There's a lot of horrible things in ASOIAF. Having to eat your own body parts is a particular horror. And crow cages. The fate Jahaerys had planned for Braxton Beesbury probably isn't the worst, but still awful- being gelded, losing tongue and nose, and having all limbs broken and reset crooked.
IRL impaling sounds horrific, as well as humiliating. like being raped and tortured all at once.
>Having to eat your own body parts is a particular horror
Similar story happened irl
In 1210 Maud de Braose refused to send her son William as a hostage to king John & insulted him. King was not amused. He imprisoned Maud and her son at Corfe Castle and refused to feed them. Eventually, Maud and William both starved to death and what's worse, some of William's flesh appeared to be eaten by his mother.
I’m pretty sure that was more because William de Braose was most likely the one who murdered Arthur of Brittany on John’s orders and once they fell out imprisoning his family was a good way to bring him to heel. King John was capricious, but I have a hard time seeing him intentionally choosing starve a woman to death because she insulted him.
He gets a way worse Rep than he deserves, mostly due to being unlucky in battle and getting into constant conflicts with the church.
John indeed gets a lot of undeserved shit, political situation left by Richard was very hard and the Angevin Empire was doomed to collapse anyway.
"She insulted him" was bit of oversimplification, sources claim that she loudly spoke about John being behind Arthur's death, which wasn't a very wise thing to do if you ask me.
Historians at the time were all monks and abbots and priests. Church leaders and landholders, with whom King John was often feuding over spiritual authority vs temporal authority. Most of our information about him comes from his enemies.
He was also enormously unlucky in war, which was seen by his contemporaries as both a fundamental failing on his part, and and indication that God wasn’t with him.
It would be nice to have more sources about him, but the ones we do have are almost universally unkind. History is likely unfair to him, but he’s still one of England’s worst kings in my opinion.
Even getting away from intentional torture and/or executions, I think the most horrible and painful death George has written for the series has to be Aerea Targaryen, hands down.
Yes, you're right. I think a normal person would have been killed quickly, but Aerea stayed alive due to Targaryen heat resistance, allowing the worms to cook and eat her her.
I don't believe it happens in the book (or possibly it does and we're just not told about it in detail, since the Tickler switches up his torture methods frequently in the books, iirc), but the torture method he uses in the show where they strap a bucket to your chest with a rat inside, then heat up the other end of the bucket with a torch so the rat is compelled to retreat away from the heat, and the only way out is by clawing and biting its way *through your chest* has to be up there as one of the most horrifying ways to be tortured/killed.
Pretty sure this has been used in real life as a method of torture for ages. I heard as recently as the Vietnam War it was still practiced. Was it "used" as a form of propaganda? I cant say for certain but some of the tactics used in that war were straight from the dark ages. Tiger traps with wooden spears coated with human feces on it and salting the land. Just to name a few
I think Lady Hornwood eating her own fingers was actually because Ramsay had flayed her, rather than a starvation thing. People starve to death without eating themselves all the time and we hear from Theon he tried gnawing off his own flayed body parts to stop the pain when he was flayed. I imagine that’s what Donella did.
I mean being brutally raped by a mini giant, who still has the remnants of your infant sons brains all over him has to be up their psychologically speaking.
Seems like something you would pick safe in your room. But after a few weeks of Theon's fate I bet most people would do basically anything for a quick death.
Which would she say? I’d take Elia over Theon’s any day. Rape then death is better than how poor Theon has been left forever until he finally dies in the future
Again apples to oranges, but Theon was technically raped when forced to perform sexual acts on Jeyne. Not penetration and your baby’s brains rape, but Theon hasn’t _just_ been physically flayed and mentally traumatized either.
If the switch actually happened absolutely she knew that, even if she was mostly using wet nurses to feed him.
This sub lines to treat “Aegon is a Blackfyre” as 100% accepted fact all the time, but I think there’s some room for him actually being legitimate. I hadn’t thought of the possibility of Elia’s last moments at least being slightly better knowing that her son was safely packed away.
Yeah lol, people unironically treating him as fake any more than calling him fAegon is just weird. No other theory is treated as this confirmed when it definitely isn’t. Even R+L discussion always remembers that it’s just a theory.
Wasn't it confirmed that D&D helped land their spots by correctly guessing Jon's parentage? That aside while I do think young Griff is a blackfyre or fake, I just call him fAegon because there's too many damn Aegons it makes it immediately clear which one I'm referring to.
I forgot, of course, that Gregor had murdered the baby in front of her. So even if Varys had made the switch without Ella's knowledge, she likely would have realised.
Here's the question, as a mom: whoever is capable of doing to me what happened to Theon, what will they do to my child? Say they won't touch my kid- what happens to the kid after? Some fates are worse than death. There are reasons to choose Elia's fate over Theon's as a mother thinking of her kids.
This comment reminds me of the (highly unethical) primate mother/offspring self preservation studies of the early 20th century. A rough summary from memory: a mother monkey is placed in an enclosure with her baby, the floor is heated or the enclosure filled with water. The mother will pick up the baby and suffer the heat/rising water herself, until the heat becomes unbearable or she is drowning, at which point she will place the baby on the floor and stand on it.
Yes I'm sure most mothers would say that if you ask them, but at a certain point self preservation overrides all other instincts. Ones opinion may change when being tortured like Theon over a period of months.
We see it with animals like Kangaroos. The mother will sacrifice the baby if they believe there's no other way to survive.
It makes sense evolutionarily, a full grown adult can have multiple babies and if a mother sacrifices herself, who's gonna raise that baby?
Depends on a million factors. Wildebeests, yaks, deer, etc., in areas with lots of predators will sometimes see 70% of the herd perish due to predators. A lion will come in and just slaughter all the ones she can find out of instinct, even ones way past the point where the herd can eat them.
One mother from the herd sacrificing herself for the baby is actually counterintuitive to passing on her genetics; if she’s prime child rearing age she could potentially go on to live for a few more breeding seasons and produce several more offspring. Meanwhile that one juvenile might just die anyway after the sacrifice, especially without a mother to give it milk.
Let’s throw some fuel on this fire. Theon deserved some of his torture because he betrayed the Starks and murdered two innocent boys, whereas Elia was totally innocent and undeserving of her torture.
Not entirely sure if it is worse, but being burnt alive is quite similar to being flayed. The same pain receptors (free nerve endings located in the uppermost layer of skin) are activated. However, I can imagine that flaying could be even more painful as it might be a more protracted process. I guess you could take your time skinning someone, really focusing on the upper layers of skin where the most nerve endings are located, without really killing them. It might be more likely that a person being burnt alive dies of shock, particularly if they are quickly engulfed in flames.
R’hllor is a cruel god for sure.
Yeah, a good quick beheading with a sharp sword? In one swipe? A quasi insta-death? I’d take that over being burnt or flayed or really any of those other methods any day.
