Idk, but I felt so much empathy towards the Bracken guy on the last episode, I felt so sorry for him, he seemed like he didn't want to fight because he was young and inexperienced. That actor really nailed it.
Yup! You should, it's neither of their fault and a war that has nothing to do with them. Dead for a beef they had no part in making. Who knows who even moved those stones, or if they were at all. But they can't avoid it, like Hoster Blackwood said in ADWD as long as they remember the past they will never be free of it.
@@JoeMagicianAeron did nothing wrong. Poor kid was just trying to do what he was taught a knight is supposed to. He had no say in the matter. The grass around the stones is overgrown and growing through the gaps, so it must've sat undisturbed for a while. My guess is that its a historical grievance and Davos was just trying to start shit. Blackwoods have probably been telling Brackens to "put the stones back" in that field for centuries. Davos probably doesn't even know where exactly they're supposed to go back to, considering they're in the middle of a field with no landmarks. I think Davos body is laying on the riverbank at 4:25 just to the left of the dead horse. Hard to tell exactly but the clothes match
In fact, after so many attempts at peace by inter-marriage, both houses practically have the same blood by now. They're parents (which only seems to make matters worse). 😆
I love this dichotomy of honor and ambition you laid out. Thinking about prophecy as well, Bloodraven is unlikely to be the only Blackwood who had green dreams. Their past ancestors might've stressed the grudge because they knew what was coming and the need to protect against it thru old god worship and culture. This was also lost to the later generations as the world lost magic and people lost faith in it.
It would be fitting for their thousand-year rivalry to be over something like a Bracken mistakenly grabbing a Blackwood's arse while reaching for a towel in a bathhouse or something.
House Bracken symbol is a horse, earthly symbolism. Maybe it was something related to Brackens going against magic bullsh!t like the Maesters killing the dragons theory. If that is the case, i preffer the Brackens.
I'm dead serious when I say your Blackwood livestreams are one of the best contributions to the asoiaf fandom i've ever seen. I IMMEDIATELY thought of you when the opening to this ep started lol.
00:11 The sword and burning mill are definitely the stars of the shot, but I will never get over the imagery of the boy's body being "crushed" under the wheel. I am unfamiliar with a lot of the lore still, but that was just a lovely little detail to reinforce the themes and context of the families, even if it is pretty on the nose. Whoever on production thought to include that, huge props to them
i could be reading too much on the names. bracken is a type of fern that has many uses, but is poisonous to humans and may even cause death. that blackwoods accuse the brackens of poisoning their weirwood tree might be true. furthermore, bracken fern needs to be managed so as not to dominate woodlands. interesting...
yo are the weirwood trees causing the brackens and blackwoods to go mad and fight each other for sacrificial blood? Weirwood's feed on blood sacrifices and it makes them more potent, like when Daemon touched the tree in the last episode and saw a vision.
Davos is laying on the embankment at 4:22, just to the left of the dead horse. Looks like he took Aeron's friends with him. Their bodies are all around him, with one face down in the river. Aeron was also killed with his own sword.
The Bracken tale makes more sense: the Blackwoods were exiled from the North and so would have become vassals of somebody in the South or else warred with someone to craft their own kingdom.
My personal favorite is both are true, just at different times. My head canon is they were both vassals to the Mudds. The Mudds giving them blackwood vale similar to the Starks and Manderlys. The Blackwoods were kings first after the Mudds. Then the Brackens rebelled and became kings. After which the Blackwoods rebelled against them to gain back their independence. Both filling the power vacuum of the loss of House Mudd, at different times both claiming to be kings of the Rivers. But the history of the Brackens shows a clear pattern of behavior that lines pretty well with the Blackwood story. They love backstabbing, oath breaking, and allying with anyone to take down the Blackwoods. My guess is that is closer to true while not having any details.
@@JoeMagician It could be the case that the Brackens were kings and accepted the Blackwoods as vassals but then at some point a Bracken king did something that went against Blackwood honor in some way, provoking them to rebel.
@@JoeMagician it's also in their coat of arms. The brackens are a free, dominant stallion without shackles, who roams and claims grasslands wherever he wants. The Blackwoods are a bunch of old crows bound to gather around the same f-ing tree from time immemorial. Polar opposites
@@Raycloud The Blackwoods are not known for honor, their most well known members are a bezerker child (Benjicot) and a very honorless Master of Whispers (Bloodraven)
To me as a Medievalist the Blackwood-Bracken Feud has always served as a lovely illustration about how honor was (usually) a zero sum game. When the stakes are that high, brutality isn't so mystifying an attitude.
