In A Clash of Kings, Daenerys Targaryen meets “three seekers” – Pyat Pree, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, and Quaithe – who are kinda like
the three wise men of the Bible – they come after a miraculous birth beneath a special
star, and give gifts to a possible prophesied saviour – but anyway – Pyat Pree is a
douchebag warlock guy, Xaro Xhoan Daxos is a douchebag “merchant prince” guy, and
Quaithe is… a mystery. She wears a red mask, and calls herself “Quaithe of the Shadow”. Like Melisandre, she says she’s a shadowbinder from Asshai. A shadowbinder seems to be someone
who uses shadow magic – like Mel does to kill Renly and Cortnay Penrose – and Asshai
is a city at the edge of the known world, steeped in darkness and magic and mystery, much like Quaithe herself – beyond her name and where she’s from, we know nothing
about this woman. Yet she repeatedly appears to Dany, offering cryptic advice. What’s
her deal? In Qarth, Quaithe tells Dany to “Beware
… Of all” who might want to take her dragons, which as Jorah says, is good advice. Later, she says magic is becoming more powerful in the world of ice and fire, which is something
we’ve heard before, but she implies that it’s happening because of the birth
of Dany’s dragons. Then Quaithe tells Dany to leave Qarth. Dany asks where she should
go, and Quaithe says this: “To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west,
you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass
beneath the shadow”. At first Dany thinks this means Quaithe wants her to go to Asshai, which is, after all, “Easternmost and southernmost of the great cities of the known
world”, so she asks “What is there in Asshai that I will not find in Qarth?”,
and Quaithe just says “Truth”. It’s probably possible for Dany to go to Asshai – it's about as close to Qarth as Meereen is. Some suggest Dany might pass through Asshai, go
all the way east, and approach Westeros from the west. But there’s good reason not to
believe that Dany goes to Asshai – George R. R. Martin has said that “[We will see
Asshai] Only in flashback and memory, if at all”. Further, it seems really silly to
have such a cryptic riddle solved immediately after we hear it. Right? So it seems unlikely
that Quaithe means for Dany to go to Asshai. But she means something important, ’cause
in the next book, in Slaver’s Bay, Quaithe appears to Dany again, seemingly in a dream,
and repeats the go back to go forward thing. In Dance, Quaithe appears a third time, and
this is where she speaks the most. Dany asks Quaithe if she’s dreaming, and Quaithe says
“no”, but she also says that she’s not actually there, and that only Dany can see
her. She then says “The glass candles are burning”. This may explain how Quaithe
keeps appearing to Dany when she sleeps – glass candles are magical Valyrian artefacts that
allow communication over long distances, kinda like palantiri in Lord of the Rings, or just,
like, uh, phones. But glass candles, according to Marwyn the Mage, allow you to “enter
a man’s dreams and give him visions”, which sounds like what’s happening to Dany. And
it’s plausible that Quaithe might have a glass candle, it’s not like they’re super-rare
– the maesters of the Citadel have a bunch, the Targaryens of Aemon’s day seem to
have had some, and someone called Urrathon Night-Walker has some, in Qarth, where Quaithe presumably still is. So it looks like Quaithe is using a glass candle to communicate with
Dany. That’s one puzzle solved, but Quaithe gives
us more. She says “Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark
flame, lion and griffin, the sun’s son and the mummer’s dragon. Trust none of them.
Remember the Undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal”. This is basically a list of
everything and everyone Dany has to deal with. “[T]he pale mare” is the disease that
ravages Slaver’s Bay, “the others” probably the Yunkai’i. The “kraken”’s Victarion
and maybe Euron, the “dark flame” is Moqorro, the “lion” Tyrion, the “griffin”
Jon Connington, “the sun’s son” Quentyn Martell. “[T]he mummer’s dragon” is
probably Aegon, maybe hinting that he’s no true Targaryen. And “the perfumed seneschal”
could be a bunch of stuff – maybe Reznak, or Varys, or the ship Tyrion was on. Interestingly,
Quaithe mentions all these people, but not Marwyn the Mage, who’s also coming for Dany.
And it just so happens that Marwyn uses a glass candle – could he be in contact with
Quaithe? In any case, overall that stuff’s pretty straightforward, and pretty accurate,
too, right? Dany notices that Quaithe predicts “the pale mare” and Quentyn. But she
still doesn’t understand the go-back-to-go-forwards stuff.
Everything starts to make sense in Daenerys X, A Dance With Dragons. In this chapter,
Dany has a climactic kind of a vision quest at the edge of the Dothraki Sea. She eats
some funny berries, flies around on Drogon, hallucinates – a lot like that scene in
Tenacious D, actually. But the point of this for Dany is huge turning point in her character.
All through Dance, she tries to peacefully and diplomatically rule the city of Meereen
– she marries Hizdahr when she wants Daario, she chains away her dragons when she wants
them free, she opens Daznak’s Pit, and allows Yunkish slavery, though she thinks it wrong,
all the while telling herself “If I look back I am lost”. That’s the mantra by
which she supresses the violent, uncompromising side of her personality, the Targaryen side.
