Heresy 27

[Black Crow]

Welcome to Heresy 27

If you haven’t been here before you’ll find that this is a wide ranging and pretty eclectic thread. We're not in the business of challenging canon, but of challenging entrenched (but unsupported) beliefs about what is canon. We are, quite justly, accused of making some tenuous connections as we grope towards an understanding of what's really going on, but far too much of the orthodoxy which we challenge is even less well founded and hallowed only be repetition.

Hence the heresies are based on the belief that what we were told in AGoT was mince; that Jon is not going to turn out to be Azor Ahai and will not ride dragons to victory over the Others to earn his place on the Iron Throne. As GRRM himself said in a recent interview:

…it was always my intention: to play with the reader’s expectations. Before I was a writer I was a voracious reader and I am still, and I have read many, many books with very predictable plots. As a reader, what I seek is a book that delights and surprises me. I want to not know what is gonna happen. For me, that’s the essence of storytelling and for this reason I want my readers to turn the pages with increasing fever: to know what happens next. There are a lot of expectations, mainly in the fantasy genre, which you have the hero and he is the chosen one, and he is always protected by his destiny. I didn’t want it for my books.

There are various story arcs being acted out in the Song of Ice and Fire, often intertwined, but here we try not always successfully to concentrate on the North, and in particular Jon’s continuing story arc (“Oh, you think he’s dead do you?” – GRRM), the true identity of the Others and the relationship GRRM has admitted that they have with those deeply creepy Children in the darkness.

We do, nevertheless argue, and at times I feel as though this thread is the kitchen at the Westeros party, with a lot of vigorous and exciting debate. All we insist upon in this thread is that discussion – and arguments – be conducted with reference to the text, a respect for the opinions of others, and above all with great good humour.

[Black Crow]

Previous heresies for reference:

Heresy five (with links to earlier heresies),

Heresy six, (inc. the complete Old Nan’s Tales)

Heresy seven,

Heresy eight,

Heresy nine,

Heresy ten, (with the introduction of the Sidhe)

Heresy eleven,

heresy twelve

heresy thirteen

http://asoiaf.wester...8801-heresy-14/

http://asoiaf.wester...9643-heresy-15/

http://asoiaf.wester...0033-heresy-16/

http://asoiaf.wester...0554-heresy-17/

http://asoiaf.wester...0972-heresy-18/

http://asoiaf.wester...1492-heresy-19/

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/71971-heresy-20/

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/72274-heresy-21/

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/74304-heresy-23/

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/74991-heresy-24/

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/75530-heresy-25/

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/75895-heresy-26/

[Knight errant]

I'll jump on this one, see if I can get involved. What's the topic for 27, o' hallowed heretic? You guys have some interesting speculation from what I've seen but I came late and don't want to sift through 100 + pages to get an understanding of where you're at...

[Black Crow]

Like most conversations it grows organically and is neither pre-planned nor devoted to a topic of the week. Most recently we've been looking once again about the true nature and possible motives of the Others, what they really want and how much the Nights Watch really knew about them but still took their eye off the ball. And we've discussed the true origins and antiquity (or not) of the Watch. It all tends to be a bit sprawling so if there's anything in particular that interests you, ask away and you'll get various replies some in agreement others not - but it will be interesting.

[alienarea]

Don't know if we looked into this or if there is some quote in the books:

Are the Others old inhabitants of Westeros as the CotF?

Because the wording (paraphrased) "in the long night the Others came for the first time" could imply they are new arrivals.

Bonus question: the long night was after the "hammer of the waters", wasn't it?

[Orrin Storm]

Hey, it's been a while fellow heretics. I moved and don't have internet to properly get on all the time, but still the heretical gears turn. A theory I've been working on lately deals with the Skinner(s), the Boltons, and their relation to the Starks.

I don't know how many of you have read George's other works, but the Skin Trade is a very good story about werewolves. I don't want to spoil it for potential readers, but suffice to say a character gains the ability of a werewolf through taking the skin off a werewolf and wearing it. The story is great, and should really be part of a series (GRRM planned for it to be originally, but got caught on Ice and Fire).

