Howdy r/pureasoiaf. I've never posted here, but I'm reposting an essay I published on r/asoiaf yesterday to you all as I realized this is one of the few essays I've written that contains material solely from the books. For the mods, I'm happy to delete and cross-post if that's your-all's preference. Thanks for reading!

Intro

In June 2009, George RR Martin posted a rare happy update on his progress for A Dance with Dragons. He had just finished three chapters for the book - an unusually productive period in writing Dance - and he was starting to feel like he was approaching the end of writing the book:

>I’m feeling rather jazzed right now, and for the first time in a very long while, I think I can see a glimmering that might just be a light at the end of the tunnel.

But there was an asterisk to this optimism:

>Now if I can only slash through the Meereenese knot that I’ve been worrying at since 2005, I may actually start to get excited.

This was the first time that George RR Martin mentioned his infamous "Meereenese Knot" by name. And the asterisk to his positive progress report proved the folly of his optimism as he spent much (not all) of his creative energy for nearly two years in solving the problem of the Meereenese Knot.

But what was the Meereenese Knot? For the half-dozen people unaware, it was a POV problem where multiple POVs, characters, and factions were on their way to Meereen in Feast and Dance. This turned into an enormous problem and delayed the publication and delivery of A Dance with Dragons, but also, as we'll discover, A Feast for Crows.

But what if I told you that the Meereenese Knot was an unfortunate consequence of a solution to an even larger narrative problem of A Dance with Dragons? But then that solution became a conundrum in its own right.

Now, the obvious question: why should anyone care about this minutiae? It's been fifteen years since A Dance with Dragons was published. To me, the minutiae matters. It demonstrates the nigh-impossible task George undertook to write a satisfying post-Storm story. And all that minutiae will ripple out into The Winds of Winter if and when it's published and delivered.

Your TL;DR For Part 1

This series will trace the origins of the Meereenese Knot from the five-year-gap in 2001 all the way to the present day. To do this work justice, I'm breaking the analysis into multiple parts - probably three. Maybe more.

Today's analysis will be an extensive (but not exclusive) examination of George RR Martin's development of Daenerys's story in the wake of A Storm of Swords and show how major changes to her story became the foundation for the Meereenese Knot.

Three arguments in this post:

1. The Meereenese Knot was not what George planned for Meereen after A Storm of Swords.
2. The foundation for the Meereenese Knot was laid by George's dissatisfaction with multiple, simpler versions of Dany's Meereenese storyline he wrote between 2001-2005.
3. The primary (but not complete) plot reason that the Meereenese Knot exists is GRRM's abandonment of the five-year-gap to write a more satisfying story for Dany that was planned to culminate in ... the Battle of Fire told from the POV of Daenerys Targaryen.

Wait. The Battle of Fire was going to be told from Dany's POV!?

Yes. We'll get to that.

First, though, we need to start with the root problem of Meereen, then go into detail on the three versions of Meereen before the knot, and then I promise we'll close out with an analysis on the embryonic Battle of Fire.

The Problem With Meereen

Daenerys Targaryen was never supposed to be in Meereen. When GRRM envisioned A Song of Ice and Fire in 1993, this was his plan for Dany:

>While the lion of Lannister and the direwolf of Stark snarl and scrap, however, a second and greater threat takes shape across the narrow sea, where the Dothraki horselords mass their barbarian hordes for a great invasion of the Seven Kingdoms, led by the fierce and beautiful Daenerys Stormborn, the last of the Targaryen dragonlords. The Dothraki invasion will be the central story of my second volume, A Dance with Dragons.

But something happened. George got to exactly where he wanted to go with Daenerys by the end of A Game of Thrones. But his muse got the better of him, and the rest of the story moved much more slowly as he talked about in his introduction to a limited edition of A Clash of Kings in 2002:

>I could see the files multiplying on my hard drive. I had 300 pages, 400 pages, 500 pages, 600 pages…and I had a problem. It was the spring of ’95 when it finally dawned on me. I was fast approaching the 800 pages that I had estimated as the length of the finished book, but most of my large cast of characters were nowhere near the places they were supposed to be. Oh, Dany was…I had always meant to hatch those dragon eggs at the climax of my first volume…but she was the only one. For the rest, the end was nowhere in sight.

So with the rest of the story lagging behind, GRRM had to invent new Daenerys material to keep her in Essos until the rest of the plot caught up with her.

To accomplish that, George had Dany embark on an extended stay in Qarth in A Clash of Kings. While the House of the Undying chapter (Daenerys IV) is one of the most memorable scenes in all of A Song of Ice and Fire, much of the rest was ... well-written wheel-spinning.

Still, by the time he finished Clash, the other POVs were still trailing behind. So, George invented more story for her in Storm. This time, though, he opted for an action-oriented arc for Dany. She conquers Slaver's Bay using dragons, Unsullied, and sellswords in a righteous quest to blot out the evil of slavery in Slaver's Bay.

These were memorable chapters. Dracarys is one of the most memorable moments in Storm! Yet ... this was still wheel-spinning, exciting wheel spinning!

But by the end of Storm, the rest of the story had finally, finally caught up to Daenerys. Robb Stark and Joffrey Baratheon were dead (two of the original planned end states of A Game of Thrones from 1993). It was time for Daenerys to exit Essos and make her way to Westeros.

... except, that at the end of A Storm of Swords, there's debate among Dany's counselors as to what she'll do now that she's conquered Meereen. Her resolution to this debate?

>"What will you do then, Khaleesi?" asked Rakharo.

>"Stay," she said. "Rule. And be a queen." (ASOS, Daenerys VI)

Oh, no. George was stalling Daenerys's story again - and now when his original story concept had culminated! He'd lost control of his story. For shame.

Except he wasn't doing any of that. He had an elegant plan that would resolve Meereen mostly off-page: a five year time skip between A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons.

Version One: Minimal Meereen

In December 2000, GRRM was interviewed about his publication plans for the future of A Song of Ice and Fire in which he talked about his plans for Daenerys:

>"Yes, three more volumes remain. The series could almost be considered as two linked trilogies... The next book, A Dance With Dragons, will focus on the return of Daenerys Targaryen to Westeros, and the conflicts that creates."

This quote came from when George planned for a five-year-gap between Storm and Dance. And it illuminates George's plans for a post-Storm Dany story. Dance would be her invasion of Westeros. So, Storm has her vowing to stay and rule. She does a five year political apprenticeship off-page. And then BAM! She picks up her story on-page in Dance returning to Westeros with readers none the wiser.

In concept, this was a simple, executable idea. But let's go deeper. Why five years? Was there a specific narrative reason for a five-year-gap for Dany's story? Yes!

In March 1999, GRRM gave a compelling answer to why he wanted a five-year-gap for Dany:

>It's been mentioned that there will be a period of around five years between the events of A STORM OF SWORDS and A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. One rather obvious reason is to allow Dany's dragons to grow. Any other reasons that can be disclosed?

>George_RR_Martin: Dany's dragons — and the kids!

That's confirmation that the five-year-gap was in partial service of Dany - specifically, it gave necessary time for Dany's dragons to grow. But! I believe there's an additional sublimity to George's idea beyond allowing the dragons to grow.

Daenerys would have five years off-page where she'd learn to play the game of thrones as she grew into an adult. So, any "Mary Sue" complaints about a fifteen year old teenaged girl blitzkrieging her way across Westeros and then navigating the ensuing political conflicts would be hand-waved away by ... why, she became a political operator and military strategist in the five years between Storm and Dance, and she's now twenty years old. Get a life, nerd.

So, George started writing this five-year-gap version of Dance in early 2001. And! There is at least one chapter that George wrote for Daenerys Targaryen for a five-year-gap version of A Dance with Dragons as he talked about with Elio and Linda right after publishing A Dance with Dragons in 2011:

>"There's a Dany scene in the book which is actually one of the oldest chapters in the book that goes back almost ten years now. When I was contemplating the five year gap [Martin laughs here, with some chagrin], that chapter was supposed to be the first Daenerys chapter in the book. Then it became the second chapter, and then the third chapter, and it kept getting pushed back as I inserted more things into it. I've rewritten that chapter so much that it ended in many different ways."

With a bit of sleuthing done by others, that chapter was the Daznak's Pit chapter (Dany IX in the published version of Dance) wherein Drogon flies into Daznak's Pit, eats some people, and then Daenerys flies away on him to the Dothraki Sea.

But that's the published version after numerous revisions. What was the chapter supposed to be in a five-year-gap version of Dance? The answer - thanks to the work of u/gsteff and others who analyzed fan-recounts of George reading this chapter back in early 2003 - is that the chapter seemed to be the inciting incident for Daenerys to leave Meereen. Drogon grabbed Dany in its claws, flew up to the top of the pyramid, then deposited her on the top of said pyramid.

Speculation here: I think the Daznak's Pit chapter and maybe one or two additional chapter where she learns to become a by-God dragonrider were the only planned Meereenese chapters George either wrote or envisioned for a five-year-gap version of A Dance with Dragons. The rest of Dany's arc ...

Look again at that George quote from 2000: The next book, A Dance With Dragons, will focus on the return of Daenerys Targaryen to Westeros, and the conflicts that creates. The focus of the book will be Dany returning to Westeros. That "return to Westeros as focus" concept bloody limits an extended narrative stay in Meereen.

That's Version One: a minimal Meereenese story.

I can already hear a subset of fans who think this is the version George should have undertaken. Get her to Westeros, man!

But notice something here: provided my idea is correct, this is a relatively uncomplicated arc for Dany. She learns to dragonride in Meereen, heads to Westeros, invades, has conflicts when she arrives.

