Who is the Harpy?

who is the harpy the mysterious leader of the sons of the harpy that miranese resistance group it's one of the biggest mysteries in a dance with dragons there are lots of candidates but i think we can now narrow this down quite a lot hi everyone this is robert welcome to in deep geek and thank you to my patrons without whose support these videos would not be possible this is the next in an occasional series of videos looking at the key questions and mysteries for the winds of winter you don't need to have watched any of the other videos in this series for this one to make sense but there's a link in the description if you're interested let's start this time by quickly reminding ourselves who the sons of the harpy are what they have been doing and why when daenerys captured meereen she was immediately faced with a very real political problem that had faced her in both yunkai and astapor once she had freed the slaves what then how can she ensure that the changes she makes actually stick she left both yunkai and astapor pretty quickly without really setting proper systems in place and the results were not good the old ruling classes took back control of yunkai and a new despot took control of astapor in marine though daenerys actively tries to create something lasting she tries a different approach this she instinctively knows requires her to show both strength and some degree of accommodation of the local powers that be she starts out by showing her strength slaves are freed the fighting pits a central part of mirani's culture are closed the dragons are free to fly over the city and she orders the brutal crucifixion of 163 of the great masters the ruling slaver class of meereen we are of course sympathetic to dany meeting out justice to these great masters as well as the horrors of slavery more broadly they were responsible for crucifying 163 slave children days earlier in a gruesome warning to dany before she attacked the city this was about justice as much as it was a show of control and power from the new ruler of marine but from the perspective of the nobles of marine daenerys's initial actions were nothing less than a brutal declaration of war dany had taken the great masters livelihoods from them banned their cultural practices and murdered their family members how else might we expect them to respond than with anger and reprisals added to which given what happened in yunkai and astapor it would have been reasonable of them to assume that if they made life difficult enough for her she would just move on to another city again so it's little surprise that they opposed her they didn't do it to her face daenerys's grip on power was too strong for that to work but secretly they formed a group called the sons of the harpy and started a series of armed guerrilla attacks on daenerys's supporters of course when i say they did this we should probably be clear that this probably wasn't all of the mirenese nobles but it definitely was a lot of them this is not the movement of just a couple of disgruntled nobles and the sons of the harpy begin killing people at night the unsullied dany's ultra loyal soldiers shave pates nobles who have shaved off their old ghiscari hairstyles as a sign of their acceptance of dany's rule and freedmen former slaves now living free in the city these aren't just one or two murders but dozens over many nights and the murders aren't just straightforward murders either bodies adorbed with their own blood with harpy symbols and worse daenerys was being taunted by the sons of the harpy her initial response was again to show strength she created a new unit of guards raised the reward for information about the sons of the harpy to an astronomical figure allowed suspects to be interrogated and even tortured and even demanded child hostages from the noble families threatening to kill them if the murders continued things were escalating badly but then a couple of things happened first zaro joe and daxos paid a visit from qarth he offered danny a root out of all of this the ships she needed to get to westeros and peace she refused him affirming her commitment to staying in marine and as a result carth declared war a war that marine really really couldn't afford that was the first thing the second is that dany started to soften her previously unbending approach to dealing with the mirenese her dragons had been terrorizing the city in the surrounding area eating whatever animals they liked and perhaps even a small child after being informed of this dany had them imprisoned in the base of her pyramid in order to protect the citizens of the city well she imprisoned two of them drogon couldn't be caught and despite all her threats and the violence from the sons of the harpy continuing it becomes very obvious that dany noticeably doesn't kill any of the hostages she has the mirenese nobles were clearly paying attention dany wasn't about to quit the city carth would probably soon attack and perhaps she wasn't quite the monster they initially thought and perhaps more open to compromise all of this changed the situation maybe instead of murders and opposition the miranese nobles could come to some kind of agreement with dany some way that everyone could win so the very next chapter the green grace the high priestess of meereen pays dany a visit and gently questions her why hasn't she killed the hostages why hasn't she allowed others to do it because they are innocent is dany's reply she basically tells the green grace that she will never kill those hostages and as if she had been hoping for or expecting that answer the green grace then immediately suggested that dany marry a mirenese noble his da zo lorac to be precise instead of opposing dany the miranese could get behind her adopt her as their own make meereen strong again hizdahr had obviously already been made aware of this plan and when he is summoned he immediately makes the bold claim that if daenerys marries him he can stop the sons of the harpy and their murderous ways i can reconcile