Point being, could the Boltons, due to certain plot points in that novel, be related to the Starks? Maybe a lesser family that wishes for the skin changing ability, and so over the millennia they've butted heads and skinned Starks to wear their skin to become skin changers?

I remember conversations about the Boltons skinning Starks before, but this seems to back up a more magical reason why.

Something else from this story is the Skinner, a being that actually harvests these skins from the werewolves and wears them. Said to have once been a (dire)wolf himself, he hunts werewolves now and can move from mirror to mirror.

I think this possible link between the Boltons and the Starks is interesting. Not to mention some of the things it could imply about the Boltons, their nature, and their past and future.

[Black Crow]

I don't get the impression that they're new arrivals at all. There's some sort of relationship with the Children - not yet explained but they're clearly not strangers - and I'd suspect that it may be down to how time is perceived.

Essentially I think there are two options. GRRM has said that the dodgy seasons have a magical cause, but what we don't know is what triggered it. If its something that's been going on since the dawn of time then it may simply be the case that the First Men arrived between visits so to speak. On balance I think this unlikely because although we have our doubts as to the actual passages of time involved in the early history of Westeros, the First Men do appear to have been around for a significant period of time without encountering them.

That's why I'd tend to go with the second option, that the Others are normally resident in the Land of Always Winter and rarely seen below it except as white shadows, until the Long Night which was both an exceptional event in its own right and may have been what triggered the subsequent pattern of long summers and long winters, providing the opportunity for the Others to come south in numbers for the first time.

Where it gets slightly complicated is the Childrens reaction because although following the Pact there is peaceful contact between both races, they are conspicuously absent during the Long Night. Far from fighting the good fight alongside mankind while the Others go stravaighing across the land they hunker down in their burrows waiting for it all to blow over. Even if the Last Hero took weeks or months rather than the years of legend to find them they were obviously keeping themselves well hidden, which suggests a certain foreknowledge of what was coming.

[Orrin Storm]

Don't know if we looked into this or if there is some quote in the books:

Are the Others old inhabitants of Westeros as the CotF?

I thought it was always implied they came from the Land of Always Winter, since it is still part of Westeros, but it's removed from the Children and the First Men at the time.

Bonus question: the long night was after the "hammer of the waters", wasn't it?

I believe it was since the Hammer came down while the Children and the First Men were originally fighting. The Long Night was post Pact.

[Black Crow]

Welcome back Orrin, and yes it can sometimes be frightening how heretic minds think alike without actually needing to talk to each other. As it happens we have been giving some thought to the Boltons just very recently and there is a school of thought emerging that they were indeed Starks once upon a time, and that their cold, hard nature - and designs on Winterfell - stem from their being descendents of the Bran Stark who was the Nights King until overthrown by his brother.

[Profion]

Don't know if we looked into this or if there is some quote in the books:

Are the Others old inhabitants of Westeros as the CotF?

Because the wording (paraphrased) "in the long night the Others came for the first time" could imply they are new arrivals.

Bonus question: the long night was after the "hammer of the waters", wasn't it?

Yes, and some believe that the Hammer of the Waters could be the event that made the others, as some kind of twisted magic, a price for this power.

[Black Crow]

I believe it was since the Hammer came down while the Children and the First Men were originally fighting. The Long Night was post Pact.

Indeed, they brought down the hammer of the waters to breach the land bridge, which now survives only as the Stepstones, in order to try and stop the First Men flooding into Westeros. But they were too late, and the wars went on until the signing of the Pact, which was followed by the Age of Heroes, all before the Long Night.

[Profion]

What is the main heretic thought about what caused the Long Night?

[Black Crow]

GRRM has said the upset in the seasons has a magical cause and my own thought if that the Long Night, however caused, was the initial splash so to speak with the subsequent long winters and long summers being the ripples that followed.

Beyond that... its time for bed. If you're British, remember that the clocks go back tonight.

[Profion]

I think the Long Night was just a huge winter, of course in this days, they wouldn´t call it long night, but in a time when seasons worked just fine, a winter of years could be called Long Night, I don´t remember anyone mentioning another Long Night...

