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Poll Results, a Fallacy on the Wall, and a Survivor(Grey Wind!)


Kienn

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So since my poll has accumulated 100 votes I’ve decided to finally write up my full explanation for why Grey Wind is not necessarily dead and therefore is almost certainly alive. Simply put – since we haven’t been shown for sure that he is dead coupled with repeated obtuse references instead of simple neglect – the simplest explanation is he is being held in reserve for a reveal.



First things first, the poll I’ve been running: http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=52555ccbe4b0330d628812fc



To which wolves do “Four” and “one” refer to in the following line?


Four remained… and one the white wolf could no longer sense.



A. Four: Shaggydog, Nymeria, Summer, Grey Wind || One: Summer [10%]



B. Four: Shaggydog, Nymeria, Summer, Grey Wind || One: Grey Wind [15%]



C. Four: Shaggydog, Nymeria, Grey Wind, Ghost || One: Summer [8%]



D. Four: Shaggydog, Nymeria, Summer, Ghost || One: Grey Wind [46%]



E. Four: Shaggydog, Nymeria, Summer, Ghost || One: Summer [21%]



I was happily surprised that more than half of respondents agreed Grey Wind is the one that can no longer be sensed by Ghost – from recent forum discussions it had seemed that a vast majority still thought the Wall blocked skinchanging magics. If you were one of these please see the quote in full.



Quote [1] Jon DWD


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Once they had been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four remained ... and one the white wolf could no longer sense.


“Snow,” the moon insisted.


The white wolf ran from it, racing toward the cave of night where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above


the wide world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream. The wolf’s pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no fur could keep the chill out. On the other side the wind was colder still, the wolf sensed. That was where his brother was, the grey brother who smelled of summer.


------------------------



If that’s not enough to convince the Wall-blocking-believers post #2 will be a full de-bunking of that fallacy. The rest of this post will be with the understanding that the Wall does not block skinchanging magics.



So the second issue implied within the poll was whether Ghost was considering himself separate from his siblings. My opinion is that Ghost does always consider himself apart from his siblings, as he does at the beginning of this very quote. It’s not just that they had started as six with four remaining... It’s they were six, five together, and Ghost separated. This also parallels the quote from Summer’s PoV in Storm of Swords(prior to the RW):



Quote [2] Bran SoS


------------------------


Sometimes he could sense them, though, as if they were still with him, only hidden from his sight by a boulder or a stand of trees. He could not smell them, nor hear their howls by night, yet he felt their presence at his back... all but the sister they had lost. His tail drooped when he remembered her. Four now, not five. Four and one more, the white who has no voice.


------------------------



For me this is the absolute clincher that Ghost is always considered separately from the other siblings, why else would it be laid out so explicitly that 4 + 1 ≠ 5. Obviously under this interpretation quote [1] can only be interpreted as option B in the poll – Grey Wind is definitely alive but cannot be sensed by his siblings anymore.



If you don’t buy the idea that Ghost is considered apart from his siblings then there are 2-3 ways to interpret quote [1] (option D on the poll) with Ghost including himself in the “four”. Essentially it comes down to how Ghost himself is interpreting the fact that he can no longer sense Grey Wind.



Firstly it could be that Ghost knows that death is different from having the link broken so he is differentiating the two by mentioning it, but he knows that Grey Wind is still alive.



Secondly it could be that Ghost can only tell that the link is broken, but he doesn’t actually know what happened to Grey Wind after their link broke.



Lastly(provisionally) it could be that Ghost knows the link is broken, and he also knows that it means Grey Wind is dead – as Jon interprets the dream. The problem with this interpretation is that if Ghost did know this then he would have been forced to think “two [he] could no longer sense” due to Lady. Since the quote does indeed start by mentioning all six siblings, if Lady’s fate was identical to Grey Wind’s then there would be no reason to subsequently leave her out of this statement.



