186 replies to this topic

[butterbumps!]

@ AppleMartini and Tze, I think you make really compelling cases for questioning whether this vision has been fulfilled.  I wonder though if any of the visions in the HotU can be taken as literal to the extent where such details are requisite for fulfillment- there aren't literally 4 rat men raping a woman, or a blue flower growing on the wall.    I guess I wonder, how much of it can be purely symbolic, and are there other interpretations of the visions which can be similarly interrogated against conventional opinion?   I don't necessarily like this theory, but regarding the iron crown, by the time of the RW the Ironborn have taken Winterfell, so perhaps the wrong crown could symbolize a "king" who doesn't hold his own kingdom? (but I think that that might get to a level of too esoteric symbolism)  

But I definitely agree we haven't seen the last of the violation of guest right.

[ManyFacedOne]

tze, on 23 March 2012 - 10:11 PM, said:

yet ignores many of the defining features that were present at the Red Wedding---the musicians, the dead fool, the crossbow bolts, etc.

With good reason, which I'll mention below. As for the fool though, one corpse looks much like the other.  

tze, on 23 March 2012 - 10:11 PM, said:

Robb's crown is described as being very distinctive, and GRRM makes sure readers know exactly what it looks like. Catelyn describes it as "an open circlet of hammered bronze incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords." Jaime sees Ryman Frey's "queen of whores" wearing "a circlet of hammered bronze . . . graven with runes and ringed with small black swords." (Whether this is Robb's crown or Jeyne's, the description is too similar to discount.) Brienne later sees Lady Stoneheart holding "a bronze circlet ringed by iron swords." None of these crowns is ever described as "an iron crown", and we are given multiple descriptions that attest to that.

Dany saw enough of this scene to take in the carnage, discern exact food items still clutched in severed hands . . . the idea that she got a "brief glimpse" of the crown isn't supported by the level of detail she goes into. Robb's crown wasn't an "iron" crown, any more than a blue shirt with white trim would be described by anyone as a white shirt. Matching the two crowns requires us to ignore the very distinctive descriptions of Robb's crown, and GRRM tends to give distinctive descriptions to things for good reasons.

Perhaps there's a very good reason he didn't. As you say, Robb's crown is very distinctive. So it's simple: he was trying to hint at the wedding here without giving the whole thing away.

tze, on 23 March 2012 - 10:11 PM, said:

First, I can't see Walder Frey letting anybody, even a corpse, sit on his throne while he's still breathing.

Second, this is actually part of my point. Walder Frey very explicitly presided (literally and metaphorically) over the Red Wedding, not Robb Stark. Presuming that he must have had Robb's corpse dragged onto his own throne sometime afterward is presuming information that 1) we're never given, and 2) goes against everything we know about Walder Frey (his whole schtick is his refusal to let anyone onto his seat of power). Wendell Manderly and the Smalljon had a leg of lamb----never Robb. Yet in Dany's vision, the slaughtered feasters are holding roast fowl, not lamb, and it's the dead king that's holding a leg of lamb.

Robb never had a wolf's head either, as best I recall. They went so far as to make a joke out of the body, so I don't see why that couldn't have included putting a leg of lamb -- or fowl or whatever -- in his hand and seating him on Frey's throne to laugh at him. Or he's mentioned on a throne to make the vision even weirder, hence hiding it's true meaning until after it comes to pass.

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The wolf-headed king in Dany's vision is dead----yet he's also in some way alive. Though she describes him as dead (she never specifies why she thinks he's dead), she also says his eyes follow her. She runs away, not from the carnage, but from him.

Visions shouldn't be taken literally. She's pretty much tripping at that point anyway, so that could explain the eyes.

