Words are Wind: Repetition of Language in A Dance With Dragons

[Warning: the following post contains SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS FOR A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. Your enjoyment of the book will be diminished if you read this article before finishing the novel. Don’t do it. Final warning.]

When George R.R. Martin gets his hands on a phrase that he likes, he gets as much use out of it as he can. Repeated phrases or images – Ned’s promise to Lyanna, the vows of the Night’s Watch, the motto of the Starks – are one of his favorite tools. It can get amusing if you look for the seams in the furniture, or even frustrating. But there is a key to the way GRRM uses repeated language and dialogue, and A Dance with Dragons (hereafter ADWD) is no exception.

But It Takes So Long My Lord, My Leal Lord

ADWD is the first Song of Ice and Fire novel that I read on the Kindle. This has several excellent advantages over traditional hardback or paperback editions. First, I can publicly read a book that has the word “dragons” in the title without bringing embarrassment to the Perich name. No one on the subway will know! Second, I can bring the book just about everywhere without putting undue strain on my spine. This saves my back muscles so I can hunch over a keyboard for hours, writing overthought articles about the book I just read.

But most important, reading ADWD on the Kindle lets me do a quick search to find every instance of the word “leal.”

Homage is the duty every leal subject owes his king. Yet your father’s bannermen all turn their back on me, save the Karstarks. Is Arnolf Karstark the only man of honor in the north?

[…]

You have my word, all that I desire is to be leal servant of your dragon queen.

[…]

I keep no secrets from my kin, nor from my leal lords and knights, good friends all.

[…]

Do you want to go with them, return to your bleak isles the cold grey sea, be a prince again? Or would you sooner stay my leal serving man?

[…]

You would do best to walk a middle course. Let men earn your trust with leal service … but when they do, be generous and openhearted.

[…]

Roose Bolton summons all leal lords to Barrowton, to affirm their loyalty to the Iron Throne and celebrate his son’s wedding to …

Those are just the first six out of fourteen. GRRM turned over a new page on his Word-a-Day calendar and got stuck. Fourteen times in one novel and, to the best of my recollection, never in the previous four. I don’t have those books on my Kindle to verify this with a search. But I had to look up “leal” to see what it meant and I’d have looked it up sooner if I’d encountered it before.

The Oxford English Dictionary tells us leal means what we think it means in context: loyal, faithful. If it sounds like it’s just the word “loyal” with a Scottish brogue, that’s because it is: it’s a Scottish term, descended from old French and Latin, that’s filtered its way into English.

“Leal” means the same thing as “loyal” when delivered by a Scottish speaker. It probably got a lot of use between 1502 and 1707, after the wars between England and Scotland finally ended but before the treaty that established “Great Britain” was signed. But “leal” has passed into the English lexicon as well. And it’s typically used to mean something different from “loyal.”

It’s not just GRRM who does it. Take for instance Charles Dickens in his 1864 novel Our Mutual Friend:

He had not only settled it with himself in course of time, that he was errand-goer by appointment to the house at the corner (though he received such commissions not half a dozen times in a year, and then only as some servant’s deputy), but also that he was one of the house’s retainers and owed vassalage to it and was bound to leal and loyal interest in it.

“Leal and loyal interest.” While Dickens was certainly known for padding his word count, he’s drawing a clear distinction. To be “leal” is different than being “loyal.”

Creon, in Storr’s 1912 translation of Antigone, says this about loyal subjects:

Whome’er the State
Appoints must be obeyed in everything,
But small and great, just and unjust alike.
I warrant such a one in either case
Would shine, as King or subject; such a man
Would in the storm of battle stand his ground,
A comrade leal and true; but Anarchy–
What evils are not wrought by Anarchy!

Here, while a case can be again made for padding word count in the name of preserving iambic pentameter, the choice of words isn’t accidental. “Leal” and “true” signify two different behaviors.

For a final item, consider the traditional Scottish song “Land of the Leal.” It comes down to us solely as a poem by Lady Carolina Nairne, so any musical reproductions by a modern band are reinterpretations. But we know that it was a song because there are contemporary accounts of it being sung: Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women for one, H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine for another.