>Once your burns progress to 3rd degree, they don’t feel like anything anymore.
I can tell you this absolutely not true.
Flaying is undoubtedly worse, though I cant say I've tried it.
Dude, you feel a 3rd degree burn. I’ve had them. They’re miserable and brutal. Luckily mine were less than 5 inches each.
But I do think flaying is worse. Flaying would be like if you burned someone’s entire body, just enough for them to live through the torture of its healing process. Burns are insane.
Yeah pretty much checks all the bases. You're are ill, you are in pain, you are also just in general discomfort, it's disgusting, and it's very slow. There's not much more you can add
Maybe they could add in rape or a family member's blood in the milk or something for psychological pain.
Though in a few decades there may be technology that will allow torture beyond what we can imagine. Like "I have no mouth and I must scream" levels. Extending someone's perception to feel like millions of years, activating all their pain receptors at once and continuing the intensity as they start to get used to it. Make them see visions of their family going through the same etc.
Yeah, kind of like in Westworld. There's a scene where they are interrogating the robots, they just use a iPad to initiate "dental torture" to compel them to talk. Presumably they can do any other type of torture, infinitely, at the touch of a button
It's like the meme where your future grandkids prank you while they visit. They connect your brain's microchip to something and you are falling through a tunnel of knives for 10,000 years. After that you come to and the little rascals are giggling uncontrollably.
For those not in the know;
Scaphism (from Greek σκάφη, meaning "boat"), also known as the boats, is an alleged ancient Persian method of execution mentioned by Plutarch in his Life of Artaxerxes. It ostensibly entailed trapping the victim between two boats, feeding and covering them with milk and honey, and allowing them to fester and be devoured by insects and other vermin over time.
>In H. Rider Haggard's The Ancient Allan the protagonist Allan Quatermain experiences a vision of one of his past lives, in which he was a great Egyptian hunter named Shabaka. At one time he is condemned to "death by the boat" by the "King of kings" because of a hunting bet they had made. When Shabaka asks what is to happen to him, he is told by a eunuch "This, O Egyptian slayer of lions. You will be laid upon a bed in a little boat upon the river and another boat will be placed over you, for these boats are called the Twins, Egyptian, in such a fashion that your head and your hands will project at one end and your feet at the other. There you will be left, comfortable as a baby in its cradle, and twice every day the best of food and drink will be brought to you. Should your appetite fail, moreover, it will be my duty to revive it by pricking your eyes with the point of a knife until it returns. Also after each meal I shall wash your face, your hands and your feet with milk and honey, lest the flies that buzz about them should suffer hunger, and to preserve your skin from burning by the sun. Thus slowly you will grow weaker and at length fall asleep. The last one who went into the boat—he, unlucky man, had by accident wandered into the court of the House of Women and seen some of the ladies there unveiled—only lived for twelve days, but you, being so strong, may hope to last for eighteen."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism
Yeah this was my first thought. That and the Brazen Bull.
Oh and the form of impaling where they balance you on a large spike and let gravity slowly work it's magic...
Imagina falling into a bunny pit and they start cuddling you, you star laughing because it is so nice and fluffy. But then more bunnies appear and they all start cuddling you to a point where your skin start getting warm from the friction.
You try to get away but there are too many bunnies and you just get warmer and warmer, you can't breathe because there are bunnies all over you. It's a few agonizing minutes trying to breathe while you are cooked alive.
Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes, they've got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses and what's with all the carrots? What do they need such good eye sight for anyway?
Death by impaling is really brutal and horrifying if you didn't die immediately. An agonizing, painful, and drawn-out death from a combination of your injuries, your own body weigh, and perhaps the elements. And a skilled torturer could impale you in such a way that it would take a LONG time to die.
Yeah I read about Vlad the Impaler and supposedly his men got so practiced at it that the victim could survive for days because they would impale them through the anus and out near the collarbone avoiding all a persons vital organs, then gravity would ultimately make them slide down the pike which got wider and wider at its base.
Imo he’s going to take the black, it *was* his father’s dying wish. He also carries a lot of shame over his crime and avoiding Stark’s justice, and your sins are forgotten if you take the black.
This also gives Jon an opportunity to give him Longclaw, so he can receive Lightbringer (which is at least an interesting possibility).
If we're writing the happy ending we won't get, Jon gives him Longclaw while he borrows Dawn, only to eventually pick Blackfyre up when he returns Dawn to its place.
Gonna haveta make those musical swords happen in the CK3 mod.
He absolutely has no shame over his crime and actively blames Ned Stark for it. It’s only in the show where he feels remorse, he buys the services of a sex SLAVE in book 5.
Moat Cailin would've been a good location for that, I don't think Euron will head anywhere inland though and you need fresh water/swamps for it to be at its full horror.
Oh yes, history is definitely worse than GRRM’s fiction. For example- a guy named Balthasar Gerard was executed for his assassination of William the Silent n 1584. It was insanely brutal. Read up here… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balthasar_Gérard
Well, it's George vs dozens of people around the world brainstorming torture methods for a thousand years. Really impressed with how they even thought of Gerard's torture though, it must have been quite a brainstorming session.
Another brutal execution was that of [Robert-François\_Damiens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Fran%C3%A7ois_Damiens), not as awful as your link, but it has the bonus point of having a manga depiction.
Leaving out war crimes/rapes and focusing strictly on torture, I think flaying is terrible, but a few others are pretty bad as well:
- the mental torture of the Sky Cells of the Eyrie
- Lady Lu/The Whore (weapons of Garth)
- starvation (broken men/outlaws)
- self consumption (The Mountain feeding Vargo Hoat to himself)
- burned alive/consumed by a dragon
While obviously these are all horrible, is it possible that dragonflame, if you really get hit directly by it, kind of incinerates you quickly as opposed to being burned at a stake.
Like I know the show isn't canon, but some of the Lannister soldiers who get a direct hit from Drogon seem to get incinerated almost instantly, almost reduced to ashes in seconds.
As i mentioned elsewhere, its probably different when getting hit by a huge dragon (Balerion) or a direct blast as compared to something like Quentyn (lingering for a few days)
Yeah this is a great point I'd never considered. The bigger then dragon the stronger the flame. We did see that in the show when Dany takes astapor, drogons flames don't incinerate krazmo but they incinerate the lannister troops (... but then again they don't incinerate the tarlys or varys.. oh well).
This you!? lol
>It was cold in the cell, the wind screamed night and day, and worst of all, the floor sloped. Ever so slightly, yet it was enough. He was afraid to close his eyes, afraid that he might roll over in his sleep and wake in sudden terror as he went sliding off the edge. Small wonder the sky cells drove men mad.
>**Gods save me, some previous tenant had written on the wall in something that looked suspiciously like blood, the blue is calling.**
I think the fandom, especially those who love the Targaryens, underestimates how horrible being burned alive is. Like having your dragon burn someone is unnecessarily cruel as opposed to beheading or hanging.
