Aegon "Jon Snow" Targaryen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
northerndragon) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
agoge2018-01-09 07:06 pm
northerndragon) wrote in agoge2018-01-09 07:06 pm
Entry tags:
>>FROM:@AEGONNER
Tell me about your gods.
If you don't have that kind of faith, then tell me what else you believe in. There must be something.
And if not that, tell me what you think of when you know a battle is coming.
If you don't have that kind of faith, then tell me what else you believe in. There must be something.
And if not that, tell me what you think of when you know a battle is coming.
Aegon Toast
Maegor's successor Jaehaerys made peace with the Faith Militant by pardoning the ones who would lay down their swords. The Faith only had to acknowledge the Targaryen marriages, they didn't have to approve of them.
[He shakes his head, blinks, and half-chuckles.]
My old Maester would be pleased that I can remember all that. I had other heroes as a boy, not Maegor or Jaehaerys.
The noise I just made
Knowing history is always a useful thing. Consider me pleased in his place, it's fascinating to hear.
[Chiron pauses, before asking his next question. It could be a bit too personal.] May I ask who, if it isn't a private thing?
no subject
He lost sixty thousand men. Not a hero now.
[His expression becomes thoughtful again, lips pressed lightly together and brows drawing down, and his next words come out more slowly.]
You get older, and it's less the men in stories and more the men you've known who you look up to, at least if you've been lucky enough to know good ones. I have been. The Young Dragon was brave, but no one should lose that many men, least of all in a boy's failed attempt to win glory.
no subject
[It is pointless when there is death for the glory of only one.]
Are your nobles raised with the concept of κλέος?
[He quickly adds:] In my time, it means accomplishing great tasks so that others will hear of your works and add to your renown.
no subject
[He doesn't understand the word κλέος as it's said to him, but as it's explained, he absorbs it, nods, and considers it before speaking again.]
Not in the North, though there are heroes. The southrons have their knightly virtues, winning glory in tournaments and battle and such, but there are few tournaments or knights in the North, because so few follow the Seven. When Northmen fight, we want to win and to live.
Most Northern boys seem to want to be heroes of some sort when they're boys, but it's a childish thing. I did, because I'm a bastard. There was small glory to be found in the Night's Watch, as it happened, yet the Watch is necessary to the safety of the Realm. Most have forgotten that.
no subject
[Direct line or not, it's within the same family.
Chiron shifts in his seat, and listens carefully to Jon's reply. It's an interesting divide, and one that seems to hinge on survival versus having a certain amount of time to devote to battle for the sake of it.
It's a matter that didn't exist in his own time, and yet that kind of personal glory still manifested.]
I see. I assume that your south has more lesiure time to devote to these tournaments and battles then, whereas where you grew up has to be more focused on practical matters?
[He wants confirmation, if nothing else.]
....I suppose the distance of your wall has something to do with where it stands in memory?
no subject
The one here is the last of them -- the last Targaryen.
[A skeptical expression crosses his face at that one: he intends that she won't be the last, but neither of them can be sure of the future.
He moves on to explain some particulars of his homeland, and the look on his face falls away, leaving only one that's normal in a serious conversation.]
The North doesn't produce much. Wool, wood, plenty of deer and wolves to hunt, but sometimes the land doesn't yield much... and winters can be hard, if they stretch on three or four years or more. We don't have gold mines like they do in the south, or lush farms like in the Reach -- which is quite far south.
Winterfell... my home [he inclines his head here, remembering his dream]... is relatively central in the North, but it's still 500 leagues from the capitol, and there's not much north of it that's of any interest to southrons... mountains, forests, bare fields, little villages, the seats of a few smaller Houses. The Wall is 200 leagues north of Winterfell. I suppose most of them don't think of it at all. Or if they do, they think it's not worth thinking about, that it's only there to keep out wildling raiders.
Still, I've seen lords from the south who once mocked the Watch go grey at the sight of what we really stood against.
no subject
[At the mention of last, Chiron's face flickers and becomes something more pensive.] That's an unfortunate distinction for anyone to have. [But not one that Chiron feels right commenting on further. No one likes to dwell on that particular sort of information.]
Mm, is there a particular boundary line that defines where the south ends and the north begins? From what you're describing based on the products of each area, it seems to me that there would be a sort of natural line where the farmland tapers off and becomes the realm of shepherds and your own people.
[The impact of climate on who produces what is something Chiron absolutely understands. The required ores to make metal and weapons aren't everywhere in Greece, and a city can be made on reputation for a particular good.]
Out of sight, out of mind. [It's too neat of a summation for the circumstance, but it seems to be a painfully true one.] Is this sight of what the wall is for a relatively recent matter?