Jump to content

Daggers in the Dark: What Did Melisandre Really See?


Recommended Posts

Cersei and Dany are two characters who denied their fates to forge a new destiny and both fully embrace the inevitability of their prophetic fates.

I have always felt that neither of them have accepted the inevitability of their fates which is why they have tried to forge new destinies, without realizing that the prophecies have accounted for every action they make...that's the issue with prophecy. Although it kinda sucks for Tommen and Myrcella if Cersei is interpreting the prophecy correctly.

The books are not that complicated guys, sometimes things are exactly what they seem. Use your imagination and cut through the fog and you can see the real facts most of the time. Stop acting like it is written by nostradamus and every single word needs to be scrutinized and deciphered.

I am all for rational to the point analysis of things that are strongly hinted in the text. For example the Jon Targaryan theories and yes the facts about Danny that are practically shouted out load. What I am not for is stuff like Rob naming theon for succession in his letter and things like that that have zero evidence in the text.

I feel that your wording is the reason you were attacked. As someone that loves to speculate and create theories, especially those related to the prophecies and how they all fit together...I still understood your point and did not feel offended. I believe that many of the pieces in this complex series fit together rather nicely, but it is often hard to see how they fit thanks to how wonderfully GRRM writes the books. I find that the outlandish theories often help me fit the logical pieces together as I try to argue against what I view as crackpot ideas. Alternatively, sometimes a crackpot theory is just a crackpot theory. :laugh:

Rather like gazing into the Palantir. I think there's something to be said for her visions always being a misdirection. I believe the Red God will become a central element in the last books, and that he may, in fact, not be an alltogether benevolent force.

I feel Mel is causing problems for herself. She is unintentionally trying to make her 'wishes' come true, causing her to misinterpret the prophecies and her visions. For example, she wants so badly to gain Jon's trust that she is attaching visions to him that I feel have no connection to him whatsoever. Her vision of "Arya" fits perfectly.

I have never believed that R'hllor was a benevolent force. I actually don't believe there are any truly benevolent forces in the books or 'gods' for that matter. I feel that Mel's 'powers' come from magic, powders, and relentless faith. Mel may fully believe that she is getting her 'powers' from R'hllor, the people that taught her could fully believe that their powers come from R'hllor, and so forth...but that does not make it so. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

A close reading of Melisandre's "vision scene" turns up a lot of interesting points that I didn't pick up on the first (several) times around.

The visions are broken up into several sub-sections, and I think the groupings are neither random nor coincidental. The first set of visions is preceded by Melisandre thinking to herself "Show me Stannis, Lord," she prayed. "Show me your king, your instrument." She "asks" to see Stannis, R'hllor's king, and R'hllor's instrument, assuming of course that those are three descriptions of the same person. But readers know that likely isn't the case at all. What (if any) common thread unites the first set of visions? Is Melisandre being shown Stannis? R'hllor's king? R'hllor's instrument? Or none of the above?

The problem is that we don't really know how or why Mel gets specific visions---whether she sees what she subconsciously looks for, what she explicitly asks for, if she's shown completely random things, or is shown whatever an outside party wishes her to see. I think the chances of R'hllor actually showing her whatever His Divine Will wants are slim to none (as I don't think R'hllor actually exists). I think there's evidence here to say that Mel's visions don't show her what she literally asks to see---after all, she asks to see the grey girl on the dying horse, and instead gets a vision of Bloodraven and Bran. I think option #1 is probably the most likely: Melisandre sees, not what she explicitly asks to see, not what some fire god wants her to see, but what she subconsciously looks to see. (Remembering, of course, that it's entirely possible that Mel's visions don't always follow a set trigger pattern.)

Mel says that the first thing she always looks for in her fires is danger to herself, and right before the first set of visions comes, she thinks,

Many a priest and priestess before her had been brought down by false visions, by seeing what they wished to see instead of what the Lord of Light had sent. Stannis was marching south into peril, the king who carried the fate of the world upon his shoulders, Azor Ahai reborn.