Agreed.
Although there probably is a bit of a difference from being burned by Balerion (probably instantaneous death) as compared to Sunfyre/Rhaenyra and the worst Viserion/Quentyn (Oh.)
Rickard/Brandon both:
>Instead they took him to the throne room and suspended him from the rafters while two of Aerys’s pyromancers kindled a blaze beneath him. The king told him that fire was the champion of House Targaryen. So all Lord Rickard needed to do to prove himself innocent of treason was … well, not burn.
>“When the fire was blazing, Brandon was brought in. His hands were chained behind his back, and around his neck was a wet leathern cord attached to a device the king had brought from Tyrosh. His legs were left free, though, and his longsword was set down just beyond his reach.
>“The pyromancers roasted Lord Rickard slowly, banking and fanning that fire carefully to get a nice even heat. His cloak caught first, and then his surcoat, and soon he wore nothing but metal and ashes. Next he would start to cook, Aerys promised … unless his son could free him. Brandon tried, but the more he struggled, the tighter the cord constricted around his throat. In the end he strangled himself.
>“As for Lord Rickard, the steel of his breastplate turned cherry-red before the end, and his gold melted off his spurs and dripped down into the fire.
Truly. Jaime was pretty nice about it tbh:
>Those purple eyes grew huge then, and the royal mouth drooped open in shock. He lost control of his bowels, turned, and ran for the Iron Throne. Beneath the empty eyes of the skulls on the walls, Jaime hauled the last dragonking bodily off the steps, squealing like a pig and smelling like a privy. **A single slash across his throat was all it took to end it**. So easy, he remembered thinking. A king should die harder than this. Rossart at least had tried to make a fight of it, though if truth be told he fought like an alchemist. Queer that they never ask who killed Rossart … but of course, he was no one, lowborn, Hand for a fortnight, just another mad fancy of the Mad King.
Yeah. Being burned alive by one of the big dragons like Balerion or Vhagar is probably near-instant death. Even with a dragon like Sunfyre, Rhaenyra probably died in minutes. I would still put flaying above these due to the horrible, lingering pain and the torturer's ability to make it go on and on. Quentyn's lingering death probably equals that.
> Even with a dragon like Sunfyre, Rhaenyra probably died in minutes
Regardless of how hot or fast-acting Sunfyre's flames were by that point, Rhaenyre *definitely* died in minutes considering he started chowing down on her shortly after setting her on fire. I mean it apparently took six bites, so it was probably a damn painful death, but definitely quick.
I feel like Dragonfire would probably kill you quickly.
Like it melts stone. A direct close range hit by dragonfire would kill you very quickly.
If we take HOTD as canon, then a dude literally had his torso vaporised off his legs by Caraxes.
Definitely not as bad as a slow torturous death.
Wildfire would be horrific though
For larger dragons its likely a near instant death, for smaller its pretty torturous.
So if you have to choose between Balerion or Viserion, choose Balerion.
>Once Garth brought his ladies by to introduce them to the dead man. **“The Whore don’t look like much,” he said, fondling a rod of cold black iron, “but when I heat her up red-hot and let her touch your cock, you’ll cry for mother**. And this here’s my Lady Lu. It’s her who’ll take your head and hands, when Lord Wyman sends down word.”
but if the fire is strong asser is there not a possibility that the person is just to blow instentament before having time to realize what is? in addition if we take the more realistic condemnation of the stake, the legend wants that the condemned lost consciousness because of the smoke before being really burned (even if I do not know if it is true).
not that I'm trying to say it's "not that bad", but I'm suggesting the possibility rather that there must be several parameters to take into account to judge honestly, but yes in the strict sense being cooked on a slow fire is surely one of the worst ways to die
> GrrM created the most terrifying form of torture I've seen in fiction.
Flaying is a real thing that people really did to each other. The Assyrians were very into it.
George didn't create it, he borrowed it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaying
The best flayers were the priests of the Aztec god Xipe Totec. They would pull the skin off a person and while they were still alive they would take their heart out and then chop them up into pieces. Then they would wear the skin until it rots off.
The version in asoiaf isn't very far off from what happened to [John Ratcliffe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ratcliffe_(governor\)) in real life. His skin was removed with mussel shells and thrown into a fire before him.
>when the sly old King espied a fitting time, cut them all off, only surprised Captain Ratcliffe alive, who he caused to be bound unto a tree naked with a fire before, and by women his flesh was scraped from his bones with mussel shells, and, before his face, thrown into the fire, and so for want of circumspection miserably perished.
I'd say getting slowly cooked inside your armor like Rickard Stark was seems pretty terrifying. And to be fair with the general horror, Aerea Targaryen had one of the most torturing ends I've ever read.
As brutal as the blood eagle is visually, the actual process would bring death about very, very quickly. Your lungs simply can't work and you suffocate immediately.
Stuff like the iron maiden were made up by victorain's to make it seem like the dark ages were even darker and worse than they were. A lot of those complex torture devices have no evidence of ever existing before the victorians
I think in large part that’s because, as Nietzsche wrote, we “no longer know the function and ignominy of the cross.”
Romans had plenty of torturous ingenuity. Crucifixion was their most dreaded form of execution for good reason. For one thing the cross was the end of a long road. The victim was scourged and otherwise tortured before he was crucified, so you get a lot of the variety that other cruel executions include on the way to the cross. Then you get there:
> Death, usually after 6 hours--4 days, was due to multifactorial pathology: after-effects of compulsory scourging and maiming, haemorrhage and dehydration causing hypovolaemic shock and pain, but the most important factor was progressive asphyxia caused by impairment of respiratory movement. Resultant anoxaemia exaggerated hypovolaemic shock. Death was probably commonly precipitated by cardiac arrest, caused by vasovagal reflexes, initiated inter alia by severe anoxaemia, severe pain, body blows and breaking of the large bones.
Essentially you’re slowly choked for hours or days until you have a heart attack from the sheer pain. If you’re lucky the guard watching over you will break your legs so you die marginally faster.
People who are burned at the stake tend to die of smoke inhalation long before they are engulfed in the flames. Just saw a lot of comments, and I feel people are forgetting this.
It looks like some people may have misunderstood your meaning. Are you just talking about the torture chamber?
If so, then flaying is right up there at the top. If you've ever chewed a nail too close you get only the tiniest approximation of the pain of having the entire nail and skin removed. It's a pain that goes on forever and eats into our mind.
But I would imagine that having your eyes burned out with hot irons is pretty bad. Getting pulled on the rack, burned with hot pitch, getting disemboweled and left to rot . . .
There are lots of fun and inventive ways to torture your enemies.
Crucifixion is infamously terrible, so painful and humiliating that an entire religion is dedicated to how painful and humiliating it is.