That's a major problem with Dany exiting Meereen early in Dance. There would be consequences to Dany leaving! What happens to those left behind? All those slaves she's freed? And what exactly did Dany learn in those five years that contributed to her becoming a good ruler?

More speculation: I wonder whether George realized this and became a contributing reason to ...

Interlude: GRRM Abandons the Five-Year-Gap

... George abandoning the five-year-gap.

As far as I can tell, George never ascribed the reason for abandoning the gap to Dany. Instead, he's attributed the reason to issues with the Dornish reaction to Oberyn Martell's death coupled with problems of telling much of Cersei and Jon Snow's stories in flashback.

Yet, I'd wager that the questions I posed above about the consequences of her leaving Meereen and her political education figured into the calculation to abandon the gap. At the same time though, the plan was for Dany to get to Westeros.

So, he comes up with a new idea: a bridging book between Storm and Dance that would cover the five years:

>The 4th Book will be A Feast For Crows, and will cover what would have been the five year gap. Some POV's -- who George said will be "learning" during the five year gap -- will have only one or two chapters.

Put a pin in that "will only have one or two chapters" quote. It'll be important for the next section! For now, know that the revised concept was for Feast to bring the story forward five years.

But while abandoning the gap made sound logic to George, it created two major problems for Dany's A Feast for Crows story: narrative logic and logistics.

• The Narrative Logic Problem: GRRM now had to write Dany's political training arc on-page. What would that education look like? What Meereenese conflicts would best dramatize Dany learning to become a ruler capable of conquering and ruling Westeros?
• The Logistics Problem: This point flows from the abandonment of the five-year-gap and retention of George's plan to get Dany to Westeros. In the post five-year-gap version of Dance, Dany, presumably, would have slowly built a fleet off-page to transport her people and army to Westeros. But now that she wouldn't have those five years, how would Dany get her and her people to Westeros? She only has the three ships that Illyrio Mopatis gifted her in A Clash of Kings. She needs boats. Where does she get those boats?

To solve those problems, GRRM embarked on ...

Version Two: A Medium Feast for Meereen

So now George had to figure out the logistics of getting Dany out of Meereen and give her something of a Meereenese political arc that would make her return to Westeros politically legible to readers.

For the logistics, GRRM gardened a rather brilliant solution that didn't require him to figure out how Dany constructs a massive fleet: the Ironborn! A mega prologue! New POV characters!

Specifically, GRRM wrote chapters from the POVs of Aeron, Asha, and Victarion Greyjoy (along with Arys Oakheart, Areo Hotah, and Arianne Martell - who were also written in partial service of Daenerys Targaryen's story) starting at some point in late 2001/early 2002.

By August 2002 (eleven months after abandoning the gap), he had completed seven chapters from this mega prologue and released four Ironborn chapters as a novella known as "The Arms of the Kraken".

So you're asking now, what was the narrative point of talking about these new Ironborn POVs in an essay about Daenerys? Answer: New Ironborn POVs were introduced in large part because the Ironborn had a fleet -- a fleet that could transport Dany and her people to Westeros. We'll talk much more about the Ironborn in part 2. But for now, know that the addition of Ironborn POVs was a likely logistics solution for getting Dany to Westeros.

Switching over to the narrative logic piece. This was a less elegant solution: he did the hard work of writing Dany chapters where she grappled with Meereenese politics. This is where George's work gets muddy. We know that GRRM revised the Daznak's Pit chapter to scrape away the five-year-gap material. Were there additional Dany chapters leftover from the gap that he revised for A Feast for Crows? I'd guess yes, but I haven't been able to confirm that explicitly.

Fast-forward to October 2003. By that point, GRRM had three Daenerys chapters done for A Feast for Crows:

• Dany I: Dany holds court in Meereen.
• Dany II: A revised version of the five-year-gap Daznak's Pit chapter.
• Dany III: Xaro Xhoan Daxos tries to bribe Dany into leaving Meereen with thirteen ships.

And then what? Nothing! A three-Dany arc was arguably all GRRM planned for Feast. At a February 2003 (eight months before the October 2003 chapter list) BosKone convention appearance, GRRM was reported to have said this:

>When asked about the progress of his writing he said AFFC is not yet finished and it is taking a long time. He has Dany pretty much done and most of the Lannister chapters. 

Dany was done by February 2003? With only three chapters? Huh?

There's a contingent of fans who think Wow, this was the way. Three Dany Meereen chapters. Then BANG. The Ironborn whisk her and her people away near the start of Dance. Great. Sign me up.

But I think George grew dissatisfied with this idea of a truncated Daenerys story in A Feast for Crows. Why? My educated guess is that this version speedran Dany's political and dragonriding development - one of the reasons I theorized GRRM abandoned the five-year-gap in the first place. A short Dany arc ensured that Meereen didn't become a gravitation center of Feast - but at the expense of Dany's character development.

And so at BosKone in February 2004 ...

Version 3: Mega Meereen

... GRRM hinted that he was expanding Daenerys's story. A fan reported George saying:

>Jon and Dany will be the two focal characters of AFfC (in the sort of way in which Ned was the focal character of AGoT).

Jon and Dany as the two focal characters seems a major step up from the three-chapter Dany arc that was "pretty much done" in 2003, doesn't it? And we now know that GRRM expanded Dany's story around this time thanks to u/gsteff's research and publication of George's June 2004 AFFC chapter order.

In that chapter count, GRRM not only listed the chapters he had written for A Feast for Crows; he also annotated chapters that were partially-written, unwritten (but planned), and "under consideration."

And here we see that GRRM expanded Dany's three-chapter arc in favor of an extensive Dany story.

All credit to u/gsteff for the google spreadsheet linked above. For our purposes, I've isolated the Dany material from June 2004 into a table below (I love tables) to demonstrate Dany's ballooning Feast arc by June 2004. (I've bolded the new chapters for visibility):

Draft Chapter	Completion Status as of June 2004	When Complete?	Corresponding Published Chapter
Daenerys I	Complete	Read as a sample in Feb 2003	Daenerys I
Daenerys II	Complete	Originally completed during the five-year-gap in 2001	Daenerys IX
Daenerys III	Complete	Included in the Oct 2003 chapter list	Daenerys III
Daenerys IV	Complete	A new finished chapter included in the June 2004 chapter list	Daenerys V/Elements of Daenerys VI
Daenerys V	Partially-Written	New addition to the June 2004 list	Unconfirmed (But I have some thoughts)
Daenerys VI-VIII	Unwritten	Unknown	Unconfirmed (Ditto. See below!)

So, now we've gone from a three-chapter Dany arc to an eight-chapter Dany story that was only halfway complete - within a year!

This is Version 3: Mega Meereen.

Now, here's where all that minutiae gets interesting. Do we know anything about those partially-written or unwritten Dany chapters? Oh yes.

A few years ago, u/zionius_ was gifted George's outline for A Feast for Crows. Written immediately after his October 2003 Feast draft, it's a FASCINATING glimpse at George's plans. I'm going to quote only the portions relevant to Meereen below:

>Dany: Pretend it’s a horse. Face off in pit. No [?marry] - city. Battle scene. ‘I’m going home’.  1 Chapter

>Dany: Her marriage. 1. Fall of Astapor. 2. Siege of Meereen - Bloody Flux. 3. Climax - dragons loosed. 4. Marriage.

Okay. This needs some serious unpacking. I spent numerous minutes analyzing, re-reading, revising my assumptions. And now I'll inflict my analysis on this essay and you by extension.

First, let's talk discrepancies here. In his outline on Dany, GRRM circles "7". This is the number of chapters he planned for Dany in Feast. However, in the chapter count unearthed by u/gsteff, he plans for 8 chapters. The discrepancy is answered in u/zionius_'s dating analysis (found in his OP). The outline was written immediately after the October 2003 Feast draft but before he wrote a new chapter (Daenerys IV - completed by June 2004).

Now, let's return to the outline and work our way from big to smaller pictures. Here's GRRM's outline for the four remaining chapters in a more readable format:

1. Fall of Astapor
2. Siege of Meereen/Bloody Flux
3. Dragons Loosed
4. Marriage

Combining the outline with GRRM's June 2004 chapter list, I think we can match every partially-written or unwritten chapter to plot events. Namely:

1. Fall of Astapor - Daenerys V - Partially-Written by June 2004
2. Siege of Meereen/Bloody Flux - Daenerys VI - Unwritten by June 2004
3. Dragons Loosed - Daenerys VII - Unwritten by June 2004
4. Marriage - Daenerys VIII - Unwritten by June 2004

So, then dialing down to the first outline page: Pretend it’s a horse. Face off in pit. No [?marry] - city. Battle scene. ‘I’m going home’.  1 Chapter.

I spent way too much time pondering this. What is this?

Answer: It's the one-chapter climax of Dany's Feast story - Draft Daenerys VII. He sketched out some of the plot points he wanted to depict in the climax of Dany's Feast story - likely so he could embed foreshadowing that he would write towards in earlier chapters. I think that's it. I also think I'm an idiot.

But my brothers and sisters, isn't this wild? The entire climax of Dany's Feast story was ...

Dany Fights the Battle of Fire

Yes. Daenerys Targaryen was originally intended to wage the actual Battle of Fire in A Feast for Crows. And it was supposed to happen in two chapters (But also maybe one or two other chapters from two different POV characters. See ya in Part 2 for more on that!)

But sit with that for a moment. The climax for Feast was going to be the battle between Dany and Yunkai and its allies.