So why does Jon interpret Ghost’s thoughts this way? Because he has heard reports of what happened at the RW himself so he assumes it is true, just as he still thinks Bran and Rickon are dead. This even nicely parallels the truth, Jon hopes that some part of Bran and Rickon live on in their wolves, but it is actually a part of Robb living on in Grey Wind.



Jon DWD


------------------------


Robb had died at the Twins, betrayed by men he’d believed his friends, and his wolf had perished with him. Bran and Rickon had been murdered too, beheaded at the behest of Theon Greyjoy, who had once been their lord father’s ward ... but if dreams did not lie, their direwolves had escaped. At Queenscrown, one had come out of the darkness to save Jon’s life. Summer, it had to be. His fur was grey, and Shaggydog is black. He wondered if some part of his dead brothers lived on inside their wolves.


------------------------



Also compare Jon’s interpretation to Bran’s.



Bran DWD


------------------------


Lady’s dead and maybe Grey Wind too, but somewhere there’s still Shaggydog and Nymeria and Ghost.


------------------------



Bran easily has more experience warging and correctly interprets the situation of the broken link to Grey Wind as the second interpretation above. The link to Grey Wind broke when Robb died so they just don’t know what happened to him afterwards. Essentially the link is a result of the Stark children’s gifts and as Varamyr suggests in the DWD prologue – the gift dies with the warg’s original body.



FAQ



Wait what, all this so-called evidence is pointless, the Freys told everyone how they sewed Grey Wind’s head on Robb’s corpse.


There’s obviously no reason to trust the Freys, and similarly Theon told everyone he burned Bran and Rickon, and Wyman Manderly tells KL that Davos is dead, and yet all are alive and well. We also know Raynald broke Grey Wind free and that GW subsequently fought viciously and that Raynald himself escaped by falling into the river, GW may have gone with him.



I know the show is different and has no relevance for discussing the books… but… you know… it clearly showed Grey Wind’s head on Robb’s body and D&D wouldn’t dare to change something so important. Plus like GRRM also even works for the show… so it must be true, obviously.


Why would it be so important? How is it relevant to any remaining plot point or event that can't be rolled into Nymeria for the show?


If Robb were still alive inside Grey Wind then he would still be KitN and would be able to sit on the throne in Winterfell, howling his orders at his bannermen, pfft… duh…


Ok, you can stick to that I guess.



Thanks for reading!



TLDR:



1) The Wall does not block skinchanging magics so the wolf that Ghost cannot sense is Grey Wind.


2) The psychic link between Grey Wind and his siblings was severed when Robb died so they don’t know what happened to GW afterwards.


3) We have no reason to believe the Freys recaptured and killed Grey Wind after Raynald released him.


4) If Grey Wind had met the same fate as Lady (death) there would be no reason to distinguish between them so it would be "two" Ghost could no longer sense.


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So where does the Fallacy about the Wall blocking skinchanging come from?



The quotes that are used as evidence come exclusively from Jon, this is the first hint that it shouldn’t really be trusted so lets look at these quotes:



Quote [3] Jon SoS


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Jon wondered where Ghost was now. Had he gone to Castle Black, or was he was running with some wolfpack in the woods? He had no sense of the direwolf, not even in his dreams. It made him feel as if part of himself had been cut off. Even with Ygritte sleeping beside him, he felt alone. He did not want to die alone.


------------------------



Quote [4] Jon SoS


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Jon sat between two merlons with only a scarecrow for company and watched the Stallion gallop up the sky. Or was it the Horned Lord? He wondered where Ghost was now. He wondered about Ygritte as well, and told himself that way lay madness.


------------------------



Quote [5] Jon SoS


------------------------


Even beneath the furs, he was cold. Ghost had shared his cell before the ranging, warming it against the chill of night. And in the wild, Ygritte had slept beside him. Both gone now. He had burned Ygritte himself, as he knew she would have wanted, and Ghost... Where are you?


