Samwell Tarly's unfinished sentence

[King Aegon The Conqueror]

This is about the founding of the Night's Watch and may answer some questions particularly regarding the revival of magic regarding the others & the dragons.

Sam's unfinished sentence:

"Some of the older books are falling to pieces. The pages crumble when I try and turn them. And the really old books ... either they have crumbled all away or they are buried somewhere that I haven’t looked yet or ... well, it could be that there are no such books and never were. The oldest histories we have were written after the Andals came to Westeros. The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later. There are archmaesters at the Citadel who question all of it. Those old histories are full of kings who reigned for hundreds of years, and knights riding around a thousand years before there were knights. You know the tales, Brandon the Builder, Symeon Star-Eyes, Night’s King ... we say that you’re the nine-hundred-and-ninety-eighth Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, but the oldest list I’ve found shows six hundred seventy-four commanders, which suggests that it was written during—"

"Long ago," Jon broke in.

The really interesting thing is here:

the oldest list I’ve found shows six hundred seventy-four commanders, which suggests that it was written during—

There have been two different interpretations of this:

1. 
   

   The list is a record of all the LCs who served before the list was created - that is, some maester sat down and transcribed the oral history of the Night's Watch and listed the 674 LCs who preceded that moment. This would imply, if you believe the 998 number, that there have been 324 additional LCs since the list was written.

   
   
   
2. 
   

   The list is a living record of all LCs - it was started during the tenure of the first LC, and each time there's a new LC, he's added to the end. This is how you'd actually expect such a list to be kept. If this list is in fact the official record of all LCs, and it only has 674 listed, then that would be quite alarming indeed.

   
   
   

Sam seems to be concerned with an incongruency between the conventional wisdom of 998 and what the list seems to be telling him. This wouldn't be the case at all if the first interpretation was the correct one - there's nothing weird there at all, it's just an old list from 324 LCs ago. The second interpretation fits the passage much better:

we say that you’re the nine-hundred-and-ninety-eighth Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, but the oldest list I’ve found shows six hundred seventy-four

This implies that Sam is the first in a very long time to actually sit down and count how many names are on the list of all LCs that have ever served. The count of 674 suggests to Sam that the Night's Watch was actually founded during - well, during what?

What Sam was about to say:

For that, we need to know the average length of an LC's tenure. The standard figure for this is 8 years. While this figure is originally derived from the combination of two bits of (wrong) conventional wisdom - that there have been roughly 1000 LCs, and that the Night's Watch has existed for approximately 8000 years - it does seem reasonable. With most successful candidates being older, proven men who've earned the respect and trust of their brothers through many years of good service, it makes sense that the average term would be relatively short. Younger LCs who serve for decades may be offset by the ones who die after a year or two from illness, war, or the trials of a harsh winter.

So if we've had 674 LCs with an average of 8 years, that puts the founding of the Night's Watch about 5000 years before Aegon's Conquest, not the 8000 that most people believe. This is after the most commonly cited date for the arrival of the Andals, which is 6000 BC.

For further confirmation, we look back to only a few sentences earlier:

The oldest histories we have were written after the Andals came to Westeros. The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later.

The arrival of the Andals predates the list of LCs (and, by extension, the founding of the Night's Watch) because the First Men didn't have written language until after the Andals arrived.

I think that what Sam was about to say was, "which suggests that it was written during the Andal Invasion."

The Implication:

Well, if we still believe that the Night's Watch was founded in response to the war against the Others, then it means that the Others last gathered in strength and marched southward approximately 5000 years ago, at the exact time that dragons were discovered and started being tamed by the early Valyrians - mirroring what we see happening right now in the series.

Sam is onto something here, and I think he'll have his suspicions confirmed at the Citadel, where the most complete texts on the history of dragons are kept. These forms of magic - ice and fire - are linked in a big way, and Sam will be the one to discover it.

"Did you find who the Others are, where they come from, what they want?"

"Not yet, my lord, but it may be that I've just been reading the wrong books. There are hundreds I have not looked at yet. Give me more time and I will find whatever there is to be found."

"There is no more time. You need to get your things together, Sam. You're going with Gilly."

"Going?" Sam gaped at him openmouthed, as if he did not understand the meaning of the word. "I'm going? To Eastwatch, my lord? Or... where am I..."

"Oldtown."

Edit: I've seen some people here posting that I'm implying the Andals went to war with the others. In no way am I implying this. Personally we don't know who or what defeated/forced the others to fall back in line and go back to their source of origination. You can argue last hero/AAR we don't actually know. Which is interesting as this is the mystery which we will uncover as we dig deeper into the winds of winter/a dream of spring and may hold the answer as to how they must be defeated.

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

really interesting. I have sod all to contribute but will be watching.

