- "Many worthy fighters have died trying to make it to the Great Games. When most of you worthless scum join them in death this afternoon, it will represent a significant rise in your station. But if you do happen to triumph here, you will fight at the Great Pit of Daznak itself in front of the queen. So whatever happens, the Gods have smiled upon you today. This is the day your lives actually start to mean something."
- ―Yezzan zo Qaggaz to his pit fighting "servants"
The Great Pit of Daznak[1] is the preeminent fighting pit of Meereen, the greatest of the three city-states of Slaver's Bay. It is one of the arenas in which the Great Games are celebrated, the city's traditional fighting season.
History[]
Game of Thrones: Season 5[]
During Daenerys Targaryen's liberation of Slaver's Bay, she defeats Yunkai before marching on Meereen, where she establishes herself as Queen.[2][3][4] The fighting pits are abolished along with slavery itself, as the pit fighters are all slaves. However, the Wise Masters of Yunkai return to power and enslave all their freedmen, so Daenerys sends a Great Master at her service, Hizdahr zo Loraq, to negotiate with the Wise Masters, and Daario Naharis and his Second Sons to serve as a threat.[5][6] When Hizdahr and Daario return they report that their negotiations were successful: the Wise Masters will comply with her abolition of slavery and set up a ruling council of former slaveholders and freedman, as long as Daenerys reopens the fighting pits in Meereen. At first, Daenerys cannot tolerate this concession, despite repeated appeals by Hizdahr and Daario.[7][8] However, a rise of the attacks by the local insurgent group of the Sons of the Harpy, which results in the death of Ser Barristan Selmy, makes Daenerys reconsider her position and decide to reopen the fighting pits, as well as betrothing herself to Hizdahr zo Loraq.[9]
Just outside Meereen, Tyrion Lannister and Jorah Mormont are sold into indentured servitude —actually a thinly veiled form of slavery— and their new master Yezzan brings them and his other servants to the lower fighting pits to test them, telling them those who survive will get to fight at the Great Pit of Daznak in front of the Queen.[10]
On the first day of the Great Games, the Sons of the Harpy come out of hiding and stage an attack against Daenerys and those loyal to her. They are unsuccessful in the attempt on her life as Drogon appears to defend her, attacking the Sons and Daenerys escapes on the dragon's back, the first dragonrider in over a century. However, her betrothed Hizdahr zo Loraq dies in the attack.[11]
In the books[]
In A Song of Ice and Fire, Daznak's Pit, or the Great Pit of Daznak, is the greatest of the fighting pits in Meereen. At the pit's entrance the Gates of Fate are erected: bronze statues of two warriors fighting each other, one wielding an axe and the other a sword, forming an archway into the arena. The bricks near the entrance bear the names of all the gladiators who have died in the arena. The seating areas are separated into different tiers, differentiated by colors: the bottom tiers, in red and orange colors, are for Great Masters, while those furthest away from the arena, in black and purple, are for the poor and the slaves of Meereen.
The 163 Great Masters who Daenerys crucifies in retaliation for the 163 slave children the masters killed are displayed in Daznak's Pit, not along the approach to the Great Pyramid as in the series. She bans the fighting pits after conquering the city, and reopens them after Hizdahr's assurances that it will unite the people and put a stop to the attacks by the Sons of the Harpy.
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ Game of Thrones: Season 5, Episode 7: "The Gift" (2015).
- ↑ "The Rains of Castamere"
- ↑ "Mhysa"
- ↑ "Oathkeeper"
- ↑ "First of His Name"
- ↑ "Mockingbird"
- ↑ "The Wars To Come"
- ↑ "Sons of the Harpy"
- ↑ "Kill the Boy"
- ↑ "The Gift"
- ↑ "The Dance of Dragons"