------------------------



Quote [6] Samwell SoS


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The warg, I’ve heard them call me. How can I be a warg without a wolf, I ask you?” His mouth twisted. “I don’t even dream of Ghost anymore. All my dreams are of the crypts, of the stone kings on their thrones."


------------------------



Quote 3 is the one that is inevitably brought up in topics about the Wall blocking skinchanging magics, and it would be convincing if there was a more diverse set of evidence, such as multiple characters having the same problem. However, if we look at all of Jon’s comments about the situation together we can get a sense of what the real problem is. In quotes 3, 4, and 5 Jon shows that every time he thinks about Ghost while awake, he also thinks about Ygritte. In quote 6 Jon explains that while he’s sleeping he only experiences dreams about Winterfell’s crypts. I won’t go deeply into what the crypt dreams are about but we can see that Jon is very distracted by both Ygritte and this other set of dreams.



Also note that all of these quotes are during the time period after Jon pretends to join the wildlings, and after he further breaks his NW vows by sleeping with Ygritte. Both his thoughts of Ygritte and Winterfell’s crypts can and have been argued to represent an identity crisis for Jon. This identity crisis is directly tied to Ghost since it is Ghost’s reunification with Jon that finally convinces Jon that he belongs to the Old Gods, the gods of the North and the Starks, and that he should decline Stannis’ offer to burn those Gods to take Winterfell.



Essentially, the Wall being between Jon and Ghost during this time period is only a coincidence, which we can confirm by the following



Jon SoS


------------------------


Jon took a step toward the tent, thinking of the Horn of Winter, but the shadowcat blocked him, tail lashing. The beast’s nostrils flared, and slaver ran from his curved front teeth. He smells my fear. He missed Ghost more than ever then. The two wolves were behind him, growling.


------------------------



Recall that this is while Jon is north of the Wall to parley with Mance. Even during that short period GRRM is specifically pointing out that Jon is still unable to sense Ghost. Compare this with a time before his identity crisis begins, before he kills Qhorin.



Jon CoK


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After that, every night seemed colder than the night before, and more lonely. Ghost was not always with them, but he was never far either. Even when they were apart, Jon sensed his nearness. He was glad for that.


------------------------



From what I can find, Jon’s failure to skinchange across the Wall is completely isolated to Jon, and generally isolated to that time period and if anything Jon’s failures to control Ghost at other periods lend further credence to this conclusion. If anyone does have a quote with another skinchanger being blocked by the wall feel free to share.



However, not only do we have this clear pattern for Jon, we also have direct contradictions to the “Wall blocks skinchanging” situation. Two of them are already shown above in the first post. Quotes 1 and 2 show Ghost and Summer sensing each other across the wall since each of their quotes are while the other is north of the wall.



In addition to these we have the following



Jon SoS


------------------------


The skinchanger was grey-faced, round-shouldered, and bald, a mouse of a man with a wolfling’s eyes. “Once a horse is broken to the saddle, any man can mount him,” he said in a soft voice. “Once a beast’s been joined to a man, any skinchanger can slip inside and ride him. Orell was withering inside his feathers, so I took the eagle for my own. But the joining works both ways, warg. Orell lives inside me now, whispering how much he hates you. And I can soar above the Wall, and see with eagle eyes.”


So we know,” said Mance. “We know how few you were, when you stopped the turtle. We know how many came from Eastwatch. We know how your supplies have dwindled. Pitch, oil, arrows, spears. Even your stair is gone, and that cage can only lift so many. We know. And now you know we know.”


------------------------



So we have Varamyr himself claiming he can skinchange his eagle above the wall and Mance proving his point with intelligence that would require it.



Thanks for reading!



TLDR:



1) All examples of the Wall supposedly blocking skinchanging magic are limited to Jon.


2) All examples are also limited to the period when Jon is working through an identity crisis.


