Skip to main content

game of thrones - How could Ser Jorah Mormont "find out" about the Second Sons?


In the TV adaptation, Game of Thrones, in the third season in the seventh episode, Daenerys and her Unsullied are parked outside of Yunkai. The messenger from the city comes to offer them gold and ships if they are willing to go away.


Alas, the mother of dragons cannot see people in chains, so she decides to put an unreasonable ultimatum so she will destroy Yunkai.


The ambassador, in return, says that they have friends who will put her army to death with great pleasure. After he leaves, Daenerys speaks with Ser Mormont about these "friends". She asks who they might be, and he says that he doesn't know. Her reply is for him to find out.


How? How would he find out? Would he knock on the city doors and ask people who are the mercenaries kept on retainer by the city leaders? Will he take out his smartphone and search on Google (I bet there's reasonable reception nearby such a glorious city)? Or in a classic Mel Brooks moment, he'll take out the script and search for the answer in the script?


Okay, all the above are fairly preposterous. But it serves to illustrate the point. It doesn't seem reasonable that he can "find out" in any way that doesn't involve engaging in war with the mercenaries to begin with...


Can anyone give a plausible explanation as to how he found out the answer without resorting to the above options?



Answer



About 5 minutes into the next episode: episode 8, season 3, Daenerys, Ser Jorah and Ser Barristan are standing behind some rocks looking at a group of warriors riding by:




Daenerys: Do you know them?
Ser Jorah: Only by the broken sword on their banners (*). They're called the Second Sons. They're lead by a bravoosi named Mero -- the Titan's Bastard.



(*) Confirmed on the wiki: The banner of the Second Sons is a broken sword.


So that is the answer in the TV-show, clearly: They find out in the next episode when Ser Jorah recognizes them. Back when Daenerys first asked Ser Jorah, there was no one there but the emissary from Yunkai, so he could not see them to recognize them.


Ser Jorah has spent a long time in Essos, selling his sword and travelling. He has lots of knowledge about Essos culture and factions. This is known from very early in the books, when we get to know Ser Jorah's tragic history. But I do not believe it is until A Dance with Dragons that we hear that he was once riding with the Second Sons.


I do not have a relevant quote to prove it, and I do not believe there is a good, short quote, but it is clearly described in Jorah's wiki page. It was more of a thing of Ser Jorah and the captains recognizing each other.


To be clear, just because Ser Jorah's affiliation with the Second Sons is in the books does not mean it should be in the TV-show, and Ser Jorah never lied to Dany about it in the books.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...
1 comment
Read more

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...
Post a Comment
Read more

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...
Post a Comment
Read more