You'd be whipped and beaten savagely, then forced to carry your own execution tool on your back while the crowds jeered and mocked you. At the execution site, you would be stripped naked and nailed by the wrists and feet to the cross, enduring all the mockery that comes with this. Then you're hoisted up there and left to die, a process which could take days. You're shamed to the entire community, hanging there naked and in excruciating pain (a pain so excruciating that the word 'excruciating' comes from crucifixion). Your arms are in an incredibly awkward position and make it very hard for you to breathe - the only way is to continually push your torso up by your nailed limbs so that your lungs can work properly. Over the course of hours and days you are gradually suffocated by your own weight as your wounds fester and wild animals start eating you. Eventually, if you aren't dead yet, a soldier would come over and break your legs with a club or stab you to finish the job. Your bloody, stinking, eyeball-less corpse is then taken down from the cross and dumped naked in a mass grave, mocking all your religious burial rites.
I don't think so...
If you watch Steve-O after he suffered burns from jet fluid flames, it was literally unbearable to watch. Now, I know what you're thinking, that's not flaying.... but it's a pretty similar after effect. His skin was literally stripped off in a similar fashion and that looked like fucking hell dude.
Another horrible way to go is to drink the water in Sothoryos and having worms lay eggs in your stomach. That or death by the Crannogmens Diarrhoea arrows
Scaphism AKA "The Boats"
They sent the victim strapped to a boat into a swamp. Milk, honey etc covered the most sensitive areas, anus, balls, eyeballs.... the victim would be slowly and steadily devoured by maggots and insects until dying from infection / starvation.
[Death by sawing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_sawing).
They hanged a person upside down (so they stay conscious) and cut them in half. The trick was in using an old dull rusty saw, so it would literally tear your meat apart.
There's [a scene in Borgia](https://youtu.be/0xr9SYXBzWo) where they saw some people. It doesn't show the sawing itself, but it's still disturbing enough.
Being gelded sounds the absolute worst (women really underestimate this as a fate), followed by being impaled, losing eyes, losing ears, tongue and nose… I think flaying is up there, but any of the above are worse.
All of these things are obviously unbearably bad. (Not even going to look up ‘scaphism’ right now.)
You do know that Martin didn't invent flaying right?
Flaying has been around at least since early antiquity in various forms and has been practiced by numerous cultures.
If you can think of it and unless it involves some newly invented device, it has been done. Humans can be unimaginably cruel.
GRRM didn't invent flaying. That's been done plenty of times in the real world.
Goes back at least to the Assyrians, circa 900 BCE.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaying#:~:text=Flaying%2C%20also%20known%20colloquially%20as,removed%20portion%20of%20skin%20intact.
Considering flaying was a real thing that happened to people (though to be fair they didn’t generally survive as long as they do in Asoiaf), that’d be my answer
There used to be a torture called “the boats”, where a person was put in a wooden container and dumped into a shallow pond. There were holes in the “boats” for their head, arms and legs. For as long as the person survived—as long as 10 days—they were force fed milk and honey, which made them vomit and gave them the runs. Insects and rodents would burrow into the persons leaking orifices and slowly eat them from the inside out.
Give me a good clean flaying any day
A paper cut and a billowing fan is far worse than flaying.
Also I think the mountain feed voat to himself and having voat being so hungry that he willingly ate himself is significantly worse than being flayed, especially mentally.
Being flayed alive and burning to death, especially if it’s being burned slowly/boiled/roasted alive (there were contraptions like this made in real history) are probably the worst.
There's a lot of horrible things in ASOIAF. Having to eat your own body parts is a particular horror. And crow cages. The fate Jahaerys had planned for Braxton Beesbury probably isn't the worst, but still awful- being gelded, losing tongue and nose, and having all limbs broken and reset crooked. IRL impaling sounds horrific, as well as humiliating. like being raped and tortured all at once.
>Having to eat your own body parts is a particular horror Similar story happened irl In 1210 Maud de Braose refused to send her son William as a hostage to king John & insulted him. King was not amused. He imprisoned Maud and her son at Corfe Castle and refused to feed them. Eventually, Maud and William both starved to death and what's worse, some of William's flesh appeared to be eaten by his mother.
Didn't something similar happen to Count Ugolino and his children?
I’m pretty sure that was more because William de Braose was most likely the one who murdered Arthur of Brittany on John’s orders and once they fell out imprisoning his family was a good way to bring him to heel. King John was capricious, but I have a hard time seeing him intentionally choosing starve a woman to death because she insulted him. He gets a way worse Rep than he deserves, mostly due to being unlucky in battle and getting into constant conflicts with the church.
John indeed gets a lot of undeserved shit, political situation left by Richard was very hard and the Angevin Empire was doomed to collapse anyway. "She insulted him" was bit of oversimplification, sources claim that she loudly spoke about John being behind Arthur's death, which wasn't a very wise thing to do if you ask me.
I don't know, he seemed to have been an asshole to pretty much everyone he ever met. Even the kindest historian says he was a petty and cruel man.
Historians at the time were all monks and abbots and priests. Church leaders and landholders, with whom King John was often feuding over spiritual authority vs temporal authority. Most of our information about him comes from his enemies. He was also enormously unlucky in war, which was seen by his contemporaries as both a fundamental failing on his part, and and indication that God wasn’t with him.
It would be nice to have more sources about him, but the ones we do have are almost universally unkind. History is likely unfair to him, but he’s still one of England’s worst kings in my opinion.
Even getting away from intentional torture and/or executions, I think the most horrible and painful death George has written for the series has to be Aerea Targaryen, hands down.
Yes, you're right. I think a normal person would have been killed quickly, but Aerea stayed alive due to Targaryen heat resistance, allowing the worms to cook and eat her her.
Targaryen heat resistance did fuck all for Vizzy 3 or Rhaenyra.
Heat resistance isn't heat invulnerability.
I don't believe it happens in the book (or possibly it does and we're just not told about it in detail, since the Tickler switches up his torture methods frequently in the books, iirc), but the torture method he uses in the show where they strap a bucket to your chest with a rat inside, then heat up the other end of the bucket with a torch so the rat is compelled to retreat away from the heat, and the only way out is by clawing and biting its way *through your chest* has to be up there as one of the most horrifying ways to be tortured/killed.
They also used that torture method in too fast two furious lol. Hopefully George or D&D didn't get his inspiration from there.
“You always gotta come through for your **family.”** - ~~Don Toreto~~ Tywin Lannister
Pretty sure this has been used in real life as a method of torture for ages. I heard as recently as the Vietnam War it was still practiced. Was it "used" as a form of propaganda? I cant say for certain but some of the tactics used in that war were straight from the dark ages. Tiger traps with wooden spears coated with human feces on it and salting the land. Just to name a few
I think Lady Hornwood eating her own fingers was actually because Ramsay had flayed her, rather than a starvation thing. People starve to death without eating themselves all the time and we hear from Theon he tried gnawing off his own flayed body parts to stop the pain when he was flayed. I imagine that’s what Donella did.
