Heresy 171

[Black Crow]

Welcome to Heresy 171, this week’s edition of the very lively thread which tries to take a thoughtful, often sideways and sometimes irreverent look at the Song of Ice and Fire.

If new to the game, don’t be intimidated by the size and scope of Heresy, or by some of the ideas we’ve discussed or might have discussed on here over the years since the thread began way back in 2011. This is very much a come as you are thread with no previous experience required. We’re very welcoming and 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

Heresy is not of itself a theory and heretics do not take and hold a particular stance on issues, or even agree with each other most of the time, but instead it’s a free-flowing and above all a friendly series of open discussions and arguments, usually concerned with the Wall, the Otherlands which lie beyond; warging, skinchanging, greenseeing, the old gods, the children and the white walkers - and the possible Stark connection to both.

GRRM’s original synopsis from 1993, [transcribed below as usual] emphasises that the story is followed through five related story arcs, not one. Clearly the story has changed and moved in a number of interesting directions since then but above all it’s clear from the synopsis that it does not revolve around the question of Jon Snow’s father, far less a return of the king scenario for the conclusion of an altogether much larger and much richer story.

The strength and the beauty and ultimately the value of Heresy as a critical discussion group is that it reflects this diversity. This is a thread where ideas can be discussed – and argued – freely, 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’s Heart of Darkness, Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, and so many others all to the way to the Táin Bó Cúailnge and the Mabinogion; it’s about history [and especially that vastly under-rated date of1189] It’s about mythology, archaeology, ringworks and chambered tombs and even heroic geology, but above all it’s about the Song of Ice and Fire.

If new to Heresy and possessed of far too much loose time on your hands 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. Be warned though that Heresy is constantly moving and evolving and that what was once regarded as important may now be exploded.

Beyond that, read on.

[Black Crow]

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.

[Voice]

Wow that last thread locked-up quick!

[Eira Seren]

It did indeed. And here I was hoping to see if someone had slipped in a post about what's in the heart of winter at the last second.

[Mother of Dragons]

Voice has remarked in the past that he had a Land of Always Winter theory, but so far I haven't seen any sign of it.

[Black Crow]

It did indeed. And here I was hoping to see if someone had slipped in a post about what's in the heart of winter at the last second.

Because...?

Actually I've just now seen Vinculus' book and once I've studied it I'm sure I'll have the answers, especially as the crows are involved.

[Black Crow]

And as to the Heart of Winter I'm still of the opinion that it exists in the mind rather than geography, it is the Heart of Darkness and what Bran saw was both the truth of his fate and the future.

And with that good night all.

[Voice]

It did indeed. And here I was hoping to see if someone had slipped in a post about what's in the heart of winter at the last second.

;) That, will be a new thread.

Voice has remarked in the past that he had a Land of Always Winter theory, but so far I haven't seen any sign of it.

Indeed I do. And it is shaping up quite nicely. All I need now is book citations.

And I don't even need someone to offer me a wager at attractive odds of my choosing, or another novel to be published, before feeling motivated to post it. ;)

And as to the Heart of Winter I'm still of the opinion that it exists in the mind rather than geography, it is the Heart of Darkness and what Bran saw was both the truth of his fate and the future.

Well, that's because you've been reading Joseph Conrad instead of GRRM. LOL

And with that good night all.

:cheers: until the morrow...

[Eira Seren]

And as to the Heart of Winter I'm still of the opinion that it exists in the mind rather than geography, it is the Heart of Darkness and what Bran saw was both the truth of his fate and the future.

And with that good night all.

Oh that's just one of my unsolved questions :). Strange and morel...Reminds me I need to stop packing and go watch some tv. And restart the dryer.

As for the heart of winter being a state of mind... Like Joel flieschman's series-end philosophy about New York? A state of mind... Without the fate part.

Though I do think it's more than just a dream/vision.

[Mother of Dragons]

And I don't even need someone to offer me a wager at attractive odds of my choosing, or another novel to be published, before feeling motivated to post it.

I'll bet you right now that whatever it is, you're wrong!! :D (I better make sure I'm liquid enough to cover all these wagers before it gets out of hand)

[Matthew.]

A state of mind that's described in explicitly geographic terms--far north, beneath the aurora borealis? :mellow: Maybe, if that had been the only feature of Bran's dream, but no, the heart of winter segment immediately follows another geographic journey, a journey to the southeast, to a place we know for a fact exists on the map, the Shadow by Asshai.

Why should the one journey be so literal, and the other so internal and figurative, when it's much more fitting to say that he's glimpsing, with his dreamers eyes, the origin points of the Fire and Ice threats that will eventually descend upon Westeros--keeping in mind that Dany's dragon eggs supposedly came from the Shadow.

[Voice]

I'll bet you right now that whatever it is, you're wrong!! :D (I better make sure I'm liquid enough to cover all these wagers before it gets out of hand)

lol

A state of mind that's described in explicitly geographic terms--far north, beneath the aurora borealis? :mellow: Maybe, if that had been the only feature of Bran's dream, but no, the heart of winter segment immediately follows another geographic journey, a journey to the southeast, to a place we know for a fact exists on the map, the Shadow by Asshai.