I think this is key: Mel tells herself that she wants to see Stannis for the good of the world . . . but subconsciously, she seems to be looking for danger to herself. She mentions how priestesses who see false visions are brought down---Mel is afraid of being brought down, of losing her power. Stannis is marching south into peril, and Stannis is the key to her power base (since her "make Jon my minion" plan hasn't borne fruit). If Stannis falls, she falls, and I think deep down Mel is focusing on the former to mask her (far greater) fear of the latter. If we look at the first set of visions as Melisandre subconsciously looking for danger to herself and her power base, I think the visions take on some interesting potential implications:

She saw the eyeless faces again, staring out at her from sockets weeping blood. Then the towers by the sea, crumbling as the dark tide came sweeping over them, rising from the depths. Shadows in the shape of skulls, skulls that turned to mist, bodies locked together in lust, writhing and rolling and clawing. Through curtains of fire great winged shadows wheeled against a hard blue sky

1) She sees "the eyeless faces again". Why do her fires show this vision more than once (apparently)? Because the eyeless faces are about to show up (the heads are discovered later in the chapter)? Possibly, but I think it's also possible that the reason she sees the eyeless faces here is because they're a danger to her---after all, Mel didn't bother warning Jon about them until it was too late to stop the ranging. Jon seems extremely pissed off about this incident (though Mel doesn't seem to realize it), and she might be seeing the eyeless faces again because she's looking for things that will "bring her down" and her handling of the whole incident will actually serve to screw over her power at the Wall.

(Alternatively, this isn't a vision about the eyeless heads at all. Mel sees "eyeless faces", not "eyeless heads"; weirwoods of course have faces carved on them and weirwood sap resembles blood, so Mel might actually be seeing weirwood faces here. If so, that could be a hint that weirwoods are one of the first threats to her and her power base.)

2) "the towers by the sea, crumbling as the dark tide came sweeping over them, rising from the depths": Every time we've seen imagery connected to the Others, it's been couched in terms of white---white mists, White Walkers, etc. I don't think this vision has anything to do with the Others. "Towers by the sea" sounds like an excellent description of Pyke. (Interesting that, when Mel later describes this vision to Jon, she says she saw "a black and bloody tide"; yet the words "and bloody" make no appearance in the original description of the vision---is Mel embellishing here? If so, what other offscreen visions might she have added details to?) I've speculated elsewhere that the greenseers are going to call down the Hammer of the Waters on the Iron Islands, and that might be why Mel gets this particular vision: the greenseers are a threat to her, so when she looks for threats to her power, she sees an expression of the greenseers' power (the Hammer).

3) "Shadows in the shape of skulls, skulls that turned to mist, bodies locked together in lust, writhing and rolling and clawing": This, to me, is the most difficult vision to interpret. Who are the people having sex (if they are people---no mention of Mel seeing animal sex here) and why are they important? This could be a vision of vigorous sex or it could be a vision of rape. The shadows start out as skulls, transform into mist, and then Mel sees what appear to be people having sex---it's not clear if the last is separate from the first two, but they are presented as a single sentence, so it's certainly possible they're a "unit". Is this a vision of Winterfell, perhaps? The skulls turn to "mist", but it's not specified that that mist is white---and we've had rising steam from water (like the hot pools of Winterfell) described as mist before (via Brienne: "The bathhouse had been thick with the steam rising off the water, and Jaime had come walking through that mist naked as his name day, looking half a corpse and half a god"). In that case, the "skulls" might represent either the crypts beneath Winterfell (or past/future Stark greenseers), and the skulls "becoming" mist would refer to how the "skulls" (the crypts) and the "mist" (the hot springs) derive from the same place---beneath the castle. The sex might be a vision of Bael the Bard and the Stark daughter---a visual representation of the idea of an alliance between the Starks and the wildlings? I do think it's likely that the Northmen and the wildlings will unite to bring down Mel. (Alternatively, it might be a vision of Jeyne being raped by Ramsay.)