When Aegon became King, the very first law he passed in Westeros forbade lords from engaging in petty wars instead decreeing that all disputes between them should be settled by thier Lord Paramount. Therefore the Brackens and Blackwoods are only too happy to use the Dance as a pretext to restart thier ancient fued which they had been forbidden from engaging in for a very long time
didn't help that their lord paramount was an old man who couldn't speak, or that House Tully is quite weak compared to say, the Lannisters or the Starks.
Given who gets the attention I feel like the Blackwoods and Brackens are less the Hatfields and the McCoys and more the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals
Love the Blackwoods. Bloodraven's mother was a Blackwood. Aegon V the Unlikely married a Blackwood, his heir runs off with Jenny of Oldstones, they all die at Summerhall. They are involved in several major events in the series. When fire and ice (or blood magic and Old Gods) come together, shit goes down.
When I first got into GOTs/ASOIAF I highly suspected that all the constant warfare & bloodshed was caused by a curse from The Children as a way to feed the weirwoods blood & ensure their continued existance. Sometimes I still wonder if that's not the case ...😮
The Blackwood’s are the main reason for the Stark’s warging abilities and Green sight. When Starks defeated the Blackwoods from the north. They took the talented women or showed magical abilities. Then married them to bring their talents to the Stark bloodline.
Blackwoods are like a cross between Warhammer Dwarves, and the Raven Guard from 40k. They have the Oath/Grudge stuff from Dwarves and then the Raven Aesthetic from raven Guard. I imagine they use some of the same tactics, too... do they use stealthy spies, and stuff?
Before I start the video I will say my own personal theory is that the Brackens are the old Brandon Stark loyalists from the days when he became the Grey King. The blackwoods on the other hand are the former greenhands. Both sides started using insults to refer to one another, family deaths happened fast and frequently and that has led to the insults becoming the family names over time.
So basically the HRE before the Imperial Peace was enforced and the Reichskammergericht established to tie feuds up in lengthy court cases. Also, the Tullys should have really put a neutral house between the Blackwood an Bracken territories to act as a buffer.
@@JoeMagician true, but I feel life he’s a whole world building chapter of his own. But even next to bitter steel (who is cool too) he comes off as the good guy.
The Blackwoods were insulted by their Queen, but that wasn't enough for them to join the dirty hightower rebels and spill needless blood. The Brackens were supported by their Queen, but still jumped at the first chance to backstab her for no possible gain because they are dirty horsebreeders.
Here’s a theory of mine, after the Blackwoods left the north, they went south in the Riverlands and actually conquered the lands previously ruled by the Brackens. They they never were the vassal of house Bracken, and by right of conquest they kept the lands and defended it multiple times when house Bracken tried to reclaim their lost lands, thus starting the feud. When the Andals came they allied, and when house Bracken abandoned the olds gods that’s when the feud got worse.
They were both arguably stronger than house Tully but if either of them rose up against the Tullys the other one would join the Tullys to defeat them out of sheer hate.
So the Starks exiled the Blackwoods but not the Boltons? Even though the Boltons had history of burning Winterfell and flaying Stark princes for the lolz even before Red Wedding?
So the Starks made peace with the Boltons to fend off the Andal invasion, which piecing a timeline together must have been long after they exiled the Blackwoods, if they already had a generational blood feud with the Brackens by the time.
The Starks were one of the many kingdoms in the north who had to fight off the Boltons, their own kin the Greystarks, the ironborn, the mountain clans and also the Blackwoods who they sent into exile.. The Blackwoods ,apart from religion have been culturally Riverlanders for a great many years so their exile was earlier than we think
I don't think Rhaenrya could have gone on a progress without the crowns leave. Didn't Alicent, then, Alicent/Otto spend upward of 20 years bullying her and denying her most of her Princessly station?
she flew a dragon to visit the Riverlanders, it was more of a private tour. She saw Samwell Blackwood and Amos Bracken fight each other in a duel for her.