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Dany's vision only encompasses a few sentences, so presumably everything she notices is important. Saying that this "must" be a vision of the Red Wedding requires us to twist what actually happened at the Red Wedding into a form that fits everything in the vision, and invent off-screen possibilities that allow the entire vision to fit the Red Wedding, which is exactly where all the characters who try to interpret prophecies in this series get into trouble. We'd have to assume that Robb's body must have been stuck on Walder Frey's throne sometime after the slaughter (or that Robb was metaphorically presiding over the slaughter, which just isn't the case), we'd have to assume that the two crowns must be the same even though they're described very differently, we'd have to assume that the presence and placement of food can only be metaphorical (yet the dead king who's also still alive holds the lamb, not the purely "dead" feasters). We'd also have to assume that the lack of the RW's many defining characteristics---musicians, for example.---is irrelevant.  I'm wary of making these kinds of assumptions about a vision, because that's exactly what GRRM seems to be telling us (via the example of Melisandre) not to do.

The "musicians" were long gone by the time they sewed his head on, unless they stayed to play them a soothing toon while they worked.

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Perhaps we'll get to the end of Book 7 and we'll never again have seen a group of feasters slaughtered in juxtaposition with a crowned Stark warg.  But we have at least two books left, and I see no reason to assume that everything Dany saw in the hallway leading to the chamber of the Undying must already have been seen by Book 3.

Not everything, but it's pretty easy to see why that fits with the Red Wedding so well.

[Lord Damian]

a couple of things, an iron crown, could this have been an older Stark king, pre-conquest pulling this on the Boltons of older times? We know of an old animostiy between Stark and Bolton that goes back since the age of heroes. Could this wolf headed king be Jon? It was alive and eyes following her with mute appeal. The Targaryen attraction.
Lets just assume it was Jon, he is sort of an elected king of the knights watch.
The Knights watch has woooden eating instruments.
Even though Jon has been attacked, the Nights watch might be starting with Jon and plan to attack the wildings as they feast at Castle Black, they would go for the hands because the Widings do have some arms/weapons. is this possible?

Edited by Lord Damian, 24 March 2012 - 12:07 AM.

[tze]

butterbumps!, on 23 March 2012 - 11:10 PM, said:

I wonder though if any of the visions in the HotU can be taken as literal to the extent where such details are requisite for fulfillment- there aren't literally 4 rat men raping a woman, or a blue flower growing on the wall. I guess I wonder, how much of it can be purely symbolic, and are there other interpretations of the visions which can be similarly interrogated against conventional opinion?

I think there's always going to be an element of "has this really been fulfilled yet?" in every prophecy or vision, right up until the final pages of ADOS, given the notoriously (and intentionally) treacherous nature of prophecy in ASOIAF.

For me, the issue of literal vs. metaphor is one major reason why I mistrust the interpretation of this prophecy that claims it must be the Red Wedding. We have a group of people slaughtered at a feast---you don't need a metaphor to analogize that to the Red Wedding. We have the story that Grey Wind's head was literally sewn onto Robb's body---no metaphor there (unlike, for example, with Melisandre's vision of Bran as having a wolf's head). These are the things that I think caused people to say "of course it's the Red Wedding"---a literal slaughter at a feast, a literal king with a literal wolf's head. But then there are all of the other parts that don't literally line up: the king is dead yet following Dany with his eyes, the king is seated on a throne overlooking the slaughter, the king holds a piece of lamb like a scepter, the king wears a crown that's not Robb's crown, the king is looking at Dany with "mute appeal" (where Robb wasn't ever "appealing" to Dany and Robb wasn't mute). And the parts that seemed to so "clearly" show the RW---a slaughter at a feast, a dead king with a wolf's head who's moving his eyes---can actually be fulfilled, quite easily, in other circumstances.

The argument is inherently circular: this must be the Red Wedding because some parts literally line up, the parts that don't line up must be meant as metaphors because this must be the Red Wedding.