Why should the one journey be so literal, and the other so internal and figurative, when it's much more fitting to say that he's glimpsing, with his dreamers eyes, the origin points of the Fire and Ice threats that will eventually descend upon Westeros--keeping in mind that Dany's dragon eggs supposedly came from the Shadow.

Yup.

[Voice]

Just remembered! Happy Father's Day to all my fellow Sworn Brothers who were led astray by seductive women!

[Sly Wren]

A state of mind that's described in explicitly geographic terms--far north, beneath the aurora borealis? :mellow: Maybe, if that had been the only feature of Bran's dream, but no, the heart of winter segment immediately follows another geographic journey, a journey to the southeast, to a place we know for a fact exists on the map, the Shadow by Asshai.

Why should the one journey be so literal, and the other so internal and figurative, when it's much more fitting to say that he's glimpsing, with his dreamers eyes, the origin points of the Fire and Ice threats that will eventually descend upon Westeros--keeping in mind that Dany's dragon eggs supposedly came from the Shadow.

Agreed it's geographical. The vision takes Bran to "places," not just a Winter state of mind.

But I doubt it's just that Bran saw the place of the Heart of Winter and it was filled with a million White Walkers. Could be--Martin could just be copying Buffy.

But I think that perhaps the Shadow and the Heart of Winter are both places driven/affected by/created by a mindset. Or a certain kind of magics used by a mindset. Could be there's a "the horror, the horror!" kind of moment coming. Bran's reaction to the vision at least makes that feasible. And that horror could be tied to the kinds of magics/mindsets that thrive in and/or create places like the Shadow and the Heart of Winter.

[Mother of Dragons]

Agreed it's geographical. The vision takes Bran to "places," not just a Winter state of mind.

But I doubt it's just that Bran saw the place of the Heart of Winter and it was filled with a million White Walkers. Could be--Martin could just be copying Buffy.

But I think that perhaps the Shadow and the Heart of Winter are both places driven/affected by/created by a mindset. Or a certain kind of magics used by a mindset. Could be there's a "the horror, the horror!" kind of moment coming. Bran's reaction to the vision at least makes that feasible. And that horror could be tied to the kinds of magics/mindsets that thrive in and/or create places like the Shadow and the Heart of Winter.

What happened in Buffy? And yes, the fact that Bran cried makes it intriguing. Of course, lots of scenes in that book would make a grown man cry!

[Sly Wren]

What happened in Buffy? And yes, the fact that Bran cried makes it intriguing. Of course, lots of scenes in that book would make a grown man cry!

Creepy, mystical wise man gave her a vision of millions of uber vampires--all in one place, all coming for her in a massive pack. Something like that--it's been years.

Really don't think Martin's copying--being facetious. But something like that could make Bran cry.

[Mother of Dragons]

Creepy, mystical wise man gave her a vision of millions of uber vampires--all in one place, all coming for her in a massive pack. Something like that--it's been years.

Really don't think Martin's copying--being facetious. But something like that could make Bran cry.

Pretty sure that would make me cry.

[Matthew.]

But I think that perhaps the Shadow and the Heart of Winter are both places driven/affected by/created by a mindset. Or a certain kind of magics used by a mindset. Could be there's a "the horror, the horror!" kind of moment coming. Bran's reaction to the vision at least makes that feasible. And that horror could be tied to the kinds of magics/mindsets that thrive in and/or create places like the Shadow and the Heart of Winter.

I have a hunch, one that I cannot remotely support, but I think our proposed "Hearts" are places that have been shaped by a heavy dose of blood sacrifice. I'm using the Isle of Faces as my model for this theory, which I would speculate is the "Heart of Earth"--the place where the Song of Earth is strongest, and where the CotF gathered when they needed to work extraordinary magic; and, as suggested by the WB, also a site of grisly mass sacrifice.

[Sly Wren]

I have a hunch, one that I cannot remotely support, but I think our proposed "Hearts" are places that have been shaped by a heavy dose of blood sacrifice. I'm using the Isle of Faces as my model for this theory, which I would speculate is the "Heart of Earth"--the place where the Song of Earth is strongest, and where the CotF gathered when they needed to work extraordinary magic; and, as suggested by the WB, also a site of grisly mass sacrifice.

Might work--we've got at least a few heart trees with screaming faces (remind me a bit of the skeletal moai on Easter Island--carved during extreme famine or crisis). If the Singers needed to amp up the Song of the Earth, extreme mass sacrifice makes sense. Plus, doesn't the World Book have something about the Ironborn fearing the heart trees because of blood sacrifice? If the "tales" of a mass blood sacrifice leaked out (grisly pun), could explain the fear.

Plus, I'm sure plenty before me have connected the shadow babies to the Shadow--seems like blood magic amped up. A heart of darkness.

And it still has a state-of-mind bent to it. The Children's fear which drove the first Long Night. Whatever drove the original Shadow. The Doom. And if Bran gets sucked into that thinking via Leaf's "We are the natural world, and we're dwindling" speeches, only to realize what "helping" the Children will cost humans, now has to choose--that could be a big "horror" for Bran.

Will stop now before I turn Martin and Conrad into complete pretzels to make them work together.

[addicted to snow]

All I can tell you about the Heart of Winter is that it is the "frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell" that Ned thinks about in AGoTs...

I can also tell you that it is Benjen's current location...