a Nissa story. (She IS Lightbringer, forged to infiltrate the Others for us as one of them, then betray them. Our Lucifer curse on the Others.

[The Mother of The Others]

It's in the title, in case you just want to comment. The idea is that Nissa was killed but not "slain." Her death didn't stick, it was just a transition---into a super-wight. Her death didn't help forge a Lightbringer sword; she was the Lightbringer, the thing being forged. Perhaps by being impaled on a sword with magical properties, perhaps not. The "forging" method used isn't really the relevant thing here--- the OUTCOME is what I'm focussed on: Nissa's sacrifice is so important to history that it's the only thing remembered from that time. A fine way to explain that would be if She was the sword humanity used against the darkness.

It'd make sense if she rendered heroes obsolete by taking care of the problem for all of us (which is why the Last Hero was the last hero--his Frankenstein creation moved us into the next phase of history). What if the sacrifice only changed Nissa's mode of existence, transforming her into an Other, a lord of the dead, so she (or several ex-humans who were all given the same Otherization treatment) could walk among the Walkers as our double agents and do what the living could not. Get close to their source. Learn what made them tick, and then smash it for us so Winter's hold over the world was broken and we could live in the light of renewed Spring. The codename for that mission might as well have been Lightbringer. A Lucifer mission: Send someone with a warm heart into the cold heart of winter on our behalf to betray the Others' trust. Turn Nissa into an ice devil so she could create trouble inside the Others' population (the same function Lucifer performed among the angels of heaven). Bust up their wintery paradise from within, in response to how they were crushing the dreams of the living. Give the Others something else to focus on besides us. (The long dormancy of the Others may have been them pulling back from their border with humanity to deal with a civil strife among themselves... an insurrection seeded by the Last Heroes, which perhaps continues to this day.)

Why did the forging require a loved one? Because love matters in the world of raising corpses. Look at the Thoros event. How can you describe that other than by saying it was Love that brought Beric back? Thoros applied his force of will---and the dead rose. It has to be a very focussed force of will, or else the universe doesn't listen. It has to be what you care most about in the world. In Thoros' case, it was the cause he cared for. He saw the kingsmen's cause as a crucial stand against chaos and depravity and wrongful genocide in the west, and when he saw Beric fall his mourning psyche simply said NO in the largest possible way. This must not be! And Willpower is what stirs magic into shape. His will was enough to bring Beric back--and as more than a wight. Because of Thoros' love for the subject matter, Beric came back still intent on the mission, still one with the Cause. A warm zombie. That's why when you send someone to infiltrate the Others you have to do it with love. Lots of love. Or else they'll awaken coldhearted as another enemy of the living, like the rest of that species.

Who was the other-ish woman who seduced the Night King? Was it our past deeds coming back to haunt us? Her existence seems to have been some kind of breakthrough. As if until then the Others hadn't considered that tactic, or didn't have any of their kind capable of seducing us, because... the two species were always so alien to one another. Doesn't it sort of make the mind reel to consider it might have been a lonely Nissa, tired of her banishment to the northern wastes, who--as a loving creature--at last succumbed to her unwise need for companionship and doomed the Wall to a frightful turmoil that threatened both species' future? In the manner of the Wandering Jew motif, was she (or her hybrid descendents) homeless for an age, shunned by humanity after returning home victorious over the Winter only to be turned away, not given a hero's welcome but treated as unclean, as a remnant of the brutal era mankind was trying hard to forget as quickly as possible. They weren't proud of having Judas as their Savior. Having their survival based on that truth didn't make for an inspiring mythology, so the survivors turned away from Nissa's cadre and put up a vicious electric fence, the Wall, to keep humanity's Colder bastard children at bay. Would not such a disposessed creature haunt the Wall and turn to guile to gain entry? Denied love, would they not choose survival no matter how nasty the method? (turning Craster's sons). Would you not eventually compromise your ideals in bitterness and say, "If this ungrateful species will no longer have me, I'll remake them into something murkier like me to bridge the divide between us, and once they're recast in my image I'll have them." The Night King endeavor. Proof that our victory over the Great Other wasn't the finish line. There's unfinished business to be resolved.