The other visions she sees en route to the Undying seem like they're either all metaphor or all literal: the visions of Aerys, Rhaegar/Aegon/Elia, and Ser Willem Darry seemed to be literal, depicting events that had literally happened. The visions of the woman being raped/chewed and the false Undying seem to have been entirely metaphorical. But if this vision has metaphorical elements . . . why assume that it's a literal slaughter at a literal feast? Can't it be entirely metaphorical? And if this vision has literal elements, why not wonder if perhaps we'll get a future event that has everything literally lining up?

ManyFacedOne, on 23 March 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

With good reason, which I'll mention below. As for the fool though, one corpse looks much like the other.

Fools are pretty distinctive, though. They have such funny hats.

ManyFacedOne, on 23 March 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

Perhaps there's a very good reason he didn't. As you say, Robb's crown is very distinctive. So it's simple: he was trying to hint at the wedding here without giving the whole thing away.

He didn't have to describe the crown at all . . . but he did.

ManyFacedOne, on 23 March 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

Robb never had a wolf's head either, as best I recall. They went so far as to make a joke out of the body, so I don't see why that couldn't have included putting a leg of lamb -- or fowl or whatever -- in his hand and seating him on Frey's throne to laugh at him. Or he's mentioned on a throne to make the vision even weirder, hence hiding it's true meaning until after it comes to pass.

Merritt Frey says that Walder Frey had Grey Wind's head sewn onto Robb's head.

And this is my point: I don't see how we can say "this is absolutely the Red Wedding" in the same breath as "I don't see why that couldn't have included . . . ". It's assuming that because Vision A has elements B and C, because B happened somewhere, C must also have happened in the same place, even though we have no actual evidence that's the case. This kind of argument is straight out of the Melisandre School of Vision Interpretation.

GRRM was under no requirement to foreshadow the Red Wedding at all, so the idea that he stuck in elements that don't follow the Red Wedding, just to screw with his readers, makes no sense to me. Especially given Patchface's little ditty, which describes the RW in far more loving (and unambiguous) detail.

ManyFacedOne, on 23 March 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

Visions shouldn't be taken literally. She's pretty much tripping at that point anyway, so that could explain the eyes.

So you think the vision of a man in rich robes, seated on a barbed throne, with dragon skulls in the background, saying "Let him be a king over charred bones and cooked meat" to the man below him . . . also shouldn't be taken literally?

And by the "she's tripping here" argument, everything she sees after this, which is most of the HOTU, can be safely dismissed as uninterpretable. Cause she was tripping.

ManyFacedOne, on 23 March 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

The "musicians" were long gone by the time they sewed his head on, unless they stayed to play them a soothing toon while they worked.

If this is a metaphor for a wedding, you'd think there'd be something, anything, to indicate a wedding. And the musicians of the Red Wedding were the kind of crucial aspect that you'd think a vision of the event would have involved in some way, shape, or form.

ManyFacedOne, on 23 March 2012 - 11:44 PM, said:

Not everything, but it's pretty easy to see why that fits with the Red Wedding so well.

It's easy to see why people jumped to the conclusion that it was the Red Wedding.

Edited by tze, 24 March 2012 - 12:31 AM.

[ManyFacedOne]

tze, on 24 March 2012 - 12:29 AM, said:

Fools are pretty distinctive, though. They have such funny hats.

True. This was in Clash though, and he didn't actually write the exact details of the wedding until after. And also, there's no reason a fool must be included. There's several corpses, and a king with a wolf's head, that's the main thing.

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He didn't have to describe the crown at all . . . but he did.

He didn't have to have any visions at all, but he did. Again, it comes back to wanting to hint at it without giving away too much.

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Merritt Frey says that Walder Frey had Grey Wind's head sewn onto Robb's head.

I meant before. I was being sarcastic. Yes, they went out of their way to sew his wolf's head on his body. That was my point.

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GRRM was under no requirement to foreshadow the Red Wedding at all, so the idea that he stuck in elements that don't follow the Red Wedding, just to screw with his readers, makes no sense to me. Especially given Patchface's little ditty, which describes the RW in far more loving (and unambiguous) detail.