And that’s how this chapter starts – she tells herself her home is in Meereen, she
needs to bend before the whip, if she looks back she is lost. But in this chapter, she
looks back. Quaithe appears, and says “Remember who you are … The dragons know. Do you?”
And her vision quest begins. A vision of Viserys reminds her of her Targaryen blood, the grass
reminds her that her dragons are her true children, a vision of Jorah reminds her that
Meereen is not her home, that her war is in Westeros, he says “Remember your words”,
and Dany says “Fire and Blood”. So at the conclusion of this chapter, Daenerys says
“To go forward I must go back”. She flies off on Drogon, hunts and eats a horse, thinks
of Daario, and the chapter ends with the appearance of a Dothraki khalasar. Dany is going back to
the Dothraki, back to the Targaryens, back to “Fire and Blood”, and it all starts
with Quaithe. This is what Quaithe means when she says “To go forward you must go back”,
and the “go north [to go] south” and “east” “to [go] west” stuff presumably means
the same thing, just a little more poetically. Admittedly, the bit saying “to touch the
light you must pass beneath the shadow” doesn’t really fit this interpretation very well.
The fact that Asshai is called Asshai-by-the-Shadow does make it tempting to believe that this means
Dany will go to Asshai, but again, that seems unlikely. So maybe the light and shadow stuff
will make more sense later. For now, we’ve got a pretty good explanation of Quaithe’s prophecy.
“To go forward you must go back” refers to transformation of Dany’s character, a
return to violence and power and “Fire and Blood”. Maybe she’ll lead a horde of Dothraki.
Maybe she’ll go burn her enemies in Slaver’s Bay. Maybe she’ll finally go to Westeros.
And maybe, with the loss of her gentler side, she’ll become a bit of a bad guy. This is
a big deal for Dany. But we still don’t know what’s
up with Quaithe. Who is she, and what does she want? To answer these questions, let’s
“go back”, to the reign of King Aegon IV Targaryen, more than a hundred years ago.
Known as “the Unworthy”, Aegon famously fathered lots of bastards, including the original
Daenerys Targaryen, after whom our Dany is named, but he also fathered someone called
Shiera Seastar, who according to one theory, is Quaithe. Now, for Quaithe to be Shiera,
she’d have to be more than a hundred years old, but funnily enough, Shiera Seastar’s
half-brother and lover was Brynden Rivers, a.k.a. Bloodraven, a.k.a. the three-eyed crow,
who Bran finds alive beyond the Wall, and who, like Quaithe, gives cryptic guidance
from afar. If Brynden extended his life, and he was close with Shiera, maybe Shiera could
extend her life too. Of course, Quaithe is not a tree-person, but The World of Ice and
Fire says Shiera’s mother was said to be a sorceress, and George R. R. Martin has said
Shiera “was reputed to practice the dark arts” – the same is said in The
Sworn Sword, specifically the she “bath[ed] in blood to keep her beauty”. So it seems
totally possible that Shiera might magically extend her life. Further, there are strong
symbolic connections between her and Quaithe. Shiera is associated with stars – her mother
named her “Star of the Sea”. And in Daenerys X, in the Dothraki Sea, the stars whisper
Quaithe’s prophecy to Dany, and Dany sees Quaithe as a “mask … made of starlight”. Quaithe’s whole role in the story is symbolically that of a sea star, a guiding light that “show[s]
[Dany] the way” when she’s “lost [on the Dothraki] sea”. Being Shiera may explain
Quaithe’s motivations – it makes sense that a fellow Targaryen princess, or legitimised
bastard, whatever, would want to guide Dany back to her Targaryen roots, and return
to Westeros. Also, Shiera is said to have “spoke[n] a dozen tongues and surrounded
herself with ancient scrolls”. You’ve gotta wonder – might some those ancient
scrolls have said something about a saviour called Azor Ahai? That prophecy seems to come from Asshai, so maybe Shiera Seastar went to Asshai for that reason, and she helps
Dany because, like Benerro and Aemon, she thinks Dany is Azor Ahai. Or she might have
just gone to Asshai for general shadowbinding black artsy stuff. Or maybe she’s never
even been to Asshai and she just says he has, and wears a mask, and takes the name of Quaithe
to hide her identity – she was a famed beauty in her day, maybe she doesn’t want to be
recognised. Maybe she had to leave Westeros to hide her unnaturally long life. We could
speculate all day. The point is that there’s fairly strong evidence that Quaithe may be
Shiera Seastar. It’s far from certain, some things don’t fit – like, Shiera’s eyes
are different colours, and Dany doesn’t notice that in Quaithe. But there are still
strong symbolic connections between the two, and being Shiera may explain Quaithe’s motivations.
Whoever she is, Quaithe’s prophecy seems to refer to a transformation in Daenerys’
character from peace and restraint to “fire and blood”.
Thanks for watching. Let me know in the comments whether you think Quaithe is Shiera Seastar,
and what topic you’d like to see next.
