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Heresy 160


Black Crow

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Welcome to Heresy 160, and the latest lively look at the Song of Ice and Fire.



So what’s Heresy all about about - and why 158* previous incarnations over the last three years?



Heresy is not a particular theory but is a free-flowing discussion, or rather a whole series of discussions and arguments, very largely but not exclusively concerned with the Wall, the Heart of Darkness which lies beyond it, the white walkers and the possible Stark connection to both – or in short, to Winter.



The strength and the beauty and ultimately the value of Heresy comes from this very diversity. This is a thread where ideas can be discussed – and argued - freely and because it’s a strong thread it can support discussion and argument that might simply vanish in the maelstrom of the general forum, because above all it is about an exchange of ideas and sometimes too a remarkably well informed exchange drawing upon an astonishing broad base of literature ranging through Joseph Conrad, Susannah Clarke, CS Lewis, and so many others all to the way to the Táin Bó Cúailnge and the Mabinogion; it’s about history [and 1189] mythology, archaeology, ringworks and chambered tombs and even, the Gods save us, heroic geology.



GRRM’s original synopsis from 1993, transcribed below emphasises that he is taking the story through five related story arcs, not one. The story has obviously changed and moved in a number of interesting directions since then but above all it’s clear that it does not revolve around the question of Jon Snow’s mother, far less depend upon it for its conclusion, but rather that particular mystery is just one plot device among many in an altogether much larger and much richer story.



If new to Heresy you may also want to refer to to Wolfmaid's essential guide to Heresy: http://asoiaf.wester...uide-to-heresy/, which provides annotated links to all the previous editions of Heresy, latterly identified by topic.



Don’t be intimidated by the size and scope of Heresy, or by some of the ideas we’ve discussed over the years. We’re very good at talking in circles and we don’t mind going over old ground again, especially with a fresh pair of eyes, so just ask, but be patient and observe the local house rules that the debate be conducted by reference to the text, with respect for the ideas of others, and above all with great good humour.



Beyond that, read on.



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



*And yes I'm reminded by Mace Cooterian it is only 158 previous editions;



As some of you will recall Heresy 137 was accidentally destroyed by a novice named Vinculus who got caught short one night and grabbed the first thing he saw to wipe his arse afterwards. As it happens all that was lost was the OP which is pretty much the same from heresy to heresy but he was so stricken with terror at what he'd done that he tore up the rest and ate it in an attempt to destroy the evidence.



Unfortunately all the words then appeared on his skin. Like most novices he rarely washed so this curious mark of his guilt went undiscovered for some time. Eventually however the secret came out and his fellow novices were set to copying it out but no-one could agree as to the running order of the posts and some of the text ran into places no-one cared to go so that while a number of transcripts are understood to exist, most are regarded as incomplete or apocryphal


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And now the slightly spoilerish full text of GRRM's1993 letter to his agent, Ralph Vicinanza. Things have obviously changed a bit since then but If you don’t want to know, don’t read on:



October 1993



Dear Ralph,



Here are the first thirteen chapters (170 pages) of the high fantasy novel I promised you, which I'm calling A Game of Thrones. When completed, this will be the first volume in what I see as an epic trilogy with the overall title, A Song of Ice and Fire.



As you know, I don't outline my novels. I find that if I know exactly where a book is going, I lose all interest in writing it. I do, however, have some strong notions as to the overall structure of the story I'm telling, and the eventual fate of many of the principle [sic] characters in the drama.



Roughly speaking, there are three major conflicts set in motion in the chapters enclosed. These will form the major plot threads of the trilogy, intertwining with each other in what should be a complex but exciting (I hope) narrative tapestry. Each of the conflicts presents a major threat to the peace of my imaginary realm, the Seven Kingdoms, and to the lives of the principal characters.



The first threat grows from the enmity between the great houses of Lannister and Stark as it plays out in a cycle of plot, counterplot, ambition, murder, and revenge, with the iron throne of the Seven Kingdoms as the ultimate prize. This will form the backbone of the first volume of the trilogy, A Game of Thrones.