Patchface's little ditty was in the same book; therefore, he could be much more exact in the details.

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So you think the vision of a man in rich robes, seated on a barbed throne, with dragon skulls in the background, saying "Let him be a king over charred bones and cooked meat" to the man below him . . . also shouldn't be taken literally?

There's some things that should be and some things that shouldn't. Why should a man with a wolf's head sewn on him -- clearly dead, I imagine, at this point -- still be able to move his eyes?

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If this is a metaphor for a wedding, you'd think there'd be something, anything, to indicate a wedding. And the musicians of the Red Wedding were the kind of crucial aspect that you'd think a vision of the event would have involved in some way, shape, or form.

Yes, there was a feast apparently, and a dead guy with a wolf's head sewn onto him. Just like the Red Wedding.

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It's easy to see why people jumped to the conclusion that it was the Red Wedding.

Yes. One I'm sticking to until something better fits the picture.

Edited by ManyFacedOne, 24 March 2012 - 01:15 AM.

[little_horn]

All the visions in the HotU were past events, future events, and possibilities that may never come to pass no?

[Apple Martini]

little_horn, on 24 March 2012 - 01:20 AM, said:

All the visions in the HotU were past events, future events, and possibilities that may never come to pass no?

Yep.

[IAmNobody]

I feel the vision really did pertain to the Red Wedding. Like others before me have mentioned, there are too many metaphors in visions interspersed with what really happened/will happen.
Melisandre mentioned somewhere, IIRC, that some things are not set in stone. You can change the future with small decisions. Maybe the roast fowl wasn't such a big deal after all.

Mutilations seem to have happened after the RW feast. Robb's head was literally cut off. Is it so hard to imagine that the Freys and the Boltons might have cut off some arms in bloodlust, post the Catelyn POV? But I don't think it's that literal either. The cut down arms, I believe, signify the people who were there to protect Robb. His "arms" were all cut down.

The lamb as scepter could signify something as simple as he was a king slaughtered in innocence/ignorace. By that I mean, he asked for bread and salt of Walder Frey as Catelyn asked him to because she was suspicious. Robb was by no means a fool, he did after all agree with his mother. But he was still a boy king in many respects.

The iron crown could be a mistake on Dany's part. Maybe she was just concentrating on the parts of the crown that were most prominent, which were the iron spike thingies. Anybody could ignore pure bronze in a crown if you saw iron spikes. Catelyn, Jaime were not in fear of their lives or over-thinking things when they described Robb's and the Queen of Whore's crowns respectively.
Sorry for the parallel, but in LOTR, i don't recall what metal Aragon's crown was made of, just that it had a huge pearl on it, IIRC.

The sitting on the throne, mute, following Dany with his eyes, are purely metaphoric I believe. Robb was king. Once dead, Robb could do nothing, let alone talk. His eyes followed her because she was the one who was having the visions. As simple as that.


That being said, I've been thinking of another theory. Crackpot theory perhaps...
The man with the wolf head on the throne holding a lamb leg scepter with an iron crown on his head could be Theon Greyjoy,
In ADwD, he had a chapter called Prince of Winterfell. In many parts of the series, you can see parts of him that are in constant struggle with each other. Part of him wanted to be a wolf (a Stark), part of him wanted to be who he was (an Ironborn man).
The iron crown could symbolize this.
In the chapter I mentioned, he sort of presided over a feast at "Arya"'s wedding to the Bastard of Bolton. Ok, I know he didn't have the place of highest honor, but in the mummer's farce that it was, Theon WAS the prince of Winterfell.
His muteness could mean he wants to explain what exactly happened at the sack of Winterfell but he couldn't. Or that he can't seem to find his name.
The scepter of lamb could mean that he was prince only for the feast. There was mutton at the feast IIRC.
The cut off hands could signify that his old home winterfell were full of dead people. "Ghosts" he called them. People he knew all his life. Or that all the northern men could have done to remove him from his position as Reek but didn't. They had no "arms" to spare for him.