the riverlands are basically the low countries in real life history! with the three points of the trident being the scheldt river, meuse river and Rhine river ;p the brackens and blackwoods would correspond with the houses Berchthout and Antwerp ;p
A Song of Ice and Fire Book Five: A Dance with Dragons (After Jaime ends the siege in Riverrun and ensures the loyalty of the Blackwoods by taking one of their sons as a hostage and one daughter from the Brackens) "So we go on century after century. with us hating the Brackens and them hating us. My father says there will never be an end to it." - Hoster Blackwood (Jaime's hostage) "There could be." - Jaime Lannister "How, my lord? The old wounds never heal, my father says." - Hoster Blackwood "My father had a saying too. Never wound a foe when you can kill him. Dead men can't claim vengeance." - Jaime Lannister "Their sons do." - Hoster Blackwood "Not if you kill their sons as well. Ask the Casterlys about that if you doubt me. Ask Lord and Lady Tarbeck, or the Reynes of Castamere. Ask the Prince of Dragonstone." - Jaime Lannister "Is that why you killed all the Starks?" - Hoster Blackwood "Not all, Lord Eddard's daughters live. One has just been wed. The other...." (Brienne, where are you? Have you found her?) "... if the gods are good, she'll forget she was a Stark. She'll wed some burly blacksmith or fat faced innkeep, fill his house with children, and never need to fear that some knight might come along to smash their heads against a wall." - Jaime Lannister "The gods are good." -Hoster Blackwood (You go on believing that.) - Jaime Lannister's thought
If they are all related, why is it that when the blackwoods and brackens Kin-slay each other everyone kinda shrugs and does an eye roll. But if anyone else does it everyone loses their shit? Edit: i realized this when replying to another comment, but it's a bit ironic that the house that got kicked out of the north can't remember why they hate the Brackens "the north remembers" and whatnot. I think grrm did that on purpose
I'm currently playing Blackwoods in CK3 AGOT. I bested Lord Bracken in a duel, he assassinated me because he was salty and now the new Lady Blackwood is plotting the long revenge. Make friendly with the Brackens. Grow up among them and take their bullying. Lull them into a false sense of security while I train Intrigue. Then start seducing his heirs and usurp the entirety of Stonehedge. Took the Brackens like 30 minutes to make me hate their blood
I dunno if he has any specific feud in mind, but my money would be on it coming from somewhere Scotland. Generational beef over trivial issues is the type of hating that just screams it being the Scottish Clans. But if George dipped into American history, Ryan’s assessment of the Hatfields and McCoy’s actually isn’t too bad.
House Bracken holds the largest army in the riverlands on their own even more than the Tullys & Freys. The Tullys would need to call all their banners if they went to war. Also House Bracken poisoned the weirwood at Raventree Hall once they comverted to the faith of the seven. So there's a lot the Brackens have to answer for.
How to solve it? Easy, barely an inconvenience. Since the Brackens have all daughters at this point in ASOIAF, and the Blackwoods mostly have sons, just throw a big wedding where all the Blackwoods marry all the Brackens. Or, you know, just get the Others to wipe out both houses. If they all die, no feud. Worse case scenario they team up to wreck shop and solve their feud that way.
To Hoster Blackwood's point I put in the video, they've done that over and over throughout history. Marriage pacts and alliances and bonds of friendship to put it all behind them. Making every Bracken a Blackwood and vice versa, hasn't stopped the feud. It eventually returns.
Now we know the atrocities the Blackwoods committed against the Brackens it makes you wonder how many other times that happened that history has just forgotten so we get the impression that they've always been the good guys
they are only "good guys" because they allied with Robb Stark and their GOT members seem honorable and just. Over time they no doubt did bad things to the Brackens that were undeserving, and had it happen to them.
So essentially the looooong version of Stark vs Lannister And hey, if the Blackwoods were driven out of the north, wouldn't that make them settlers? Maybe they really did encroach on Bracken land. Maybe the Brackens were the kings and the Blackwoods were the uppity vassals. Wouldn't be the first case of history through projection
This might not go well for a Blackwood aligned channel, but I hope GRRM would elaborate more on House Bracken lore than the Blackwoods on TWOW, & at least gave them a chance to even out their so called dispute. it's pretty clear GRRM is biased to the Blackwoods.
yo are the weirwood trees causing the brackens and blackwoods to go mad and fight each other for sacrificial blood? Weirwood's feed on blood sacrifices and it makes them more potent, like when Daemon touched the tree in the last episode and saw a vision.
Assizes - medieval? Nope. They were, essentially, travelling courts, and continued right on up until the early 1970s, when they were replaced by Crown Courts. The presiding judge/judges all came from London, but they travelled about the country, on particular circuits holding assize courts, at particular towns, at particular times. They tended to hear more serious cases. Though this wasn't always so.
@@JoeMagician Ah, I didn't mean to imply they WEREN:T going on in medieval times. They were part of the work that Henry 2 did, trying to establish a coherent legal/court system. As, of course, England was in that state of having so many legacy systems from so many small, ever changing kingdoms from the previous, oh, seven or so centuries, and then having the Normans stomp in with yet another, operating from the centre. Very like....surprise surprise..westeros. But the assize courts went on for many centuries. One can't hope to polish off even a, relatively speaking, short volume of Trollope without assize courts hoving into view. People with zero legal knowledge will become jolly familiar with assize courts if they read even light weight fiction by British Isles novelists. They were around for so long, till they got Beeching-d out of existence - though not the same strain of bastard Beeching as did for all the lovely branch lines.
you know its bad when house Bolton looks at you and says wow, guys calm down lol
Based Bolton. Ramsay is literally me fr.