While the lion of Lannister and the direwolf of Stark snarl and scrap, however, a second and greater threat takes shape across the narrow sea, where the Dothraki horselords mass their barbarians hordes for a great invasion of the Seven Kingdoms, led by the fierce and beautiful Daenerys Stormborn, the last of the Targaryen dragonlords. The Dothraki invasion will be the central story of my second volume,A Dance with Dragons.



The greatest danger of all, however, comes from the north, from the icy wastes beyond the Wall, where half-forgotten demons out of legend, the inhuman others, raise cold legions of the undead and the neverborn and prepare to ride down on the winds of winter to extinguish everything that we would call "life." The only thing that stands between the Seven Kingdoms and and endless night is the Wall, and a handful of men in black called the Night's Watch. Their story will be the heart of my third volume, The Winds of Winter. The final battle will also draw together characters and plot threads left from the first two books and resolve all in one huge climax.



The thirteen chapters on hand should give you a notion as to my narrative strategy. All three books will feature a complex mosaic of intercutting points-of-view among various of my large and diverse cast of players. The cast will not always remains the same. Old characters will die, and new ones will be introduced. Some of the fatalities will include sympathetic viewpoint characters. I want the reader to feel that no one is ever completely safe, not even the characters who seem to be the heroes. The suspense always ratchets up a notch when you know that any character can die at any time.



Five central characters will make it through all three volumes, however, growing from children to adults and changing the world and themselves in the process. In a sense, my trilogy is almost a generational saga, telling the life stories of these five characters, three men and two women. The five key players are Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and three of the children of Winterfell, Arya, Bran, and the bastard Jon Snow. All of them are introduced at some length in the chapters you have to hand.



This is going to be (I hope) quite an epic. Epic in its scale, epic in its action, and epic in its length. I see all three volumes as big books, running about 700 to 800 manuscript pages, so things are just barely getting underway in the thirteen chapters I've sent you.



I have quite a clear notion of how the story is going to unfold in the first volume, A Game of Thrones. Things will get a lot worse for the poor Starks before they get better, I'm afraid. Lord Eddard Stark and his wife Catelyn Tully are both doomed, and will perish at the hands of their enemies. Ned will discover what happened to his friend Jon Arryn, but before he can act on his knowledge, King Robert will have an unfortunate accident, and the throne will pass to his sullen and brutal son Joffrey, still a minor. Joffrey will not be sympathetic and Ned will be accused of treason, but before he is taken he will help his wife and his daughter escape back to Winterfell.



Each of the contending families will learn it has a member of dubious loyalty in its midst. Sansa Stark, wed to Joffrey Baratheon, will bear him a son, the heir to the throne, and when the crunch comes she will choose her husband and child over her parents and siblings, a choice she will later bitterly rue. Tyrion Lannister, meanwhile, befriend both Sansa and her sister Arya, while growing more and more disenchanted with his own family.



Young Bran will come out of his coma, after a strange prophetic dream, only to discover that he will never walk again. He will turn to magic, at first in the hope of restoring his legs, but later for its own sake. When his father Eddard Stark is executed, Bran will see the shape of doom descending on all of them, but nothing he can say will stop his brother Robb from calling the banners in rebellion. All the north will be inflamed by war. Robb will win several splendid victories, and maim Joffrey Baratheon on the battlefield, but in the end he will not be able to stand against Jaime and Tyrion Lannister and their allies. Robb Stark will die in battle, and Tyrion Lannister will besiege and burn Winterfell.



Jon Snow, the bastard, will remain in the far north. He will mature into a ranger of great daring, and ultimately will succeed his uncle as the commander of the Night's Watch. When Winterfell burns, Catelyn Stark will be forced to flee north with her son Bran and her daughter Arya. Hounded by Lannister riders, they will seek refuge at the Wall, but the men of the Night's Watch give up their families when they take the black, and Jon and Benjen will not be able to help, to Jon's anguish. It will lead to a bitter estrangement between Jon and Bran. Arya will be more forgiving... until she realizes, with terror, that she has fallen in love with Jon, who is not only her half-brother but a man of the Night's Watch, sworn to celibacy. Their passion will continue to torment Jon and Arya throughout the trilogy, until the secret of Jon's true parentage is finally revealed in the last book.



