397 replies to this topic

[DragonSpawn]

I personally enjoyed the Silmarillion as much - if not more than the LotR - the battles were darker, the gods more involved and the evil things that happened were much much more evil than anything in LotR... e.g. Ungoliant..."dark spider" also known as "gloomweaver"... drinking light and life from the two trees of Valinor...

I often wonder if GRRM has used more than he intended from LotR... i mentally block most parallels between the two to avoid obscuring my perception of events in ASOIAF but it's very difficult sometimes...

We have the Others associated with spiders and darkness and trees etc... and Melkor and Ungoliant spun webs of darkness, destroyed trees of light and life... i mean.. so far we have heard nothing about spiders really - Bran observes a few but that's about it... is it possible these are actually responsible in some way for the Winter..? I doubt it, but hard not to ignore some of the similarities... in fairness you could pretty much take the template Tolkein used for creating his world and apply it to ASOIAF without too much trouble... singers, trees, darkness, spiders, and not to mentioned the Last Hero and his 12 companions possibly representing Aragon - the lost King and the fellowship of the ring...

ETA: Forgot to mention the comparison between the two trees... representing male / female... in ASOIAF we have the Weirwood and also the tree the Warlocks make 'shade of the evening from' - dark bark with blue leaves...

Also ETA:

The Song of Winter: LOL!

Three Dragons for the Targaryens, under the sky,
Seven kingdoms for the Dwarf to rule in his halls of stone,
Nine Swords for the Heroes of Men doomed to die,
One Crown for the Ice Dragon on his dark throne
In the Land of Always Winter where the Shadows lie.

One King to rule them all, One King to find them,
One King to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Always Winter where the Shadows lie.

Edited by DragonSpawn, 27 June 2012 - 10:22 AM.

[bloodymime]

QuentynTheBlazed, on 27 June 2012 - 08:58 AM, said:

When Joramun blew it he "Woke the Giants"

And whether or not the wall existed during this is highly debatable (It wasn't built yet)

So why are they all thinking it will bring down the Wall.

And the people at least south of the Wall believed the Wall was there since he helps overthrow the Night King who is on the the Wall in their stories, not sure I remember what the Wildlings think if it's said.

[Quentyn the Blazed]

bloodymime, on 27 June 2012 - 09:14 AM, said:

So why are they all thinking it will bring down the Wall.

And the people at least south of the Wall believed the Wall was there since he helps overthrow the Night King who is on the the Wall in their stories, not sure I remember what the Wildlings think if it's said.

Its become part of a story thats changed over thousands of years...these heresy forums talk about it alot

He helps overthrow the nights king but thats (probably) unrelated to the long night and the blowing of the horn.

The timeline is unkown, but I like to think:

1. Long night, last hero allies with joramun, he blows the horn to wake the giants and battle begins
2. Wall starts to be built after the battle for the dawn.
3.  thirteen LCs in Joramuns lifetime
4. Stark in winterfell allies with joramun to take down nights king

[Ser Leftwich]

snip

DragonSpawn, on 27 June 2012 - 09:10 AM, said:

We have the Others associated with spiders and darkness and trees etc... and Melkor and Ungoliant spun webs of darkness, destroyed trees of light and life... i mean.. so far we have heard nothing about spiders really - Bran observes a few but that's about it... is it possible these are actually responsible in some way for the Winter..? I doubt it, but hard not to ignore some of the similarities... in fairness you could pretty much take the template Tolkein used for creating his world and apply it to ASOIAF without too much trouble... singers, trees, darkness, spiders, and not to mentioned the Last Hero and his 12 companions possibly representing Aragon - the lost King and the fellowship of the ring...

snip

The example of Bran seeing spiders is a great example to demonstrate GRRM's use of POV and history within his story.

Bran does not see spiders, he sees tree roots.  He thinks of them as spiders because he has heard countless stories about spiders from Old Nan. In Tolkien, there are true and accurate stories/histories about the past and the characters all think and know the same past.  

GRRM uses internal POV of different characters to tease out that people don't believe the same things, two truths can both be correct from different points of view or even both wrong.

[bloodymime]

So they have already, I really need to find and read all these back topics to avoid rehash. Thank you.

[DragonSpawn]

Ser Leftwich, on 27 June 2012 - 09:41 AM, said:

snip
snip

The example of Bran seeing spiders is a great example to demonstrate GRRM's use of POV and history within his story.