3) Jon is also unable to sense Ghost when they are both north of the Wall during this identity crisis.


4) We have specific counter-examples of Bran, Jon, and Varamyr skinchanging through the Wall.



ETA: You can make a similar case that BR was controlling Ghost - blocking Jon - during the same time period, this also fits with the half-dozen instances of Ghost disobeying Jon at other periods. Either way it's clear that the problem is limited to Jon and includes periods where he and Ghost are both on the same side of the Wall.


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There is only one word in french for "sense" and "smell", but there is a distinction to be made here. Bran states that "He could not smell them, nor hear their howls by night, yet he felt their presence at his back". Does the wolf/warg feel the sensation of socialization ( which makes you behave in a socially acceptable way ) that you feel when you're beside someone, whether you can see him or no ? Or is this more related to the warging power, and thus a sensation only felt by wargs ?


No one can say for sure, I'm only asking your opinion.



Well, if Grey Wind lives, we can believe he is with Nymeria at this moment. Maybe we can expect future Arya's chapters to reveal this all to us.


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If he's alive (if if if if if if if... I hope, but if...), he could be a "replacement" wolf for Sansa. The wolf who wasn't only his brother's but a King's.

We saw a head in the tv show, sure, but not in books. In books, people also claimed that Robb transformed into his direwolf.

So, who knows. I hope he's alive.

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If he's alive (if if if if if if if... I hope, but if...), he could be a "replacement" wolf for Sansa. The wolf who wasn't only his brother's but a King's.

We saw a head in the tv show, sure, but not in books. In books, people also claimed that Robb transformed into his direwolf.

So, who knows. I hope he's alive.

The wolf might also be a proof that Alayne is a Stark. Grey wind would surely remember Sansa.

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I just don't believe it? Plus surely if Greywinds survival was going to be of some significance to the plot line then they wouldn't have included the scene of Rob with Greywinds hed sewed on being paraded around the twins in the show?

GRRM has said a few times that characters who have been killed in the show still have major roles to play in the books, so just because they killed Grey Wind or anyone else in the show doesn't necessarily mean they will be dead/unimportant in the books.

that being said i do think Grey Wind is dead. I believe quote means only 4 remained and 1 of the 4 could no longer be sensed.

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I know, a lot of you are still in denial and all, so this might sound harsh to some of you. However, bare in mind that I don't mean it offensive in any way.



First of all @OP: I just don't dig it. At all. I can hear the crackpots cracking all over... Your text interpretations are completely biased and sometimes even unlogical. You're leading the evidence where you want it to go instead of following it where it leads.


It's just like thinking Ned or Syrio will show up again. (But wait! They could have made a role swap! Yeah, right... You go on believing that, sweet summerchild. :P )



Lets face it, please:


1. Grey Wind is dead as disco.


2. There is no undercover Robb-spirit who will suddenly impact future storylines.


3. This whole Robb / Grey Wind arc is OVER. Sorry, but get real, will ya?



Actually, I hate to break it to you in such a blunt way. But to my mind, thinking otherwise is completely delusional, folks. Better to face the hard truth now instead of keeping fantasizing and being even more disappointed later on. Please, don't look forward to a Grey Wind revival with high expectations. Because with almost absolute certainty it won't come. (I'm doing you a favour, here. No hard feelings.)



Cheers!





ETA (03/10/2015): Looking at this post of mine now after more than a year has passed, I'm actually quite ashamed of myself. Wow! What an asshole I was back then. :) I've completely forgotten about it. But the board remembers, of course. It always remembers... I must have been in a bad place at the time or in full troll mode. I don't know. Apologies, everyone, is all I can say now. I'm still not convinced in the slightest by the OP, but apologies, nonetheless. I behaved like a bull in a china shop. Let this be an example to anyone who thinks online anonymity gives you a free pass. It doesn't. You still know yourself and might rue the things you did one day.