Abandoned by the Night's Watch, Catelyn and her children will find their only hope of safety lies even further north, beyond the Wall, where they fall into the hands of Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall, and get a dreadful glimpse of the inhuman others as they attack the wildling encampment. Bran's magic, Arya's sword Needle, and the savagery of their direwolves will help them survive, but their mother Catelyn will die at the hands of the others.



Over across the narrow sea, Daenerys Targaryen will discover that her new husband, the Dothraki Khal Drogo, has little interest in invading the Seven Kingdoms, much to her brother's frustration. When Viserys presses his claims past the point of tact or wisdom, Khal Drogo will finally grow annoyed and kill him out of hand, eliminating the Targaryen pretender and leaving Daenerys as the last of her line. Daenerys will bide her time, but she will not forget. When the moment is right, she will kill her husband to avenge her brother, and then flee with a trusted friend into the wilderness beyond Vaes Dothrak. There, hunted by Dothraki bloodriders [?] of her life, she stumbles on a cache of dragon's eggs [?] of a young dragon will give Daenerys the power to bend the Dothraki to her will. Then she begins to plan for her invasion of the Seven Kingdoms.



Tyrion Lannister will continue to travel, to plot, and to play the game of thrones, finally removing his nephew Joffrey in disgust at the boy king's brutality. Jaime Lannister will follow Joffrey on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms, by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of succession and blaming his brother Tyrion for the murders. Exiled, Tyrion will change sides, making common cause with surviving Starks to bring his brother down, and falling helplessly in love with Arya Stark while he's at it. His passion is, alas, unreciprocated, but no less intense for that, and it will lead to a deadly rivalry between Tyrion and Snow.



[7 Lines Redacted]



But that's the second book...



I hope you'll find some editors who are as excited about all of this as I am. Feel free to share this letter with anyone who wants to know how the story will go.



All best,


George R.R. Martin





What’s in that redacted passage we don’t know but here’s what appears to be the equally spoilerish original synopsis/publisher’s blurb for Winds of Winter; not the forthcoming one, alas, but one apparently dating back to when it was still to be the third volume of the trilogy and following directly on in content and style from the first synopsis set out above:




Continuing the most imaginative and ambitious epic fantasy since The Lord of the Rings Winter has come at last and no man can say whether it will ever go again. The Wall is broken, the cold dead legions are coming south, and the people of the Seven Kingdoms turn to their queen to protect them. But Daenerys Targaryen is learning what Robert Baratheon learned before her; that it is one thing to win a throne and quite another to sit on one. Before she can hope to defeat the Others, Dany knows she must unite the broken realm behind her. Wolf and lion must hunt together, maester and greenseer work as one, all the blood feuds must be put aside, the bitter rivals and sworn enemies join hands. The Winds of Winter tells the story of Dany’s fight to save her new-won kingdom, of two desperate journeys beyond the known world in to the very hearts of ice and fire, and of the final climactic battle at Winterfell, with life itself in the balance.


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Finally, thought 160 would never get here! lol



Wonder what number we'll be on when WoW hits the shelves....hmmm...



Mayhaps we should play some heretical roulette :pimp:


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As Voice has already responded, this is a question which we've discussed at some length on various occasions, but can and no doubt will do again.

The short answer as to how we tend to rationalise it is that the original Watch was quite small and based at the Nightfort to look after the Black Gate as the only crossing point. They [mayhap only 13 of them] were then destroyed by Brandon the Breaker and replaced by an entirely new Watch which is the one we know.

There are various wrinkles to this, arguments and counter-arguments, but again there's no point in going into them here because Heresy 160 awaits.