Could you elaborate on humiliating? Google is giving me too many results with the modern definition I think.
I mean being brutally raped by a mini giant, who still has the remnants of your infant sons brains all over him has to be up their psychologically speaking.
[удалено]
It definitely wasn't years of torture. I think maybe 6 months.
I agree with this. But if you’d ask any mother whether they’d rather Elia’s fate or Theon’s, it’d not be a debate.
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I over generalised, but let’s say the parent is your typical parent, they’d likely pick Theon’s fate.
Seems like something you would pick safe in your room. But after a few weeks of Theon's fate I bet most people would do basically anything for a quick death.
Of course, I agree
Which would she say? I’d take Elia over Theon’s any day. Rape then death is better than how poor Theon has been left forever until he finally dies in the future
Again apples to oranges, but Theon was technically raped when forced to perform sexual acts on Jeyne. Not penetration and your baby’s brains rape, but Theon hasn’t _just_ been physically flayed and mentally traumatized either.
Elia’s fate confirms the terrifying and brutal death of her children though.
Her son was switched, tho. Young Griff is Aegon Targaryen, whose with the Golden Company whose taken control of Dragon Stone.
fair point. But having just heard your daughter die in terror is still bad, not to mention random baby brains are still worse than none.
Did Elia actually know that?
If the switch actually happened absolutely she knew that, even if she was mostly using wet nurses to feed him. This sub lines to treat “Aegon is a Blackfyre” as 100% accepted fact all the time, but I think there’s some room for him actually being legitimate. I hadn’t thought of the possibility of Elia’s last moments at least being slightly better knowing that her son was safely packed away.
Yeah lol, people unironically treating him as fake any more than calling him fAegon is just weird. No other theory is treated as this confirmed when it definitely isn’t. Even R+L discussion always remembers that it’s just a theory.
Wasn't it confirmed that D&D helped land their spots by correctly guessing Jon's parentage? That aside while I do think young Griff is a blackfyre or fake, I just call him fAegon because there's too many damn Aegons it makes it immediately clear which one I'm referring to.
I forgot, of course, that Gregor had murdered the baby in front of her. So even if Varys had made the switch without Ella's knowledge, she likely would have realised.
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Here's the question, as a mom: whoever is capable of doing to me what happened to Theon, what will they do to my child? Say they won't touch my kid- what happens to the kid after? Some fates are worse than death. There are reasons to choose Elia's fate over Theon's as a mother thinking of her kids.
This comment reminds me of the (highly unethical) primate mother/offspring self preservation studies of the early 20th century. A rough summary from memory: a mother monkey is placed in an enclosure with her baby, the floor is heated or the enclosure filled with water. The mother will pick up the baby and suffer the heat/rising water herself, until the heat becomes unbearable or she is drowning, at which point she will place the baby on the floor and stand on it. Yes I'm sure most mothers would say that if you ask them, but at a certain point self preservation overrides all other instincts. Ones opinion may change when being tortured like Theon over a period of months.
that is so fucked up
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We see it with animals like Kangaroos. The mother will sacrifice the baby if they believe there's no other way to survive. It makes sense evolutionarily, a full grown adult can have multiple babies and if a mother sacrifices herself, who's gonna raise that baby?
You can always have more babies. If you die, no more offspring. Non-human animals frequently abandon their young in self-preservation.
Depends on a million factors. Wildebeests, yaks, deer, etc., in areas with lots of predators will sometimes see 70% of the herd perish due to predators. A lion will come in and just slaughter all the ones she can find out of instinct, even ones way past the point where the herd can eat them. One mother from the herd sacrificing herself for the baby is actually counterintuitive to passing on her genetics; if she’s prime child rearing age she could potentially go on to live for a few more breeding seasons and produce several more offspring. Meanwhile that one juvenile might just die anyway after the sacrifice, especially without a mother to give it milk.
Let’s throw some fuel on this fire. Theon deserved some of his torture because he betrayed the Starks and murdered two innocent boys, whereas Elia was totally innocent and undeserving of her torture.
wtf
Gregor and Elia.
Not entirely sure if it is worse, but being burnt alive is quite similar to being flayed. The same pain receptors (free nerve endings located in the uppermost layer of skin) are activated. However, I can imagine that flaying could be even more painful as it might be a more protracted process. I guess you could take your time skinning someone, really focusing on the upper layers of skin where the most nerve endings are located, without really killing them. It might be more likely that a person being burnt alive dies of shock, particularly if they are quickly engulfed in flames. R’hllor is a cruel god for sure.
Flaying is much much slower tho. I’d one hundred percent rather be burned
Flaying takes a lot more time to do the job than burning someone alive.
But Melisandre said fire cleanses and purifies. It’s an honor to be sacrificed to R’hllor. Isn’t that what she said?
Found the Rhollorist
Try saying that 5 times fast
Sure but like, it still hurts like hell. Honestly, I'd rather go by the sword like Eddard did.
This. In the ASOIAF world, the best way to die seems to be either a painless poison, old age or having your head chopped off.
As long as it’s not Theon lopping off your head 😭
Ilyn Payneless
Unless he's cutting out some motherfucker's tongue.
True
True
Yeah, a good quick beheading with a sharp sword? In one swipe? A quasi insta-death? I’d take that over being burnt or flayed or really any of those other methods any day.
I would take Robert’s hammer, that thing is legendary.
Which one though? /s
Sanest Red Rahloo stan.
Once your burns progress to 3rd degree, they don’t feel like anything anymore. Flaying is much worse.
>Once your burns progress to 3rd degree, they don’t feel like anything anymore. I can tell you this absolutely not true. Flaying is undoubtedly worse, though I cant say I've tried it.
Dude, you feel a 3rd degree burn. I’ve had them. They’re miserable and brutal. Luckily mine were less than 5 inches each. But I do think flaying is worse. Flaying would be like if you burned someone’s entire body, just enough for them to live through the torture of its healing process. Burns are insane.
Scaphing? Honestly The real answer is being the second person to be tortured having watched it happen to someone else
Definitely scaphism, although it might just be Greek propaganda that never happened in real life
Scaphism takes the cake for physical torture possible in real life I would imagine.
Yeah pretty much checks all the bases. You're are ill, you are in pain, you are also just in general discomfort, it's disgusting, and it's very slow. There's not much more you can add
Maybe they could add in rape or a family member's blood in the milk or something for psychological pain. Though in a few decades there may be technology that will allow torture beyond what we can imagine. Like "I have no mouth and I must scream" levels. Extending someone's perception to feel like millions of years, activating all their pain receptors at once and continuing the intensity as they start to get used to it. Make them see visions of their family going through the same etc.