That is astounding to me on multiple axes. Allow me to give my three largest astonishments:

1. That is not the story that we possess in the published versions of Feast and Dance.
2. Two chapters for the Battle of Fire!? (Or maybe three or four in total. Part 2, people.) Jumping way ahead of this analysis: George has written at least five chapters for the battle for Winds.
3. Daenerys Targaryen does not participate in the battle whatsoever in any of those Winds sample chapters. She's on the Dothraki Sea as battle erupts. I think it unlikely she'll be a POV character for the battle. But back in 2003/2004, she was the main POV for the battle. Crazy!

Having picked my jaw off the ground, let's move the timeline forward.

So, that's the June 2004 plan. Dany had an eight-chapter arc culminating in the Battle of Fire and ending with "marriage." Did George end up writing the partially-written and unwritten Dany chapters by the time he wrapped Feast?

I'm relatively confident he did! Why? In May 2005, GRRM attended the To Be Continued Con in which it was reported that:

>Dany has more chapters than anyone. He also said that Dany's love life is going to become "extremely complex".

And less than a month later, a fan reported this from ConQuest 2005 (where he announced the publication date of Feast):

>[Note: Spoiler POV redacted] has the most number of chapters in AFFC, while Dany has the most in ADwD.

The redacted spoiler POV is Cersei Lannister who has ten chapters in Feast. Combining the "Dany has more chapters than anyone" with the comparison GRRM drew between chapter counts between Dany and Cersei, I think those partially-written and unwritten Dany chapters he planned from June 2004 were completed by May 2005. And it's likely that the chapter count expanded between June 2004 and May 2005 from eight to ten Daenerys chapters in total.

Aside: You might be skeptical that GRRM could complete/write four to six Dany chapters in a little under a year after he'd only done four in the previous three years. But I think what tends to happen generally in George's writing of A Song of Ice and Fire is that as soon as he figures out a solution to a writing problem, the story takes fuller shape and his progress kicks into high gear - something we'll see specifically when he solved the Meereenese Knot itself in 2010.

Returning to the analysis: if GRRM finished ten chapters for Dany for Feast, it happily corresponds to the ten Dany chapters in the published version of A Dance with Dragons. Mission accomplished.

Except ... deep sigh ... there are significant discrepancies! Sure, there's a version of Daenerys V-VI in the published version of A Dance with Dragons. But the whole Battle of Fire climax was originally conceived from Dany's POV and isn't in the book. And then there's the marriage conclusion to her arc. I think the marriage chapter (Draft Dany VIII) was completely overhauled from the draft chapter where Dany would marry ... someone ... to having her marry Hizdahr zo Loraq in the published version of A Dance with Dragons which, confusingly, is also Dany VIII.

Where did the battle and "original marriage" plot work go?

Tune back in a month or two. I have theories!

Conclusion: The Minutiae Matters

Now, I want to take a big step back from all this minutiae. It's fun in its own right. But I have to ask myself if I've lost the plot of my own essay. I have, I think. It's a tautology, but all those revisions and versions of Dany's post-Storm arc were not in service of the technical mechanics of writing or to give one obsessive redditor raw material to write this essay rather than be a productive member of society.

All of those refinements, rewrites, and expansions of Dany's story were spurred by the character, plot, and thematic work George realized he needed to invest in Dany's arc.

This becomes explicit with a final examination of each version of Dany's story in draft and how it ended up in its final, published version that came out in 2011:

• Version 1 (2001): Dany departs Meereen after five years of off-page political maturation within a few chapters.
• Version 2 (2002-2003): Dany has three chapters in A Feast for Crows set in Meereen that breeze through her political education and her initial steps in becoming a dragonrider. She and her people/army leave Meereen with the Ironborn in A Dance with Dragons.
• Version 3 (2003-2005): Eight chapters (then maybe ten by the time he finished Feast). She's dealing with multiple, complex crises that better showcase her leadership than the medium version. But the arc still resolves in a massive action sequence: the Battle of Fire.
• Version 4 (2006-2009): We'll get to it in Part 3, but Dany's arc was revised yet again after the publication of A Feast for Crows.
• The Published Version: Ten Dany chapters, all of them stress-testing her morals and willingness to compromise. She engages in incredibly fraught and difficult trade-offs, compromises with dubious and outright malicious characters and factions to achieve something she would call peace. And then she chooses Drogon at the climax of her arc, rejecting Meereen and all the difficult work she undertook for most of her arc.

Do you see the progression? Every change George made to Dany from concept to publication was him stripping layers off of the Daenerys Targaryen action hero initial concept and replacing it layer-by-layer, version-by-version with what's Aragorn's tax policy turned up to "11." And then she rejects grappling with the answer in favor of her dragon.

There's also something else here that strikes me as I finish this essay. In the Mega-Meereen version of Dany's story, the climax of her story is also Dany choosing fire and blood. And that's meted out in an enormous action set piece battle. From the outline, the dragons are loosed, Dany is presumably a dragon rider by this point in the story. I'd bet my house (okay, maybe my Garmin watch) that Dany commands the battle from atop Drogon, and she wins the battle with actual fire and blood.

But does she have agency in becoming a dragonrider and choosing fire and blood in that version? Or is she forced into that choice by the external factor of the eruption of an enormous battle?

The climax in the published version is also action-packed. It's the revised version of the Daznak's Pit chapter. She becomes a dragonrider there. She embraces dragon and thematically fire and blood as she lifts off from Meereen atop dragon's back.

But her final chapter in Dance is a quiet chapter. Dany is alone with no army around her, no battle to face. She's alone with her dragon, memories, and apparitions.

There, Daenerys wrestles with her human heart, and she makes the choice - all on her own. Fire and Blood. Westeros over Meereen. Dragons plant no trees.

Personally, I believe the final version of Dany's story and all the revisions and versions to the whole of her story make George's hard work satisfying and worth the writing toil. GRRM wrote something novel with Dany's story - something that, if not explicitly new to fantasy readers, was fresh to readers of A Song of Ice and Fire.

But know this: the labor George put into Daenerys Targaryen's post-Storm story is only one part of a greater whole of his revision work. GRRM revised every POV character who ended up in Feast and Dance - especially those who would intersect with Daenerys and Meereen.

And it's in those characters that GRRM unknowingly, at the time, added a second tangle to what would become the Meereenese Knot.

Sources

This essay owes a debt to others who went before me. So, in lieu of a mailed fruit basket, here are people and links to sources that were helpful in crafting this essay:

• u/gsteff for his entire "Secrets of the Cushing Library" series, especially "Daenerys, the Ironborn, and Jaime" post.
• u/feldman10 for "A Decade Writing ‘Dance,’ Part 2: A Decade Writing Dany"
• u/zionius_ for "GRRM's 2003-2004 Outline for AFFC"
• Elio Garcia Jr. and Linda Antonsson for maintaining the So Spake Martin archive on westeros.org
• All the folks who made numerous fan reports on chapters George read or statements George made at convention appearances over the years.

Next up: the Ironborn, Dornish, Tyrion, and Aegon.

Intro

In June 2009, George RR Martin posted a rare happy update on his progress for A Dance with Dragons. He had just finished three chapters for the book - an unusually productive period in writing Dance - and he was starting to feel like he was approaching the end of writing the book:

>I’m feeling rather jazzed right now, and for the first time in a very long while, I think I can see a glimmering that might just be a light at the end of the tunnel.

But there was an asterisk to this optimism:

>Now if I can only slash through the Meereenese knot that I’ve been worrying at since 2005, I may actually start to get excited.

This was the first time that George RR Martin mentioned his infamous "Meereenese Knot" by name. And the asterisk to his positive progress report proved the folly of his optimism as he spent much (not all) of his creative energy for nearly two years in solving the problem of the Meereenese Knot.

But what was the Meereenese Knot? For the half-dozen people unaware, it was a POV problem where multiple POVs, characters, and factions were on their way to Meereen in Feast and Dance. This turned into an enormous problem and delayed the publication and delivery of A Dance with Dragons, but also, as we'll discover, A Feast for Crows.

But what if I told you that the Meereenese Knot was an unfortunate consequence of a solution to an even larger narrative problem of A Dance with Dragons? But then that solution became a conundrum in its own right.

Now, the obvious question: why should anyone care about this minutiae? It's been fifteen years since A Dance with Dragons was published. To me, the minutiae matters. It demonstrates the nigh-impossible task George undertook to write a satisfying post-Storm story. And all that minutiae will ripple out into The Winds of Winter if and when it's published and delivered.

Your TL;DR For Part 1

This series will trace the origins of the Meereenese Knot from the five-year-gap in 2001 all the way to the present day. To do this work justice, I'm breaking the analysis into multiple parts - probably three. Maybe more.

Today's analysis will be an extensive (but not exclusive) examination of George RR Martin's development of Daenerys's story in the wake of A Storm of Swords and show how major changes to her story became the foundation for the Meereenese Knot.

Three arguments in this post:

1. The Meereenese Knot was not what George planned for Meereen after A Storm of Swords.
2. The foundation for the Meereenese Knot was laid by George's dissatisfaction with multiple, simpler versions of Dany's Meereenese storyline he wrote between 2001-2005.
3. The primary (but not complete) plot reason that the Meereenese Knot exists is GRRM's abandonment of the five-year-gap to write a more satisfying story for Dany that was planned to culminate in ... the Battle of Fire told from the POV of Daenerys Targaryen.

Wait. The Battle of Fire was going to be told from Dany's POV!?

Yes. We'll get to that.

First, though, we need to start with the root problem of Meereen, then go into detail on the three versions of Meereen before the knot, and then I promise we'll close out with an analysis on the embryonic Battle of Fire.