the city to your rule and put an end to this nightly slaughter in the streets can you danny studied his eyes why should the sons of the harpy lay down their knives for you are you one of them no would you tell me if you were he laughed no so daenerys negotiates if the murders stop for 90 days she will marry his da and the murders do stop immediately hisdah is seen going from noble house to noble house giving the impression of someone negotiating with a lot of people but in truth the murders do just stop straight away and on the 91st day true to her word dany marries his star despite offers in the days before from quentin martell and dario it's fair to say that she was more tempted by dario's offer than by quentin's anyway peace had returned to meereen and the sons of the harpy had apparently laid down their weapons it's the day after the wedding that things blew up again this should have been the moment when things all came to fruition daenerys's marriage to hizdah was effectively a peace treaty sealed by marriage something we're very aware of from westerosi politics the sons of the harpy stopped murdering people and accepted her as queen including her rule that slavery would not return within the city in exchange she had allowed the fighting pits to reopen taken a mirenese noble as co-ruler and imprisoned her dragons to protect the mirenese both sides had compromised massively and distrust was still everywhere but peace was secured the people chanted her name in dasnack's pit but as i said that was when things blew up again first there were the poisoned honeyed locusts in hizdahr and dany's books strong balwas ate them all and was very sick but presumably they were meant for daenerys or hizdah himself the identity of the poisoner here often gets quite a lot of attention and i'll talk about it a little bit more later on but i don't think it was the work of the sons of the harpy it's not really their style after all they're more of the brutal murder kind of people not subtle poisoners anyway it wasn't that that really caused the problems because then daenerys objects to some of the spectacles in the fighting pit before her drogon turns up and starts killing animals and people his da shouts for the people to kill drogon daenerys tries to stop drogon and ends up climbing onto his back and flying off leaving the city an uproar the whole carefully negotiated piece was in tatters things moved quickly after that his da who in daenerys's absence was then technically king started replacing dany's advisors with his own and bringing back more of the traditional miranese ways that may sound like opportunism and i'm sure there was an element of that but his star was in charge and able to do whatever he wanted and the longer dany was gone the more people had to assume that she was dead or not coming back however scahas the shave pate seeing his own influence suddenly decimated by this unexpected turn of events managed to persuade barristan selmy that hizdah had been responsible for the poisoning attempt and barristan then launched a coup against hizdah putting him under effective house arrest in the great pyramid and assumed control himself in the name of daenerys naming himself and of the queen this of course broke the delicate peace deal secured by the marriage of daenerys and histor of course the sons of the harpy started killing people again in ever greater numbers and the besieging junkish army who were at the very least sympathetic to the aims of the sons of the harpy demanded the death of rhaegal and vicerion dany's dragons the fragile piece was blown apart seemingly irreparably it seems that with daenerys's departure and barristan's actions the sons of the harpy have gone right back to their original tactics through everything getting the foreign invaders out of the city so what can we learn from all this well first let's just address the question of whether there actually is a harpy a mastermind behind all of this we first hear of this idea from scahas who suggests it might be hizdah we'll come back to sakahaza in a moment because he isn't exactly neutral in this it is a tempting idea though that there isn't just one leader but a loose conglomeration of miranese nobles but given that this mystery has been set up by george r martin it seems likely that there is an answer to it and everything we have seen suggests that this movement is not by a committee but masterminded by one or two people at most the attacks start and stop as one there are no rogue attacks by one member of the committee who disagreed with the majority view or anything like that this is all very coordinated and decisions are made quickly there is clearly a very strong and streamlined decision-making structure here and not just a loose collection of people with shared interests a decision is made on what to do and everyone follows that decision i'm sure we will find that there is more than one person involved in all this but there is a leader and although we don't know all the subtleties of miranese politics it's clear that whoever is directing this action is capable of commanding complete and immediate respect from everyone else involved tactics change by 180 degrees overnight on a couple of occasions pausing the attacks then restarting them opposing daenerys completely then reaching an accommodation with her i think this is the first clue that scar has is not the harpy he is noble but not very noble he's the equivalent of a mid-ranking lord in westeros not exactly the kind that everyone would automatically rally behind and in addition he is very publicly siding against the sons of the harpy he's known as the shavepate because he cut his hair as a symbol of turning his back on old mireni's ways and accepting daenerys rule so if he is the harpy leader he's playing a very very devious game so devious that well he's actually working against the interests of the harpies at every turn he heads up a political group focused on opposing the sons of the harpy he creates the brazen beasts a militia aimed at fighting