AFFC Reread Project - Samwell (+Prologue)

[Jon Targaryen]

Samwell 5

We see Hightower is one of the chief, if not the chief, bannerman of Lord Tyrell.

We may get to see Horn Hill through Sam.

I wonder if Sam is in danger of being killed and take over by Jaqen.

[The Scabbard Of the Morning]

Yes, when Aemon dies, Sam says "he was... sworn brother of the Night's Watch...now his watch has ended."

[Ealasaid]

Samwell 5

We see Hightower is one of the chief, if not the chief, bannerman of Lord Tyrell.

We may get to see Horn Hill through Sam.

I wonder if Sam is in danger of being killed and take over by Jaqen.

Sam being killed. Wow. That would a shocker. That's an excellent thought about seeing the south through Sam's eyes, especially as we know next to nothing about Horn Hill. (And what is he going to do with Gilly?)

[Lord Eddard's Shame]

Sam is one of my favorite characters too. I see him getting thinner and thinner as the series goes on and gaining courage where he loses weight. I mean, he must have lost weight in the Haunted Forest, with little to no food, trudging through the snow and wilderness for weeks on end. Then he must have lost even more weight on his balemic trip across the narrow sea and on the poor fare they had while in Bravos, and he admits to losing weight on the Cinnamon Wind from the work and a diet of fruits and fish.

Hopefully he'll manage to keep up the trend while in Oldtown. I hear cider is good for you.

Then there's Aemon's more confusing ramblings:

The ending is a powerful piece of writing, that really drives home the urgency that Aemon feels at knowing that the goal of his entire family is within reach but that he will be unable to contribute anymore.

The rest raises questions . . .

The dreams could be those dreams he had himself, or also the dreams of Rhaegar. Earlier Aemon mentions that Rhaegar thought himself the Prince who was Promised, then later thought it was his son. I believe somewhere in SoS Barristan tells Dany that Rhaegar had dreams. The "dreamer" could be Rhaegar.

The eggs that would not hatch would undoubtedly be the eggs the Dragon Kings had been trying to hatch for the last century, to varying degrees of failure. Whether the specific eggs were those given to Dany or not is rather immaterial. I have also wondered if, now that dragons have been born again, other eggs could be hatched as well. Perhaps Dany's dragons could sit on them or something.

I too would like to know what Septon Barth wrote about. We may never know. Has Septon Barth ever been mentioned in any of the previous books? It sounds vaguely familiar. If so it would have been no more than a sentance or two, no doubt seperated by a thousand pages or so.

[Wrex]

Lol, my favourite chapter in the entire series is the chapter where Sam gets laid. Fat. Pink. Mast.

[hnv]

after reading what Aemon said I am srue Jon is AA

salt and smoke:

either the tower of joy with tears of L and salt dunno

or starfall...we know it's by the sea and maby the smoke was the burning of arthur daynes body

broken star:

either ToJ birth and then the broken star would be Dawn of arthur dayne

or starfall and then broken star again Dawn

and if R+L=J then he also has dragon blood

[Stark Loyalist]

All that evidence applies to Dany just as much, if not more.

Born on Dragonstone (salt and smoke)

At the end of a long summer

Woke dragons from stone

Under a bleeding star

[oba]

I too would like to know what Septon Barth wrote about. We may never know. Has Septon Barth ever been mentioned in any of the previous books? It sounds vaguely familiar. If so it would have been no more than a sentance or two, no doubt seperated by a thousand pages or so.

In ASoS, Maester Pylos tells Davos that Septon Barth was Hand to King Jaehaerys I for 40 years.

Against this, you have Septon Barth, the blacksmith's son the Old King plucked from the Red Keep's library, who gave the realm forty years of peace and plenty.