[Gar Weg Wun Sygerrik]

There is an SSM relating to whether the Others originate in the north or where they come from. I can't remember the specific details but his response was something like "The first men weren't the only migrating people". I'll see if I can dig it up, it was fairly recent.

[Gar Weg Wun Sygerrik]

Have not found it yet, but I did find this :)

Regarding the dead direwolf and her pups: was this a sign from the gods, or from the three eyed crow? Some also see some symbolism in the way the direwolf died, with a stag's antler in her throat presaging a Stark-Baratheon conflict.

Man, that's something that's for the readers to figure out. If it's a symbol that I've carefully worked in there in a subtle way, it's because I'm trying to be suggestive, to make people think. If you see it and start wondering about it, that's on purpose. But I'm not going to start singing out, "It's a symbol! It's a symbol!" Each reader has to read it and decide for themselves what the symbols are and what they mean. That's part of what you do in a complex work of art, one that's deliberately structured and is relatively ambiguous, so that each reader can drawn their own conclusions.

[Buried Beneath the Wall]

The Hammer of the Waters pretty much tore a continent in half (or in twain, if you're so inclined), that had to change the currents and what not. I know that our world's ice age cycles started when the isthmus of Panama rose and blocked the currents of the equatorial Pacific from carrying its warm water into the Atlantic. Is it possible that the hammer allowed a major weather pattern shift? It would still qualify as a magical cause.

[Ludd]

Rather than Boltons being Starks I think they are one of the houses that has NO stark blood. I am going to take a guess as say that the starks have regularly married with

Most of the Hill tribes

Cerwyns

Mandelays

Mormants

People of the Neck

People of the vale (first men families)

Karstarks

the original Flints

Never with

Dustins

Boltons

Flints of Widow Watch

Not sure about Ryswells

[Knight errant]

I don't get the impression that they're new arrivals at all. There's some sort of relationship with the Children - not yet explained but they're clearly not strangers - and I'd suspect that it may be down to how time is perceived.

Essentially I think there are two options. GRRM has said that the dodgy seasons have a magical cause, but what we don't know is what triggered it. If its something that's been going on since the dawn of time then it may simply be the case that the First Men arrived between visits so to speak. On balance I think this unlikely because although we have our doubts as to the actual passages of time involved in the early history of Westeros, the First Men do appear to have been around for a significant period of time without encountering them.

That's why I'd tend to go with the second option, that the Others are normally resident in the Land of Always Winter and rarely seen below it except as white shadows, until the Long Night which was both an exceptional event in its own right and may have been what triggered the subsequent pattern of long summers and long winters, providing the opportunity for the Others to come south in numbers for the first time.

Where it gets slightly complicated is the Childrens reaction because although following the Pact there is peaceful contact between both races, they are conspicuously absent during the Long Night. Far from fighting the good fight alongside mankind while the Others go stravaighing across the land they hunker down in their burrows waiting for it all to blow over. Even if the Last Hero took weeks or months rather than the years of legend to find them they were obviously keeping themselves well hidden, which suggests a certain foreknowledge of what was coming.

I was mulling this over the other day. I did not know the Seasons where magically effected. I suggested that the COTF already knew about the Others because they'd tangled with them before, say before the arrival of the first men. But if that is the case I hear you cry out how come the FM didn't meet them sooner, well I reply, what if the Long night isn't caused by the Others but the Others cause the Long night. Say every 8000 years. It'd explain why the long night seemed a sudden new thing to the Humans but not the COTF. Moreover it'd explain their absence, a cycle is in effect and inbetween the long nights of this cycle they wait and build up.

An idea coming off of that, what if the COTF made the magic, with human help I guess to make the summer/winter cycles. They couldn't permamently stop winter but delay it? Holding back the Others to a lesser extent.

[Tyryan Lannister]

what if the Long night isn't caused by the Others but the Others cause the Long night.

Snip

This is something that I've been pondering myself, especially since it's a nice compliment to "Do the Others bring the cold/cold mists or does the cold/cold mists bring the Others?"