@@nont18411Ramsay is cringe but you seem p cool
Lol how you gonna say that?! 🤣@@nont18411
😂
Just as there have been some wicked Starks in history, I'm sure there have been one or 2 non-sadistic not totally evil Boltons in the last 8,000 years
Idk, but I felt so much empathy towards the Bracken guy on the last episode, I felt so sorry for him, he seemed like he didn't want to fight because he was young and inexperienced. That actor really nailed it.
Yup! You should, it's neither of their fault and a war that has nothing to do with them. Dead for a beef they had no part in making. Who knows who even moved those stones, or if they were at all. But they can't avoid it, like Hoster Blackwood said in ADWD as long as they remember the past they will never be free of it.
I’ll be honest when I saw the trailer I thought he was a chick
@@JoeMagicianAeron did nothing wrong. Poor kid was just trying to do what he was taught a knight is supposed to. He had no say in the matter. The grass around the stones is overgrown and growing through the gaps, so it must've sat undisturbed for a while. My guess is that its a historical grievance and Davos was just trying to start shit. Blackwoods have probably been telling Brackens to "put the stones back" in that field for centuries. Davos probably doesn't even know where exactly they're supposed to go back to, considering they're in the middle of a field with no landmarks.
I think Davos body is laying on the riverbank at 4:25 just to the left of the dead horse. Hard to tell exactly but the clothes match
You mean Blackwood… Bracken was the bad the guy picking on the lil guy
nah he fucked around and found out
House Atreides vs. House Harkonnen medieval fantasy style.
Loved the red and yellow cinematography as the colors designate the sides while panning over the dead bodies.
Glad you noticed! Exactly what I was going for by adding those overlays to the show footage.
I just knew there must be a romeo & juliet somewhere in the family tree. I JUST KNEW IT 🤯
In fact, after so many attempts at peace by inter-marriage, both houses practically have the same blood by now. They're parents (which only seems to make matters worse). 😆
It's almost like the river run lords keep the 2 houses fighting to balance power
I love this dichotomy of honor and ambition you laid out. Thinking about prophecy as well, Bloodraven is unlikely to be the only Blackwood who had green dreams. Their past ancestors might've stressed the grudge because they knew what was coming and the need to protect against it thru old god worship and culture. This was also lost to the later generations as the world lost magic and people lost faith in it.
It would be fitting for their thousand-year rivalry to be over something like a Bracken mistakenly grabbing a Blackwood's arse while reaching for a towel in a bathhouse or something.
I'm screaming
@@heresfrankbetches921 why it really wasn't that funny..
@@TheGreatPewpyOne yeah it was tense...
House Bracken symbol is a horse, earthly symbolism. Maybe it was something related to Brackens going against magic bullsh!t like the Maesters killing the dragons theory. If that is the case, i preffer the Brackens.
@@TheGreatPewpyOne found the homophobe
I'm dead serious when I say your Blackwood livestreams are one of the best contributions to the asoiaf fandom i've ever seen. I IMMEDIATELY thought of you when the opening to this ep started lol.
Aeron Bracken got stabbed with his own sword.. sin begets sin begets sin...
He bragged it would be good for killing Blackwoods, ends with it in his own throat. Ironic.
He'll never get to bang a horse again.
Add Targaryen blood to each side from Aegon IV and you get a feud that tears the entire kingdom apart... again! 😂😂😂
two weirdos in Bloodraven and Aegor Rivers
CRAVEN. That singular vitriolic word has been a call to arms for both sides since time immemorial.
Loved the Blackwoods ever since i saw their banner. Its a glorious, beautiful banner. When i learned their history, it just made the love official.
00:11 The sword and burning mill are definitely the stars of the shot, but I will never get over the imagery of the boy's body being "crushed" under the wheel. I am unfamiliar with a lot of the lore still, but that was just a lovely little detail to reinforce the themes and context of the families, even if it is pretty on the nose. Whoever on production thought to include that, huge props to them
i could be reading too much on the names. bracken is a type of fern that has many uses, but is poisonous to humans and may even cause death. that blackwoods accuse the brackens of poisoning their weirwood tree might be true. furthermore, bracken fern needs to be managed so as not to dominate woodlands. interesting...
Yeah that checks out
Read into it! Love this insight
Bravo, George. The gardener-author strikes again.