I think we can etch the "the Black Gate was once the only gate" in stone at this point.

In response to the post, I think the architect (be it BtB or someone else) simply took charge and guided existing momentum, consolidating several watchers -- who watched from several walls -- into the first incarnation of the Night's Watch.

The same is likely true of their vows. i.e... if I were unifying House Royce and House Stark under a single "Lord to Command them," I would adopt the words "We Remember Winter is Coming."

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Nah, if his brother who overthrew him was Brandon the Breaker I'd say its pretty unlikely.

Mayhaps NK's name was Brandon, mayhaps it wasn't. I don't discount Brandon the Breaker, nor his alliance with Joramun. I've no doubt they were around.

But, just because the 13th Lord Commander was a Stark, doesn't mean all his brothers were :cool4:

Gared:

“I’ve had the cold in me too, lordling.” Gared pulled back his hood, giving Ser Waymar a good long look at the stumps where his ears had been. “Two ears, three toes, and the little finger off my left hand. I got off light. We found my brother frozen at his watch, with a smile on his face.”

Gren:

“What do you want with me?” Jon demanded.

“We want to take you back where you belong,” Pyp said.

“I belong with my brother.”

“We’re your brothers now,” Grenn said.

Yoren:

“No one sent me, m’lord, saving old Mormont. I’m here to find men for the Wall, and when Robert next holds court, I’ll bend the knee and cry our need, see if the king and his Hand have some scum in the dungeons they’d be well rid of. You might say as Benjen Stark is why we’re talking, though. His blood ran black. Made him my brother as much as yours. It’s for his sake I’m come. Rode hard, I did, near killed my horse the way I drove her, but I left the others well behind.”

Samwell:

Sam clasped Jon’s hand, “You’re my brother now, so he’s my father too,” the fat boy said.

Mormont:

“I ordered a watch kept over you., You were seen leaving. If your brothers had not fetched you back, you would have been taken along the way, and not by friends. Unless you have a horse with wings like a raven. Do you?”

Jon:

They are my brothers, he thought. As much as Robb and Bran and Rickon...

Forgive the quote-overkill :) Wanted to highlight this diverse group of brothers: Gared, Gren, Yoren, Samwell, and Jon.

Point is, some of Jon's own brothers have just stuck him with some pointy ends, and seemingly ended his reign as 998th Lord Commander... I think it's more likely the brother who brought down the 13th was one of his black brothers. Mayhaps his name was Dayne. Or, mayhaps he's still out there hunting him to this day... wandering the cold, dead lands with his sword and his elk :smoking:

Mind you, it's interesting to speculate as to what Brandon broke and the likeliest I would say is that he broke some kind of pact with Joruman, but that mayhap can be discussed in Heresy 160 coming to an electronic device near you in the next few minutes.

The horn of Joramun is supposedly imbued with the power to break the Wall. Then we have this Brandon the Breaker guy, who formed an alliance with him. Seems like both men earned a reputation for demolition work. Yet neither is described as having truly ever broken anything, except for the reign of Night's King of course, but that would be a strange event to describe as breakage...

Mayhaps Brandon the Breaker was a brother who broke his vows to the Watch?

Mayhaps Joramun was a "horn that wakes the sleepers" during the long night....but screwed up, blew the horn only once when his brother, the Stark King of Night, returned to the Night Fort with his pale woman, and caused the Wall to fall only metaphorically.... disgraced, he fled to the Fist, buried his horn, dragonglass blades and arrowheads, and became King beyond the Wall. Or not :D

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Nah, thought of that. We have the World Book confirming that it was Brandon Stark of Winterfell who brought the Nights King down. Old Nan is the one who describes them as brothers - from Winterfell. Given that Joruman ended up north of the Wall I'm still inclined to think that what was broken was the alliance between them. As to the Horn, we really don't know what it really does but if its something to do with warding it may be that Joruman's contribution to the overthrow of the Nights King was to break the wards that protected him and his.