Bran does not see spiders, he sees tree roots.  He thinks of them as spiders because he has heard countless stories about spiders from Old Nan. In Tolkien, there are true and accurate stories/histories about the past and the characters all think and know the same past.  

GRRM uses internal POV of different characters to tease out that people don't believe the same things, two truths can both be correct from different points of view or even both wrong.

Bran does see some roots and think they look like spiders or snakes so i see your point... but worth adding that there are a couple of genuine spider references in the books although not obvious or in any way useful for theorising! I think Bran describes an Emperor Spider while he's learning to ride again... before he gets attacked by Osha and her crew.

I often wonder... although have got nowhere with it yet... but there has been some talk of red silk woven into various garments... e.g. Mance Rayders cloak... i think Aegon's garb... and there has been a few other mentions... and the possiblity of having some magical properties associated with it... could this be in some way related to Spider silk... and the possibility that Spider silk also has some magical properties of it's own?

ETA: I wonder why GRRM chose the name The Land of Always Winter? instead of say: The Land of Endless Winter... or The Land of never-ending Winter, or the White-lands etc... i wonder if he leant towards this because of the name: The Land of Always Winter... (The LAW) - a sneaky link to the Old gods and the Old gods Laws e.g. Guestright, Kinslaying etc.... making the Others a bit like the Special Forces... FBI, Scotland Yard etc...

Edited by DragonSpawn, 27 June 2012 - 10:29 AM.

[Lummel]

bloodymime, on 27 June 2012 - 08:56 AM, said:

Sorry if these have been asked and answered, do people think the heroes and kings buried in the Milkwater are all wildlings or first men as well despite their looking for the Horn of Joramun there?I'm mainly wondering since it's so close to to the Fist?...If Joramun has already blown the Horn and the Wall isn't down why would they think it would work for them this time?

Aren't the Wildlings First Men who didn't form into a lordship society?

Doesn't joramun's horn wake the giants? And did he blow it ever?   Who knows?

Ser Leftwich, on 27 June 2012 - 09:41 AM, said:

snip
...Bran does not see spiders, he sees tree roots.  He thinks of them as spiders because he has heard countless stories about spiders from Old Nan. In Tolkien, there are true and accurate stories/histories about the past and the characters all think and know the same past.  

GRRM uses internal POV of different characters to tease out that people don't believe the same things, two truths can both be correct from different points of view or even both wrong.

Yes, agree.  In Tolkien a character can be ignorant of the past, or have wrong ideas but there is an absolutely true no debate possible version of the past that someone knows.  That's not to say that is a good or bad way to go about writing, it's just the way he did it and it's a question of taste what you prefer.

GRRM makes a virtue of unreliability - part of the fun is spotting characters misremembering or misinterpreting each other.

[Sword Of Mid Afternoon]

I was able to maintain interest throughout Silmarillion & Lost/Unfinished Tales but the "History of LotR" series require/-d a bit more effort to get through.   I actually just received "History of..." vol. X & XI.... Aka "The Later Silmarillion, Part I & II" in the mail.  I look forward to starting them soon.

Back to the histories... Im going to need more evidence before I can accept that all of the various far flung regional kingdoms, cultures, families, and populations were hoodwinked into believing an identical false history.  And recall, we're not talking about 7 kingdoms, we're talking about upwards of 100 independent kingdoms. These kingdoms were isolated from one another, what interaction that did occur often came in the form of warfare, yet somehow all of their accounts agree on the major events.   No way.   Someone would remember.

[Black Crow]

Sword Of Mid Afternoon, on 27 June 2012 - 11:17 AM, said:

Back to the histories... Im going to need more evidence before I can accept that all of the various far flung regional kingdoms, cultures, families, and populations were hoodwinked into believing an identical false history.  And recall, we're not talking about 7 kingdoms, we're talking about upwards of 100 independent kingdoms. These kingdoms were isolated from one another, what interaction that did occur often came in the form of warfare, yet somehow all of their accounts agree on the major events.   No way.   Someone would remember.

I have to refer you again to Hoster Blackwood: "...some of the histories were penned by their marsters and some by ours, centuries after the events they purport to chronicle...

...no one knows when the Andals crossed the narrow sea. The True History says four thousand years have passed since then, but some maesters claim it was only past two. Past a certain point, all the dates grow hazy and confused, and the clarity of history becomes the fog of legend."