@@FunkBastid I'm envious of his writing abilities.
yo are the weirwood trees causing the brackens and blackwoods to go mad and fight each other for sacrificial blood? Weirwood's feed on blood sacrifices and it makes them more potent, like when Daemon touched the tree in the last episode and saw a vision.
RIP Bracken twink. We hardly knew ye...
Such a great actor tho. In such few time, he transmitted so much
Twink? How?
@@wrestlinginfodude2644He do looks like one.
@@wrestlinginfodude2644 look in a mirror
@@wrestlinginfodude2644He's handsome as fu_k
Davos is laying on the embankment at 4:22, just to the left of the dead horse. Looks like he took Aeron's friends with him. Their bodies are all around him, with one face down in the river. Aeron was also killed with his own sword.
Ramsay learned all the ways to hate and start a war from the book A War History of the Brackens and Blackwoods.
We need Bittersteel to weigh in on this lmao
Ya surprised he hasnt caught this yet! 😂
The Bracken tale makes more sense: the Blackwoods were exiled from the North and so would have become vassals of somebody in the South or else warred with someone to craft their own kingdom.
My personal favorite is both are true, just at different times. My head canon is they were both vassals to the Mudds. The Mudds giving them blackwood vale similar to the Starks and Manderlys. The Blackwoods were kings first after the Mudds. Then the Brackens rebelled and became kings. After which the Blackwoods rebelled against them to gain back their independence. Both filling the power vacuum of the loss of House Mudd, at different times both claiming to be kings of the Rivers. But the history of the Brackens shows a clear pattern of behavior that lines pretty well with the Blackwood story. They love backstabbing, oath breaking, and allying with anyone to take down the Blackwoods. My guess is that is closer to true while not having any details.
@@JoeMagician It could be the case that the Brackens were kings and accepted the Blackwoods as vassals but then at some point a Bracken king did something that went against Blackwood honor in some way, provoking them to rebel.
@@JoeMagician Yeah, this feud lasted for thousands of years, it's completely possible that both sides' stories happened MULTIPLE TIMES.
@@JoeMagician it's also in their coat of arms. The brackens are a free, dominant stallion without shackles, who roams and claims grasslands wherever he wants. The Blackwoods are a bunch of old crows bound to gather around the same f-ing tree from time immemorial. Polar opposites
@@Raycloud The Blackwoods are not known for honor, their most well known members are a bezerker child (Benjicot) and a very honorless Master of Whispers (Bloodraven)
ngl both of the actors for the blackwood and bracken dudes are handsome af
The Blackwood dude had no top lip.
They shoulda just hate fucked
True
@@donkeydarko77Nah his features were very handsome
@@Nicole-ju3zb Yeah, if you think Miley Cyrus is handsome
That long hair Bracken kid was cute as damn button ngl
Nice pfp!
@@dehypnotizebroadcast14 A man of culture and enlightenment I see 😎
Gay
@@makjmakjs6146 It's like 5% gay
@@CommanderLongJohnit's not gay. Buttons are cute
To me as a Medievalist the Blackwood-Bracken Feud has always served as a lovely illustration about how honor was (usually) a zero sum game. When the stakes are that high, brutality isn't so mystifying an attitude.
between neighbors there is no honor, just a constant sense of entitlement
When Aegon became King, the very first law he passed in Westeros forbade lords from engaging in petty wars instead decreeing that all disputes between them should be settled by thier Lord Paramount. Therefore the Brackens and Blackwoods are only too happy to use the Dance as a pretext to restart thier ancient fued which they had been forbidden from engaging in for a very long time
didn't help that their lord paramount was an old man who couldn't speak, or that House Tully is quite weak compared to say, the Lannisters or the Starks.
Since we didn’t see the actual battle it’s my head canon that it was a dance battle.
@@cadewilliams3857 what’s sadder is now NO cows get eat any grass. The place is a mess.
Even the name Bracken is a hint. The Bracken fern is poisonous
I miss your theory videos they were super interesting takes, hope you make one again soon
This is awesome, Matt. Looking forward more Blackwood content
You will not be disappointed
@@JoeMagician You never disappoint
Great video. Love the Blackwoods. I think they should have their own show or book.
House Justman FTW
It's a rare day we get to celebrate the one time the two houses teamed up and did something productive for once.
And the thumbnail of the year goes to... 🏆
Given who gets the attention I feel like the Blackwoods and Brackens are less the Hatfields and the McCoys and more the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals
Fun fact you can see Davos blackwood dead too near the left side
You predicted it right a few videos back. Kudos
Love the Blackwoods. Bloodraven's mother was a Blackwood. Aegon V the Unlikely married a Blackwood, his heir runs off with Jenny of Oldstones, they all die at Summerhall. They are involved in several major events in the series. When fire and ice (or blood magic and Old Gods) come together, shit goes down.
my actual last name is blackwood and i am indeed a bit of a tree-worshipping nerd
Bloodraven approves!