The Problem With Meereen

Daenerys Targaryen was never supposed to be in Meereen. When GRRM envisioned A Song of Ice and Fire in 1993, this was his plan for Dany:

>While the lion of Lannister and the direwolf of Stark snarl and scrap, however, a second and greater threat takes shape across the narrow sea, where the Dothraki horselords mass their barbarian hordes for a great invasion of the Seven Kingdoms, led by the fierce and beautiful Daenerys Stormborn, the last of the Targaryen dragonlords. The Dothraki invasion will be the central story of my second volume, A Dance with Dragons.

But something happened. George got to exactly where he wanted to go with Daenerys by the end of A Game of Thrones. But his muse got the better of him, and the rest of the story moved much more slowly as he talked about in his introduction to a limited edition of A Clash of Kings in 2002:

>I could see the files multiplying on my hard drive. I had 300 pages, 400 pages, 500 pages, 600 pages…and I had a problem. It was the spring of ’95 when it finally dawned on me. I was fast approaching the 800 pages that I had estimated as the length of the finished book, but most of my large cast of characters were nowhere near the places they were supposed to be. Oh, Dany was…I had always meant to hatch those dragon eggs at the climax of my first volume…but she was the only one. For the rest, the end was nowhere in sight.

So with the rest of the story lagging behind, GRRM had to invent new Daenerys material to keep her in Essos until the rest of the plot caught up with her.

To accomplish that, George had Dany embark on an extended stay in Qarth in A Clash of Kings. While the House of the Undying chapter (Daenerys IV) is one of the most memorable scenes in all of A Song of Ice and Fire, much of the rest was ... well-written wheel-spinning.

Still, by the time he finished Clash, the other POVs were still trailing behind. So, George invented more story for her in Storm. This time, though, he opted for an action-oriented arc for Dany. She conquers Slaver's Bay using dragons, Unsullied, and sellswords in a righteous quest to blot out the evil of slavery in Slaver's Bay.

These were memorable chapters. Dracarys is one of the most memorable moments in Storm! Yet ... this was still wheel-spinning, exciting wheel spinning!

But by the end of Storm, the rest of the story had finally, finally caught up to Daenerys. Robb Stark and Joffrey Baratheon were dead (two of the original planned end states of A Game of Thrones from 1993). It was time for Daenerys to exit Essos and make her way to Westeros.

... except, that at the end of A Storm of Swords, there's debate among Dany's counselors as to what she'll do now that she's conquered Meereen. Her resolution to this debate?

>"What will you do then, Khaleesi?" asked Rakharo.

>"Stay," she said. "Rule. And be a queen." (ASOS, Daenerys VI)

Oh, no. George was stalling Daenerys's story again - and now when his original story concept had culminated! He'd lost control of his story. For shame.

Except he wasn't doing any of that. He had an elegant plan that would resolve Meereen mostly off-page: a five year time skip between A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons.

Version One: Minimal Meereen

In December 2000, GRRM was interviewed about his publication plans for the future of A Song of Ice and Fire in which he talked about his plans for Daenerys:

>"Yes, three more volumes remain. The series could almost be considered as two linked trilogies... The next book, A Dance With Dragons, will focus on the return of Daenerys Targaryen to Westeros, and the conflicts that creates."

This quote came from when George planned for a five-year-gap between Storm and Dance. And it illuminates George's plans for a post-Storm Dany story. Dance would be her invasion of Westeros. So, Storm has her vowing to stay and rule. She does a five year political apprenticeship off-page. And then BAM! She picks up her story on-page in Dance returning to Westeros with readers none the wiser.

In concept, this was a simple, executable idea. But let's go deeper. Why five years? Was there a specific narrative reason for a five-year-gap for Dany's story? Yes!

In March 1999, GRRM gave a compelling answer to why he wanted a five-year-gap for Dany:

>It's been mentioned that there will be a period of around five years between the events of A STORM OF SWORDS and A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. One rather obvious reason is to allow Dany's dragons to grow. Any other reasons that can be disclosed?

>George_RR_Martin: Dany's dragons — and the kids!

That's confirmation that the five-year-gap was in partial service of Dany - specifically, it gave necessary time for Dany's dragons to grow. But! I believe there's an additional sublimity to George's idea beyond allowing the dragons to grow.

Daenerys would have five years off-page where she'd learn to play the game of thrones as she grew into an adult. So, any "Mary Sue" complaints about a fifteen year old teenaged girl blitzkrieging her way across Westeros and then navigating the ensuing political conflicts would be hand-waved away by ... why, she became a political operator and military strategist in the five years between Storm and Dance, and she's now twenty years old. Get a life, nerd.

So, George started writing this five-year-gap version of Dance in early 2001. And! There is at least one chapter that George wrote for Daenerys Targaryen for a five-year-gap version of A Dance with Dragons as he talked about with Elio and Linda right after publishing A Dance with Dragons in 2011:

>"There's a Dany scene in the book which is actually one of the oldest chapters in the book that goes back almost ten years now. When I was contemplating the five year gap [Martin laughs here, with some chagrin], that chapter was supposed to be the first Daenerys chapter in the book. Then it became the second chapter, and then the third chapter, and it kept getting pushed back as I inserted more things into it. I've rewritten that chapter so much that it ended in many different ways."

With a bit of sleuthing done by others, that chapter was the Daznak's Pit chapter (Dany IX in the published version of Dance) wherein Drogon flies into Daznak's Pit, eats some people, and then Daenerys flies away on him to the Dothraki Sea.

But that's the published version after numerous revisions. What was the chapter supposed to be in a five-year-gap version of Dance? The answer - thanks to the work of u/gsteff and others who analyzed fan-recounts of George reading this chapter back in early 2003 - is that the chapter seemed to be the inciting incident for Daenerys to leave Meereen. Drogon grabbed Dany in its claws, flew up to the top of the pyramid, then deposited her on the top of said pyramid.

Speculation here: I think the Daznak's Pit chapter and maybe one or two additional chapter where she learns to become a by-God dragonrider were the only planned Meereenese chapters George either wrote or envisioned for a five-year-gap version of A Dance with Dragons. The rest of Dany's arc ...

Look again at that George quote from 2000: The next book, A Dance With Dragons, will focus on the return of Daenerys Targaryen to Westeros, and the conflicts that creates. The focus of the book will be Dany returning to Westeros. That "return to Westeros as focus" concept bloody limits an extended narrative stay in Meereen.

That's Version One: a minimal Meereenese story.

I can already hear a subset of fans who think this is the version George should have undertaken. Get her to Westeros, man!

But notice something here: provided my idea is correct, this is a relatively uncomplicated arc for Dany. She learns to dragonride in Meereen, heads to Westeros, invades, has conflicts when she arrives.

That's a major problem with Dany exiting Meereen early in Dance. There would be consequences to Dany leaving! What happens to those left behind? All those slaves she's freed? And what exactly did Dany learn in those five years that contributed to her becoming a good ruler?

More speculation: I wonder whether George realized this and became a contributing reason to ...

Interlude: GRRM Abandons the Five-Year-Gap

... George abandoning the five-year-gap.

As far as I can tell, George never ascribed the reason for abandoning the gap to Dany. Instead, he's attributed the reason to issues with the Dornish reaction to Oberyn Martell's death coupled with problems of telling much of Cersei and Jon Snow's stories in flashback.

Yet, I'd wager that the questions I posed above about the consequences of her leaving Meereen and her political education figured into the calculation to abandon the gap. At the same time though, the plan was for Dany to get to Westeros.

So, he comes up with a new idea: a bridging book between Storm and Dance that would cover the five years:

>The 4th Book will be A Feast For Crows, and will cover what would have been the five year gap. Some POV's -- who George said will be "learning" during the five year gap -- will have only one or two chapters.

Put a pin in that "will only have one or two chapters" quote. It'll be important for the next section! For now, know that the revised concept was for Feast to bring the story forward five years.

But while abandoning the gap made sound logic to George, it created two major problems for Dany's A Feast for Crows story: narrative logic and logistics.

• The Narrative Logic Problem: GRRM now had to write Dany's political training arc on-page. What would that education look like? What Meereenese conflicts would best dramatize Dany learning to become a ruler capable of conquering and ruling Westeros?
• The Logistics Problem: This point flows from the abandonment of the five-year-gap and retention of George's plan to get Dany to Westeros. In the post five-year-gap version of Dance, Dany, presumably, would have slowly built a fleet off-page to transport her people and army to Westeros. But now that she wouldn't have those five years, how would Dany get her and her people to Westeros? She only has the three ships that Illyrio Mopatis gifted her in A Clash of Kings. She needs boats. Where does she get those boats?

To solve those problems, GRRM embarked on ...

Version Two: A Medium Feast for Meereen

So now George had to figure out the logistics of getting Dany out of Meereen and give her something of a Meereenese political arc that would make her return to Westeros politically legible to readers.

For the logistics, GRRM gardened a rather brilliant solution that didn't require him to figure out how Dany constructs a massive fleet: the Ironborn! A mega prologue! New POV characters!

Specifically, GRRM wrote chapters from the POVs of Aeron, Asha, and Victarion Greyjoy (along with Arys Oakheart, Areo Hotah, and Arianne Martell - who were also written in partial service of Daenerys Targaryen's story) starting at some point in late 2001/early 2002.

By August 2002 (eleven months after abandoning the gap), he had completed seven chapters from this mega prologue and released four Ironborn chapters as a novella known as "The Arms of the Kraken".

So you're asking now, what was the narrative point of talking about these new Ironborn POVs in an essay about Daenerys? Answer: New Ironborn POVs were introduced in large part because the Ironborn had a fleet -- a fleet that could transport Dany and her people to Westeros. We'll talk much more about the Ironborn in part 2. But for now, know that the addition of Ironborn POVs was a likely logistics solution for getting Dany to Westeros.

