Why did Jaqen recruit Arya?

why did jackan recruit Arya and what do the Faceless Men want with her anyway hi everyone this is Robert welcome to in deep geek on this channel we cover A Song of Ice and Fire Game of Thrones and House of the dragon as well as other great fantasy worlds like the Lord of the Rings if that sounds good there's a subscribe button in the bottom right of your screen latest in my series of videos about the Faceless Men In A Song of Ice and Fire this video is a standalone video but we'll be building on some things we talked about in previous ones so if you want to go back and watch those first then come back here feel free in a previous video we tried to answer the tricky question of why jaken was in the Caravan of recruits heading to the Night's Watch it certainly wasn't to get close to Arya jacken was already locked in that cage ready to head north well before joran randomly spotted Arya cut her hair and smuggled her into the Caravan but Jack and does seem to have hung around with the group because of Arya and only left when his deal with her was done and he had suggested she go to braavos with him so what Jack and saw in that period roughly the span of a Clash of Kings persuaded him to try to recruit her so let's break down what he did see well jaqen takes an immediate interest in her calling her over asking her for favors and so on and it's not hard to work out why her disguise which was basically a haircut and a dirty face may have been enough to fool casual observers but to the trained eye like say a faceless man well-versed in disguising his own appearance and seeing through lies it will have been immediately apparent that she was not who she claimed to be jaqen will have been intrigued by her straight away and Arya still only about 10 years old at this point let's not forget gave away plenty of Clues to her secret identity She carries around an expensively made sword odd for an orphaned boy from flea bottom and when getting into a fight with one of the other boys in the Caravan she adopts a bravosi water dancer's stance showing she had been trained by an expert again clearly not just a member of the King's Landing small folk she noticeably never goes to the toilet at the same time as the other boys is treated slightly differently by joren and hides when the gold cloaks come looking for an important person who may have escaped King's Landing finally when the party is attacked she shouts Winterfell as a Battle Cry as I said lots of rather glaring Clues so by the time Arya frees jaquin from his cage perhaps a couple of weeks later if he has been paying attention and I think we can safely assume that he will have been he will have enough information to place her as a Highborn lady from Winterfell on the run from King's Landing everyone knows that the Night's Watch are close to the Starks and it doesn't take much imagination from that point to figure out that she is the missing Arya Stark so although Arya was surprised when jackan later addresses her by her real name we shouldn't be in the short Journey from King's Landing to the south of the Godzilla Lake Jack and worked out who Arya was then he came back for her at harrenhall the question is why the reason he gives is that the red God demands three deaths in exchange for the three lives she saved from the fire on the surface this seems to make some sort of sense The Faceless Men require a payment for each assassination and only death can pay for life is a phrase we hear elsewhere in the Game of Thrones World Miri Mazda for example says it to Danny before taking her unborn child's life in exchange for Carl drogos so it does seem to be some kind of principle of magic and will have made some sort of sense to ah yeah but I think we can see through this quite quickly the causality here is the wrong way around and it's not intentional on arya's part intentionality is seemingly also a very important part of how magic Works in this world what I mean is that when she saved Jack and Rogue and biter I did not think that she was paying the price for three deaths any more than any other character thinks that they need to kill someone just because they've saved someone's life that's not how it works and most importantly Jack and himself doesn't seem to care about this so-called balance of deaths for lives yes he puts up a pretense of not wanting to kill multiple people in exchange for that third name but he does it and doesn't follow up by saying that she must now save some lives to keep that balance going yes the whole needing to order three deaths thing was very likely just a clever line to see whether Arya really would go through with killing people it was a test jaqen returning to Arya and telling her she had to name three people who would die was not about balance or the red God getting its due it was about coming back for Arya showing her what a faceless man can do and seeing whether she really did have the character to kill people he was thinking about recruiting her and wanted to see whether she had the stomach for it let's not forget that the Faceless Men are not a proselytizing Faith they don't go on missions or actively seek to convert the masses they are happy for people to continue to worship whatever gods they already do so in order to keep the Faceless Men going they need to proactively recruit new Faceless Men and jacken must have thought that Arya seemed perfect for their needs you see it's not just that he figures out that she's a Highborn lady from Winterfell in fact that probably didn't play much into jaquin's considerations at all instead in the short term that jaqen can observe Arya from the cage he can see that she has everything he might want in an apprentice she is clever bold and able to