Sam as we know said much the same thing when he was delving into the archives in Castle Black and if you take a long look at the way things have been developing we started off with what might be termed the official history of Westeros as articulated by the late Maester Luwin and ever since we've gradually been getting other stories from places far removed from Kings Landing which are not only explicitly saying the histories are wrong or at best unreliable, but we're also getting different versions, some of them contradicting Luwin. It is a false history, but the real one needs to be pieced together because there is no universal true and authentic account agreed by everyone sitting in a library somewhere, just a variety of stories from different places

[Black Crow]

Lummel, on 27 June 2012 - 10:30 AM, said:

Aren't the Wildlings First Men who didn't form into a lordship society?
...GRRM makes a virtue of unreliability - part of the fun is spotting characters misremembering or misinterpreting each other.

Agree entirely with the last bit - which is why we have this Heresy thread cycle.

As to the Wildlings and the 100 kingdoms referred to by Sword of the Morning, I'm still very much of the view that the Free Folk started off as the survivors of the Kingdoms lost beyond the Wall. The Thenns survived the Long Night and the coming of the Others/Sidhe but we're told of other kings freezing in their castles or being killed and I reckon the original wildlings were survivors left masterless after first their kingdoms were destroyed and then they themselves were "abandoned" on the wrong side of the Wall.

As to consistency of history amongst those petty kingdoms below the wall which were eventually swallowed up into seven, Hoster Blackwood demonstrates pretty explicitly that they do not remember things the same way.

[Uncat]

Here is an idea of why Joramum was on Stark's side of the Wall and was able to "partner up" with him leading an army as a King.

Imagine this scenario:

The Kings of Winter once ruled, what is now The North and took care of the lands north of the Wall in account of the White Walkers /Sidhe/ Others (i.e. took care that no further  humans moved in there. Meaning: Their Kingdom hat two provinces, one south of the Wall and one north of it.

Then the Stark in Winterfell goes up against his Brother - the King of Winter, later known as Night's King. In this he has to allies. A bunch of northern Lords which he conviced to participate is the pne groupe.

But there is another group of people in the North: a solid host of those who were uprooted by the Andals and fled north to the last stronghold of the Old Gods. They want new land and the Stark promises them the wast lands beyond the Wall. They have a leader, one Joramum.

After the deed is done and the Kings of Winter are history, the Stark in Winterfell becomes King in the North from Neck to Wall while Joramum gets the other half of the reign of the Kings of Winter - everithing north of the Wall. As like the Stark he gets half a kingdom, he begins to style himself as a king, too. The King beyond the Wall.

By the way: By that time, those northern lands may have been friedlier then "today". After all, if Black Crow is right with his ideas, then the fall of the Night's King would have marke the victory of the fire side. And like the advancing winter in the books marks the growing power of ice, I suppose, that this victory of fire would have been acompanied by a climatic shift. The summers would grow longer and warmer and the climate even beyond the Wall would be more favorable then it is now.

[Lummel]

Sword Of Mid Afternoon, on 27 June 2012 - 11:17 AM, said:

...Back to the histories... Im going to need more evidence before I can accept that all of the various far flung regional kingdoms, cultures, families, and populations were hoodwinked into believing an identical false history.  And recall, we're not talking about 7 kingdoms, we're talking about upwards of 100 independent kingdoms. These kingdoms were isolated from one another, what interaction that did occur often came in the form of warfare, yet somehow all of their accounts agree on the major events.   No way.   Someone would remember.

OK.  Lets turn that round and look at it a bit differently.

The Ned returns home from Robert's rebellion with a baby boy.  Some say the mother was a fisherman's daughter from the Sisters, some say the mother was Wylla and others say the mother was Ashara Dayne.  For the sake of the argument lets assume that everybody who knew the truth took the secret of what happened to their graves.  That means there are now three seperate stories circulating all of which are false, but nobody has made up a false story with the intention of replacing the truth.  You just had three seperate people (at least) who put two and two together and came up with three, five and seven respectively.

I imagine the same things happens with the history of Westeros as you go further back.  In the earliest times there was not any written history just stories.  As we see from the Blackwoods and the Brackens the stories can deal with the same events but be totally self serving.  Both sets of stories must originate in real events but neither is true, nor are they complete lies, but they are extremely partial.