Switching over to the narrative logic piece. This was a less elegant solution: he did the hard work of writing Dany chapters where she grappled with Meereenese politics. This is where George's work gets muddy. We know that GRRM revised the Daznak's Pit chapter to scrape away the five-year-gap material. Were there additional Dany chapters leftover from the gap that he revised for A Feast for Crows? I'd guess yes, but I haven't been able to confirm that explicitly.

Fast-forward to October 2003. By that point, GRRM had three Daenerys chapters done for A Feast for Crows:

• Dany I: Dany holds court in Meereen.
• Dany II: A revised version of the five-year-gap Daznak's Pit chapter.
• Dany III: Xaro Xhoan Daxos tries to bribe Dany into leaving Meereen with thirteen ships.

And then what? Nothing! A three-Dany arc was arguably all GRRM planned for Feast. At a February 2003 (eight months before the October 2003 chapter list) BosKone convention appearance, GRRM was reported to have said this:

>When asked about the progress of his writing he said AFFC is not yet finished and it is taking a long time. He has Dany pretty much done and most of the Lannister chapters. 

Dany was done by February 2003? With only three chapters? Huh?

There's a contingent of fans who think Wow, this was the way. Three Dany Meereen chapters. Then BANG. The Ironborn whisk her and her people away near the start of Dance. Great. Sign me up.

But I think George grew dissatisfied with this idea of a truncated Daenerys story in A Feast for Crows. Why? My educated guess is that this version speedran Dany's political and dragonriding development - one of the reasons I theorized GRRM abandoned the five-year-gap in the first place. A short Dany arc ensured that Meereen didn't become a gravitation center of Feast - but at the expense of Dany's character development.

And so at BosKone in February 2004 ...

Version 3: Mega Meereen

... GRRM hinted that he was expanding Daenerys's story. A fan reported George saying:

>Jon and Dany will be the two focal characters of AFfC (in the sort of way in which Ned was the focal character of AGoT).

Jon and Dany as the two focal characters seems a major step up from the three-chapter Dany arc that was "pretty much done" in 2003, doesn't it? And we now know that GRRM expanded Dany's story around this time thanks to u/gsteff's research and publication of George's June 2004 AFFC chapter order.

In that chapter count, GRRM not only listed the chapters he had written for A Feast for Crows; he also annotated chapters that were partially-written, unwritten (but planned), and "under consideration."

And here we see that GRRM expanded Dany's three-chapter arc in favor of an extensive Dany story.

All credit to u/gsteff for the google spreadsheet linked above. For our purposes, I've isolated the Dany material from June 2004 into a table below (I love tables) to demonstrate Dany's ballooning Feast arc by June 2004. (I've bolded the new chapters for visibility):

Draft Chapter	Completion Status as of June 2004	When Complete?	Corresponding Published Chapter
Daenerys I	Complete	Read as a sample in Feb 2003	Daenerys I
Daenerys II	Complete	Originally completed during the five-year-gap in 2001	Daenerys IX
Daenerys III	Complete	Included in the Oct 2003 chapter list	Daenerys III
Daenerys IV	Complete	A new finished chapter included in the June 2004 chapter list	Daenerys V/Elements of Daenerys VI
Daenerys V	Partially-Written	New addition to the June 2004 list	Unconfirmed (But I have some thoughts)
Daenerys VI-VIII	Unwritten	Unknown	Unconfirmed (Ditto. See below!)

So, now we've gone from a three-chapter Dany arc to an eight-chapter Dany story that was only halfway complete - within a year!

This is Version 3: Mega Meereen.

Now, here's where all that minutiae gets interesting. Do we know anything about those partially-written or unwritten Dany chapters? Oh yes.

A few years ago, u/zionius_ was gifted George's outline for A Feast for Crows. Written immediately after his October 2003 Feast draft, it's a FASCINATING glimpse at George's plans. I'm going to quote only the portions relevant to Meereen below:

>Dany: Pretend it’s a horse. Face off in pit. No [?marry] - city. Battle scene. ‘I’m going home’.  1 Chapter

>Dany: Her marriage. 1. Fall of Astapor. 2. Siege of Meereen - Bloody Flux. 3. Climax - dragons loosed. 4. Marriage.

Okay. This needs some serious unpacking. I spent numerous minutes analyzing, re-reading, revising my assumptions. And now I'll inflict my analysis on this essay and you by extension.

First, let's talk discrepancies here. In his outline on Dany, GRRM circles "7". This is the number of chapters he planned for Dany in Feast. However, in the chapter count unearthed by u/gsteff, he plans for 8 chapters. The discrepancy is answered in u/zionius_'s dating analysis (found in his OP). The outline was written immediately after the October 2003 Feast draft but before he wrote a new chapter (Daenerys IV - completed by June 2004).

Now, let's return to the outline and work our way from big to smaller pictures. Here's GRRM's outline for the four remaining chapters in a more readable format:

1. Fall of Astapor
2. Siege of Meereen/Bloody Flux
3. Dragons Loosed
4. Marriage

Combining the outline with GRRM's June 2004 chapter list, I think we can match every partially-written or unwritten chapter to plot events. Namely:

1. Fall of Astapor - Daenerys V - Partially-Written by June 2004
2. Siege of Meereen/Bloody Flux - Daenerys VI - Unwritten by June 2004
3. Dragons Loosed - Daenerys VII - Unwritten by June 2004
4. Marriage - Daenerys VIII - Unwritten by June 2004

So, then dialing down to the first outline page: Pretend it’s a horse. Face off in pit. No [?marry] - city. Battle scene. ‘I’m going home’.  1 Chapter.

I spent way too much time pondering this. What is this?

Answer: It's the one-chapter climax of Dany's Feast story - Draft Daenerys VII. He sketched out some of the plot points he wanted to depict in the climax of Dany's Feast story - likely so he could embed foreshadowing that he would write towards in earlier chapters. I think that's it. I also think I'm an idiot.

But my brothers and sisters, isn't this wild? The entire climax of Dany's Feast story was ...

Dany Fights the Battle of Fire

Yes. Daenerys Targaryen was originally intended to wage the actual Battle of Fire in A Feast for Crows. And it was supposed to happen in two chapters (But also maybe one or two other chapters from two different POV characters. See ya in Part 2 for more on that!)

But sit with that for a moment. The climax for Feast was going to be the battle between Dany and Yunkai and its allies.

That is astounding to me on multiple axes. Allow me to give my three largest astonishments:

1. That is not the story that we possess in the published versions of Feast and Dance.
2. Two chapters for the Battle of Fire!? (Or maybe three or four in total. Part 2, people.) Jumping way ahead of this analysis: George has written at least five chapters for the battle for Winds.
3. Daenerys Targaryen does not participate in the battle whatsoever in any of those Winds sample chapters. She's on the Dothraki Sea as battle erupts. I think it unlikely she'll be a POV character for the battle. But back in 2003/2004, she was the main POV for the battle. Crazy!

Having picked my jaw off the ground, let's move the timeline forward.

So, that's the June 2004 plan. Dany had an eight-chapter arc culminating in the Battle of Fire and ending with "marriage." Did George end up writing the partially-written and unwritten Dany chapters by the time he wrapped Feast?

I'm relatively confident he did! Why? In May 2005, GRRM attended the To Be Continued Con in which it was reported that:

>Dany has more chapters than anyone. He also said that Dany's love life is going to become "extremely complex".

And less than a month later, a fan reported this from ConQuest 2005 (where he announced the publication date of Feast):

>[Note: Spoiler POV redacted] has the most number of chapters in AFFC, while Dany has the most in ADwD.

The redacted spoiler POV is Cersei Lannister who has ten chapters in Feast. Combining the "Dany has more chapters than anyone" with the comparison GRRM drew between chapter counts between Dany and Cersei, I think those partially-written and unwritten Dany chapters he planned from June 2004 were completed by May 2005. And it's likely that the chapter count expanded between June 2004 and May 2005 from eight to ten Daenerys chapters in total.

Aside: You might be skeptical that GRRM could complete/write four to six Dany chapters in a little under a year after he'd only done four in the previous three years. But I think what tends to happen generally in George's writing of A Song of Ice and Fire is that as soon as he figures out a solution to a writing problem, the story takes fuller shape and his progress kicks into high gear - something we'll see specifically when he solved the Meereenese Knot itself in 2010.

Returning to the analysis: if GRRM finished ten chapters for Dany for Feast, it happily corresponds to the ten Dany chapters in the published version of A Dance with Dragons. Mission accomplished.

Except ... deep sigh ... there are significant discrepancies! Sure, there's a version of Daenerys V-VI in the published version of A Dance with Dragons. But the whole Battle of Fire climax was originally conceived from Dany's POV and isn't in the book. And then there's the marriage conclusion to her arc. I think the marriage chapter (Draft Dany VIII) was completely overhauled from the draft chapter where Dany would marry ... someone ... to having her marry Hizdahr zo Loraq in the published version of A Dance with Dragons which, confusingly, is also Dany VIII.

Where did the battle and "original marriage" plot work go?

Tune back in a month or two. I have theories!

Conclusion: The Minutiae Matters

Now, I want to take a big step back from all this minutiae. It's fun in its own right. But I have to ask myself if I've lost the plot of my own essay. I have, I think. It's a tautology, but all those revisions and versions of Dany's post-Storm arc were not in service of the technical mechanics of writing or to give one obsessive redditor raw material to write this essay rather than be a productive member of society.

All of those refinements, rewrites, and expansions of Dany's story were spurred by the character, plot, and thematic work George realized he needed to invest in Dany's arc.