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I know, a lot of you are still in denial and all, so this might sound harsh to some of you. However, bare in mind that I don't mean it offensive in any way.

First of all @OP: I just don't dig it. At all. I can hear the crackpots cracking all over... Your text interpretations are completely biased and sometimes even unlogical. You're leading the evidence where you want it to go instead of following it where it leads.

It's just like thinking Ned or Syrio will show up again. (But wait! They could have made a role swap! Yeah, right... You go on believing that, sweet summerchild. :P )

Lets face it, please:

1. Grey Wind is dead as disco.

2. There is no undercover Robb-spirit who will suddenly impact future storylines.

3. This whole Robb / Grey Wind arc is OVER. Sorry, but get real, will ya?

Actually, I hate to break it to you in such a blunt way. But to my mind, thinking otherwise is completely delusional, folks. Better to face the hard truth now instead of keeping fantasizing and being even more disappointed later on. Please, don't look forward to a Grey Wind revival with high expectations. Because with almost absolute certainty it won't come. (I'm doing you a favour, here. No hard feelings.)

Cheers!

I've always believed that Robb and Grey Wind were dead as disco. Those who question one, the other, or both of those deaths can finally put those beliefs to rest knowing that you don't dig it.

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Once they had been six. Four remained.


= two dead.



Seems pretty clear to me that Grey Wind should not be included in any argument listed in the OP. And the one that cannot be sensed is Summer because he is with the COTF in Blooodraven's warg-safe secret hideout.




"For me this is the absolute clincher that Ghost is always considered separately from the other siblings, why else would it be laid out so explicitly that 4 + 1 ≠ 5. Obviously under this interpretation quote [1] can only be interpreted as option B in the poll – Grey Wind is definitely alive but cannot be sensed by his siblings anymore."



This is because the Red Wedding has not happened yet, so yes at the time of this quote, GW is alive.



You login on how Ghost is viewed is accurate. He is different just like Jon. But that does not necessarily mean that Grey WInd is not dead. Now if you are trying to make a compelling argument that Robb Stark "lives," look no further than Nymeria in the Riverlands leading calculated attacks against Stark enemies. |But Grey Wind is as dead as Ned.

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I would love it if this was true but I highly doubt it. All reports said that the Freys taken Greywind's head and sewed it to Robb's body. And yes I know, reports can be faulty (Davos living is evidence of such). However, I don't see any reason for such reports if someone hadn't seen a wolf head sewed to Robb. Unless we're suggesting that the Frey's just took a random wolf because they didn't want anyone knowing Greywind had escaped, but that seems unnecessary to me since it's not as if Tywin would have cared. Greywind couldn't very well be crowned King of the North in Robb's place, after all, and he would hardly have been a rallying point for Robb's bannerman. He was a wolf!


In addition to the reports, there is also Dany's vision in the house of the undying, which depicts a man with the head of a wolf. This appears to foreshadow the red wedding. Again, I suppose the argument could be that it was figurative or the head of a random wolf and not Greywind.


So basically, as much as I would love for Greywind to still be alive and for Robb to live through him and ultimately link up with Sansa, I won't be holding my breath.


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Supposing that the "four remained" and "one the white wolf could no longer sense" must be non-overlapping groups is grammatically incorrect. I'm pretty sure the four remaining are Ghost, Nymeria, Summer and Shaggydog, and the one he cannot sense is Summer, because the Wall is between them. The one is one of the four, not separate from them. Is English not your native language, perhaps?



Also, Bran dreams of the Red Wedding through Summer, and says,





If he never talked of it maybe he could forget he ever dreamed it, and then it wouldn't have happened and Robb and Grey Wind would still be...




This is about as blatant as it's going to get without a POV character actually seeing the corpse. I'm a Robb fan and I would love it if he were living a second life instead of being dead, but the textual evidence unambiguously says Grey Wind is dead.


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Yeah I mean don't we have witnesses who saw grey wind killed, decapitated, then his head sewn onto Robbs neck?



