A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin
"A Dance with Dragons" is the fifth installment in George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy series, "A Song of Ice and Fire." Set against the backdrop of the Seven Kingdoms and the distant continent of Essos, the narrative intertwines the lives of various characters as they navigate a world rife with political intrigue, war, and supernatural threats. The story follows the Stark children, who are scattered after the devastating War of the Five Kings, as they pursue their fates: Arya Stark trains as an assassin in Braavos, while Bran Stark ventures beyond the Wall in search of magical truths.
Meanwhile, Jon Snow, their half-brother and lord commander of the Night's Watch, confronts the looming danger of the Others and faces rebellion from within his ranks. In King's Landing, Cersei Lannister grapples with her imprisonment while her twin brother Jaime attempts to stabilize the kingdom amidst chaos. The narrative also explores Daenerys Targaryen's rule in Meereen as she contends with both her dragons and political machinations, while various factions plot to restore the Targaryen dynasty.
The story is marked by complex character relationships and moral dilemmas, reflecting themes of power, identity, and survival in a world where allegiances shift and danger lurks at every corner. The intertwining arcs of ambition and betrayal leave readers eager to discover the fates of these richly developed characters.
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Subject Terms
A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin
- Born: September 20, 1948
- Birthplace: Bayonne, New Jersey
First published: 2011
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Three hundred years after Aegon I’s conquest of the Seven Kingdoms
Locale: The fictional continents of Westeros and Essos
Principal Characters
Arya Stark, an assassin in training
Bran Stark, her brother
Jon Snow, their illegitimate half-brother; lord commander of the Night’s Watch
Cersei Lannister, mother of King Tommen of the Seven Kingdoms
Jaime Lannister, her twin brother and lover
Tyrion Lannister, their brother
Theon Greyjoy, the son of the former king of the Iron Islands
Asha Greyjoy, his sister
Victarion Greyjoy, their uncle
Davos Seaworth, adviser to Stannis Baratheon
Melisandre, a priestess of the god R’hllor
Daenerys Targaryen, a claimant to the throne
Barristan Selmy, her adviser
Quentyn Martell, her would-be suitor
Areo Hotah, captain of the guard for House Martell
Jon Connington, an exiled noble
The Story
After the deaths of their parents and oldest brother in the bloody War of the Five Kings, the children of House Stark are scattered throughout the continents of Westeros and Essos. Arya Stark trains with a society of assassins known as the Faceless Men in the Free City of Braavos, learning to cast off her past and identity. Her brother Bran and his companions travel beyond the Wall, which separates the Seven Kingdoms from the northern lands populated by wildling tribes and strange, frightening creatures known as the Others, who have the ability to transform human corpses into undead creatures called wights. Led by a mysterious man known as Coldhands, Bran finds his way to a cave in which the children of the forest, magical beings who are the indigenous population of Westeros, live. There he finds the last greenseer, a powerful magic user who has appeared to Bran in visions in the form of a three-eyed crow.
Bran and Arya’s illegitimate half-brother, Jon Snow, serves as lord commander of the Night’s Watch, a force tasked with guarding the Wall. Faced with the growing threat of the Others and their wights, he forms an alliance with the wildling army formerly led by Mance Rayder. He also forms an uneasy alliance with Stannis Baratheon, brother of former king Robert Baratheon and a claimant to the throne, and Melisandre, a priestess of the god R’hllor who serves Stannis. Stannis leads his forces to capture fortresses that have fallen under enemy control and sends his adviser Davos Seaworth to recruit other nobles to his side. Meanwhile, Jon’s decisions as lord commander anger many members of the Night’s Watch, and his men eventually ambush and stab him.
Stannis’s forces capture Asha Greyjoy, the daughter of the former ruler of the Iron Islands, who fled the islands after her uncle Euron was crowned king. Asha’s brother, Theon, is held captive by the sadistic Ramsay Bolton, who has tortured him and forced him to assume the identity of the servant Reek. Theon escapes from Ramsay along with Ramsay’s new wife, a young woman claiming to be Arya Stark. Although the Boltons are aware that she is not truly Arya, they believe that marrying her to Ramsay will help him lay claim to Stark lands. Theon and the phony Arya are eventually found by one Stannis’s followers—Mance Rayder, along with his spearwives, in disguise—who send them to Stannis. Meanwhile, Victarion, who is Asha and Theon’s uncle, sails for the city of Meereen, on Essos, in order to locate Daenerys Targaryen. The daughter of deposed king Aerys Targaryen, Daenerys has conquered Meereen and now rules there, accompanied by her three young dragons and her adviser Barristan Selmy. Victarion was tasked with bringing Daenerys to the Iron Islands to marry his brother Euron; however, he intends to marry her himself.
In King’s Landing, the capital of the Seven Kingdoms, Cersei Lannister, the mother of King Tommen, has been imprisoned by the realm’s religious leaders and charged with a variety of moral crimes. She is allowed to visit her son before her trial but is forced to walk naked from her place of imprisonment to the palace. Meanwhile, her twin brother and lover, Jaime, works to end a siege at a fortress north of the capital. After he does so, the warrior Brienne of Tarth arrives and asks Jaime to accompany her elsewhere.
Cersei and Jaime’s younger brother, Tyrion, travels to Essos. Having fled the Seven Kingdoms after being found guilty of murdering former king Joffrey Baratheon, a crime he did not commit, Tyrion stays in the city of Pentos for a time before deciding to locate Daenerys and join forces with her. He travels east with a man known as Griff and his son, Young Griff, and soon realizes that Griff is exiled noble Jon Connington and Young Griff is likely Aegon Targaryen, Daenerys’s nephew, thought to have been killed as a baby. Jon and Aegon decide to hire mercenaries and invade the Seven Kingdoms, while Tyrion continues to travel east, is captured and sold into slavery, and eventually joins an army of mercenaries just outside Meereen.
Quentyn Martell, son of Prince Doran of Dorne—the semiautonomous southern region of the Seven Kingdoms—also travels to Meereen. With the help of his children and nieces as well as captain of the guard Areo Hotah, Doran plans to restore the Targaryen dynasty to power in the Seven Kingdoms. Quentyn hopes to marry Daenerys, but she instead marries Meereenese nobleman Hizdahr zo Loraq in an attempt to restore peace to the city. Quentyn is later fatally burned by Daenerys’s dragons. While trying to prevent her largest dragon, Drogon, from attacking a crowd of spectators at the Meereenese fighting pits, Daenerys climbs onto his back and is carried away. She finds herself in the grasslands far from the city, where a band of nomadic Dothraki warriors finds her.
Bibliography
Frankel, Valerie Estelle. Winter Is Coming: Symbols and Hidden Meanings in A Game of Thrones. New York: Thought Catalog, 2013. Digital file.
Goertz, Sharon Dee. "Mothers and Monsters: The Return of the Great Goddess in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire." Myth in the Modern World: Essays on Intersections with Ideology and Culture. Ed. David Whitt and John Perlich. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014. 102–22. Print.
Jacoby, Henry, ed. Game of Thrones and Philosophy: Logic Cuts Deeper than Swords. Hoboken: Wiley, 2012. Print.
Lowder, James, ed. Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, from A Game of Thrones to A Dance with Dragons. Dallas: BenBella, 2012. Print.