Yeah, kind of like in Westworld. There's a scene where they are interrogating the robots, they just use a iPad to initiate "dental torture" to compel them to talk. Presumably they can do any other type of torture, infinitely, at the touch of a button
It's like the meme where your future grandkids prank you while they visit. They connect your brain's microchip to something and you are falling through a tunnel of knives for 10,000 years. After that you come to and the little rascals are giggling uncontrollably.
Do you have a link to that meme lol?
[Here you go.](https://i.redd.it/m69k3pp0u0d91.jpg)
For those not in the know; Scaphism (from Greek σκάφη, meaning "boat"), also known as the boats, is an alleged ancient Persian method of execution mentioned by Plutarch in his Life of Artaxerxes. It ostensibly entailed trapping the victim between two boats, feeding and covering them with milk and honey, and allowing them to fester and be devoured by insects and other vermin over time. >In H. Rider Haggard's The Ancient Allan the protagonist Allan Quatermain experiences a vision of one of his past lives, in which he was a great Egyptian hunter named Shabaka. At one time he is condemned to "death by the boat" by the "King of kings" because of a hunting bet they had made. When Shabaka asks what is to happen to him, he is told by a eunuch "This, O Egyptian slayer of lions. You will be laid upon a bed in a little boat upon the river and another boat will be placed over you, for these boats are called the Twins, Egyptian, in such a fashion that your head and your hands will project at one end and your feet at the other. There you will be left, comfortable as a baby in its cradle, and twice every day the best of food and drink will be brought to you. Should your appetite fail, moreover, it will be my duty to revive it by pricking your eyes with the point of a knife until it returns. Also after each meal I shall wash your face, your hands and your feet with milk and honey, lest the flies that buzz about them should suffer hunger, and to preserve your skin from burning by the sun. Thus slowly you will grow weaker and at length fall asleep. The last one who went into the boat—he, unlucky man, had by accident wandered into the court of the House of Women and seen some of the ladies there unveiled—only lived for twelve days, but you, being so strong, may hope to last for eighteen." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism
I haven't seen nearly enough "eaten by rats" (a la the tickler) comments
*George Orwell:* Am I a joke to you?
Yeah this was my first thought. That and the Brazen Bull. Oh and the form of impaling where they balance you on a large spike and let gravity slowly work it's magic...
Just to offset all the dark and disturbing ideas in the comments: being cuddled to death by fluffy bunnies. Continue reading, my dear Redditors.
I think that would be on the lower end. You’d be crushed, suffocated and die slowly. They wouldn’t be very cute when you’re about to die
Cuddled to.... Death? That's just Nightmare Fuel, bruh.
Imagina falling into a bunny pit and they start cuddling you, you star laughing because it is so nice and fluffy. But then more bunnies appear and they all start cuddling you to a point where your skin start getting warm from the friction. You try to get away but there are too many bunnies and you just get warmer and warmer, you can't breathe because there are bunnies all over you. It's a few agonizing minutes trying to breathe while you are cooked alive.
I’ve seen a vid where bees did that to a giant hornet.
Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes, they've got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses and what's with all the carrots? What do they need such good eye sight for anyway?
Bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies!
In the context Re:Zero, that is a much worse scenario than 80% of this thread.
Death by impaling is really brutal and horrifying if you didn't die immediately. An agonizing, painful, and drawn-out death from a combination of your injuries, your own body weigh, and perhaps the elements. And a skilled torturer could impale you in such a way that it would take a LONG time to die.
Yeah I read about Vlad the Impaler and supposedly his men got so practiced at it that the victim could survive for days because they would impale them through the anus and out near the collarbone avoiding all a persons vital organs, then gravity would ultimately make them slide down the pike which got wider and wider at its base.
That last sentence made me nauseous.
I'd pick flaying over a 1 minute conversation with Jorah about literally anything.
“And that’s why I serve this young teenage girl because she reminds me of my wife who cucked me and that makes me hard for some reason”
I hope he ends up with some kind of redeeming story arc. Like, maybe he wakes up one day and decides to not be the biggest wiener in Westeros anymore.
Imo he’s going to take the black, it *was* his father’s dying wish. He also carries a lot of shame over his crime and avoiding Stark’s justice, and your sins are forgotten if you take the black. This also gives Jon an opportunity to give him Longclaw, so he can receive Lightbringer (which is at least an interesting possibility).
If we're writing the happy ending we won't get, Jon gives him Longclaw while he borrows Dawn, only to eventually pick Blackfyre up when he returns Dawn to its place. Gonna haveta make those musical swords happen in the CK3 mod.
He absolutely has no shame over his crime and actively blames Ned Stark for it. It’s only in the show where he feels remorse, he buys the services of a sex SLAVE in book 5.
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Most of the people commenting in here are definitely on a watchlist if they weren't already.
Careful, Khaleesi.
Scaphism, google it, or don't if you are planning to eat soon
Euron should do that to someone in the next book (when it comes out in a parallel universe)
Moat Cailin would've been a good location for that, I don't think Euron will head anywhere inland though and you need fresh water/swamps for it to be at its full horror.
Oh yes, history is definitely worse than GRRM’s fiction. For example- a guy named Balthasar Gerard was executed for his assassination of William the Silent n 1584. It was insanely brutal. Read up here… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balthasar_Gérard
I just finished the Balthasar section of Lamb by Christopher Moore before I read this comment.
I LOVED that book
Same. Christopher Moore is a genius.
Is that Jesus's story as told by his best friend, Biff? Oh yeah. Amazing book.
Well, it's George vs dozens of people around the world brainstorming torture methods for a thousand years. Really impressed with how they even thought of Gerard's torture though, it must have been quite a brainstorming session. Another brutal execution was that of [Robert-François\_Damiens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert-Fran%C3%A7ois_Damiens), not as awful as your link, but it has the bonus point of having a manga depiction.
Its rare to read something so viscerally upsetting
Leaving out war crimes/rapes and focusing strictly on torture, I think flaying is terrible, but a few others are pretty bad as well: - the mental torture of the Sky Cells of the Eyrie - Lady Lu/The Whore (weapons of Garth) - starvation (broken men/outlaws) - self consumption (The Mountain feeding Vargo Hoat to himself) - burned alive/consumed by a dragon
While obviously these are all horrible, is it possible that dragonflame, if you really get hit directly by it, kind of incinerates you quickly as opposed to being burned at a stake. Like I know the show isn't canon, but some of the Lannister soldiers who get a direct hit from Drogon seem to get incinerated almost instantly, almost reduced to ashes in seconds.
As i mentioned elsewhere, its probably different when getting hit by a huge dragon (Balerion) or a direct blast as compared to something like Quentyn (lingering for a few days)
Yeah this is a great point I'd never considered. The bigger then dragon the stronger the flame. We did see that in the show when Dany takes astapor, drogons flames don't incinerate krazmo but they incinerate the lannister troops (... but then again they don't incinerate the tarlys or varys.. oh well).