__________

This one goes out to the board member named Lightbringer Means Lucifer.

[LmL]

:) Hey there! Did someone say my name? :)

I am at work now, so I'll give longer thoughts later, but initial reactions:

I like your line of thinking. All the heroes of the ancient tales - Nights King, Azor Ahai, Last Hero, Bran the Builder, Garth the Green, Durran Durrandon, the Barrow King and the Grey King - have something in common. They are men! I highly doubt that women played only a tertiary role in these ancient events which shaped the Long Night and the Dawn. So, I applaud your inquiry into Nissa Nissa's role possibly being bigger than we are told.

I have picked up on some of the same general themes you're presenting here. I do think that there were people who sacrificed themselves intentionally, specifically so they could become a Coldhands-style conscious wight - the perfect weapon to infiltrate the North. Jon seems to be headed this direction. I hadn't thought of it being Nissa Nissa, but she could certainly be analogous to the role of Nights Queen, who certainly was important. There has been several folks speculating that the NK wasn't a bad guy at all, and that by procreating with the NQ, who I think was a hybrid-Other of some kind, not a full Other, he was actually honoring a pact of some kind. Craster "honors the gods" by sacrificing is make children, and the Others leave him alone. Seems like the NK and NQ may have been doing something similar. Makes you wonder about who the NQ really was and what her agenda was.

I actually disagree with your interpretation of Lucifer somewhat. Granted, the Morningstar deity is an old one and takes many forms, each with their own connotations. The Bible only conflated Lucifer with Satan in about 600 AD, when Pope Gregory something or other decided that they meant the same thing. His conclusion is very shaky, to say the least. The Morningstar deities, of whom Jesus and Osiris are one, as well as Lucifer, descend from heaven to bring sacred knowledge, learning, light, and love to mankind. Then they are sacrificed, and are ressurrected as a sort of lord of the afterlife or underworld. Most cultures regard the "underworld" as more of a retirement center than something like hell. Osiris rules the underworld, and that's a good thing, for example. I think there is a lot of Lucifer symbolism in ASOAIF, and I'm working on a writing to that effect. I don't think the secret double agent is one of them, though. However, I do like the idea. :)

[WeaselPie]

Well this is a fascinating read. Nicely done. I have a bit of confusion about your timeline since the Night's King story comes 12 Lord Commanders after the building of the wall. However, I do think that the Black Gate wasn't discovered and warded until after the Night King. He needed a way to sneak his Other queen to the Night Fort after all.

I find the literal Lightbringer-Lucifer aspect interesting. How do you tie in the rest of the Nissa Nissa tale? The water and the lion?

Lots to say on this topic, more later.

[The Mother of The Others]

Nicely done. a bit of confusion about your timeline

Thanks. I don't know if Others are essentially immortal or not. So it all depends on just how much "ice preserves". If they are immortal, it could be Nissa herself who came back and stole the Night King's heart, which seems like the more fun option. If they're not immortal then she's long gone and it'd have to be her hybrid descendent, which means multiple generations of snatched human babies being turned blue-eyed like Legion took that kid to raise in Stephen King's Storm of the Century... or else they're actually breeding, which doesn't sound quite right and would require the Hero to have turned additional people into Others at the start besides just Nissa, so their cadre would have set out on the quest with its own Noah's ark breeding stock already intact. (Not that this was the intent of the Hero who just wanted to create enough cold soldiers for the mission to succeed. Only after they "won" and were then banished did their offspring become a lasting consequence of operation Lightbringer.)