Here’s Scottish folk ensemble Silly Wizard doing their rendition:

(if there’s a five-word phrase that gets more delightful with each successive word than “Scottish folk ensemble Silly Wizard,” I don’t know it)

The titular “land of the leal” is Heaven. The speaker is a woman on her deathbed, comforting her husband with the knowledge that she is off to Heaven, so dry your tears, you can come join me soon enough. In this case, reading “leal” as interchangeable with “loyal” doesn’t make sense. Is loyalty all it takes to get into Heaven? Loyalty to what? No, to vouchsafe your place in the clouds, you need to be not just loyal but leal.

Since GRRM’s the only person using “leal” in a sentence these days, we turn to him for context. In each use of the word in ADWD, “leal” describes a proper subject’s relation to his lord. Arnolf Karstark is a leal subject to Stannis Baratheon (or he at least claims to be). Tyrion professes that he’ll be leal if he can get to the court of Daenerys Targaryen. Young Griff, a/k/a the baby-swapped Prince Aegon, must scope out which of his men are leal and which aren’t. And so forth.

It’s also worth noting that “leal” is not limited in geography, the same way the term is in the real world. No one outside of Great Britain or the English-speaking peoples would use the word “leal” today. But subjects from as far north as the Boltons’ keep and as far south as Dorne (Quentyn Martell) profess themselves to be leal subjects. A casual reader can write all of Westeros off as “fantasy England with zombies and dragons,” but Dorne, the Stormlands, the Riverlands and the North are vastly different nations. While the lords of the North may be the closest analog to Scots that Westeros has, all lords of the Seven Kingdoms seek for leal subjects.

While we may tease GRRM for his archaic vocabulary, no writer worth his salt uses a word like that fourteen times in one book by accident. It’s a deliberate choice. So why is he using it? And why now?

ADWD takes place during a brief respite in the wars racking Westeros. The armies of the North have largely been scattered. The Greyjoy raiders are holding more territory than they’re taking. Stannis Baratheon has parked at the Wall, waiting for his opportunity. And across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys Targaryen has halted her march of conquest and is trying her hand at ruling. The pitched wars of A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords are over.

None of the major players think that the fighting is over, though. Everyone is gathering their forces and recovering. New offensives are about to be launched. By the time the book ends, many are already under way: Stannis is marching on Winterfell, Aegon has landed on Westeros, Meereen is under siege.

When war is underway, you inspire your bannermen to fight. But between wars, when you’re catching your breath, you look to see who’s still on your side. You sound out your vassals, punishing some and rewarding others. You want a sound army behind you when you ride out to fight again. You want an army full of leal men and true.

Men can be loyal to each other, but they can only be leal to a master.

Oh, Oh, I Want to Know-oh, Where Do The Whores Go?

I don’t pretend to have my finger on the blood pressure cuff of the Internet, but I get the impression readers grew tired of Tyrion’s one-track mind by the end of ADWD.

Tyrion Lannister, everyone’s favorite dwarf, asks “where do whores go?” or some variation thereof fifteen times in ADWD. He asks it aloud and he speculates about it in his head. He asks it of wealthy merchants, seasoned travelers, common servants and a few actual whores. The man’s not good for much else.

It gets a little tiring only because it’s not the Tyrion we’re used to. Tyrion Lannister was born to wealth but steeped in disrespect. He learned to use both his family’s gold and people’s tendency to underestimate him to his advantage. He has always been master of his circumstances, even if he wasn’t totally in control. And he’s always had an agenda.

So to see Tyrion wandering from port to port, repeating the same question like it’s an inside joke, can be a little disheartening.

GRRM clearly wants us to take note of this question (else why repeat it fifteen times?). So let’s consider what we know.

First, Tyrion asks this of almost everyone he meets. He first asks a mute cabin boy who’s cleaning him up before his visit to Pentos. He asks Illyrio Mopatis, the man behind the strings of several plots in the Free Cities. He asks the attendants in Mopatis’s estate. He asks the knight errant Duck, one of Young Griff’s coterie. He asks a whore in Selhorys. Tyrion doesn’t play his cards close to his chest, as he usually would. He spreads his inquiries far and wide. This in itself represents a departure from his usual mien.

Second, Tyrion asks a question that’s not all that mysterious. The blank stares he gets from most of the people he talks to should suggest as much. Asking where whores go is like asking “where are bricks?”. Whores are everywhere in Westeros and the Free Cities. There’s nowhere they’re not. It’s one of the few professions a free woman can enter that doesn’t require apprenticeship, wealth or marriage. It’s one of the few ways to profit off an army on the march. So Tyrion’s question either has no answer or infinite answers.