[Leonardo]

Some very nice points being made here, especially about the timeline for the invasion of the andals.

[Lord of Nutella]

really interesting. good eye!

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

This is about the founding of the Night's Watch and may answer some questions particularly regarding the revival of magic regarding the others & the dragons.

Sam's unfinished sentence:

The really interesting thing is here:

There have been two different interpretations of this:

1. The list is a record of all the LCs who served before the list was created - that is, some maester sat down and transcribed the oral history of the Night's Watch and listed the 674 LCs who preceded that moment. This would imply, if you believe the 998 number, that there have been 324 additional LCs since the list was written.

2. The list is a living record of all LCs - it was started during the tenure of the first LC, and each time there's a new LC, he's added to the end. This is how you'd actually expect such a list to be kept. If this list is in fact the official record of all LCs, and it only has 674 listed, then that would be quite alarming indeed.

Sam seems to be concerned with an incongruency between the conventional wisdom of 998 and what the list seems to be telling him. This wouldn't be the case at all if the first interpretation was the correct one - there's nothing weird there at all, it's just an old list from 324 LCs ago. The second interpretation fits the passage much better:

This implies that Sam is the first in a very long time to actually sit down and count how many names are on the list of all LCs that have ever served. The count of 674 suggests to Sam that the Night's Watch was actually founded during - well, during what?

Nah. As you quoted, Sam is skeptical about the reliability of written history in general (kings ruling for centuries, ancient knights, etc.). Including the history of the Night Watch. He said the oldest list he found is 674 names long. Not the newest nor the most complete. On one fine day a watchman who mastered the secrets of writing (mayhaps the first one in the Watch's history) sat and wrote down six hundred names of the previous Lords Commander - how accurate could that list be? What are the chances he didn't pull a name, or five hundred names, out of his ass?

[Lion Of The Night]

Interesting. ..

I do like the conection between fire and ice, between dragons and others. The implications can be huge if this were the case, I can only assume what could be the outcome, but I do believe Sam will find something in the libraries of Oldtown that will dictate how the Battle for the Dawn needs to be fought.

[King Aegon The Conqueror]

Nah. As you quoted, Sam is skeptical about the reliability of written history in general (kings ruling for centuries, ancient knights, etc.). Including the history of the Night Watch. He said the oldest list he found is 674 names long. Not the newest nor the most complete. On one fine day a watchman who mastered the secrets of writing (mayhaps the first one in the Watch's history) sat and wrote down six hundred names of the previous Lords Commander - how accurate could that list be? What are the chances he didn't pull a name, or five hundred names, out of his ass?

sorry but "how accurate could that list be? What are the chances he didn't pull a name, or five hundred names, out of his ass?" is an absolutely ridiculous statement to make. People would know who the previous 100-200 lord commanders were as their histories would be quite recent eg bloodraven was lord commander during Aegon 5's reign. He wouldn't be able to fake all 600 names as accounts may have existed till then. this were a full first list of them.

In basic terms, the watchman could only lie so far. He would surely have been caught.

Also some names have deliberately been kept vague eg the night's king. Also note worthy is that it's been revealed at the end of season 4's Oathkeeper episode where the others leader was the night's king and walked from the middle of 12 other companions. Those 12 other companions may be likely to be the first 12 lord commanders of the night's watch. GRRM has purposely kept some information vague and others not.

Just some further points to add.

[Gibzit]

so if I understand correctly, if we kill all the dragons, all the others will die, THE END

[FaceGardener]

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I personally have a (relatively undeveloped) hypothesis about the invasion of the Andals, the Long Night, and the rise of the Valyrian Freehold being connected. We have plenty of pointers that the chronology is unreliable, and GRRM is vocally fond of unreliable narrators, which gives a lot of wiggle room in interpretation of stuffs happening more than a thousand years ago.

We have all these tales of The Others being this great menace that NEARLY invaded Westeros, and how evil they are for doing that--and yet there are no tales of how evil the Andals are, despite the fact that they burned, raped, pillaged, and mass-slaughtered most of Westeros. Why? Because history is written by the victors. This MAY suggest that the Andals came into conflict with The Others and defeated them. We also see how the Children of the Forest brought down the hammer in and around Moat Cailin to try to keep the Andals away, so why wouldn't they involve the Others/giants/etc to help defend themselves. I've got no solid theory, just a load of ideas and maybes.

I think we'll see a lot of the answers in and around Moat Cailin--the Green Men of the Gods Eye, I'm betting, know a good deal of the truth, and I'm guessing it's relatively complex.

This may also help to answer the question of why the Valyrians never invaded Westeros. If, at their founding, they had a major scrap with the Others and barely survived, that would be a powerful and mythical deterrent to future invasion.