(I gave you what I got, and don't got nothin' for incorporating the water and the.... lion.... unless the Sphinx is being alluded to. Maybe the key to transforming people is the same for both Fire and Ice: you need to create a Sphinx-like hybrid. The sphinx could be a metaphor for magically bonding your blood with elemental Fire energy so you pass the dragon's sniff test, or the Sphinx could be a very literal human/monster blend like the rumored Targaryen malformed stillbirths with tails and wings. So if the Hero created a Sphinx hybrid race, he did so by fusing Cold magic to their blood to Otherize them and then jabbing a molten blade into the heart to keep that from freezing? I don't know, man. )

[allenczhang]

I think a theory like this needs much much more textual evidence than what you have right now... the way the Azor Ahai prophecy is told, the only real role Nissa plays in defeating the others is her sacrifice. The sword/prince who was promised does the rest.

Generally when making these theories you should follow Occam's Razor. Is it possible that Nissa "survived" as a wight? Yes. Is it necessary/foreshadowed anywhere in the book? I don't think so. In fact, including it would change the plot drastically, and introduce a lot of new factors (something GRRM probably doesn't want to do considering that there's only 2 books left and he has a lot of loose ends to tie).

And Thoros wasn't able to revive Beric because of "love". He was able to because of the reemergence of dragons/strengthening of magic. If I remember correctly, he states that he didn't think giving the breath of life would do anything to Beric, and was just going through the motions...

And correct me if I'm wrong, but the wall was already up by the time the Night's King was seduced.

[The Mother of The Others]

I think a theory like this needs much much more textual evidence than what you have right now... the way the Azor Ahai prophecy is told, the only real role Nissa plays in defeating the others is her sacrifice. The sword/prince who was promised does the rest.

Generally when making these theories you should follow Occam's Razor. Is it possible that Nissa "survived" as a wight? Yes. Is it necessary/foreshadowed anywhere in the book? I don't think so. In fact, including it would change the plot drastically, and introduce a lot of new factors (something GRRM probably doesn't want to do considering that there's only 2 books left and he has a lot of loose ends to tie).

And Thoros wasn't able to revive Beric because of "love". He was able to because of the reemergence of dragons/strengthening of magic. If I remember correctly, he states that he didn't think giving the breath of life would do anything to Beric, and was just going through the motions...

And correct me if I'm wrong, but the wall was already up by the time the Night's King was seduced.

Sorry if you're a fan of textual evidence. I'm beyond that. The things we can prove by quoting stuff have already been proven. This is pushing past the science of citations into the realm of magical analysis where you use the entirety of the text to feel your way to the correct answers to these mysteries. It's similar to the process of locating the female orgasm. Also, there's no surviving text to cite from the War For the Dawn era anyway. So this has to be conjecture.

To address your other concerns, George has already hinted he'll be introducing some "new factors" to the Others' story at the later stages. He'll need to show us how they're not actually pure menacing evil. This version of Nissa ^ would let us view the Others in a new light and give them a kind of pathos, if their race is being "infected" by humanity and starting to grapple with our kinds of issues. And this transformation would be a way of bridging the gulf between us and them.... so Jon and Friends might be forced to tread the Nissa path themselves to save humanity if history calls for repitition. And Thoros cast a spell alright, but he wasn't a spell caster. He didn't know what he was doing. Which leaves what? Powerful emotion. That's what he brought to the table. That's what the newly returned magics in the air responded to. Similar to how Daenerys "lucked" into her mother of dragons event by.... willing it. And yes the wall was up during Night King's adventures, and that didn't stop the love connection.

[Lady Blizzardborn]

And then if NK was the LH, it makes even more sense for him to get involved with this particular Other-ish creature, since she was his true love anyway. What could make a man sacrifice everything and forsake his vows? Love. Love versus duty is a huge theme of the series.