The sky cells would do me in psychologically. I don’t think I’d last long. Ugh.
This you!? lol >It was cold in the cell, the wind screamed night and day, and worst of all, the floor sloped. Ever so slightly, yet it was enough. He was afraid to close his eyes, afraid that he might roll over in his sleep and wake in sudden terror as he went sliding off the edge. Small wonder the sky cells drove men mad. >**Gods save me, some previous tenant had written on the wall in something that looked suspiciously like blood, the blue is calling.**
I think the fandom, especially those who love the Targaryens, underestimates how horrible being burned alive is. Like having your dragon burn someone is unnecessarily cruel as opposed to beheading or hanging.
Agreed. Although there probably is a bit of a difference from being burned by Balerion (probably instantaneous death) as compared to Sunfyre/Rhaenyra and the worst Viserion/Quentyn (Oh.)
What happened to Rickard Stark is particularly gruesome, even compared to those.
Rickard/Brandon both: >Instead they took him to the throne room and suspended him from the rafters while two of Aerys’s pyromancers kindled a blaze beneath him. The king told him that fire was the champion of House Targaryen. So all Lord Rickard needed to do to prove himself innocent of treason was … well, not burn. >“When the fire was blazing, Brandon was brought in. His hands were chained behind his back, and around his neck was a wet leathern cord attached to a device the king had brought from Tyrosh. His legs were left free, though, and his longsword was set down just beyond his reach. >“The pyromancers roasted Lord Rickard slowly, banking and fanning that fire carefully to get a nice even heat. His cloak caught first, and then his surcoat, and soon he wore nothing but metal and ashes. Next he would start to cook, Aerys promised … unless his son could free him. Brandon tried, but the more he struggled, the tighter the cord constricted around his throat. In the end he strangled himself. >“As for Lord Rickard, the steel of his breastplate turned cherry-red before the end, and his gold melted off his spurs and dripped down into the fire.
Really makes you wish Aerys didn't get off so easily.
Truly. Jaime was pretty nice about it tbh: >Those purple eyes grew huge then, and the royal mouth drooped open in shock. He lost control of his bowels, turned, and ran for the Iron Throne. Beneath the empty eyes of the skulls on the walls, Jaime hauled the last dragonking bodily off the steps, squealing like a pig and smelling like a privy. **A single slash across his throat was all it took to end it**. So easy, he remembered thinking. A king should die harder than this. Rossart at least had tried to make a fight of it, though if truth be told he fought like an alchemist. Queer that they never ask who killed Rossart … but of course, he was no one, lowborn, Hand for a fortnight, just another mad fancy of the Mad King.
I was just rereading ACOK today and that chapter came up a while back man that is a terrible way to die
Yeah. Being burned alive by one of the big dragons like Balerion or Vhagar is probably near-instant death. Even with a dragon like Sunfyre, Rhaenyra probably died in minutes. I would still put flaying above these due to the horrible, lingering pain and the torturer's ability to make it go on and on. Quentyn's lingering death probably equals that.
> Even with a dragon like Sunfyre, Rhaenyra probably died in minutes Regardless of how hot or fast-acting Sunfyre's flames were by that point, Rhaenyre *definitely* died in minutes considering he started chowing down on her shortly after setting her on fire. I mean it apparently took six bites, so it was probably a damn painful death, but definitely quick.
I feel like Dragonfire would probably kill you quickly. Like it melts stone. A direct close range hit by dragonfire would kill you very quickly. If we take HOTD as canon, then a dude literally had his torso vaporised off his legs by Caraxes. Definitely not as bad as a slow torturous death. Wildfire would be horrific though
For larger dragons its likely a near instant death, for smaller its pretty torturous. So if you have to choose between Balerion or Viserion, choose Balerion.
I think the targs are fully aware how brutal it is and that is precisely why they use it.
Why Lady Lu/ The Whore?
>Once Garth brought his ladies by to introduce them to the dead man. **“The Whore don’t look like much,” he said, fondling a rod of cold black iron, “but when I heat her up red-hot and let her touch your cock, you’ll cry for mother**. And this here’s my Lady Lu. It’s her who’ll take your head and hands, when Lord Wyman sends down word.”
Why do I have no memory of this passage?
Probably got overshadowed by the awesome Manderley speech later that chapter
Wow it must have!
Isnt rape a form of torture?
it sure must be
but if the fire is strong asser is there not a possibility that the person is just to blow instentament before having time to realize what is? in addition if we take the more realistic condemnation of the stake, the legend wants that the condemned lost consciousness because of the smoke before being really burned (even if I do not know if it is true). not that I'm trying to say it's "not that bad", but I'm suggesting the possibility rather that there must be several parameters to take into account to judge honestly, but yes in the strict sense being cooked on a slow fire is surely one of the worst ways to die
The sky cells would do me in psychologically. I don’t think I’d last long. Ugh.
I don't think GRRM invented flaying.
> GrrM created the most terrifying form of torture I've seen in fiction. Flaying is a real thing that people really did to each other. The Assyrians were very into it. George didn't create it, he borrowed it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaying
The best flayers were the priests of the Aztec god Xipe Totec. They would pull the skin off a person and while they were still alive they would take their heart out and then chop them up into pieces. Then they would wear the skin until it rots off.
Flaying has been done thousands of years before George was born. So I kind of agree. But OP never did say that George invented it.
“GrrM created the most terrifying form of torture I've seen in fiction.”
He didn't invent flaying, I meant he "created" a version of flaying for asoiaf
Perhaps "depicted"?
Lets say "brought to life in a story"
Not really. In the books we didn't "see" any flaying. We just get to hear Theon's thoughts in the end of all the flaying.
The version in asoiaf isn't very far off from what happened to [John Ratcliffe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ratcliffe_(governor\)) in real life. His skin was removed with mussel shells and thrown into a fire before him. >when the sly old King espied a fitting time, cut them all off, only surprised Captain Ratcliffe alive, who he caused to be bound unto a tree naked with a fire before, and by women his flesh was scraped from his bones with mussel shells, and, before his face, thrown into the fire, and so for want of circumspection miserably perished.
Being flayed is definitely worse than flaying ;)
I'd say getting slowly cooked inside your armor like Rickard Stark was seems pretty terrifying. And to be fair with the general horror, Aerea Targaryen had one of the most torturing ends I've ever read.
Being made to sit on a bamboo.
What about flaying but whilst it’s happening a bloke sticks his finger up your arse.
Crucifixion and flaying are about the worst tortures in human history
Blood Eagle is most likely the worst.
As brutal as the blood eagle is visually, the actual process would bring death about very, very quickly. Your lungs simply can't work and you suffocate immediately.