So there wasn't a truth that everybody acknowledged and believed to be right that had to be falsified.  There's just a great mass of seperate stories and traditions, some of which survive in the accounts that the Septons and later the Maesters write down and then probably shape up and try to make sense of.  The history doesn't come from the time of the events, but like our own history is created with more or less imaginative interpretation much, much later.

[Black Crow]

Indeed and that's exactly what we find - there is no generally agreed history and more importantly we still don't know about the major events. We don't know how the Others/Sidhe were turned back, we don't even know whether they were actually defeated or whether as some of us suspect the Children/Singers brokered a cease-fire. We don't know who built the Wall - although we're pretty sure it wasn't Bran the Builder, we don't know when the Night that Ended battle happened - was it at the end of the Long Night or was it the defeat of the Nights King. Why and when did the Starks stop being Kings of Winter and become Kings in the North instead. Again we have a suspicion its tied in with the Nights King, but we don't yet know. These and more are all great gaping holes in the "identical false history" - it isn't anything like a complete history, let alone an indentical one.

[Elaena Targaryen]

bloodymime, on 27 June 2012 - 09:14 AM, said:

So why are they all thinking it will bring down the Wall.

And the people at least south of the Wall believed the Wall was there since he helps overthrow the Night King who is on the the Wall in their stories, not sure I remember what the Wildlings think if it's said.

I believe a few times when Jon thinks about the Horn of Winter he thinks about the song that is sang about the horn. Like the song says Joramun blew the horn to wake giants but the song does not say if you can put them back to sleep and I'm pretty sure Jon thinks about the song says the horn can bring down the Wall. It does not specify what song.

I don't remember what the wildlings think except they believe the horn will bring down the Wall. I do find it interesting that Mance was looking for the horn in the graves of giants. Was Joramun a giant or did he entrust the horn to the giants?

On the Night's King and the Wall it was said ( or thought by Bran (?) ) that the NK spotted his cold queen from atop the Wall and he chased her down and married her, so the Wall was there but it may not have been as high as it is now for him to see her so well blue eyes and all. There is an SSM where Martin said it took thousands of years for the Wall to reach it's present hight.

There is also the question on how did Joramun the King Beyond the Wall get south with his army to aid the Stark in Winterfell to bring down the NK.

I can look up quotes if you would like to see anything specific for yourself, I'm just being lazy but I will find something if you would like it.

[Stark@heart]

Good News All.   Or maybe not, depending on your own fav ideas about the histories of Westeros.

October 30, 2012  The World of Fire & Ice Cond -whatever is being published so soon we will have a reliable source for our timeline theories and speculations.

You can go to the Westeros home page and pre-order from Amazon in the US & UK now.  The info is also provided on GRRMs not a blog at his webpage.

[bloodymime]

Elaena Targaryen, on 27 June 2012 - 05:10 PM, said:

I believe a few times when Jon thinks about the Horn of Winter he thinks about the song that is sang about the horn. Like the song says Joramun blew the horn to wake giants but the song does not say if you can put them back to sleep and I'm pretty sure Jon thinks about the song says the horn can bring down the Wall. It does not specify what song.

I don't remember what the wildlings think except they believe the horn will bring down the Wall. I do find it interesting that Mance was looking for the horn in the graves of giants. Was Joramun a giant or did he entrust the horn to the giants?

On the Night's King and the Wall it was said ( or thought by Bran (?) ) that the NK spotted his cold queen from atop the Wall and he chased her down and married her, so the Wall was there but it may not have been as high as it is now for him to see her so well blue eyes and all. There is an SSM where Martin said it took thousands of years for the Wall to reach it's present hight.

There is also the question on how did Joramun the King Beyond the Wall get south with his army to aid the Stark in Winterfell to bring down the NK.

I can look up quotes if you would like to see anything specific for yourself, I'm just being lazy but I will find something if you would like it.

That's kind and I thank you but I've been meaning to dig up all these old heresy threads anyways to read through. Pretty interesting stuff if the two I've seen are any indication.

[Sword Of Mid Afternoon]

Black Crow, Uncat, Lummel, others...  no need to quote all of your comments...


<<I was in the middle of the 2nd to last paragraph and I almost lost everything by my backspace key turning into a shortcut for the back button on my browser.  I hate it when that happens.  So many good posts have been lost that way.  I have to remember to type these in a document first...>>

Where were we...  ah, yes.