[A Free Shadow]

Apple Martini, on 23 March 2012 - 08:00 PM, said:

Well yeah, but how does that relate to this idea? Her point was that Catelyn makes a note of the menu and it doesn't contain roast fowl or bread.

Bread could simply mean bread that was given to them before the wedding. That bread should have been a guarantee that northmen are protected by the guest right. Heels of bread (being the lesser part of a loaf) can carry the meaning that they were served "foul bread".

@tze

My main problem with getting to believe that this vision was about something different, is dead king. You argue that it is not Robb, because he did not preside over the wedding. Well, no dead person can litteraly preside over the wedding. Or should we expect that Jon/Bran will preside at some feast with a fowl and then get killed off in the same manner as Robb?

You allow another interpretation that it might be done to avenge Robb and his presence is symbolic there. But then your argument about the crown not being his gets contradicted.

[PatrickStormborn]

A lot of the people focusing on the metaphorical imagery seem to be the ones who say that prophecies will "not be fulfilled literally". So I don't see what the problem is. Martin wanted another opportunity to foreshadow the Red Wedding. He wasn't going to have it exactly the same, otherwise it would be giving too much away. If he had described Robb's crown, every reader would have known that his death was approaching.

Is there a possibility that it refers to a future event? Yes, maybe. But we all know that Martin intended to include the Red Wedding right from the beginning, so it seems quite logical that this was just another opportunity for him to foreshadow it.

The real question, for me, is why Dany is seeing a vision of the Red Wedding.

[Ser Ilyn's Tongue]

Just to say I like this theory a lot.  A bit of misdirection and assumptions being wrong makes for good reading.  

Robb having his head replaced with Grey Wind's was a horrible but important little detail as it lead us believe that the king seen in Dany's vision was him.  This I think might be misdirection.  A king with a wolf's head could surely represent any of the Starks - it's their sigil and the current generation are all wargs.  So it could quite possibly be Jon, Bran or Rickon.

Here's my rather poor contribution (I've really got to get work!):  The hands that have been cut off are surely cold hands no?

[Errant Bard]

From a narrative point of view, how would it make sense for Dany to not have a vision of the Red Wedding? What exactly would be more important to put in prophecy for Martin, compared to the Red Wedding? Who exactly would be more fit to look at Dany with "mute appeal", while sitting on a throne, with wolf head and iron crown and holding piece of lamb?

It doesn't check. Even if Martin did a copycat scene, which he won't considering the story flow (luck is turning against the Lannisters/Boltons/whatever, and not only would these guys not look at Dany in mute appeal, but their enemies would not kill a wolf to sew it on them), it still wouldn't have the same pivotal importance, which is key for prophecies.

[Early Earl]

You either take the prophecy literally or as metaphor, but I think one should follow through.
Example: Giant destroying Winterfell was quite literally that (Robin's doll) but could also refer to house Umber bringing down house Stark or sth (which never happened, but was probably assumed then). So,

literally
If you take it literally, there's only one king with a wolf's head, Robb.
But the number of facts (as brought up already, the crown, the throne, the fowl, etc.) that don't add up, make it hard to believe that there was an actual description of the RW.
Note, though: GrrM stated many times, that the RW was the last thing he wrote for the book, while the prophecy was for an earlier book, I think. While he could've had the trouble of not "knowing" the RW yet when writing the prophecy, I'm pretty he would've matched them more if he intended them to be the same.
So, I don't really believe there was a literal description of the RW

Metaphor
ETA: The hands, of course, are his "minions", his fighters, the people doing his will. That could be Robb's people, but also anyone's people.

The Crown could just be the old crown of the Kings of the North. I see no problem there.
It could refer to: Robb, then Jon, then Bran, then Rickon, then Sansa, then Arya, then any of the old Kings long dead, then any of the kings yet to come...

The Wolf's head= Starks or at least Stark-pretenders.