This becomes explicit with a final examination of each version of Dany's story in draft and how it ended up in its final, published version that came out in 2011:

• Version 1 (2001): Dany departs Meereen after five years of off-page political maturation within a few chapters.
• Version 2 (2002-2003): Dany has three chapters in A Feast for Crows set in Meereen that breeze through her political education and her initial steps in becoming a dragonrider. She and her people/army leave Meereen with the Ironborn in A Dance with Dragons.
• Version 3 (2003-2005): Eight chapters (then maybe ten by the time he finished Feast). She's dealing with multiple, complex crises that better showcase her leadership than the medium version. But the arc still resolves in a massive action sequence: the Battle of Fire.
• Version 4 (2006-2009): We'll get to it in Part 3, but Dany's arc was revised yet again after the publication of A Feast for Crows.
• The Published Version: Ten Dany chapters, all of them stress-testing her morals and willingness to compromise. She engages in incredibly fraught and difficult trade-offs, compromises with dubious and outright malicious characters and factions to achieve something she would call peace. And then she chooses Drogon at the climax of her arc, rejecting Meereen and all the difficult work she undertook for most of her arc.

Do you see the progression? Every change George made to Dany from concept to publication was him stripping layers off of the Daenerys Targaryen action hero initial concept and replacing it layer-by-layer, version-by-version with what's Aragorn's tax policy turned up to "11." And then she rejects grappling with the answer in favor of her dragon.

There's also something else here that strikes me as I finish this essay. In the Mega-Meereen version of Dany's story, the climax of her story is also Dany choosing fire and blood. And that's meted out in an enormous action set piece battle. From the outline, the dragons are loosed, Dany is presumably a dragon rider by this point in the story. I'd bet my house (okay, maybe my Garmin watch) that Dany commands the battle from atop Drogon, and she wins the battle with actual fire and blood.

But does she have agency in becoming a dragonrider and choosing fire and blood in that version? Or is she forced into that choice by the external factor of the eruption of an enormous battle?

The climax in the published version is also action-packed. It's the revised version of the Daznak's Pit chapter. She becomes a dragonrider there. She embraces dragon and thematically fire and blood as she lifts off from Meereen atop dragon's back.

But her final chapter in Dance is a quiet chapter. Dany is alone with no army around her, no battle to face. She's alone with her dragon, memories, and apparitions.

There, Daenerys wrestles with her human heart, and she makes the choice - all on her own. Fire and Blood. Westeros over Meereen. Dragons plant no trees.

Personally, I believe the final version of Dany's story and all the revisions and versions to the whole of her story make George's hard work satisfying and worth the writing toil. GRRM wrote something novel with Dany's story - something that, if not explicitly new to fantasy readers, was fresh to readers of A Song of Ice and Fire.

But know this: the labor George put into Daenerys Targaryen's post-Storm story is only one part of a greater whole of his revision work. GRRM revised every POV character who ended up in Feast and Dance - especially those who would intersect with Daenerys and Meereen.

And it's in those characters that GRRM unknowingly, at the time, added a second tangle to what would become the Meereenese Knot.

Sources

This essay owes a debt to others who went before me. So, in lieu of a mailed fruit basket, here are people and links to sources that were helpful in crafting this essay:

• u/gsteff for his entire "Secrets of the Cushing Library" series, especially "Daenerys, the Ironborn, and Jaime" post.
• u/feldman10 for "A Decade Writing ‘Dance,’ Part 2: A Decade Writing Dany"
• u/zionius_ for "GRRM's 2003-2004 Outline for AFFC"
• Elio Garcia Jr. and Linda Antonsson for maintaining the So Spake Martin archive on westeros.org
• All the folks who made numerous fan reports on chapters George read or statements George made at convention appearances over the years.

Next up: the Ironborn, Dornish, Tyrion, and Aegon.

• Attempt 1
• Attempt 2

QUERY

Dear Agent,

SOL INVICTUS is a 118,000-word science fiction novel—Book One of a planned series—set during a succession crisis in a crumbling interstellar empire modeled after the late Roman Empire. The novel follows five distinct viewpoints orbiting the collapse and will appeal to readers of Ann Leckie’s Radiant Star, James S.A. Corey's The Captive’s War series, and Christopher Ruocchio's Sun Eater series.

A strung-out detective trawls the gutters of the empire seeking killers to put in bracelets and narcotics to forget the war crimes he committed against the Getae as a young soldier. When he responds to the murders of a Getae mother and son living in the capital, the killings awaken a desire to atone for his past. But just as he unearths evidence that these weren’t street-level killings, his mentor pulls him off the case.

As the mother and son lie dead in the streets, the Executor of Caelum dies in the palace. His Prefect closes his friend’s eyes and initiates his plan to undo the dead man’s twin legacies: despotism and reliance on the Getae—a nomadic tribe of spacefaring warriors and defeated enemies—to man Caelum’s borders. Those policies caused the dead Executor’s brother to rise in a rebellion that was defeated but not quelled. To halt Caelum’s decline, the Prefect will quietly restore Caelum’s tattered institutions and assimilate the Getae into Caelum without bloodshed. And he’ll channel it through the late Executor’s seventeen-year-old heir. 

Across the city, the detective won’t let the dead Getae go. He conducts an off-the-books investigation and discovers that the slain mother had worked in the palace, and their deaths point to a conspiracy at the highest echelons of imperial power. And that conspiracy proves more sinister and extensive.  

The Prefect discovers that a cabal in the palace plots to reignite war against the last rebel holdouts and use the Getae as shock troops. When the Prefect confronts the cabal, they outmaneuver him with proof that the Executor’s insurgent brother is gathering strength to renew his rebellion. Outflanked, the Prefect abandons his bloodless designs and joins the mobilization for war. 

But the rebels strike first. During the boy Executor’s ascension ceremony, half of Caelum’s navy publicly declares for the rebel. As the Prefect readies his new sovereign for command, hidden factions within the palace walls maneuver against him and the boy he serves. And the key to unraveling these palace intrigues before the Executor sails into war may be a strung-out detective who won't stop asking who murdered a mother and son—and why.

BIO

FIRST 300 WORDS

GAIUS I

The Unconquered Sun illuminated the conquered dead. 

Sputtering fingers of neon light reached past Gaius to touch the bodies at his feet. Gaius’s head slumped forward as the light flickered off with a static buzz. He squeezed his eyelids closed, forcing the mithri haze from his vision.

He knew it wouldn’t banish the narcotic from misting over his mind. It never did. But he owed the dead the attempt. The first drops of rainwater splashed cold on the back of his neck, wrenching his eyes back open at the same instant the neon ignited again. 

The liquid rolled off his neck and fell onto the concrete, twining with the blood—thick red and light clear intermingled into a brackish, pale pink. The fluid drifted through gaps in the cobbled concrete and emptied into a gutter. 

Gaius stared at the grotesque stream, then turned his eyes back to the bodies. 

Under the light, the entry wounds were two garish holes, caves burrowing into the back of their heads. Gaius didn't need to turn them over to know what he would find: Exit wounds for faces.

Two more faceless dead. Two more homicides in Colonia Getica that would never be closed. 

Gaius’s back creaked as he straightened. Dizziness hit, unbalancing him. He gulped air, slowing the spins, and fixed his eyes on the fuzzy shape that was probably the patrolman who called the bodies in.

“Walk me through it.”

“Witnesses say they heard two shots.” He waved a hand at the bodies. “Two ashback stiffs.”

Gaius let the slur slide. “And?”

“Each ashy took a round to the head.”

The patrolman’s voice was bored, detached—like he’d been sweating these streets for twenty years. But Gaius saw how the man held back from the bodies.

Thanks for reading and the critiques!

Hi r/PubTips,

Thanks for the comments on my first query a few months ago. I've gone through another draft of the novel and paused these past few days to work on the below query. I've also included the first 250 words (first page) of the novel too.

One note: The novel has five POV characters. This version of the query focuses on the two lead POVs. I'm unsure of the efficacy of a narrower focus without allusion to the three other POVs. Any advice on that point would be divine.

Thank you for your feedback and critiques!

QUERY

Dear Agent,

SOL INVICTUS is a 114,000-word science fiction novel—Book One of a planned series—set during a succession crisis in a crumbling interstellar empire modeled after the late Roman Empire. It will appeal to readers of Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire, James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series, and Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater series.

When Marcus Sextillius, Executor of the Caelian Empire, dies, Prefect Lucius Postumus closes his dead friend’s eyes and plots to dismantle his legacy. Against Postumus’s counsel, Marcus imported Goths—a nomadic tribe of spacefaring warriors and former enemies of Caelum—into the empire. That policy led to the Executor’s brother launching a rebellion that devastated the empire and was never fully quelled. To undo that folly, Postumus will manipulate Marcus’s seventeen-year-old heir, Quintus, into reversing his father’s catastrophic bargains. But the grieving boy proves no pawn—and worse, Postumus discovers that malign actors in the palace are running their own schemes against Quintus.

Across the city, Detective Gaius Vatinius trawls the gutters of the empire seeking killers to put in bracelets, narcotics to shoot into his veins, and redemption he doesn’t deserve. Responding to the murders of a Gothic mother and son, a strung-out Gaius comes to suspect that these were not street-level killings. The mother had just taken a post inside the palace; the rounds that slew her and her fourteen-year-old son were military-grade. Before he can uncover more, he’s pulled from the case.

But Gaius won't let the dead Goths go. He conducts an off-the-books investigation and discovers that their deaths point to a conspiracy at the highest echelons of Caelian power. Then a seemingly separate emergency erupts: in the middle of Quintus’s ascension ceremony, half the Caelian Navy publicly declares for Marcus’s rebel brother. This crisis forces Postumus to set aside his dismantling of Marcus’s legacy and steer the boy-Executor into war. 