Third, Tyrion doesn’t really ask the question he’s after. He doesn’t want to know where whores go. He wants to know where Tysha went.

”Wherever whores go,” his father had said. His last words, and what words they were. The crossbow thrummed, Lord Tywin sat back down and Tyrion found himself waddling through the darkness …

But he doesn’t ask anyone about Tysha. He doesn’t describe her in much detail except to Penny, the jousting dwarf he gets bundled with after being kidnapped from Selhorys.

Whence this ambiguity? Whence this hesitation from the normally canny dwarf? To find out what Tyrion has in mind, we may need to go even farther east than he does.

In Zen Buddhism, students may be guided to insight with the use of koans. A koan is a question which defies rational analysis. The cliched riddles of “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” and “if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound?” are popular examples. A koan is not meant to be unanswerable. Rather, it is the process of embracing the multifaceted nature of the universe that the koan contains that shows whether the student has achieved insight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhEoKO1UIOg

The point of the koan is to meditate on it. Arriving at the answer and then stopping does not enhance one’s Buddha nature. Rather, pursuing the answer is as much a part of growth as finding the answer.

Tyrion’s not asking “where do whores go?” because he wants to know the literal answer. He’s asking it because he has no other purpose in life. When last we left Tyrion, he was Hand of the King. Then he was accused of poisoning Joffrey, locked up and condemned to death. He was given the hope of reprieve at the hands (or spear) of Oberyn Martell, then had that hope dashed. Having come to terms with death, he was freed at the last moment by Varys, departing King’s Landing with a brief detour to fulfill the Oedipal dream and murder his father. If it’s possible for a man to make sense of his life, everything that made sense of Tyrion’s was smashed in a few short months.

Tyrion Lannister is a man without purpose. The schemes, ambitions and simple hopes that made up his life have all been scattered. Having realized the illusory nature of possessions, ambition, status and even relationships, he’s in the perfect mindset to accept the nature of Zen Buddhism. To attain that state, he meditates on an unanswerable question.

All We Are is Words in the Wind

No examination of GRRM’s use of recurring language in ADWD would be complete without GRRM’s aphorism on language itself.

The phrase “words are wind” appears thirteen times in ADWD. Bear with me as I list them all:

1. “Words are wind. Who is this bloody savior?” says Tyrion, when Illyrio Mopatis hints at the true identity of Young Griff.
2. ”Words are wind, and the wind from Manderly’s mouth means no more than the wind escaping from his bottom.” So says Lord Godric, Lord of Sisterton, to Davos Seaworth. He’s referencing Lord Manderly’s vow to be revenged on the Freys.
3. ”Words are wind,” says a woman in Wyman Manderly’s court. This is in response to Davos’s claim (and Stannis’s) that Joffrey Baratheon is the product of incest.
4. ”Words are wind, even words like love and peace.” Daenerys Targaryen says this to Hizdahr zo Loraq, getting him to work his connections to bring peace to Meereen.
5. ”Men are men, vows are words, and words are wind.” Iron Emmett says this to Jon Snow, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, in response to his plan to keep wildling women along the Wall.
6. ”Words are wind […] No words of yours will secure this peace for Meereen.” Hizdahr turns Dany’s phrase against her, suggesting it will take a marriage to convince Yunkai that she means peace.
7. ”That is good to hear […] but words are wind.” These are Prince Doran Martell’s words to his daughters – the same ones who tried to kidnap Myrcella in A Feast for Crows – to compel them to swear obeisance to him.
8. ”Words are wind, and the wind is always blowing at the Wall,” says Jon Snow, to dismiss gossip being spread about him.
9. ”Words are wind.” Theon Greyjoy says this to the wildling woman Rowan when she denies the charge of having murdered a boy in the northmen’s company.
10. Words are wind, thinks Ser Barristan Selmy, comforting Missandei that Daenerys is safe and coming home soon.
11. Words are wind, thinks Cersei Lannister, enduring the mocks of the crowd as she staggers naked through the streets of King’s Landing.
12. She thinks this twice, actually.
13. Finally, Ser Kevan Lannister, Hand of the King, says it to Ronnet Connington, nephew of Jon Connington, who has just invaded Westeros as the story ends.