Hey, so... I don't know how to put this to you but... I''m a Bracken.
@@yellowfellow7246 ....and there has been blood flowing in the RUclips comment sections ever since.
Natural enemies
When I first got into GOTs/ASOIAF I highly suspected that all the constant warfare & bloodshed was caused by a curse from The Children as a way to feed the weirwoods blood & ensure their continued existance. Sometimes I still wonder if that's not the case ...😮
No one in the Asoiaf universe will have the drip comparable to Tytos Blackwood
The Blackwood’s are the main reason for the Stark’s warging abilities and Green sight. When Starks defeated the Blackwoods from the north. They took the talented women or showed magical abilities. Then married them to bring their talents to the Stark bloodline.
nah I doubt that starks have been getting that bloodline for ages
Nah it was the warg kings daughters that was the reason why starks git magical powahhh
My grandmother used to accuse all neighbours of moving boundrie stones, and moved alot herself. Lucky i dont live in Westeros.
Its also kinda funny how all of them being so young implies that they never get old due to them murdering each other all the time
Blackwoods are like a cross between Warhammer Dwarves, and the Raven Guard from 40k. They have the Oath/Grudge stuff from Dwarves and then the Raven Aesthetic from raven Guard. I imagine they use some of the same tactics, too... do they use stealthy spies, and stuff?
Before I start the video I will say my own personal theory is that the Brackens are the old Brandon Stark loyalists from the days when he became the Grey King. The blackwoods on the other hand are the former greenhands. Both sides started using insults to refer to one another, family deaths happened fast and frequently and that has led to the insults becoming the family names over time.
well the Grey King is an ironborn, so all that is wrong.
If the Hatfields and Mcoys had swords instead guns
Joe, you know I'm a lawyer. So, I am *all about* boundary stones & assizes.
Your time to shine!
@JoeMagician *cracks knuckles* let's do this
Objection!
So basically the HRE before the Imperial Peace was enforced and the Reichskammergericht established to tie feuds up in lengthy court cases.
Also, the Tullys should have really put a neutral house between the Blackwood an Bracken territories to act as a buffer.
I find this dispute interesting. It’s basically the only time where the backwoods are wrong instead of clearly the good guys.
Except for Bloodraven! He's the bad guy often and on purpose.
@@JoeMagician true, but I feel life he’s a whole world building chapter of his own. But even next to bitter steel (who is cool too) he comes off as the good guy.
@@JoeMagicianproblematic fave
@@JoeMagician he is technically a Targaryen rather than a Blackwood
im sure the only reason blackwood followed old gods is cause brakens choosed the new one and they be like yeah we are on opposite
I can’t freaking wait for Bloody Ben and Black Ali ❤️🔥 🩸 ❤️🔥
Ouuuuuu we eating good tonight Bois!!
Been waiting for this banger
04:07 Had the Bracken been killed with his own sword?
Pretty sure. It has the same weird half pommel
The sword wants more!
Technically it killed a Blackwood since brackens have Blackwood blood
@@timtim6373 there's no technicality here, it's what they wear as their sigil
Shout-out to house Bracken for producing the biggest hater in Westeros and Essos, Aegor 'Bittersteel' Rivers!
The Blackwoods were insulted by their Queen, but that wasn't enough for them to join the dirty hightower rebels and spill needless blood.
The Brackens were supported by their Queen, but still jumped at the first chance to backstab her for no possible gain because they are dirty horsebreeders.
BLACKWOOD🔛🔝
Another Joe lore video? Yessir.
Here’s a theory of mine, after the Blackwoods left the north, they went south in the Riverlands and actually conquered the lands previously ruled by the Brackens. They they never were the vassal of house Bracken, and by right of conquest they kept the lands and defended it multiple times when house Bracken tried to reclaim their lost lands, thus starting the feud. When the Andals came they allied, and when house Bracken abandoned the olds gods that’s when the feud got worse.
Do they have house words like “Ours is the Fury!”?
No known house words for either family unfortunately
@@JoeMagician really? They got a coat of arms. Hell even my lowly house has a slogan. Every night at 1800 you can the battle cry of “When’s Dinner?!”
They were both arguably stronger than house Tully but if either of them rose up against the Tullys the other one would join the Tullys to defeat them out of sheer hate.
So the Starks exiled the Blackwoods but not the Boltons? Even though the Boltons had history of burning Winterfell and flaying Stark princes for the lolz even before Red Wedding?
