. Granaries guarded instead of plundered. Pleasure houses still open, but no longer permitted to own the bodies within them. And from the Gulf itself came the strangest rumor of all: the cities that had once trained Unsullied through torture, mutilation, and terror no longer sold soldiers. They trained men. Not boys stolen from their mothers. Not children cut and broken until obedience replaced the soul. Men. Freedmen, volunteers, guards, and soldiers from across the new territories gathered beneath instructors who had survived the old way and refused to reproduce it. Discipline remained. Formation remained. Spear-work, shield-work, endurance, pain tolerance, silent movement, and battlefield obedience remained.

The horror did not. No knives between a child’s legs. No puppies killed to harden the hand. No wine of courage. No names stripped away and replaced like collars. If the Unsullied had once been proof that men could be manufactured through suffering, these new guilds appeared to be an answer written in drill yards and clean barracks:

Discipline did not require cruelty. Nor were the training cities only military now. Healing houses had begun growing beside the barracks. Former battlefield surgeons, midwives, bonesetters, herbalists, temple healers, poison-tasters, horse doctors, wet nurses, fever women, and physicians from cultures that had never willingly shared the same room were being gathered beneath common standards. Ghiscari salves, Dothraki wound craft, Qartheen tinctures, YiTish pulse readings, Rhoynish birthing knowledge, Valyrian blood cautery, Myrish lens work, and the plain stubborn wisdom of old women who had kept villages alive with weeds and boiled cloth all found places in the same ledgers.

What worked was taught. What failed was studied. What nearly worked was improved. No one in King’s Landing knew what to make of that. And beneath every rumor, one truth repeated itself:

The ports were stabilizing. That frightened Bloodraven far more than fire ever could. Conquerors were easy to understand. Builders were not.

ASOIAF VS HARD TIMES (pt1)

The description of Astapor vs Coketown:

All the streets were made of the same red brick that had paved the plaza. […] So many bricks, she thought, and so old and crumbling. Their fine red dust was everywhere, dancing down the gutters at each gust of wind. Small wonder so many Astapori women veiled their faces; the brick dust stung the eyes worse than sand. (Daenerys II, ASOS)

"It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.” (Hard times, description of Coke Town).

Both towns have two things in common: both are made of old red bricks, and both are infested by gas and dust which make it hard for its inhabitants to live (astapori women having to wear veils, people of Coketown having several illnesses caused by the smog).

But let’s not forget another thing which both towns have in common: its values. Coketown’s values are established by two main things, which are Bentham’s Utilitarism and Smiles’ concept of the Self-made Man. Other than, of course, capitalism.

All these things are to be found as well in one Astapori character which, I think, could be easily seen as a parallel of the ‘villains’ characters we have in ASOIAF during Daenerys’ time in Astapor. Kraznys.

It’s just at the start of Hard Times that we find the main theme of the book (and Bentham’s utilitarian philosophy):

“NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and giris nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!"

Even if in a more violent way, this approach is similar to that Kraznys has with the Unsullied:

“Tell her that these have been standing here for a day and a night, with no food nor water. Tell her that they will stand until they drop if I should command it, and when nine hundred and ninety-nine have collapsed to die upon the bricks, the last will stand there still, and never move until his own death claims him. Such is their courage. Tell her that." (Daenerys II, ASOS)

“A word from me and these sheep would spill his stinking old bowels on the bricks," he [Kraznys] said, "but do not say that. Tell them that these creatures are more dogs than sheep.” (Daenerys II, ASOS)

"A bull is strong as well, but bulls die every day in the fighting pits. A girl of nine killed one not three days past in Jothiel's Pit. The Unsullied have something better than strength, tell her. They have discipline. We fight in the fashion of the Old Empire, yes. They are the lockstep legions of Old Ghis come again, absolutely obedient, absolutely loyal, and utterly without fear." (Daenerys II, ASOS)

The ‘fact’ that we see Kraznys make the Unsullied obey to, is discipline— maybe even some sort of twisted version of strength, and obedience. They do not have space for nothing else: no feelings (just like the people of Coketown who do not know what love is) nor emotion or identity.

Their identity is stolen— and so is that of the people of Coketown. Let’s see:

“Girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, “I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?”

“Sissy Jupe, sir,” explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.

“Sissy is not a name,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “Don't call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia. [Sissy says that her father calls her that] Then he has no business to do it,” said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Tell him he mustn't.”

She is not Mrs. Jupe, not Cecilia, not even Sissy— she’s called ‘girl number twenty’ and when she says her name (the one strictly linked with affection, as her father calls her thar), Gradgrind tells her that he mustn’t and not only does he strip her identity away from her; but he also strips the affection that is tied to her name away from her.

“This one does not recall, your worship. Blue Toad, perhaps. Or Blue Worm."

“Tell her all their names are such," Kraznys commanded the girl. "It reminds them that by themselves they are vermin. The name disks are thrown in an empty cask at duty's end, and each dawn plucked up again at random." (Daenerys II, ASOS)

Kraznys (and every other slaver, really) is taking away their identity and their parents-given names from the Unsullied. They do not have ‘normal’ names, but they have those of an animal to remind themselves of what they are: animals. And whatever they were before that, does not matter at all.

"No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles's Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. […]”

And just like the Unsullied, who do not do, say or even think anything without Kraznys’ command, even the little Gradgrind do not know anything about childhood or real happiness— because all they have known, ever since they were little, were facts.

But they both— Unsullied and the people of Coketown— will eventually see the light.