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

sorry but "how accurate could that list be? What are the chances he didn't pull a name, or five hundred names, out of his ass?" is an absolutely ridiculous statement to make. People would know who the previous 100-200 lord commanders were as their histories would be quite recent eg bloodraven was lord commander during Aegon 5's reign. He wouldn't be able to fake all 600 names as accounts may have existed till then. this were a full first list of them.

In basic terms, the watchman could only lie so far. He would surely have been caught.

I beg to differ. People would know the most recent LC's, the most notable historic LC's, and even that with some difficulty ("Brandon the Tough Motherfucker came right after Aeron the Smartass, right?" What? No, of course not, the other way around"). Everything else would be quite fuzzy. Everybody forgot that fire hurts wights and obsidian was deadly to white walkers, but the name of 376th Lord Commander, Jon the Quite Unremarkable, would still be alive in every black brother's memory two thousand years later? To Quote Maekar Targaryen, not bloody likely.

And the boundaries between what's a fact and what's a myth are pretty fluent to begin with. Again: "so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later. There are archmaesters at the Citadel who question all of it. Those old histories are full of kings who reigned for hundreds of years, and knights riding around a thousand years before there were knights...". Historians apparently did get away with putting down on paper pure bullshit.

Also some names have deliberately been kept vague eg the night's king. Also note worthy is that it's been revealed at the end of season 4's Oathkeeper episode

Wrong forum.

[SacredOrderOfGreenMen]

Fantastic OP, but the conclusion may not be that the Andals fought the others:

Sam also notes that many Maesters believe the Andal invasion was only 2000 year prior.

[King Aegon The Conqueror]

so if I understand correctly, if we kill all the dragons, all the others will die, THE END

an extremely weird interpretation and no haha. Oh and in answer to your signature, you are not the only Aegon the 6th fan here on this forum. I'm a fan too!

[King Aegon The Conqueror]

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I personally have a (relatively undeveloped) hypothesis about the invasion of the Andals, the Long Night, and the rise of the Valyrian Freehold being connected. We have plenty of pointers that the chronology is unreliable, and GRRM is vocally fond of unreliable narrators, which gives a lot of wiggle room in interpretation of stuffs happening more than a thousand years ago.

We have all these tales of The Others being this great menace that NEARLY invaded Westeros, and how evil they are for doing that--and yet there are no tales of how evil the Andals are, despite the fact that they burned, raped, pillaged, and mass-slaughtered most of Westeros. Why? Because history is written by the victors. This MAY suggest that the Andals came into conflict with The Others and defeated them. We also see how the Children of the Forest brought down the hammer in and around Moat Cailin to try to keep the Andals away, so why wouldn't they involve the Others/giants/etc to help defend themselves. I've got no solid theory, just a load of ideas and maybes.

I think we'll see a lot of the answers in and around Moat Cailin--the Green Men of the Gods Eye, I'm betting, know a good deal of the truth, and I'm guessing it's relatively complex.

This may also help to answer the question of why the Valyrians never invaded Westeros. If, at their founding, they had a major scrap with the Others and barely survived, that would be a powerful and mythical deterrent to future invasion.

Yes I agree. The Andals are by far but many posters here think it was in fact the Valyrians (Targs/Velaryons/Celtigar). The Andals were by far the worst and in my opinion the Targaryens were the best thing to happen to Westeros. They brought order.

Also I disagree with the idea that the andals defeated the others. Highly doubt that. The others were a killing offence who just annihilated everything on their path hence why it's been rather of a mix and match regarding who or what actually defeated the others. Was it AAR? was it the last hero? was it the night's watch? was it the COTF? These questions will be answered in the next 2 books as they hold the key to defeating them again!

Lastly, personally I don't see why people try to answer why the Valyrians never conquered Westeros. This question MAY ALSO be answered in the upcoming world of ice and fire. I too have my own theory why the Valyrians never conquered Westeros which I have written in my thread titled "Valyria's arsenal" and the link to which can be found in my signature.

I do highly doubt the Valyrians ever had an encounter with Westeros. Many posters just complicate with their assumptions claiming they feated the skinchangers, or they got beat or many other absurd theories. IMO it's rather simple. They didn't need to expand that much anymore. Plus controlling an entire continent which is divided by sea would have been harder as well. For my full theory on why they never expanded towards Westeros feel free to read Valyria's arsenal homie :)

[James Arryn]

Honestly, I think someone ought to catalogue every single interruption in the series. Was thinking this the other day. They all seem pregnant. Not being sarcastic; I think GRRM has a pattern of using interruptions to tease readers with very important 'almosts', especially that time when-

[not in the face]

I have a question though about magic. The magic in the wall and at Storm's End, is that different from the magic that is brought by the Dragons? Because when they died, the magic held in those places held.