I recall Merit Frey saying they shot it with multiple crossbow bolts.



They is both deaded.



I DO however think Raynold Spicer is still alive and POSSIBLY rolling with either the Black Fish or Lady Stoneheart.



At least with him the door was left cracked open. He got capped by a couple of crossbows then jumped into the river.



Grey Wind just got murdalized.

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Updated post #2 with the debunking of the Fallacy.





There is only one word in french for "sense" and "smell", but there is a distinction to be made here. Bran states that "He could not smell them, nor hear their howls by night, yet he felt their presence at his back". Does the wolf/warg feel the sensation of socialization ( which makes you behave in a socially acceptable way ) that you feel when you're beside someone, whether you can see him or no ? Or is this more related to the warging power, and thus a sensation only felt by wargs ?


No one can say for sure, I'm only asking your opinion.



Well, if Grey Wind lives, we can believe he is with Nymeria at this moment. Maybe we can expect future Arya's chapters to reveal this all to us.





I take the sense of their siblings as a sixth sense derived from skinchanging magics, so not no everyone feels it.



Last we saw Grey Wind was with Raynald Westerling, if they did stay together then GW may not have simply joined up with Nymeria's pack. Hopefully they will run into each other at some point though and we'll see it from Arya's PoV.





I just don't believe it? Plus surely if Greywinds survival was going to be of some significance to the plot line then they wouldn't have included the scene of Rob with Greywinds hed sewed on being paraded around the twins in the show?




Try reading the FAQ section:




I know the show is different and has no relevance for discussing the books… but… you know… it clearly showed Grey Wind’s head on Robb’s body and D&D wouldn’t dare to change something so important. Plus like GRRM also even works for the show… so it must be true, obviously.


Why would it be so important? How is it relevant to any remaining plot point or event that can't be rolled into Nymeria for the show?


If Robb were still alive inside Grey Wind then he would still be KitN and would be able to sit on the throne in Winterfell, howling his orders at his bannermen, pfft… duh…


Ok, you can stick to that I guess.








Your text interpretations are completely biased and sometimes even unlogical.




Have anything specific to point to?





It's just like thinking Ned or Syrio will show up again. (But wait! They could have made a role swap! Yeah, right... You go on believing that, sweet summerchild. :P )




Or it's just like thinking that Bran, Rickon, Davos, Arya, Arya, Tyrion, etc would show up again - were people who believed that summer children? There are plenty of false deaths throughout the books. Ned is directly witnessed dying by two separate PoVs so it's quite a different situation from simply hearing the stories told by people who wanted Robb and GW dead.





Once they had been six. Four remained.


= two dead.



You login on how Ghost is viewed is accurate. He is different just like Jon. But that does not necessarily mean that Grey WInd is not dead. Now if you are trying to make a compelling argument that Robb Stark "lives," look no further than Nymeria in the Riverlands leading calculated attacks against Stark enemies. |But Grey Wind is as dead as Ned.




This seems like a contradiction from you, you agree Ghost thinks of himself as separate, but also think that he includes himself in the four...





"For me this is the absolute clincher that Ghost is always considered separately from the other siblings, why else would it be laid out so explicitly that 4 + 1 ≠ 5. Obviously under this interpretation quote [1] can only be interpreted as option B in the poll – Grey Wind is definitely alive but cannot be sensed by his siblings anymore."



This is because the Red Wedding has not happened yet, so yes at the time of this quote, GW is alive.




I never claimed this quote was after the RW, I pointed out that Summer is explicitly defining Ghost separately from the group, so that even though there are 5 wolves left with Lady dead somehow 4 + 1 ≠ 5. This extends into Ghost's quote later after the RW. GRRM intentionally uses the same extremely awkward grammar to draw a connection between the two quotes, I take it as a hint of how to read Ghost's to indicate that there are in fact still 5 wolves left total.