As the Caelian Empire braces for war, the gathering conspiracy against Quintus goes unwatched. And a dead mother and son in a Gothic slum go forgotten—save for one detective who won’t stop asking who killed them and why.

BIO

FIRST 250 WORDS (FIRST PAGE)

GAIUS I

Neon fingers of purple light reached for the bodies, breaking Gaius’s reverie. He looked up and saw that the light shone down from a shrine looming above him, its flame faltering behind violet glass. His eyes followed light to the grotesque display on concrete below him—to the bodies. 

The Unconquered Sun illuminated the conquered dead. 

But the sputtering neon did worse than enlighten. 

It made it look like the two women were alive, still moving.

Gaius’s head slumped forward as the light flickered off with a static buzz. He squeezed his eyelids closed, forcing the mithri haze from his vision.

He knew it wouldn’t banish the narcotic from misting over his mind. It never did. But he owed the dead the attempt. The first drops of rainwater splashed cold on the back of his neck, wrenching his eyes back open. The liquid rolled off his neck and fell onto the concrete below, twining with the blood—thick red and light clear intermingled into a brackish, pale pink. The liquid drifted through gaps in the cobbled concrete and emptied into a gutter.

The neon sign ignited again. Under the light, the entry wounds were two garish holes, caves burrowing into the back of their heads. Gaius didn't need to turn them over to know what he would find—nothing. Exit wounds for faces.

Two more faceless dead. Two more homicides in Colonia Gothica that would never be closed.

In my most recent re-read of A Clash of Kings, I've been paying attention to the story behind the story. Not simply the subtext, but rather what's happening beyond the perception of the POV characters. Varys and Littlefinger, in particular, have grabbed my attention in this re-read.

And their actions rewoke memories of when I was but a young man of three and twenty (or whatever age I actually was. It all fades into mist.) and played too much online poker. For a long time, I believed Littlefinger was a loose-aggressive player (or "maniac" in the biz -- see how hip I am, mom?), playing a high percentage of hands and playing them aggressively while Varys was a tight-aggressive player or even a "rock" -- playing a low number of hands and playing reactively while waiting for a good starting hand.

I've come to reevaluate that dynamic in my re-re-re-re-re-re-re-infinity read of A Song of Ice and Fire. Currently, I'm wrapping up A Clash of Kings, and I think there are two spots in that book where the two conspirators switch roles, and I find it utterly fascinating. And no, that's not sarcasm. I swear.

And intriguingly, both spots have the same objective: securing a piece in the game of thrones that they plan (or allegedly plan in the case of Varys) to use to enhance their power. And even more intriguingly, both men use a civil disturbance to start movement on their plan. And it involves the same minor Lannister failson.

But hey, this is a poker-analogized post. So, in short:

• Varys becomes a maniac in securing a future heir of the Westerlands, and it nearly felts him.
• Littlefinger plays tight-aggressive in obtaining the potential heir of the North and doubles his stack.

Are you ready to go all in on this? Or will you fold your two-pair on the turn to the next section as you groan at my check-raise with a potential straight on the board? I'm calling clock on myself because you've grown exhausted by the poker terminology.

Varys The Maniac

Outside of the Battle of the Blackwater, the most prominent King's Landing event in Clash is the Riot that occurs in Tyrion's ninth chapter. In that chapter, the Lannisters dispatch Myrcella to Dorne along with Ser Arys Oakheart. But on the way back, they encounter a little civil disturbance that explodes into a riot.

Now, I won't insult your intelligence by going through the riot. It's memorable territory. It's also a fairly common fan-theory that Varys was behind the riot. But if Varys was behind the riot, what was his objective?

In short, what it seems like Varys was after was to instill a level of instability in King's Landing in advance of Aegon and the Golden Company arriving in Westeros with Daenerys and her dragons. If we take Tristan Rivers from ADWD at his word, Varys's plan was at the stage highlighted below:

>"Which plan?" said Tristan Rivers. "The fat man's plan? The one that changes every time the moon turns? First Viserys Targaryen was to join us with fifty thousand Dothraki screamers at his back. Then the Beggar King was dead, and it was to be the sister, a pliable young child queen who was on her way to Pentos with three new-hatched dragons. (ADWD, The Lost Lord)

But instability was not the only objective here. Instead, Varys had a likely secondary goal in mind -- securing someone:

>Tyrek was still missing, as was the High Septon's crystal crown. Nine gold cloaks had been slain, two score wounded. No one had troubled to count how many of the mob had died.

>"I want Tyrek found, alive or dead," Tyrion said curtly when Bywater was done. "He's no more than a boy. Son to my late uncle Tygett. His father was always kind to me." (ACOK, Tyrion IX)

Tyrek Lannister's disappearance is the most interesting part of the riot -- and one that fans pick up on early on and asked George about.

>Was "file Tyrek" closed in ASOS with the hint that he ended in a bowl of stew?

>GRRM: Maybe he did. Maybe he didn't.

This has led fans to speculate that Varys snatched Tyrek during the riot. This theory gains credence through Jaime's POV in AFFC:

>It was Varys he thought of then, smiling and smelling of lavender. The eunuch had agents and informers all over the city. It would have been a simple matter for him to arrange to have Tyrek snatched during the confusion . . . provided he knew beforehand that the mob was like to riot. And Varys knew all, or so he would have us believe. Yet he gave Cersei no warning of that riot. Nor did he ride down to the ships to see Myrcella off. (AFFC, Jaime III)

But why would Varys kidnap Tyrek? For that, we need to dive into Lannister succession for a bit and start with talking about Tyrek. He's the son of Tygett Lannister and fairly far down the line of succession to Casterly Rock. (5th to 7th depending on whether you count Cersei, Myrcella, and Janei Lannister ahead of him). Yet, not that far down. For instance, Tyrion is ahead of him, and we know of Tywin's thoughts on Tyrion inheriting Casterly Rock. Lancel Lannister, too, is ahead of him. Yet he takes Warrior's Sons' vows in AFFC. Martyn Lannister is the final male Lannister ahead of Tyrek.

By the end of ADWD, Martyn is at the Golden Tooth. Genna Lannister suggests that Martyn marry Amerei Darry to seize the Darry castle for the Lannisters. That might prove troublesome for the life of Martyn with the Brotherhood without Banners hunting Lannisters and Freys in the Riverlands. Regardless, I fear Martyn is not long for this world.

So, if Martyn dies, that leaves Tyrek as heir to Casterly Rock. The above is a long-winded way of saying that Varys likely seized Tyrek to stash him as an heir when Aegon lands in Westeros.

But let's move back to the riot itself. While the move achieved Varys's ends, can we say that it was extraordinarily reckless too? The riot which destabilized King's Landing and resulted in Varys potentially netting Tyrek nearly resulted in utter catastrophe:

>"Fire!" a voice screamed down from atop the barbican. "My lords, there's smoke in the city. Flea Bottom's afire."

>Tyrion was inutterably weary, but there was no time for despair. "Bronn, take as many men as you need and see that the water wagons are not molested." Gods be good, the wildfire, if any blaze should reach that . . . "We can lose all of Flea Bottom if we must, but on no account must the fire reach the Guildhall of the Alchemists, is that understood?" (ACOK, Tyrion IX)

King's Landing going ka-boom in Clash was not in Varys's interest to put it mildly. First off, and probably most importantly, Varys likely turns to ash along with the hundred of thousands of souls who would go with him. Secondly, if the whole goal is to set Aegon's ass on the iron throne, the image of Aegon sitting atop shapeless cooled steel gets significantly undercut.

Or to return with the poker analogy you hate, it's like Varys went all-in on the flop for only a small mount of chips. Tyrek wouldn't have been worth the risk if King's Landing became a crater.

Littlefinger Plays Tight-Aggressive

And now for Lord Littlefinger. He also desires to secure an heir to one of the kingdoms of Westeros. But his method of obtaining that heir is much more deliberate than throwing a city-wide amount of chaos into the mix to gain his heir. Instead, he works methodically, using smaller incidents and smaller bets to build equity in gaining Sansa Stark.

One thing that hit me on this re-read is that I think I discovered a spot in Clash where Littlefinger operates, and it's one I hadn't seen before (But I'm not a genius - I'm sure others have seen this). It's found in Sansa's second chapter in Clash. That chapter opens with Sansa reading a note she found hidden under her pillow:

>"Come to the godswood tonight if you want to go home." (ACOK, Sansa II)

This leads to Sansa meeting Ser Dontos Hollard in the Red Keep's godswood. There, Dontos promises that he'll get Sansa out of King's Landing. This is all in-text and about as well-known as the riot material we covered above.

But what I hadn't realized before this re-read is that the event is precipitated by a small civil disturbance at the gates of the Red Keep:

>"You expect her to sleep with all the noise?" Clegane said. "What was the trouble?"

>"Fools at the gate," Ser Boros admitted. "Some loose tongues spread tales of the preparations for Tyrek's wedding feast, and these wretches got it in their heads they should be feasted too. His Grace led a sortie and sent them scurrying." (ACOK, Sansa II)

Now, let's flip over to an earlier Tyrion chapter where Littlefinger talks about his plan to spread the lie that Shireen Baratheon was the product of an affair between Selyse Baratheon and Patchface. What does Littlefinger say there?

>"The story should not come from us," Tyrion said, "or it will be seen for a self-serving lie." Which it is, to be sure.

>Once more Littlefinger supplied the answer. "Whores love to gossip, and as it happens I own a brothel or three. And no doubt Varys can plant seeds in the alehouses and pot-shops." (ACOK, Tyrion III)

This is where something clicked for me. Littlefinger boasts of his ability to spread tales through gossip at his brothels. At the same time, he was working the angle of safeguarding Sansa Stark for his own designs.