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Nah, thought of that. We have the World Book confirming that it was Brandon Stark of Winterfell who brought the Nights King down. Old Nan is the one who describes them as brothers - from Winterfell. Given that Joruman ended up north of the Wall I'm still inclined to think that what was broken was the alliance between them. As to the Horn, we really don't know what it really does but if its something to do with warding it may be that Joruman's contribution to the overthrow of the Nights King was to break the wards that protected him and his.

It seems to me though that we've had a lot of Kings-Beyond-The-Wall actually somehow get past the Wall. Yet we see that when Mance Rayder attacked the Wall, he was fairly easily thrown back. 100,000 wildlings, giants, mammouths, etc. couldn't force the gate, the only way through the Wall for an attacking force, and 1500 cavalry broke them to pieces. 300 years ago the Night's Watch numbered 10,000. They should have been easily able to throw back these Kings-Beyond-The-Wall... yet almost all of the Kings we've heard about made it past the Wall.

Which leads me to think that they didn't actually get past the Wall, as there was no Wall during their time (except Redbeard and Mance who are recent Kings). Maybe there was a wall, but not the Wall.

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Which leads me to think that they didn't actually get past the Wall, as there was no Wall during their time (except Redbeard and Mance who are recent Kings). Maybe there was a wall, but not the Wall.

From GRRM, we have:

Well, the Wall has undoubtedly "eaten" a lot of crushed stone over the centuries and millenia, especially around the castles where the black brothers regularly gravelled the walkways. But there's a lot more ice than there is stone.

Yes, the Wall was much smaller when first raised. It took hundreds of years to complete and thousands to reach its present height.

So the Wall's great age seems established.

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From GRRM, we have:

So the Wall's great age seems established.

But we can't actually really date any of the Kings except Redbeard and Mance. Mance is obviously the current king, and Redbeard was during Jon's grandfather's grandfather's time. The rest we can't date as we have no idea when they existed, or the story doesn't make sense (Bael stole the Lord Stark's daughter, but the Starks have been lords for only 300 years and then the son was killed by the Boltons who haven't rebelled in a thousand years).

So we have no idea how big the Wall was during the other Kings time. That interview really only confirms that it's its current size in the times of Mance and Redbeard. Mance couldn't break through, and Redbeard just went over.

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Mance made the mistake of attacking the Wall at its strongest point - where it was still manned. If he'd come across at say the Nightfort there would have been nobody there to stop him. His problem, unlike his predecessors was that he wasn't just taking an army across but a whole people and all their livestock and moveable possessions. For that he needed the gate.


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So we have no idea how big the Wall was during the other Kings time. That interview really only confirms that it's its current size in the times of Mance and Redbeard. Mance couldn't break through, and Redbeard just went over.

There's no doubt it was expanded over the millennia, but there's also no doubt the Wall has been there for thousands of years. I'm not sure what premise is in any doubt?

If it's that the Watch was created to defend Men, and was instead really created to defend the Popsicles, my questions are:

Why build the Nightfort on the south side?

Why are there no castles on the north side?

Is there any evidence the Popsicles can build castles, or for that matter, any form of architecture?

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There's no doubt it was expanded over the millennia, but there's also no doubt the Wall has been there for thousands of years. I'm not sure what premise is in any doubt?

If it's that the Watch was created to defend Men, and was instead really created to defend the Popsicles, my questions are:

Why build the Nightfort on the south side?

Why are there no castles on the north side?

Is there any evidence the Popsicles can build castles, or for that matter, any form of architecture?

Only armor and swords at the moment, at least to my knowledge. And, speculatively, walls

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There's no doubt it was expanded over the millennia, but there's also no doubt the Wall has been there for thousands of years. I'm not sure what premise is in any doubt?

Just wondering why it seems that it's the norm that these Kings got past the Wall, when it seems to be fairly easy to stop them if it only takes 1500 cavalry and the Watch used to have 10,000 men. They should be kicking their ass every time, so the only thing that makes sense to me is that the Wall might have existed but it wasn't nearly as big so people could storm it much easier.