Seems pretty clear to me that Grey Wind should not be included in any argument listed in the OP. And the one that cannot be sensed is Summer because he is with the COTF in Blooodraven's warg-safe secret hideout.



Another glaring contradiction - if the cave is proof against skinchanging magics then it would make a pretty terrible place to practice skinchanging... The cave blocks wights(and maybe the Wall does too), but not skinchanging.






the one he cannot sense is Summer, because the Wall is between them.




I've updated the Fallacy post so you can see why this doesn't work as an explanation. I did my best to explain the grammar for the rest of the statement, apologies if you couldn't follow it.





Yeah I mean don't we have witnesses who saw grey wind killed, decapitated, then his head sewn onto Robbs neck?



I recall Merit Frey saying they shot it with multiple crossbow bolts.





Merrett is the only PoV we have who might have witnessed it, unfortunately he was completely drunk at the time was likely passed, so all he really has is the second-hand word from other Freys.



Epilogue SoS


------------------------





Stark’s direwolf killed four of our wolfhounds and tore the kennelmaster’s arm off his shoulder, even after we’d filled him full of quarrels...”









“So you sewed his head on Robb Stark’s neck after both o’ them were dead,” said yellow cloak.


“My father did that. All I did was drink. You wouldn’t kill a man for drinking.”


------------------------



So he says GW was "filled" with quarrels, but even after that Grey Wind was able to fight fiercely.


Notice if you take his statement literally he's saying his 90+-year-old father sewed a gigantic dire wolf head onto a corpse himself... Not very believable at all.






So even Merrett is relating events second-hand, likely Grey Wind only was only hit by a few quarrels before he was freed, if he didn't take much more injury then he may have been able to escape with Raynald, and quarrels aren't generally barbed, so Raynald could have easily pulled them out afterwards for Grey Wind to recover.


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i wont claim to understand the inner-workings of wolfs mind so i dont really know what Ghost was thinking, let alone how he perceives his siblings or the world around him, trying to figure it out will only lead us to insanity...

I think understanding how skinchanging works will be more important as we learn more about how magic works, the true history of the First Men and other things.

There's no definitive proof GW is alive, but the myth that he must be dead and the misunderstanding about how skinchanging across the Wall works seem to feedback into each other, so I think it's important to clarify both situations. Rather than assuming GW is definitely dead and interpreting other things based on that, realize that GW's status is more like Syrio. The last time we "see" him was in a difficult situation, but if Raynald was able to escape (unconfirmed) then GW may have as well. If you prefer to assume he's dead until proven otherwise then you can take it just as Syrio - each of them bought time for someone else to escape - just don't let it color interpretations of other events.

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"Once they had been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four remained ... and one the white wolf could no longer sense."




This quote if broken down means “ones there were six now there are four", Ghost being one of them. The fact that Ghost usually counts himself separately doesn’t matter. So the sentence clearly states that two are dead the only possible ones being Lady and GW. That’s really the only thing that matters and then you can speculate about who the one he can no longer feel is. I´m not 100% on where in the timeline this quote is from but hypothetically it can be anyone of the others. Summer because his with BR and there’s some CotF magic at work, Nymeria because she´s starded a new family and closed herself of to her lost sibling abandoning her identity in a fashion similar to Arya, Shaggydog because we have no idea what is happening at Skaggos.

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I´m not 100% on where in the timeline this quote is from but hypothetically it can be anyone of the others. Summer because his with BR and there’s some CotF magic at work, Nymeria because she´s starded a new family and closed herself of to her lost sibling abandoning her identity in a fashion similar to Arya, Shaggydog because we have no idea what is happening at Skaggos.

Jon DWD

----------------------------------------------

Far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like. They were hunting too. A wild rain lashed down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goat’s long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food. Many a night his sister’s pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself.