Makes you wonder, what did the Blackwoods do ....
@@JoeMagician Probably stole one of the Starks’ birthday cake
So the Starks made peace with the Boltons to fend off the Andal invasion, which piecing a timeline together must have been long after they exiled the Blackwoods, if they already had a generational blood feud with the Brackens by the time.
The Starks were one of the many kingdoms in the north who had to fight off the Boltons, their own kin the Greystarks, the ironborn, the mountain clans and also the Blackwoods who they sent into exile.. The Blackwoods ,apart from religion have been culturally Riverlanders for a great many years so their exile was earlier than we think
❤ those Blackwoods
Sad how it ends with Willem.
4:22 Davos is lying next to Aeron in the river
I don't think Rhaenrya could have gone on a progress without the crowns leave. Didn't Alicent, then, Alicent/Otto spend upward of 20 years bullying her and denying her most of her Princessly station?
she flew a dragon to visit the Riverlanders, it was more of a private tour. She saw Samwell Blackwood and Amos Bracken fight each other in a duel for her.
the riverlands are basically the low countries in real life history! with the three points of the trident being the scheldt river, meuse river and Rhine river ;p the brackens and blackwoods would correspond with the houses Berchthout and Antwerp ;p
Bittersteel wouldn’t let this slide
A Song of Ice and Fire Book Five: A Dance with Dragons
(After Jaime ends the siege in Riverrun and ensures the loyalty of the Blackwoods by taking one of their sons as a hostage and one daughter from the Brackens)
"So we go on century after century. with us hating the Brackens and them hating us. My father says there will never be an end to it."
- Hoster Blackwood (Jaime's hostage)
"There could be."
- Jaime Lannister
"How, my lord? The old wounds never heal, my father says."
- Hoster Blackwood
"My father had a saying too. Never wound a foe when you can kill him. Dead men can't claim vengeance."
- Jaime Lannister
"Their sons do."
- Hoster Blackwood
"Not if you kill their sons as well. Ask the Casterlys about that if you doubt me. Ask Lord and Lady Tarbeck, or the Reynes of Castamere. Ask the Prince of Dragonstone."
- Jaime Lannister
"Is that why you killed all the Starks?"
- Hoster Blackwood
"Not all, Lord Eddard's daughters live. One has just been wed. The other...." (Brienne, where are you? Have you found her?) "... if the gods are good, she'll forget she was a Stark. She'll wed some burly blacksmith or fat faced innkeep, fill his house with children, and never need to fear that some knight might come along to smash their heads against a wall."
- Jaime Lannister
"The gods are good."
-Hoster Blackwood
(You go on believing that.)
- Jaime Lannister's thought
If they are all related, why is it that when the blackwoods and brackens Kin-slay each other everyone kinda shrugs and does an eye roll. But if anyone else does it everyone loses their shit?
Edit: i realized this when replying to another comment, but it's a bit ironic that the house that got kicked out of the north can't remember why they hate the Brackens "the north remembers" and whatnot. I think grrm did that on purpose
I'm currently playing Blackwoods in CK3 AGOT. I bested Lord Bracken in a duel, he assassinated me because he was salty and now the new Lady Blackwood is plotting the long revenge. Make friendly with the Brackens. Grow up among them and take their bullying. Lull them into a false sense of security while I train Intrigue. Then start seducing his heirs and usurp the entirety of Stonehedge. Took the Brackens like 30 minutes to make me hate their blood
"And the Brackens exist as well". That basically sums it up.
They exist so that the Blackwoods have something to do.
Damn it dude! Tree worshipping nerds made me almost piss myself
Fuck right I'm here for the boundary stones!
My people
Long live House Blackwood and long live Brynden Blackwood Targaryen also called Bloodraven ✓
Team blackwood ⚫️ 🔥
As a House Piper meatrider the blackwood and bracken land should be given to Marq Piper 🗣️🗣️
I'm just goona point out the Blackwoods poisoned and killed their own weirwood tree by stuffing it with coins then blamed the Brackens for it
I love this channel.
House Blackwood forever!
They way they came off, I thought it would be an open handed slap fight.
Asking someone “Blackwood or Bracken” is like asking someone “Alien or Predator”. It tells you pretty much everything you need to know about a person.
I wonder which historical feud inspired them for GRRM to use in ASOIAF
I dunno if he has any specific feud in mind, but my money would be on it coming from somewhere Scotland. Generational beef over trivial issues is the type of hating that just screams it being the Scottish Clans.
But if George dipped into American history, Ryan’s assessment of the Hatfields and McCoy’s actually isn’t too bad.