I don't remember if Robb also was king of the Riverlands or just allied with them. If he was their king, no problem there either: he "presided" on a throne, regardless of how bad the Freys treated their king. If not, then it doesn't fit.

The lamb-scepter: Scepter is a symbol of worldly power. All kinds of interpretations are possible here. If you want it to fit Robb, you could say he was king over slaughtered (innocent) lambs. But really, which king ever was not? It would fit, but it would fit many other events, too.

Here's a little on the symbolic meaning of fowls, that is... err yes. Not suprisingly, it can mean all kinds of stuff.

In conclusion, if you take it all as symbols and metaphors, you can twist it pretty much any way you want, so I'll make my conclusion dependant on the question whether Robb was king of the riverlands or not. If it doesn't even fit in the symbolic way, GRRM would've probably made a better job at describing it if he wanted to.

Also: When GRRM describes something twice (ie Jaquen), he uses element A and B in vers. 1 and elements A and C in vers. 2. While element A is not worded the same way, it uses to be very similiar and reckognizable nontheless. That a point contra RW, because of the crown.

He always says prophecies are to be taken carefully. While it seems obviously to be the RW, it's probably not. But if it's something else, we won't guess it anyways, so it doesn't really matter .

Edited by Early Earl, 24 March 2012 - 05:17 AM.

[Errant Bard]

Early Earl, on 24 March 2012 - 05:13 AM, said:

Also: When GRRM describes something twice (ie Jaquen), he uses element A and B in vers. 1 and elements A and C in vers. 2. While element A is not worded the same way, it uses to be very similiar and reckognizable nontheless. That a point contra RW, because of the crown.

you mean like when he describes the colour of Renly's eyes or the sex Jaime's horses?

[Queen Beyond the Wall]

I was thinking about this vision yesterday in conjunction with one of Melissandre's visions from ADWD.

'A face took shape within the hearth. Stannis? she thought, for just a moment . . . but no, these were not his features. A wooden face, corpse white. Was this the enemy? A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames. He sees me. Beside him, a boy with a wolfs face threw back his head and howled.'

Melissandre wonders if they might be the 'enemy' (aka: the great other). At this point we don't know if Melissandre is friend or foe, and we don't know that about Bran and Bloodraven, either, though readers are more likely to simply associate them with good, because Bloodraven is helping Bran, and Bran is a Stark who we have followed through 5 books.

This presents Bran (and Bloodraven)  in a very ominous way.  Bran howling with a WOLF'S FACE is a definite parallel to Dany's vision in the house of the undying.  Remember that Bloodraven is 'encased in weirwoods', and that Bran is given a chair to sit beside him and learn greenseeing.

Bran also eats the flesh of dead wights through Summer, not to mention other possible acts of cannibalism (once on the way to the wall, and the theory that the weirwood paste is part Jojen).

Anyhow, I think there is a distinct possibility that this vision is Bran and not the Red Wedding.

[Early Earl]

Errant Bard, on 24 March 2012 - 05:31 AM, said:

you mean like when he describes the colour of Renly's eyes or the sex Jaime's horses?

He has described the sex of a horse?
By the tone of the question I'm inclined to answer "no", but I don't remember either incident.
Please enlighten me, I'm here to learn

[Errant Bard]

Early Earl, on 24 March 2012 - 05:13 AM, said:

You either take the prophecy literally or as metaphor, but I think one should follow through.

Really? So what do you think of stuff like:

"I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more."

Is the river a metaphor, or is the woman really, non-metaphorically, a fish?

I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings

So, metaphorical bridge or real, non-metaphorical drowned crow?

She saw sunlight on the Dothraki sea, the living plain, rich with the smells of earth and death. Wind stirred the grasses, and they rippled like water. Drogo held her in strong arms, and his hand stroked her sex and opened her and woke that sweet wetness that was his alone, and the stars smiled down on them, stars in a daylight sky. "Home," she whispered as he entered her and filled her with his seed, but suddenly the stars were gone, and across the blue sky swept the great wings, and the world took flame.