So, combing information from Tyrion and Sansa's POVs: what I think happened between the pages of Tyrion III and Sansa II is that Littlefinger used his brothel gossip network to spread the rumor that Tyrek's marriage would involve a feast. The starving population of King's Landing picked up that rumor and came to the gates demanding bread.

And this civil disturbance served as a distraction that allowed Littlefinger's agent (Dontos) to meet with Sansa to start movement on getting her out of King's Landing and into his clutches.

But look at the stakes here. Littlefinger played a long game here. He used a small civil disturbance for the purposes of arranging a meeting between his agent and Sansa. That's it! And this plan worked over the a longer period of time to get Sansa out of King's Landing. And you know what? It worked -- at least so far.

Conclusion

If we widen the aperture here, we see that Varys is playing a long game -- perhaps a very long game in seating Aegon on the Iron Throne while Littlefinger's machinations have a shorter flash to bang dynamic to them. Yet, in Clash, Varys makes a dramatic bet to seize Tyrek (probably) while Littlefinger makes smaller bets that accumulate into him seizing Sansa at the end of Storm.

Both ostensibly succeed in achieving their goals. And while both have risks, Varys took an enormous risk while Littlefinger took a much smaller risk in gaining his piece.

Regardless of how much you hate the poker analogies, I wanted to share this as it's proved to me that my re-read is personally rewarding. And it was fun to revisit the brain of GRRM in writing the conspiracies of Varys and Littlefinger.

Thanks for readin'.

Intro

I've been rereading A Clash of Kings for the first time in ... a while. I finished Jon III (Jon at Craster's Keep) and then the next chapter was ... Theon II? I felt whiplashed by the tonal switch from Jon the Hero to Theon the scumbag who gets sexually humiliated by his sister Asha. But in that whiplash, something clicked: Clash doesn’t actually read quite the same as A Game of Thrones. It reads like a bundle of novellas that George fused into one novel.

And that should not work. Readers should feel the tonal whiplash and bounce off the book with a "Did Not Finish" mark on Goodreads.

But the wild thing is that it works -- really, really well.

Because whether George intended it or not (he didn’t; does anyone know that George is a gardener?), every POV in this book is doing its own genre bit. It’s like GRRM wrote eight nine separate novellas that somehow weaved together to form a coherent novel.

The Genres of CLASH

We’ve got eight nine POVs in A Clash of Kings. Here's a bottom-line up front take on each of their genres:

1. Sansa Stark: Courtly Romance
2. Arya Stark: Survival Horror and Revenge Thriller
3. Tyrion Lannister: Chamber Drama/Mafia Drama/War Fiction
4. Catelyn Stark: Diplomatic Tragedy
5. Theon Greyjoy: Cringe Comedy and Psychological Horror
6. Davos Seaworth: Religious Mythmaking and Naval (Mis)Adventure
7. Jon Snow: The Heroic Quest or America's Entry Into the Vietnam War
8. Bran Stark: Coming of Age Drama
9. Daenerys Targaryen: Imperial Fantasy with Prophetic Overtones

Clash doesn’t treat these POVs as fantasy rotations though. Instead, it reads like George used the fantasy scafollding (or foundation?) to hang genre drywall off of.

Or to use a less purple metaphor: it's a funhouse mirror Old Country Buffet. You got your continental cuisine sitting alongside Carribean next to a pot of Pho.

So, grab a plate and walk with me through the genre buffet.

A Feast for Genres

Sansa Stark: Courtly Romance

Sansa’s chapters are a courtly romance with teeth. Her storyline is palace horror and courtly manners within the framing of her learning the game of thrones. She is the young heroine in a hostile castle, surrounded by people who see her as a bargaining chip, a body to abuse, or a game piece. Yet she survives the book and does so while retaining chivalric principles -- seen best in her salvation of Dontos Hollard in her first chapter.

Arya Stark: Survival Horror and Revenge Thriller

The first half of Arya's Clash story is her, Yoren, and the Night's Watch recruitees walking forward to where the monsters lurk. Those monsters are Amory Lorch and Gregor Clegane. And those monsters capture her, and Arya witnesses some of ASOIAF's most horrific events on the march up to Harrenhal -- or the haunted house at the end of her journey.

But this is where the story shifts. Instead of Arya simply surviving and escaping the haunted house, we have a whole revenge arc where Arya employs Jaqen H'ghar as an assassin-genie (I mean, hell, she gets three deaths/wishes!) to get some cold, bloody revenge on some of the worst of the Lannisters.

Tyrion Lannister: Chamber Drama/Mafia Drama/War Fiction

The elevator pitch for Tyrion's Clash story goes something like this: What if Wolf Hall was run by the Corleone Family, and they have to survive the Siege of Minas Tirith? There are more Tyrion chapters than any other POV, and the genre blending propels his massive arc. There's everything from political maneuvering to espionage to Tyrion and Cersei's disastrous relationship to a full-blown battle to cap it all off.

Catelyn Stark: Diplomatic Tragedy

Catelyn reads like she’s in a completely different book -- because she is. Cat in Clash is the second act of her overall tragic arc. Game was personal tragedy. Storm was cataclysm. But Clash is the failure of institutions. She's the last gasp of the previous generation and its adherence to norms.

She's the “we’re all adults here trying to negotiate peace while the world sets itself on fire” genre. She wanders from failing to counsel Robb to failing to bridge the gap between Renly and Stannis to deciding "Fuck it. If everyone else is violating norms, I will too" in freeing Jaime Lannister. And it all backfires in Storm. Her chapters are a meditation on how reasonable people lose in unreasonable times.

Theon Greyjoy: Cringe Comedy and Psychological Horror

People say Theon’s horror arc begins with Ramsay. Wrong. The real horror is Theon vs. Theon. His Clash storyline is a psychological horror novella disguised as an Ironborn homecoming. But it starts as cringe comedy. Theon is repeatedly humiliated when he lands at Lord's Port and then by Balon and then sexually humiliated by Asha.

But then his story shifts. His humiliations "compel" him to commit acts of cruelty as his identity breaks down. And then "Reek" is down in the dungeon, and as Satan, he tempts Theon to commit greater acts of atrocity with the Miller's Boys. It all culminates in Satan betraying him at Winterfell.

Davos Seaworth: Religious Myth Meets Naval (Mis)Adventure

Davos is just a normal guy, right? I mean, sure, he has a fabulous and storied backstory. But there's nothing particular special about him. He's everyman -- allbeit one a touch too loyal for his own good. So, George decides that everyman has to encounter religious horror ... for fun.

But is it religious horror or religious/sociopolitcal mythtelling? Through Davos, we get the story of Azor Ahai and watch the second shadowbaby be birthed. And also through him, we get the myth of Stannis Baratheon from the person most sympathetic to him.

But it all culminates in naval disaster when the myths of Stannis's divine choosing and him as the great general of Westeros crash against Tyrion's chain and then burn under the wildfire.

Jon Snow: Classic Hero’s Quest Meets Vietnam

At first blush, Jon is off doing genre comfort food: the hero’s journey. Travel north, meet strange cultures, face moral dilemmas, battle monsters -- familiar fare. But Clash complicates the quest by making identity, loyalty, and truth the actual battles. His story is less about reaching the Frostfangs and more about the limits of heroism and do-goodery. Should he save Craster's "wives"? Or are there larger goods to achieve -- his "other" wars?

But the fascinating thing of it is that the Great Ranging itself reads a bit like George reflecting on Vietnam. Recall that the original mission was to rescue Benjen Stark. But then the mission becomes "Stop Mance Rayder". That's some serious mission creep, and I can't help but feel that George interrogated Jon's Hero's Quest through Vietnam War pastiche. (That could be stretch)

Bran Stark: Mythic Coming-of-Age

Bran’s chapters drift into myth. As a paralyzed kid, his story is arguably the slowest in the book. Yet it reads like a coming-of-age drama that prepares him for his future magical role. But in that slowness, there's some cool stuff: the Harvest Feast which occupies the middle of his arc is northern politics at its best and works as a training run for Bran as future Iron Throne sitter. But then his story turns to political tragedy with the Ironborn invasion and the Fall of Winterfell. Thankfully, Meera and Jojen Reed are there. They (especially Jojen) serve as shamanic guides to his magical future in the far north in Storm and Dance.

Daenerys Targaryen: Imperial Fantasy with Prophetic Overtones

Arguably, Dany's novella is the weakest of the Clash stories. The reason is ... complicated. But in a nutshell, Dany’s story in Game advanced faster than any other POV in the first book while others lagged behind. So, there's some wheel-spinning in her story. But! It's not bad wheel-spinning. George takes the "destiny" storyline that closes out her arc in Game and turns it up to "11" by having her storyline occupies the “distant-lands epic” corner of the book. She has the fewest chapters of any POV in Clash, but George makes her story one where she assumes the role of a prophetic figure of destiny -- one that meets the hard realities of where image collides with reality in Qarth. Ultimately, it culminates at the House of the Undying and her journey on to become the queen she's destined to be in Storm.

Conclusion

That George writes in sub-genre is very likely not an original thought. But for me, it lended more enjoyment of A Clash of Kings than I had previously. Because it’s not one book. It’s eight nine novellas sharing a book spine.

This is why Clash feels both sprawling and tight. Each storyline has its own tone and stakes, but together they give the world depth and texture that a single-genre book simply couldn’t. The genres don’t clash; they harmonize. The result is a story that feels huge without feeling messy, coherent without feeling uniform.

GRRM didn’t write a sequel to A Game of Thrones.

He wrote a mosaic.