So her warm heart turned cold after they killed her beloved NK and she was sent back North with the Others, who didn't fully accept her because she's the reason they got their butts kicked. Now she has vowed revenge and is using a faction of Others who are sympathetic to her cause (maybe those who had Wildling girlfriends?) and creating live-wighted human soldiers from Craster's boys to up their numbers. It's taken her this long to get the army she needs. Queen Bee, but with a background story that works, and a highly believable motive.

Awesomely done, The Mother of The Others!

[Ser Cold Fingers]

Interesting premise! Good job!

[Blazfemur]

bridging the two lores together. i like it. on principle i can't believe it, mostly because im pulling for my own ideas to occur. but i do find it fascinating, and ironic that the azor ahai essos prophecies are supposedly around the same the long night debacles happened. it's like their own legends occurred, at the same time, ont he opposite end of the wall while the north were coming up with their own legends. so there is SOMEthing there and i like that it was finally brought up.

[Ser Cold Fingers]

bridging the two lores together. i like it. on principle i can't believe it, mostly because im pulling for my own ideas to occur. but i do find it fascinating, and ironic that the azor ahai essos prophecies are supposedly around the same the long night debacles happened. it's like their own legends occurred, at the same time, ont he opposite end of the wall while the north were coming up with their own legends. so there is SOMEthing there and i like that it was finally brought up.

Like what you and I theorized in another thread...that Westros had (has) the Wall and Essos had (has) the Five Forts?

Both could occur, around the same time, on opposite ends of the world and both be unrelated yet related.

That is why the Last Hero used a blade of Dragonsteel (per Sam's textual discovery) while AA used Lightbringer.

[Blazfemur]

Like what you and I theorized in another thread...that Westros had (has) the Wall and Essos had (has) the Five Forts?

Both could occur, around the same time, on opposite ends of the world and both be unrelated yet related.

That is why the Last Hero used a blade of Dragonsteel (per Sam's textual discovery) while AA used Lightbringer.

well that, yeah, i also dont think there's a such thing as a female Other, as a whole. Wights yes, but not a female. This is based on everything we've witnessed and seen, and contradicts what The Night's Watch would have you believe.

But i do recognize the homework done in this theory and it makes a ton of sense, i fully support the advancement of such a theory, it just doesnt coincide with mine. The linking of Azor Ahai/Nissa Nissa with TNK/TNQ is awesomely done.

[Princess]

This is exactly what I see happening to Jon Snow when he wakes up. After all he is a great double agent (wilding-brother of nights watch).

[Lady Blizzardborn]

well that, yeah, i also dont think there's a such thing as a female Other, as a whole. Wights yes, but not a female. This is based on everything we've witnessed and seen, and contradicts what The Night's Watch would have you believe.

But i do recognize the homework done in this theory and it makes a ton of sense, i fully support the advancement of such a theory, it just doesnt coincide with mine. The linking of Azor Ahai/Nissa Nissa with TNK/TNQ is awesomely done.

You must know, surely you must know that every time you say there are no female Others, I will contradict you. :D Nothing we have seen indicates that the Others are all male. In fact, they could be all female, or entirely genderless.

Like what you and I theorized in another thread...that Westros had (has) the Wall and Essos had (has) the Five Forts?

Both could occur, around the same time, on opposite ends of the world and both be unrelated yet related.

That is why the Last Hero used a blade of Dragonsteel (per Sam's textual discovery) while AA used Lightbringer.

Doesn't Asshai'i lore say that AA defeated the Others in Westeros? That kind of makes him the Last Hero. Except of course for the stories not matching, but after 8,000 years there should be some variations.

[Ser Cold Fingers]

You must know, surely you must know that every time you say there are no female Others, I will contradict you. :D Nothing we have seen indicates that the Others are all male. In fact, they could be all female, or entirely genderless.

Doesn't Asshai'i lore say that AA defeated the Others in Westeros? That kind of makes him the Last Hero. Except of course for the stories not matching, but after 8,000 years there should be some variations.