the sons of the harpy he presses for torturing those suspected of being sons of the harpy he is the first one to mention the idea that there is a harpy when none of team daenerys had thought of the idea unnecessarily compromising himself if he were the harpy and at every turn he tries to turn daenerys and barristan against hizdah who is undoubtedly at least partly involved in what's going on with the sons of the harpy but we'll get onto that in just a second most crucially he keeps on calling for the hostages the children of the noble families of marine to be killed skahaz going deep undercover would be one thing but actively torturing your allies and trying to kill the children of your supporters is another entirely these are not things the harpy would do no scahas gives every impression of actually being what he looks like a mid-ranking miranese noble who saw an opportunity with daenerys taking over to rise in power himself he wheedles his way into her inner circle and tries to undermine his rivals he's not innocent but he's also very clearly not the harpy so perhaps scahaz is right and it is his da well on the surface this is quite appealing his dar is the person who gains the most out of all of this after all he becomes king of marine something he admits he wanted and also the murders stop when daenerys agrees to marry him and start again when barristan arrests him there is no doubt that he is involved somehow even if it is only as a figurehead the activity of the sons of the harpy are inextricably tied to what is going on with his star but he does always give the impression of being a useful ally for them rather than the mastermind when daenerys is gone and he suddenly is king several other nobles emerge questioning whether he really is the right person to be ruling as if they didn't really want him to just saw him as the best bet to get daenerys to agree to a marriage with his youthful good looks and honest approach and surely if he were the kind of person able to order the brutal murders of dozens of innocent people he would have made more of the opportunity presented by daenerys disappearance yes he reshuffled advisors so he had his own people there but he didn't really roll back many of daenerys's big reforms or tried to take out her loyal supporters like sir barristan or grey worm he just sat back and enjoyed being king for a while no it's not him but we're getting closer how about the person the fandom most often suspects the green grace herself the high priestess of marine the case against her is actually pretty strong she is undoubtedly somebody who people could rally behind and she is the one who actually suggests the marriage to his star as a means of ending the violence that scene is definitely worth a closer read because she questions dany about the hostages assures herself that they won't be killed no matter what and then suggests a way forward that could avoid more bloodshed it seems that she has the authority to at the very least make the decision on whether to go ahead with the marriage plan clearly something changed in the mindset of the sons of the harpy as we noted earlier this is probably the consequence of daenerys clearly indicating her commitment to stay carth's declaration of war and her new willingness to compromise on her dragons and killing hostages and so on the green grace is very clearly chosen as the best person to present this new proposal to daenerys which probably means that she is either an integral part of what's going on with the sons of the harpy and possibly the harpy herself or was genuinely an honest broker as she presents herself wanting peace but which one i think we can see the answer to this in her reaction to the end of the peace deal that she brokered when daenerys has gone and peace seems far off again she has a conversation with sir barristan she waxes lyrical about how wonderful pieces a pearl beyond price she tries to persuade him to do something anything to bring peace back release his da agree to yonkai's demands and so on it's as if she no longer cares what the price is peace is worth it we read that her voice is full of grief and fear when she reports that the junkish have rejected terms even through her multiple veils barristan can see that she is crying she sighs when she talks of how hard they had worked for that piece in meereen and all for nothing this doesn't seem like an act this seems like someone who is genuinely trying to find any way to bring peace to meereen in short the green grace appears not to be the person who set the sons of the harpy on a murdering rampage but the person who managed to negotiate a ceasefire so if not her then who she must know the harpy to be able to negotiate on their behalf well there are two other possibilities both rather minor characters rezak and graznan the case against rezak is mostly based around the fact that he is a perfumed cena shell and is referred to as such a couple of times and dany was warned by quaithe to beware the perfumed cena shell but there are several candidates to be the perfumed cena shell not least varys this isn't exactly strong evidence and everything rezak has been doing is working against the aims of the sons of the harpy when daenerys was offered the option to leave marine he advised that she stay and almost all of his other advice has been about making her more mirror knees in order to win the support of the locals no there's no evidence that it's him so finally what about grazdanzo galer he is clearly a senior great master and related to the green grace so it makes sense for her to be the one he trusts to negotiate the peace deal he's clearly very set in his ways as a slave master and has lost out personally as a result of dany's reforms so exactly the kind of person we might expect to be the harpy and although most of the son of the harpy murders we read about are of anonymous victims one set of victims sounds suspiciously like some people he has a personal grudge against grazdan's first and only appearance before daenerys was to demand