handle herself in a fight despite her flimsy disguise she also seems to fool a lot of people by this point she has lived several distinct identities Arya Stark a street urchin and flea bottom Ari in the Night's Watch Caravan and weasel at harrenhal she is living the life of a Face Changer even if she doesn't yet know how to change faces and we know that she is also a talented wag or skin changer it's not clear whether jacking could have known that by observing one of her wolf dreams perhaps but it certainly would have added to her appeal she seems unnatural at disguises and she seems increasingly obsessed with death and killing specifically the deaths of her enemies again this will have been ideal from the perspective of the acolytes of the many-faced god of death and added to all that Arya is at a very impressionable stage of her life she has just seen her father unjustly killed had to send away her beloved direwolf lost the teacher she had started to form a bond with and found herself a thousand miles from home with no friends or family to call on she is all alone in the world in other words ripe for brainwashing bizarrely she may even remind jackon of the waif when she was recruited for she was also the child of an ancient Noble House who lost a parent when she was young and importantly no one would miss Arya no one even knew where she was all of which would have been more than enough to make Jack and want to hang around she wasn't just a precocious child he could try to recruit she must have met all of his criteria and there was even something more going on here that will have really sealed the deal for him jaqen's return to Arya at Herron Hall in the books coincides with Arya reciting her list of people she wants to kill this is I think a seriously overlooked Point she lists the people she wants dead out loud in a prayer before bed thinking she is on her own and then the very next paragraph jacken wakes her to tell her to give him three names of people who should die to Jack and this will have seemed more than just a coincidence it will have a resonated for him with the origin story of The Faceless Men that story if you remember is that the first faceless man heard the prayers of the slaves crying out in desperation and granted them the gift of death later the first faceless man heard a different prayer for the death of one of the slave masters and granted that to in exchange for a lifelong service from the slave in other words the origin story of The Faceless Men is all about answering desperate prayers like arya's for a murder in exchange for service because although we often talk of arya's Hit List or her kill list she doesn't call it that she calls it her prayer later on she ends her Prayer by saying Valar morghulis to a follower of the god of many faces who overheard this it would be nothing less than a desperate prayer to his God one that would need answering so when Jack and asked her to name some names it probably wasn't just about providing some balance for the red God it was probably just as much about him testing her metal seeing whether she was the kind of person who could be a faceless man because let's face it it takes a very special kind of person to be able to callously sentence people to death and it was simply answering her prayer as he saw it he even went as far as telling her that she could ask him to kill a king such as Joffrey who was on her list and he would do it but she resists that and if this was a test she passes it with flying colors she shows that she has the mentality as well as the natural talents to be a cold-hearted killer remorselessly reeling off names of people for him to kill so having passed all his tests he offers her an apprenticeship effectively the coin he gives her and the words he teaches her show that it is an open offer for whenever she wants to take it up and he tries to tempt her by showing the cool face changing trick but when she says she has other things to do first go home to Winterfell he accepts her decision he wants a willing and eager Apprentice not one who has business elsewhere that they think is more important so when Aya does finally make it to the house of black and white she arrives with a recommendation from jackan in the form of the coin and the words and an understanding on both sides that she is there to learn the secrets of the Faceless Men because she no longer yearns to be on Winterfell she is figuratively giving up her old identity in the next video we will look at that a bit more arya's training and what that tells us about what the Faceless Men want from her besides just becoming one of them will she become no one that's next time at this point it's enough to see that Arya was the perfect recruit for The Faceless Men and Jack and must have seen that very quickly clever capable and bold Adept at taking on new disguises and personalities obsessed with death able to stomach killing at an impressionable age and if she disappeared after braavos no one would come looking for her there Arya isn't just someone who might do well she is the most promising future faceless man imaginable and that's why Jack and recruited her but what do you think is there more to this than that let me know in the comments below if you'd like to see more videos in this series about the Faceless Men In A Song of Ice and Fire please click on the link to the playlist on the left of your screen or to support this channel the best way to do that is by clicking on the link to my patreon page on the right of the screen thanks for watching that's all for this time I'll see you again soon

Channel: In Deep Geek

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Id: zIfpuXsGA5k

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023