Another great video 👏
All i gotta say is, dont stick copper pennies in your tree then be surprised when it dies🤷🏻♂️
Need a spinoff for these feuding houses
are you going to write the information to make it a reality? need need
@@SantomPh if only I was a writer
House Bracken holds the largest army in the riverlands on their own even more than the Tullys & Freys. The Tullys would need to call all their banners if they went to war. Also House Bracken poisoned the weirwood at Raventree Hall once they comverted to the faith of the seven. So there's a lot the Brackens have to answer for.
Wasn't the Brachen kid stabbed through the neck with his own sword. I swear the pommel was the same.
yes he was
How to solve it? Easy, barely an inconvenience.
Since the Brackens have all daughters at this point in ASOIAF, and the Blackwoods mostly have sons, just throw a big wedding where all the Blackwoods marry all the Brackens.
Or, you know, just get the Others to wipe out both houses. If they all die, no feud. Worse case scenario they team up to wreck shop and solve their feud that way.
To Hoster Blackwood's point I put in the video, they've done that over and over throughout history. Marriage pacts and alliances and bonds of friendship to put it all behind them. Making every Bracken a Blackwood and vice versa, hasn't stopped the feud. It eventually returns.
@@JoeMagician But since Bracken has NO sons, how could the main Bracken line continue? His nephew and bastard son are dead I'm pretty sure.
Mass arranged weddings are TIGHT!
@@KaiHung-wv3ulthat’s the fun part, they don’t.
Blackwoods 📈
Now we know the atrocities the Blackwoods committed against the Brackens it makes you wonder how many other times that happened that history has just forgotten so we get the impression that they've always been the good guys
they are only "good guys" because they allied with Robb Stark and their GOT members seem honorable and just. Over time they no doubt did bad things to the Brackens that were undeserving, and had it happen to them.
So essentially the looooong version of Stark vs Lannister
And hey, if the Blackwoods were driven out of the north, wouldn't that make them settlers? Maybe they really did encroach on Bracken land. Maybe the Brackens were the kings and the Blackwoods were the uppity vassals. Wouldn't be the first case of history through projection
This might not go well for a Blackwood aligned channel, but I hope GRRM would elaborate more on House Bracken lore than the Blackwoods on TWOW, & at least gave them a chance to even out their so called dispute. it's pretty clear GRRM is biased to the Blackwoods.
yo are the weirwood trees causing the brackens and blackwoods to go mad and fight each other for sacrificial blood? Weirwood's feed on blood sacrifices and it makes them more potent, like when Daemon touched the tree in the last episode and saw a vision.
A hundred and thousands of men? Wow House Blackwood and Bracken are so large house then?
Yo!
I heard the Brackens do more with their horses besides breed them...
I dont really see this border dispute being related to the duel in season 1, which was, what, 20 years ago at this point in the story?
Jonos insulted Willem who drew his sword and drew blood right away. That was yet another sad death between the two houses.
What if the Children of the Forest 🧚♀️ are moving the boundary stones 🪨
Huh they're really a couple rascals, always up to some shenanigans.
What happened to William blackwood?
We haven't seen him return yet, perhaps he will resurface.
It’s so cool how no one likes the brakens lol.
Like NO ONE likes them, Even the people saying they do, Don’t.
Blackwoods for life baby
Yesss
This video is Blackwood propaganda. (This comment has been verified and approved by House Bracken ™️)
glorious, isn't it?
Get out Bracken sympathizer.
Sounds like something a bracken would say.
As the whole ASOIAF franchise
You're god damn right
Its reminds me of a real war starting over someone stealing a chicken.
Assizes - medieval? Nope.
They were, essentially, travelling courts, and continued right on up until the early 1970s, when they were replaced by Crown Courts.
The presiding judge/judges all came from London, but they travelled about the country, on particular circuits holding assize courts, at particular towns, at particular times.
They tended to hear more serious cases. Though this wasn't always so.
That's what they became in modern times, they were started in the 1200's.
@@JoeMagician Ah, I didn't mean to imply they WEREN:T going on in medieval times. They were part of the work that Henry 2 did, trying to establish a coherent legal/court system. As, of course, England was in that state of having so many legacy systems from so many small, ever changing kingdoms from the previous, oh, seven or so centuries, and then having the Normans stomp in with yet another, operating from the centre. Very like....surprise surprise..westeros.
But the assize courts went on for many centuries. One can't hope to polish off even a, relatively speaking, short volume of Trollope without assize courts hoving into view.
People with zero legal knowledge will become jolly familiar with assize courts if they read even light weight fiction by British Isles novelists. They were around for so long, till they got Beeching-d out of existence - though not the same strain of bastard Beeching as did for all the lovely branch lines.