money from some freed women weavers who used to be his slaves and had now set up a shop his argument was that they had learned their skills and they were undoubtedly skillful while being his slaves so he should be recompensed dany obviously refuses this and instead forces him to buy them a new loom he's obviously not happy to say the least and then a while later we hear that some young female freed women weavers who are very clearly skillful and personally known to daenerys are murdered and not just murdered brutally but the sons of the harpy deliberately broke their loom first the one that grazdan had been forced to buy for them this was almost certainly a direct instruction from grazdan why else break the loom so of all the characters we have been introduced to grasdan seems the most likely he ticks all the boxes and we have one direct clue linking him to the murders we have to be honest and admit that george r martin hasn't yet given us enough information to be categorical on this one and it's possible that it's a character we haven't met yet but it's not the shave pate it's not rezak or hisda and unless she's a great actress it's not the green grace everything points to grasdan but until we get the winds of winter we won't know for sure as a brief digression i did say that i would come back to the poisoned honey locusts it gets talked about a lot but it's not often recognized that this is a particularly poor assassination attempt if it is aimed at daenerys there was a lot of different food in that box and the thing that was poisoned was something dany had never eaten before she seems to actually quite like relatively plain food figs and dates and flatbread with a glass of wine all those things were there in the box and that's obviously what she ate but they weren't poisoned no this poisoning either wasn't meant for her was by someone who had no idea what she liked to eat and it was nothing like the usual modus operandi of the sons of the harpy they are more direct and want everyone to know it was them daubing harpy symbols and the like no this very probably wasn't the sons of the harpy and it very probably wasn't an attempt to kill daenerys i've seen a rather convincing argument on westeros.org by master of little birdies suggesting that this was the house of pal trying to kill strong belwas who clearly loved honeyed locusts but that would require a video on its own to explore the important point here is that as is often the case with george r.r martin who actually did it is actually less important than who people think did it and the shave pate managed to convince barristan that it was his star and what barristan did then had huge implications so let's pull all of this together this is what seems to have happened in meereen with the sons of the harpy dany took over the city at the end of a storm of swords and immediately took a very progressive but confrontational approach to the local powers that be she ended slavery which was how they earned their money and kept their power executed 163 of them for their crimes shut down their entertainment and cultural focus of the fighting pits allowed her dragons to fly free killing and eating whatever animals they wanted and so on opposition was inevitable some of the miranese nobles like scahas the shavepate saw the opportunity to rise in power by siding with daenerys others like grazdan put pressure on her to leave or conform the sons of harpy were formed to put even more pressure on daenerys and kill her allies but then things changed daenerys softened her position not killing the hostages she'd taken imprisoning the dragons and so on and made a clear commitment to staying long-term in meereen meereen's enemies grew qarth yunkai volantis and in response to all this the leadership of the sons of the harpy changed tack they got the green grace to propose a deal if dany compromised a bit and agreed to marry one of their own they would stop the murders and it worked the sons of the harpy didn't attack anyone for 90 days dany married his star the fighting pits were reopened and all was well for a few hours at least then it all fell apart again in the space of a few minutes there was the poisoning plot with the honeyed locusts that probably wasn't the sons of the harpy resuming hostilities but eventually sir barristan decided that it was dany reacted badly to the spectacle in the fighting pit drogon arrived and started eating animals and people his star reacted by calling for drogon to be killed dany flew off on drogon and the city was in uproar the sons of the harpy resumed their attacks but only after barristan launched his coup against hizdah the green grace attempted to restore peace begging the junkish to stand down so barristan to release his star or give in to the youngest demands but no team dany even without dany there had pushed things back to even worse than they were before the harpy probably grazdan but we'll have to wait and see on that feels betrayed after giving so much in a negotiated peace things will get tougher for sebastian and marine before they get easier if you'd like to see more a song of ice and fire theories and explanations please click on the link on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel or get access to content i produced just for my patrons like audio recordings of the pre-release chapters from the winds of winter please click on the link on the right of your screen thanks for watching that's all for this time and i'll see you again soon

Channel: In Deep Geek

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Keywords: in deep geek, deep geek, game of thrones, got, asoiaf, a song of ice and fire, twow, the winds of winter, who is the harpy game of thrones, who is the harpy, game of thrones harpy, game of thrones sons of the harpy, sons of the harpy, the sons of the harpy, poisoned honey locusts, honeyed locusts, poison daenerys, meereen, daenerys, hizdahr zo loraq, hizdahr, shavepate, the shavepate

Id: pLs3pNQnAmI

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020