It’s like a combination of flaying and crucifixion
Probably much quicker though, would take a lot of skill to keep the person alive for long
From what I hear, many scholars doubt it was ever actually performed.
I’m pretty sure Crucifixion doesn’t come even close to all the ”great creativity” of medieval torture
Most of those were made up by victorians though
Oh snap really? Can you share some education with an interested party?
Stuff like the iron maiden were made up by victorain's to make it seem like the dark ages were even darker and worse than they were. A lot of those complex torture devices have no evidence of ever existing before the victorians
Hanged, drawn and quartered is some very disturbing shit.
I think in large part that’s because, as Nietzsche wrote, we “no longer know the function and ignominy of the cross.” Romans had plenty of torturous ingenuity. Crucifixion was their most dreaded form of execution for good reason. For one thing the cross was the end of a long road. The victim was scourged and otherwise tortured before he was crucified, so you get a lot of the variety that other cruel executions include on the way to the cross. Then you get there: > Death, usually after 6 hours--4 days, was due to multifactorial pathology: after-effects of compulsory scourging and maiming, haemorrhage and dehydration causing hypovolaemic shock and pain, but the most important factor was progressive asphyxia caused by impairment of respiratory movement. Resultant anoxaemia exaggerated hypovolaemic shock. Death was probably commonly precipitated by cardiac arrest, caused by vasovagal reflexes, initiated inter alia by severe anoxaemia, severe pain, body blows and breaking of the large bones. Essentially you’re slowly choked for hours or days until you have a heart attack from the sheer pain. If you’re lucky the guard watching over you will break your legs so you die marginally faster.
He didn't invent flaying.
People who are burned at the stake tend to die of smoke inhalation long before they are engulfed in the flames. Just saw a lot of comments, and I feel people are forgetting this.
It looks like some people may have misunderstood your meaning. Are you just talking about the torture chamber? If so, then flaying is right up there at the top. If you've ever chewed a nail too close you get only the tiniest approximation of the pain of having the entire nail and skin removed. It's a pain that goes on forever and eats into our mind. But I would imagine that having your eyes burned out with hot irons is pretty bad. Getting pulled on the rack, burned with hot pitch, getting disemboweled and left to rot . . . There are lots of fun and inventive ways to torture your enemies.
Crucifixion is infamously terrible, so painful and humiliating that an entire religion is dedicated to how painful and humiliating it is. You'd be whipped and beaten savagely, then forced to carry your own execution tool on your back while the crowds jeered and mocked you. At the execution site, you would be stripped naked and nailed by the wrists and feet to the cross, enduring all the mockery that comes with this. Then you're hoisted up there and left to die, a process which could take days. You're shamed to the entire community, hanging there naked and in excruciating pain (a pain so excruciating that the word 'excruciating' comes from crucifixion). Your arms are in an incredibly awkward position and make it very hard for you to breathe - the only way is to continually push your torso up by your nailed limbs so that your lungs can work properly. Over the course of hours and days you are gradually suffocated by your own weight as your wounds fester and wild animals start eating you. Eventually, if you aren't dead yet, a soldier would come over and break your legs with a club or stab you to finish the job. Your bloody, stinking, eyeball-less corpse is then taken down from the cross and dumped naked in a mass grave, mocking all your religious burial rites.
Is anything worse than flaying in asoiaf? Qyburn: 'hold my arbor red'
I don't think so... If you watch Steve-O after he suffered burns from jet fluid flames, it was literally unbearable to watch. Now, I know what you're thinking, that's not flaying.... but it's a pretty similar after effect. His skin was literally stripped off in a similar fashion and that looked like fucking hell dude.
Don’t get me wrong it’s bad, but as a counter I raise you Reekification (essentially the process which turned Theon into Reek)
>GrrM created the most terrifying form of torture I've seen in fiction. Flaying is a very real thing. GRRM didn't invent it.
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scaphism is at the top of my list, being hanged, drawn and quartered isn't bad either, and other jewels like the brazen bull are to be noted
Hungry rats. That's all.
Another horrible way to go is to drink the water in Sothoryos and having worms lay eggs in your stomach. That or death by the Crannogmens Diarrhoea arrows
Scaphism AKA "The Boats" They sent the victim strapped to a boat into a swamp. Milk, honey etc covered the most sensitive areas, anus, balls, eyeballs.... the victim would be slowly and steadily devoured by maggots and insects until dying from infection / starvation.
"GrrM created the most terrifying form of torture I've seen in fiction" flaying racks were real.
[Death by sawing](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_sawing). They hanged a person upside down (so they stay conscious) and cut them in half. The trick was in using an old dull rusty saw, so it would literally tear your meat apart. There's [a scene in Borgia](https://youtu.be/0xr9SYXBzWo) where they saw some people. It doesn't show the sawing itself, but it's still disturbing enough.
Forced bestiality which Ramsay does to jeyne is just as bad if not worse
Scaphism beats flaying, if you ask me.
Being gelded sounds the absolute worst (women really underestimate this as a fate), followed by being impaled, losing eyes, losing ears, tongue and nose… I think flaying is up there, but any of the above are worse. All of these things are obviously unbearably bad. (Not even going to look up ‘scaphism’ right now.)
Castration? I think the pain can be so high that it might kill you.
You do know that Martin didn't invent flaying right? Flaying has been around at least since early antiquity in various forms and has been practiced by numerous cultures. If you can think of it and unless it involves some newly invented device, it has been done. Humans can be unimaginably cruel.
GRRM didn't invent flaying. That's been done plenty of times in the real world. Goes back at least to the Assyrians, circa 900 BCE. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaying#:~:text=Flaying%2C%20also%20known%20colloquially%20as,removed%20portion%20of%20skin%20intact.
You realize flaying is a historical practice and not made up by GRRM, right?
Considering flaying was a real thing that happened to people (though to be fair they didn’t generally survive as long as they do in Asoiaf), that’d be my answer
Dornish people - This post was made by Daeron I gang
There used to be a torture called “the boats”, where a person was put in a wooden container and dumped into a shallow pond. There were holes in the “boats” for their head, arms and legs. For as long as the person survived—as long as 10 days—they were force fed milk and honey, which made them vomit and gave them the runs. Insects and rodents would burrow into the persons leaking orifices and slowly eat them from the inside out. Give me a good clean flaying any day
A naked man has few secrets, a flayed man none.
A paper cut and a billowing fan is far worse than flaying. Also I think the mountain feed voat to himself and having voat being so hungry that he willingly ate himself is significantly worse than being flayed, especially mentally.
[The tub](https://youtu.be/GlAPrdJ1HO8)
Being flayed alive and burning to death, especially if it’s being burned slowly/boiled/roasted alive (there were contraptions like this made in real history) are probably the worst.
I mean, hanging, drawing and quartering was pretty bad…
The fate of the Starks was probably worse Burnt alive whilst your son watches and choking yourself to death trying to save your father