Metaphorical dragon, Drogo, or real star in day and world catching fire?

Ser Jorah's face was drawn and sorrowful. "Rhaegar was the last dragon," he told her. He warmed translucent hands over a glowing brazier where stone eggs smouldered red as coals. One moment he was there and the next he was fading, his flesh colorless, less substantial than the wind. "The last dragon," he whispered, thin as a wisp, and was gone. She felt the dark behind her, and the red door seemed farther away than ever.

Jorah never said that, or is his teleporting away non-metaphorical?

Mirri Maz Duur shrieked in the flames, a dragon bursting from her brow.

All a metaphor or did the dragon come from MMD's brow, not the eggs?

Early Earl, on 24 March 2012 - 05:45 AM, said:

He has described the sex of a horse?
By the tone of the question I'm inclined to answer "no", but I don't remember either incident.
Please enlighten me, I'm here to learn

Well, he described Renly's eyes as green one time, blue another, and so for Jaime's horse one time it's a mare another it's a gelding. Stuff like that. That's simple errors, but it happens: not everything is consistent always, and that's not taking into account that prophecies and multiple PoV necessarily do distort reality, as pointed above.


ETA: Have I mentioned I hate the text editor? I do.

Edited by Errant Bard, 24 March 2012 - 06:03 AM.

[kissdbyfire]

Regarding Robb’s crown, I think it may not have been described in more detail in the vision just because, as others have said, it would simply give too much away.

I could see this crown business indicating the vision is not the RW if it had been the other way around: if Robb’s crown is an iron crown, and in the vision it’s described as ‘a bronze crown with iron spikes’ (“an open circlet of hammered bronze incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords” is the full description we get from Catelyn). The way it is, though, I think it is more suggestive that more details of the crown are just omitted – not changed - not to give it all away much too soon.

[Errant Bard]

I feel I must provide the vision quote again:

Farther on she came upon a feast of corpses. Savagely slaughtered, the feasters lay strewn across overturned chairs and hacked trestle tables, asprawl in pools of congealing blood. Some had lost limbs, even heads. Severed hands clutched bloody cups, wooden spoons, roast fowl, heels of bread. in a throne above them sat a dead man with the head of a wolf. He wore an iron crown and held a leg of lamb in one hand as a king might hold a scepter, and his eyes followed Dany with mute appeal.

Queen Beyond the Wall, on 24 March 2012 - 05:32 AM, said:

This presents Bran (and Bloodraven)  in a very ominous way.  Bran howling with a WOLF'S FACE is a definite parallel to Dany's vision in the house of the undying.  Remember that Bloodraven is 'encased in weirwoods', and that Bran is given a chair to sit beside him and learn greenseeing.

If you discount the vision as not matching the Red Wedding because of some stuff about an iron and copper crown not being able to be referred to after a quick vision as an iron crown, or Robb never presiding, or Catelyn never describing severed hands, then it's rather... I don't know, weird? to push it mean Bran when a lot more big points don't match there.

A chair is not a throne. a non-existent crown is not an iron crown. If you are hung up about a copper and iron crown not being an iron crown, then this should be much more glaring. Bran is not a dead man with a wolf's head, nor is he appealing to anyone, or is he mute. There are not trestle tables or chairs to overturn and hack, there are no feasters to be savagely slaughtered. They have problems finding food up north, they don't have fowl or mutton, or bread, and even less enough for a feast. There is not even a significance to Bran holding a leg of lamb like a scepter.

Edited by Errant Bard, 24 March 2012 - 06:22 AM.

[Early Earl]

Errant Bard, on 24 March 2012 - 05:57 AM, said:

*crushing Earl's case*

Wow, you're right. Sorry to have you do all that work.
It was a legitimite try to approach the matter though, in my defense.

Ah well, I still think it all fits more in ways of metaphors to the RW and those metaphors can be interpreted in different ways.