[Crowford]

1. The list is a record of all the LCs who served before the list was created - that is, some maester sat down and transcribed the oral history of the Night's Watch and listed the 674 LCs who preceded that moment. This would imply, if you believe the 998 number, that there have been 324 additional LCs since the list was written.

2. The list is a living record of all LCs - it was started during the tenure of the first LC, and each time there's a new LC, he's added to the end. This is how you'd actually expect such a list to be kept. If this list is in fact the official record of all LCs, and it only has 674 listed, then that would be quite alarming indeed.

Sam seems to be concerned with an incongruency between the conventional wisdom of 998 and what the list seems to be telling him. This wouldn't be the case at all if the first interpretation was the correct one - there's nothing weird there at all, it's just an old list from 324 LCs ago. The second interpretation fits the passage much better:

This implies that Sam is the first in a very long time to actually sit down and count how many names are on the list of all LCs that have ever served. The count of 674 suggests to Sam that the Night's Watch was actually founded during - well, during what?

And that's not really believable, is it? If this is indeed a living list it means that at least every time a new LC has been elected, someone has grabbed that list and worked on it. This means that every few years (Mormont was elected in 288, his predecessor Qorgyle in 283) a literate, and at least in Aemon's case, quite diligent person had a list that's more than 300 names shorter than expected in front of him and just went with it. So I think a much safer bet would be that:

1.) It wasn't a living list, and the point Sam wanted to make before Jon cut him off was something along the lines of: "it suggests that the list was written in XXX, and we have better records from that time on and know that there haven't been 324 LC's since then". I.e. the list would suggest that it was (for an arbitrary example) written around the time of the Conquest, which is much more "recent" history.

2.) It actually was a living list, but if it was than Sam is getting much more excited about it than he should be. Because what he "discovered" is probably discovered every few years by anyone who is even slightly interested in the Watch's history, but most people couldn't care less and the fictitious numbering just stuck (probably also because some people are excited at the prospect of LC #1000 being elected in their lifetime, or even being LC #1000).

A case against it being a living list is also Sam's statement that it's the "oldest he has found", and that the oldest books are so damaged that they crumble when touched - meaning that list was in no state to be actually written on for quite some time. Also, if the Watch had an "official" living list that supposedly goes from the very first LC up to the current and is always updated at each election, wouldn't they have copied all the past names when they made newer lists (and what Sam says confirms that there ARE newer lists, but that they apparently list different and/or fewer names).

[Woofless]

"the oldest list I’ve found shows six hundred seventy-four commanders, which suggests that it was written during— the Wildling Invasion.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

It can't be a genuine list. Paper and even parchment crumbles and rots. To my knowledge, the oldest surviving scrolls on earth are 2,000-odd years old and they were preserved under top conditions in closed amphores in dry climate. Not comparable to the Wall at all.

Furthermore, invented histories are natural. To Shakespeare's contemporaries, King Lear was a real, historic king. The Hethites got a full genealogy spanning 200,000 years and it was considered the utter truth.

[White Ravens]

so if I understand correctly, if we kill all the dragons, all the others will die, THE END

That is what I think will happen. Sort of. I think some sort of imbalance has shifted Westeros from a natural world similar to our own to one where the seasons don't follow the annual orbit of Westeros around its sun and that magic is somehow connected to that. The recent recurrence of Dragons has made magic more powerful as commented on by some of the characters in the books, so they are clearly strongly connected to magic, but magic didn't die when they weren't around. It was just diminished in strength. My take on all this is that Magic enables many things to exist that will cease to exist when magic is removed. The demise of magic will bring an and end to the inconstant whacky seasons and with that will end all forms of magic such as blood magic, Weirwood magic, glamors and other sorceries, and magical creatures such as Dragons, The Others, Children of the Forest, Giants and Direwolves. On the bright side, a return to a non-magical existence with normal seasons dictated by the orbit around the sun might allow the people of Westeros to finally move beyond the Medeival society that they have been stuck in for thousands of years.

[Lion Of The Night]

It can't be a genuine list. Paper and even parchment crumbles and rots. To my knowledge, the oldest surviving scrolls on earth are 2,000-odd years old and they were preserved under top conditions in closed amphores in dry climate. Not comparable to the Wall at all.

Furthermore, invented histories are natural. To Shakespeare's contemporaries, King Lear was a real, historic king. The Hethites got a full genealogy spanning 200,000 years and it was considered the utter truth.

Are you referring to the hittites?

Interesting, in the region where the hittite empire formed there were indeed a hattic speaking people who left trace records dating back to 5000 BCE some 3000 years before the hittites moved in and assimilated them. The history of those people formed the mythos of the hittite people.