Don't go refuting my observations with textual evidence! Speculating on minimal evidence is what I do best damnit!!! :D

[Blazfemur]

You must know, surely you must know that every time you say there are no female Others, I will contradict you.

Ah yes, the Charles Xavier to my Eric Lensherr ;) It's an eternal struggle, you and i. And one i must stick with :P

That is why the Last Hero used a blade of Dragonsteel (per Sam's textual discovery) while AA used Lightbringer.

Old nan also specified The Last Hero's blade snapped from the cold when confronted by the Others. Can dragonsteel shatter like that?

Doesn't Asshai'i lore say that AA defeated the Others in Westeros? That kind of makes him the Last Hero. Except of course for the stories not matching, but after 8,000 years there should be some variations.

There's got to be something big, in that whole "some texts say 6,000 years, others swear by 8,000," i think there's a big reveal in why there's a big gap there. I cant wait for it.

Could AA be TLH according to foreign lore? I have to say i hate the concept on first thought lmao

[Ser Cold Fingers]

<SNIP>

Old nan also specified The Last Hero's blade snapped from the cold when confronted by the Others. Can dragonsteel shatter like that?

<SNIP>

True...but that was his first blade and before he found the CotF. Old Nan didn't get to finish her story...

[Blazfemur]

True...but that was his first blade and before he found the CotF. Old Nan didn't get to finish her story...

cant do it. nope. im gambling on him wielding Ice. all-in. :P

[Ser Cold Fingers]

cant do it. nope. im gambling on him wielding Ice. all-in. :P

Still thinking that Ice is an Other Sword that has somehow been permanently cast so that it can be wielded by a Stark?

[Blazfemur]

Still thinking that Ice is an Other Sword that has somehow been permanently cast so that it can be wielded by a Stark?

not necessarily. i think when it was "lost," it didnt actually lose, it was just exiled with him

[Crowfood's Daughter]

Sorry if you're a fan of textual evidence. I'm beyond that.

Best "textual evidence" reply ever. Interesting take on Nissa, I think GRRM has quite a bit in store for the females in the storyline.

GRRM was collaborating the Winds of Windhaven with Lisa Tuttle (a hardcore feminist who wrote the Encyclopedia of Feminism) around the same time The Mermaid and the Minotaur by Dorothy Dinnerstein was published. It was a highly celebrated book at the time. The Mermaid and the Minotaur was heavily influenced by Simone de Beavoir and the Theory of The Self and The Other.

GRRM delves into many societal arrangements and gender arrangements, women, slavery, the disabled and developmentally challenged, the elite and lower classes. His entire series is a retrospect of The Self and The Other.

"In couples such as Varuna— Mitra, Uranus— Zeus, Sun— Moon, Day—Night, no feminine element is involved at the outset; neither in Good— Evil, auspicious and inauspicious, left and right, God and Lucifer; alterity is the fundamental category of human thought. No group ever defines itself as One without immediately setting up the Other opposite itself."--Simone de Beauvoir

The images of the mermaid and the minotaur have bearing not only on human malaise in general (this they have in common with all the creatures of their ilk—harpies and centaurs, werewolves and sphinxes, winged nymphs, goat-eared fauns, and so on—who have haunted our species’ imagination) but also on our sexual arrangements in particular.....

---Dinnerstein, Dorothy (2010-12-14). The Mermaid and The Minotaur

"Thus, Mother Earth has a face of darkness: she is chaos, where everything comes from and must return to one day; she is Nothingness . The many aspects of the world that the day uncovers commingle in the night: night of spirit locked up in the generality and opacity of matter, night of sleep and nothing. At the heart of the sea, it is night: woman is the Mare tenebrarum dreaded by ancient navigators; it is night in the bowels of the earth. Man is threatened with being engulfed in this night, the reverse of fertility, and it horrifies him." --Simone de Beauvoir

“ The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother's milk. Darkness will make you strong. ” – the three-eyed crow, to Bran Stark