So historians grapple over the landing date of the Andals...  specifically as to whether it was 4,000 years ago or 2,000 years ago... Rather than coming to the conclusion that every one of those historians is in fact wrong, isn't it far more likely that there are varying dates on the Andal invasion because there were different invasions!  They couldn't have invaded every region of Westeros at the same time.  There are huge geographic roadblocks that would almost certainly necessitate a seperate invasion/landing.  They may have landed in the Vale 4,000 years ago, but the Vale is largely isolated from the rest of Westeros, save a Mountain pass or two.

Is it not more likely to think that while they landed in the Vale 4,000 years ago, they may have then made it down through the crownlands 3,750 years ago, then tried to invade the North 3,500 years ago, then being rebuffed, went for the Riverlands 3,250 years ago, then the Westerlands 3,000 years ago, then the Reach 2,750 years ago, then the Stormlands 2,500 years ago, Outlying islands 2,250 years ago, and then the far Southlands (And Oldtown)  2,000 years ago.

(((Or simpler still, Middle 1/3 of Westeros invaded ~3,500 years ago, and the bottom 1/3 invaded ~2,500 years ago.)))

That long drawn out invasion which I just came up with on the fly seems infinitely more likely than every single person in Westeros - from the Grand Maester down to the thickest headed horse muck shoveller -being completely wrong about their history.  There may be uncertainty as to when the Andals invaded where, but I don't see anyone considering that all estimates are wrong and it in fact happened 1,000 years ago.
If you want to try and transpose that to R + L = J.... which, let me preface by saying is comparing something very macro to something very micro (You can confuse people when the information only has one or two or even ten sources, but when the sources are several million pairs of eyes and ears and the brains to remember, the ability to achieve universal deception goes out the window)....it would be like while almost everyone has narrowed it down to some combination of Rhaegar, Ned, Lyanna, Ashara, Wylla with a reasonable degree of confindence, we find out that in fact his parents are Paxter Redwyne and a tavern wench from Duskendale.   I know you had a different point...namely that none of what we've been presented is correct...  but for that to happen with the history... EVERY SINGLE person with a first-hand account of the Andal invasion would have to be either silenced, fed a fake story that they believed, or be a co-conspirator in the cover up.

It's just not possible for such a vast cover up.   Even if the 'writers' of history steer belief in that direction....    Do you think people like Old Nan got her information & stories from a book written by a Maester ?   Of course not.

You can not universally erase oral history like that, I'm sorry.  It's not burning a book.   You'd have to get to every single person.   If your version of events was correct, someone would remember. Alot of someones, actually.

AND If you somehow find fault with the above argument, as I said previously,  if there secretly was only a few hundred years worth of events between the Andals landing and the Targs landing, Bran would've realized that in short order from his weirwood time travelling.

[7V3N]

DragonSpawn, on 27 June 2012 - 10:01 AM, said:

I often wonder... although have got nowhere with it yet... but there has been some talk of red silk woven into various garments... e.g. Mance Rayders cloak... i think Aegon's garb... and there has been a few other mentions... and the possiblity of having some magical properties associated with it... could this be in some way related to Spider silk... and the possibility that Spider silk also has some magical properties of it's own?

It was developed by Bran Vras here. It is indeed very interesting and has a lot of evidence to support (but not prove) it.

[Sword Of Mid Afternoon]

Stark@heart, on 27 June 2012 - 06:11 PM, said:

Good News All.   Or maybe not, depending on your own fav ideas about the histories of Westeros.

October 30, 2012  The World of Fire & Ice Cond -whatever is being published so soon we will have a reliable source for our timeline theories and speculations.

You can go to the Westeros home page and pre-order from Amazon in the US & UK now.  The info is also provided on GRRMs not a blog at his webpage.

Thats awesome.  I can come to terms with buying that far easier than I could come to terms with buying the cookbook.


Also... there's a pretty neat ASOIAF Map App on the Android market..  "Westeros Map"... free.  Fairly detailed map of the known world.

[Quentyn the Blazed]

Stark@heart, on 27 June 2012 - 06:11 PM, said:

Good News All.   Or maybe not, depending on your own fav ideas about the histories of Westeros.

October 30, 2012  The World of Fire & Ice Cond -whatever is being published so soon we will have a reliable source for our timeline theories and speculations.

You can go to the Westeros home page and pre-order from Amazon in the US & UK now.  The info is also provided on GRRMs not a blog at his webpage.

You mean the Lands of Ice and Fire is being published. The World of Ice and Fire the concordance is still in the works

http://www.westeros...._Fire_and_More/