Rats

Rats are linked to the Shivers through a widespread but unconfirmed belief that they carried the disease into Westeros. Their appearance in the account distinguishes the suspected black ship rats from the larger grey rats familiar in King’s Landing and Oldtown, and shows how fear of contagion reshaped ordinary life and prompted a royal campaign against them.

Kinds and Associations

The smallfolk did not blame the familiar grey rats of King’s Landing and Oldtown, described as large, bold, and vicious. Instead, they feared smaller black rats seen swarming out of ships’ holds at dock and scurrying down the ropes that secured the vessels. The distinction gave the suspicion a specific route and image: disease arriving from overseas in the traffic of the ports.

The maesters believed the Shivers had come from across the sea, perhaps from one of the Free Cities or lands farther away, and port cities and harbor towns were struck first and hardest. But the proposed role of rats remained a popular explanation, not an established cause. The Citadel was never satisfied that the evidence proved their guilt.

The Shivers and the Rat Panic

The outbreak came amid the exceptionally harsh winter of 59–60 AC, when failed harvests and rising food prices had already made scarcity a realm-wide concern. As the disease spread, fear of rats reached every level of society: a cat became necessary in households from the grandest castle to the humblest hut. Kittens rose in price to as much as destriers, a striking measure of how urgently people sought protection from a danger they could see, even though the suspected connection between rats and infection remained unproven.

The Crown’s Response

When Princess Daenerys Targaryen fell ill, King Jaehaerys Targaryen ordered a hundred new ratcatchers to be hired and offered a silver stag for every dead rat, grey or black. The order turned a popular suspicion into an organized royal effort, and its inclusion of both kinds of rat shows the breadth of the emergency response. Yet the princess died a day and a half after first complaining of cold. Rat-catching did not stop the Shivers or save her, and the account gives no evidence that killing rats could halt the contagion.

Significance

Rats occupy an uncertain place in the history of the outbreak: they are neither confirmed cause nor mere background detail, but the focus of a desperate attempt to make an invisible threat manageable. The contrast between the maesters’ uncertainty and the smallfolk’s conviction, followed by the king’s bounty, captures how fear moved from explanation to policy. The cats and ratcatchers were tangible remedies in a crisis for which the learned had no proven means of prevention or cure.