Illyrio Mopatis

We go from the freezing snows and dark iron woods of the north to a place of flame-colored silk and oppressive heat.

They're living as guests of Magister Illyrio Mopatis.

Illyrio is described as a massive man with an oiled, forked yellow beard and crooked yellow teeth, wearing rings with heavy gemstones on every finger.

Outside their square brick towers, red priests are singing and ragged children are playing.

It is a world of extreme wealth built on extreme transactional cruelty.

Beneath the luxury of Illyrio's manse lies a deep, agonizing history of trauma that Viserys constantly inflates on Daenerys.

The text details the heavy burden of Targaryen history.

It isn't just backstory.

That's it.

He clearly had in mind that Tyrion had to, you know, first land with Illyrio and then end up with the young Griff crew and then get hooked up with Jorah.

And then he has to end up enslaved outside the walls of Meereen.

Like he had these very specific things in mind that Tyrion had to do all of them.

And I'm like, you could have combined this.

There's no reason that Connington couldn't have been at Illyrio's in those first chapters.

You could have combined all of that and just kind of, compacted it you didn't need didn't need didn't need all of this I mean just It's one of those things.

And this happens sometimes with writers when nobody pushes back or they just kind of, they're like, and then this happened and then this happened.

Everything she'd loved had turned to ash.

Everything except the three eggs Illyrio had given her as a wedding gift.

On the funeral pyre, as Drogo's body burned and Mirri Maz Duur screamed her curses, Daenerys walked into the flames.

She heard Ser Jorah shouting, felt the heat that should have consumed her, and let it wash over her like a baptism.

It can apparently be spread by rats as well as humans, and can nearly wipe out whole cities.

Grey plague struck Oldtown when Grand Maester Pycelle was a boy, killing three-quarters of the city population, and hit Pentos some years before the main story, killing Illyrio's beloved wife Serra and two thousand others.

He claims to have kept her stone hands to help remember her.

Concerningly, we hear reports during one of Arianne's chapters in A Feast for Crows that it has hit Yi Ti.

Not so much greyscale.

Septa Maegelle Targaryen died from it.

Shireen Baratheon claims some Targaryen heritage, and you'll remember Illyrio's wife.

Many fans, including me, believe she was a Blackfyre.