[Ealasaid]

Sam is one of my favorite characters too. I see him getting thinner and thinner as the series goes on and gaining courage where he loses weight. I mean, he must have lost weight in the Haunted Forest, with little to no food, trudging through the snow and wilderness for weeks on end. Then he must have lost even more weight on his balemic trip across the narrow sea and on the poor fare they had while in Bravos, and he admits to losing weight on the Cinnamon Wind from the work and a diet of fruits and fish.

Hopefully he'll manage to keep up the trend while in Oldtown. I hear cider is good for you.

Lord Eddard, love the trepanned look.

Sam's a teddy bear who is going to become a grizzly.

He's in the perfect place for fruit and fish. And I like the thought that as he sheds his baby fat, he gains in strength and knowlege. Good point.

[GiantSwan]

I didn’t like Mollander saying Alleras coring the apple with his arrow was “sweet†– it seemed anachronistic to me, and when he said it I immediately heard it in my mind in Cartman from South Park’s voice, so it grated on me. It seemed a contrived way to bring the narrative back around to Pate’s thoughts of Rosey.

This is a rather late response, but in terms of usage, I'm pretty sure the problem here is not the use of "sweet" but actually your feeling that it's anachronistic.

I am no expert on middle/modern English usage, but right off the bat we can assume that Martin's English in general is anachronistic - If we assume the time period to be roughly equivalent to The War of the Roses (1455-1487), then the "correct" form of English would be barely recognizable. Ever taken a look at The Canterbury Tales (written in the 14th century) in the original middle English? Early modern English, the English of Shakespeare, starts to kick in around the latter half of the 15th century, so the transition occurred somewhere in the ball park of The War of the Roses. So, if we want an intelligible reference (although admittedly still somewhat anachronistic) it looks like the most readily available literary source we have is Shakespeare, or the King James Bible, and really let's not bring religion into this.

Here's a quote from Shakespeare's As You Like It, "Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, though ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head."

This quote clearly demonstrates that "sweet" was, at the time, a stand in for words like "good", "nice", "wonderful" etc. While obviously you won't find too many single word responses in a play or poem, I think we can safely say that in daily conversation, and across many languages, people are lazy and resort to single adjective responses quite frequently. If it was an established adjective with that sort of meaning, I can't see any reason why it would be anachronistic. Martin makes frequent use of the adjective to describe things outside of the flavor. I've always assumed that it was a conscious choice to sound *more* in period, in part because of the sheer number of "sweet"s peppering Shakespeare and other old quotes like the translation "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country."

So, this use of "sweet" is probably old, and as close to period accurate as we're going to get in modern English. It stays old, even if Cartman uses it now.

[GiantSwan]

Just to clarify, I don't think that we should be concerned about the timing of the language at all - if we start worrying about that, we might as well ask how English showed up fully formed with no French or German to influence it. I was just defending the word choice's chronicity, since someone complained.

[Daemon23]

Concerning the FM and guilt:

Arya kills Dareon after he deserts the Night's Watch and the FM seems to approve her actions...

He does? I read that interaction entirely differently. He referred to her as Arya Stark (which she observes that he does when he is displeased with her), and asked the Waif to bring her a drink - warm milk, with a burnt, bitter aftertaste. She woke up blind. The singer was guilty, no doubt, of a crime punishable in Westeros by death. But Arya killed him for Stark reasons, not for Many-Faced God reasons. I think the blinding is half punishment, half the next phase of her training - as well as a way to keep her leashed until she is less dangerous.

Sorry to derail this from the Samwell discussion - although it does tie in to the Braavos layover as well.

[Drowned Princess]

Re the obsidian candles, in a Dany chapter in aCoK she is watching the street magician climb the fiery ladder when Quaithe says "Half a year gone, that man could scarcely wake fire from dragonglass... he could no more aspire to climb the fiery ladder than a common fisherman could hope to catch a kraken in his nets... And now his powers grow, Khaleesi. And you are the cause of it".

Seems like if you're into magic, lighting an obsidian candle is a pretty low rung of the magic ladder.