If it's that the Watch was created to defend Men, and was instead really created to defend the Popsicles, my questions are:

Why build the Nightfort on the south side?

Well the Nightfort is the first castle built by the Night's Watch, but the Black Gate only opened to a specific part of the Night's Watch oath by Sam. Which I said last thread seems to have been a later addition to the oath as it's different than the rest. In which case, the Nightfort could have been built on the south side, because it was built when the Night's Watch changed to its current incarnation

Why are there no castles on the north side?

There could have been. 8000 years is a long time, and they needed to get stone somehwere to build all their castles on the south side

Is there any evidence the Popsicles can build castles, or for that matter, any form of architecture?

GRRM has said that they can do things with ice that no one else can. So likely they can build, and we've seen them use normal materials before (riding a horse)

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Just wondering why it seems that it's the norm that these Kings got past the Wall, when it seems to be fairly easy to stop them if it only takes 1500 cavalry and the Watch used to have 10,000 men. They should be kicking their ass every time, so the only thing that makes sense to me is that the Wall might have existed but it wasn't nearly as big so people could storm it much easier.

Black Crow got this above -- Mance is unique in that he is responding to a Popsicle incursion.

This means he has to get the entire population of free folk and giants and everything they're taking south of the Wall. This, in turn, means he is forced to attack at Castle Black, because it's got the tunnel.

Because he chooses to attack at only that point, Jon has a relatively easy time handling him. It's actually a plot flaw in my view; he could easily have sent ten teams to scale the Wall, not one, and if he had, he would have totally overwhelmed Castle Black from the south, and thus gotten his people through the tunnel. (In the show he actually claims he did send multiple teams over.)

The other KbtWs didn't have that problem, of needing to get 100,000 people through -- just their much smaller hosts. So they either climbed it (like Raymun) or went under it (like Gendel and Gorne) or, supposedly, through it (the World book claims the Horned Lord used sorcery to pass through the Wall).

Since the Watch was always, until recently, much stronger, it's not surprising the KbtWs always failed.

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Just wondering why it seems that it's the norm that these Kings got past the Wall, when it seems to be fairly easy to stop them if it only takes 1500 cavalry and the Watch used to have 10,000 men. They should be kicking their ass every time, so the only thing that makes sense to me is that the Wall might have existed but it wasn't nearly as big so people could storm it much easier.

Well the Nightfort is the first castle built by the Night's Watch, but the Black Gate only opened to a specific part of the Night's Watch oath by Sam. Which I said last thread seems to have been a later addition to the oath as it's different than the rest. In which case, the Nightfort could have been built on the south side, because it was built when the Night's Watch changed to its current incarnation

There could have been. 8000 years is a long time, and they needed to get stone somehwere to build all their castles on the south side

GRRM has said that they can do things with ice that no one else can. So likely they can build, and we've seen them use normal materials before (riding a horse)

The Wall and everything that has gone with it over the last 6,000 years since the Long Night is a perennial topic at the very heart of Heresy and while we reckon to know more about it than anybody else on the board it doesn't mean we're in agreement. :cool4:

Something you may consider is the fact that we're variously told that the Black Gate is as old as the Wall and that the Nightfort is the oldest castle on the Wall. Since it is twice as old as Castle Black does that mean that for half of its history there were no castles on the Wall other than whatever was at the Nightfort.

Can I suggest that as a starting point you look at this one:

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/103541-heresy-91/

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Because he chooses to attack at only that point, Jon has a relatively easy time handling him. It's actually a plot flaw in my view; he could easily have sent ten teams to scale the Wall, not one, and if he had, he would have totally overwhelmed Castle Black from the south, and thus gotten his people through the tunnel. (In the show he actually claims he did send multiple teams over.)

The problem there I would have thought might be keeping control of them and ensuring that they did turn around to attack Castle Black from behind. He did try that of course, using the Thenns, but he didn't send enough of them to ensure success.

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