Again, no writer uses a phrase thirteen times by accident. And this is a phrase used by people in the North, the South and on both sides of the Narrow Sea: Daenerys Targaryen, Barristan Selmy, Theon Greyjoy, the Martells, the Manderlys, Jon Snow and Kevan Lannister. Everyone says it. It’s on everyone’s mind.

What does the phrase mean?

A speaker says or thinks “words are wind” to suggest that someone’s speech has no weight to it. Wind has no mass. You can’t build a house on it or trade it. Davos can’t prove the truth of his claims, Dany can’t prove her good intentions and Jon can’t prove what people say about him isn’t true. Words last no longer than it takes to say them.

But note that people only say this about speech. No one ever says it about writing. A letter, a treatise or an historical tome all contain words, but no one ever accuses a book of being wind. Westeros is a largely illiterate culture. The words on a page might as well be 256-bit encryption for your average lord or peasant. Yet those words have weight and power. It’s Jon Arryn’s letters, plus the books he used for research, that started this whole bloody war. Speech, we have cause to doubt.

And yet.

Jon Snow dismisses the rumors that other members of the Night’s Watch spread about him. Yet before he can ride off in disobedience of his vows, the Night’s Watch descends on him, stabbing him with daggers and leaving him to die at the foot of the Wall. “Words are wind,” observed Jon Snow, yet these words helped to kill him.

(Sidebar: though GRRM leaves the ending unclear, and has been known to yank death from the jaws of ambiguity, I’m fairly confident Jon Snow is actually dead. He’s stabbed at least four times by hardened warriors of the Night’s Watch. These aren’t the sort of men to leave a job half-done. That said, there are at least three means for Jon to come back from the dead within a dozen miles of where his body falls, so he may not be out of the equation yet)

“Words are wind,” says Lord Godric of Wyman Manderly, and yet Manderly’s plans for vengeance against the Freys run true. He spares Davos Seaworth, defying Queen Cersei’s orders and sneaking him out of White Harbor.

Words are wind, thinks Cersei Lannister as she parades naked through the streets of King’s Landing. Yet the words the smallfolk hurl at her do their damage. Cersei can not rule the city with the same regal pomp as before. Rule has to fall to Kevan Lannister, her uncle.

For such windy things, words still seem to carry a lot of force.

Perhaps everyone’s taking the wrong meaning from this old saw. It’s not unheard of. People misuse the exception that proves the rule or begging the question all the time. Perhaps everyone in Westeros uses the phrase “words are wind” to mean the opposite of what it says. Wind is far from harmless, after all. Cold wind cuts Stannis’s ranks to tatters before they can reach Winterfell. Wind carries ships across the sea, bringing Davos to White Harbor and taking Tyrion away from Daenerys. Wind brings the sound of war and the vectors of disease.

And the text supports this:

On the window seat a raven loitered, pale, huge, its feathers ruffled. It was the largest raven that Kevan Lannister had ever seen. Larger than any hunting hawk at Casterly Rock, larger than the largest owl. Blowing snow danced around it, and the moon painted it silver.

Not silver. White. The bird is white.

The white ravens of the Citadel did not carry messages, as their dark cousins did. When they went forth from Oldtown, it was for one purpose only: to herald a change of seasons.

“Winter,” said Ser Kevan. The word made a white mist in the air.

Winter means a changing of the winds. Though we’ve feared the coming of winter since the first chapter of A Game of Thrones, this is the first proof we have of its certainty. Every army in the world has been preparing for battle against foes on all sides. No one has been preparing for this. And the cold wind of winter arrives on the wind itself: on the wings of a raven.

Immediately after learning this, Kevan Lannister dies.

The wind means more than we think, especially in Westeros. So it is that words mean more than people think. Jon Snow neglects his vows (his words, as they’re often called) and is killed. Tyrion’s words turn Aegon Targaryen back from the road to Meereen and on his way to Westeros, precipitating another war. The words of the smallfolk of King’s Landing strip Cersei of her last vestiges of power. The words of winter mean the end of Kevan Lannister and the end of peace in Westeros.

To say that “words are wind” should mean that words can shift the balance between great houses. But no one who says that believes it. They ignore the wind, focusing on their petty schemes as the snow creeps up around them. And all the while, winter is coming.