Flea Bottom

Flea Bottom is the poorest, most squalid slum in King's Landing, a warren of mud streets, daub-and-wattle hovels, and desperate poverty that serves as the birthplace of Davos Seaworth and a recurring site of degradation, violence, and social commentary throughout the narrative. Its inhabitants are the city's most wretched—beggars, thieves, whores, and the starving—and the district's name itself has become a byword for the filth and misery that fester beneath the capital's gilded surface. The district is defined less by geography than by its social function: it is where the city's unwanted are discarded, where the smallfolk live in conditions so brutal that even the most hardened knights and lords speak of it with contempt or pity.

Geography and Character

Flea Bottom is a sprawling warren of mud streets, crooked alleys, and ramshackle daub-and-wattle hovels that cling to the lower slopes of Aegon's High Hill, beneath the shadow of the Red Keep. The district is notorious for its stench, its filth, and its desperate poverty. Its inhabitants are the dregs of King's Landing: beggars, thieves, whores, cutpurses, and the starving. The streets are often ankle-deep in mud and refuse, and the air is thick with the smells of smoke, rotting food, and human waste. The district's name is itself a byword for squalor; when Tyrion Lannister, in his guise as Hugor Hill, invents a false biography for himself, he claims to have been born in an alley in Lannisport, a city he knows well, but the implication is that a dwarf of low birth would naturally come from such a place. The district is also home to a pot shop that sells a famously thick and hearty bowl of brown, a stew of indeterminate origin that Tyrion Lannister, in his exile, recalls with a kind of grim nostalgia. The pot shop's fare is so thick that a spoon can stand upright in the bowl, and it is made with "chunks of this and that," a euphemism for whatever scraps and offal are available.

Social and Narrative Significance

Flea Bottom serves as a stark counterpoint to the wealth and power of the Red Keep and the Great Sept of Baelor. It is the place where the city's most vulnerable are concentrated, and where the consequences of the realm's wars and political machinations are felt most acutely. During the food riots that followed the death of King Robert, the mob that tore apart the old High Septon and raped Lollys Stokeworth half a hundred times was drawn largely from Flea Bottom. Cersei Lannister, during her walk of atonement, is forced to pass through the lower slopes of Aegon's High Hill, where the denizens of Flea Bottom have gathered to jeer at her. The faces she sees there are described as "twisted, monstrous, hideous"—men with filed teeth, hags with goiters, a whore with a snake draped about her shoulders, a man whose face is covered with weeping sores. The district is also the birthplace of Davos Seaworth, the Onion Knight, who rose from its depths to become a King's Hand. Davos's origins are a source of both shame and pride; he is never allowed to forget where he came from, and his low birth is used against him by his enemies. When he returns to White Harbor, he recalls the Lazy Eel, a winesink in that city that was renowned for its vile wine and its oldest whores, a place that reminded him of the establishments he knew in Flea Bottom. The district is also the home of Kem, a young sellsword who joins the Second Sons in Meereen. Kem recalls the pot shops of Flea Bottom with a kind of desperate longing, and he tells Tyrion that he misses the food more than anything else about King's Landing. The district's most famous product, the bowl of brown, is a symbol of the city's poverty and resilience; it is a meal that can sustain a man, but it is made from whatever is available, and its contents are often a mystery.