“Snow,” the moon called down again, cackling. The white wolf padded along the man trail beneath the icy cliff. The taste of blood was on his tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins. Once they had been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four remained ... and one the white wolf could no longer sense.

“Snow,” the moon insisted.

The white wolf ran from it, racing toward the cave of night where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above

the wide world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream. The wolf’s pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no fur could keep the chill out. On the other side the wind was colder still, the wolf sensed. That was where his brother was, the grey brother who smelled of summer.

----------------------------------------------

So even though he knows exactly where each of those 3 siblings are... you think one of them is the one he explicitly mentions he can't sense?

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Kienn, as you know I agree with you that there are enough hints in the text to believe that GW survived. And Raynald Westerling too, for that matter. You also know that I've written extensively on this myself. What I want to say is that I now think you are right-- there doesn't appear to be any evidence at all that the Wall blocks skinchanging. The common denominator in all instances where the bond failed is Ghost, which indicates that Ghost-- not the Wall-- is the issue. I'm still undecided whether this is best explained by an external "force" (ie Bloodraven) or some as yet unknown quality of Ghost himself.



As for all the specifics-- we know that the white wolf is always thought of as separate by his pack and by himself. The most compelling evidence for me is the Summer "POV" in ASoS. Even though it before the RW it absolutely confirms that Ghost is considered separate, therefore post RW when Ghost "thinks" about four surviving pack mates it is 4 of the 5, with himself separate as indicated in the opening line of that passage "five whimpering blind... while he crawled off alone"



Additionally, we have a chain of wolf's head = false death connections. Remember we have no actual eyewitness account of a dead GW. Cat hears him howling in her final POV, after which we have nothing but hearsay and rumor about the desecration of Robb’s corpse. We have Dany’s vision and Theon’s dream and we have the wolf:corpse connections. The wolf’s head brooch from the fake Bran and Rickon corpses in Theon’s Clash chapter, and the corpse of Catelyn Stark that was thought dead but then revived, in part due a wolf’s mouth. Those a possible show the connection between a wolf’s head and a false corpse or a corpse that is resurrected. So when we are told GW’s head was sewn to Robb’s corpse it may be a hint of a "false" death or a revival. I certainly don’t think Robb is alive, yet the in story symbolism points to a fake death.



Now consider the following. When Dany goes to the HotU, she sees a feast of corpses “In a throne above them sat a dead man with the head of a wolf. He wore an iron crown and held a leg of lamb in one hand as a king might hold a scepter, and his eyes followed Dany in mute appeal.” The dead wolf headed king at the feast would seem to indicate Robb Stark. But the wolf head does not have to be interpreted literally, since the direwolf head is the sigil of House Stark. Interestingly, the iron crown, while it may refer to the crown of the North which does have iron elements, could also be a historical reference. The Iron Crown of Lombardy is one of the oldest symbols of royalty in Europe. It is reputed to contain an iron nail from the True Cross and as such would be a potent symbol of death and resurrection. At the same time, Christ is called the Lamb of God and the King of the Jews (INRI is inscribed on the cross) so the lamb, kings scepter and Iron Crown all taken together in this vision point in one direction: resurrection/continued life.



Finally, anyone who wants to believe Merrett Frey's account of the matter is free to do so. Just remember that Merrett Frey spent the RW trying (and failing) to drink the Greatjon under the table, so he can't exactly be reliable when he says his father sewed GW's head to Robb Stark's shoulders. Really Merrett? This sounds like the tale of someone who has never even seen a direwolf which, according to the text are as big as ponies and have "a bigger head [than a regular wolf] and longer legs in proportion to its body... its snout and jaw were markedly leaner and more pronounced" So we should believe that 90 year old Walder Frey sewed a direwolf head-- which would be huge, much larger than the head and shoulders of a young man-- to a human body? As there has been not one shred of evidence of this other than peasant tales and poor old drunk Merrett, I think we're free to consider that "unreliable."



Happy to have company in crackpotville! :cheers:


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