Meereen

Great city of Slaver's Bay

The largest of the slave cities, a city of colored brick beneath its Great Pyramid.

The fuller tale

Meereen is the largest of the slave cities and the loudest argument for their world: a sprawl of many-colored brick at the mouth of the Skahazadhan, crowned by stepped pyramids in which the Great Masters live like minor gods ÔÇö the Great Pyramid alone rises eight hundred feet, with a bronze harpy screaming from its summit. The harpy is GhisÔÇÖs old emblem, and Meereen is old GhisÔÇÖs proudest heir: a culture of tokars and filed teeth, of fighting pits where slaves die for applause, and of a trade in human beings so foundational that the city cannot imagine itself without it. When Daenerys marches up the coast road, the Great Masters nail a slave child to a milepost every mile, arms pointing her way ÔÇö a hundred and sixty-three signposts announcing exactly what the city thinks of liberators.

The city falls to cunning rather than siege: a way in through the sewers, arms passed to the slaves within, and a rising that opens the gates from the inside. Daenerys answers the mileposts with a symmetry that will follow her name forever ÔÇö a hundred and sixty-three Great Masters crucified in the plazas, justice by mirror ÔÇö and then does the thing no conqueror in the story has done before her: she stays. Astapor taught her that a freed city abandoned is merely a city waiting for new masters. So the queen sits in the Great Pyramid, and the tale turns from the easy arithmetic of conquest to the long division of ruling.

What she rules is an insurgency with a city attached. The Sons of the Harpy murder her freedmen in the night; the old families smile in her court and bank on her failure; the fighting pits demand reopening, and the cityÔÇÖs peace is finally priced at a wedding ÔÇö Hizdahr zo Loraq, nobilityÔÇÖs smoothest invoice. In the books the vise is crueler still: YunkaiÔÇÖs coalition camps outside the walls with sellsword companies and siege engines, the pale mare ÔÇö the flux ÔÇö rides into the city with the refugees, and the peace curdles toward a battle the published story has only begun. Both tellings converge at DaznakÔÇÖs Pit, where the gamesÔÇÖ blood-noise draws Drogon out of the sky, and Daenerys climbs onto her dragonÔÇÖs back and leaves her own compromise burning on the sand.

The books mark time in her absence with the storyÔÇÖs strangest queue: half the east sails for Meereen at once. Victarion Greyjoy brings the Iron Fleet and a stolen horn that allegedly binds dragons; Quentyn Martell arrives with a marriage pact a generation old and pays for his try at a dragon with his life; Tyrion reaches the siege lines in a sellsword company; and Ser Barristan, ruling as Hand in the queenÔÇÖs absence, readies the city for the Battle of Fire. The show compresses the convergence to its essentials ÔÇö Tyrion governs, bargains with the masters, and is rescued from his own diplomacy when Daenerys returns to burn the slaversÔÇÖ fleet in the bay and take their ships for Westeros.

Meereen is the taleÔÇÖs test case, and it is honest about the results. Daenerys wins every battle in SlaverÔÇÖs Bay and nearly loses the peace in a single city, because breaking chains is a morningÔÇÖs work and building what comes after is a lifeÔÇÖs. The queue of suitors, advisers and enemies her pyramid accumulates is the story in miniature: everyone wants the dragon, no one wants the homework. When she finally sails, she leaves the city its freedom and its uncertainty in equal measure ÔÇö the most truthful ending the story could give a revolution.

The page and the screen

Meereen is where the showÔÇÖs compression cuts deepest. Ser Barristan dies in a Harpy ambush on screen; in the books he lives to rule the city as Hand and lead it to war. VictarionÔÇÖs fleet, QuentynÔÇÖs doomed embassy, the pale mare, the Windblown and the whole assembling Battle of Fire are book material the show replaces with a single naval assault. Even the marriage differs ÔÇö book Daenerys actually weds Hizdahr and endures the politics of the match, while the show leaves him a betrothed corpse at DaznakÔÇÖs. Screen Meereen resolves in a season what the novels have deliberately left as their greatest unfinished siege.

The chronicle here

Meereen sends a champion; Daario opens him like a wine skin, and Dany catapults broken chains over the walls. (S4┬ÀE3)
Meereen rises from within; the Great Masters are nailed up as answer to the children on the road. (S4┬ÀE4)
In Meereen, the Sons of the Harpy begin murdering from the shadows. (S5┬ÀE1)
Dany executes a freedman for murdering a captive Harpy ÔÇö and Meereen hisses at its queen. (S5┬ÀE2)
Jorah's 'gift' to the queen in a Meereen pit is Tyrion Lannister, alive and bowing. (S5┬ÀE7)
Meereen: the Masters' fleet burns under three dragons; the siege ends in ash and terms. (S6┬ÀE9)
Before Meereen's walls the city sends a champion in pink and white; Strong Belwas eats his liver ÔÇö figuratively ÔÇö and the slaves listen at night to a word: Dracarys. (ASOS 58)
Meereen falls from within: sewers, slave revolt, and a queen's arithmetic ÔÇö one hundred sixty-three masters nailed to posts, a child for a child. (ASOS 72)
Meereen wears its queen uneasily: the Sons of the Harpy write their name in freedmen's blood each night, and out in the hills something has been eating children. (ADWD 3)
The Yunkai'i camp at Meereen's gates with their slave soldiers and their plague; the queen's council urges the peace: open the fighting pits, wed Hizdahr, endure. (ADWD 31)
Shipwrecked survivors are scooped up by slavers off the coast; Tyrion talks fast enough to keep Penny and Jorah alive as far as the auction block outside Meereen. (ADWD 41)
Daenerys weds Hizdahr zo Loraq in the Temple of the Graces, buying Meereen's peace with a Ghiscari crown ÔÇö and burying what she wants beneath what is needed. (ADWD 44)
With the queen gone on dragonback, Ser Barristan stands between Meereen and its king's mercies; the old knight polishes his armor and his suspicions together. (ADWD 56)
Battle gathers around Meereen: the Second Sons weigh their contract against the wind, and a dwarf with a ledger talks treason toward the dragon queen's side of the scale. (ADWD 67)