It could refer to the Others (given their association with mist), and skulls are present in Bloodraven's cave---is this a hint toward a connection, or maybe a future alliance, between the greenseers and the Others? Is the sex vision a reference to a marriage alliance (Sigorn/Alys, maybe, or even a potential future human/Other marriage alliance?) A reference to Mel draining Stannis, via sex, to make her shadow babies (will this come back to bite her, either because the weakened Stannis dies more easily than he would otherwise, or because the shadow baby incidents somehow lead to Mel's downfall in another way)?

4) "Through curtains of fire great winged shadows wheeled against a hard blue sky": I know the common interpretation is that these are the dragons, but I'm not so sure. One thing we know about shadows is that they're frequently distorted, size-wise: small creatures can cast very large shadows. And Mel spent a significant amount of time on Dragonstone, literally surrounded by visual depictions of dragons---but she never says these shadows look like dragons---they're just "great winged shadows". So maybe they're not dragons at all: maybe they're birds? Like, for example, Bloodraven's ravens? (They appear larger than they physically are because we only see their shadows.) And the juxtaposition between the "winged shadows" and "curtains" is particularly interesting because of what happened during Bran's Dream Journey to the Heart of Winter (which began with the 3-Eyed-Crow trying to teach him how to fly---how to become a bird):

North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.

She sees the winged shapes through curtains of fire, and it's not clear if the curtains are actually made of fire in the vision or if the "fire" part is simply a reference to the fact that she's seeing "curtains" in her fires. (Even if the former is true, I can see how Mel would see a curtain of light and assume the light must be fire.) The point might have nothing to do with dragons and everything to do with Bloodraven (and/or Bran) and the curtain that surrounds the Heart of Winter. And the term "hard blue sky" might itself be a clue, because as far as I can tell, it's used to describe the sky on four different occasions in two different parts of the world. The first time, it's when Drogo's khalasar attacks Ogo's khalasar and the Lamb Men. But the other three times the term is used, it's used to describe areas in the north of Westeros:

The Wall wept and the sun crept across a hard blue sky.

At the Nightfort,

The morning was cold but bright, the sun shining down from a hard blue sky, but [bran] did not like the noises.

And beyond the Wall,

They burned Qhorin Halfhand where he'd fallen, on a pyre made of pine needles, brush, and broken branches. Some of the wood was still green, and it burned slow and smoky, sending a black plume up into the bright hard blue of the sky.

Three of the four times the term "hard blue sky" is used prior to its appearance in Melisandre's vision, it's been in reference to the north of Westeros---twice for the sky above the Wall, once for the area north of the Wall. This might be meaningless, of course, but then again, the word choice might be a hint.

So basically, the first set of visions could actually represent the primary dangers to Melisandre's power at the Wall: 1) The eyeless heads sent (presumably) by the Weeper which make Jon pissed at her (or weirwood faces in general); 2) the power of the greenseers (as represented by the Hammer of the Waters), 3) Winterfell and sex as a threat (either via rape, a marriage alliance, or Mel's own succubus actions) 4) what lies in the Heart of Winter and its connection to the greenseers.

(Taken as a set, I don't see how these visions could reference Dany, as she has no connection to any eyeless faces, or Stannis, as none of these seem particularly Stannis-centric. The idea of them showing Jon as Azor Ahai, while possible, runs into some roadblocks when you look at the actual form of the visions: the eyeless faces, for example, piss Jon off---but they don't represent him. You could argue that they're important to Melisandre as they relate to him, though.)

After this set of visions, Mel thinks about how she wants to see "The girl. I must find the girl again, the grey girl on the dying horse." (Interesting that she's only seen that vision once, while the "eyeless faces" vision apparently comes to her more than once.) I think the important part here is why she wants to see the grey girl: because "Jon Snow would expect that of her, and soon." The whole point of this is so that she can use information about Jon Snow's sibling to start controlling him as she does Stannis. But instead of Jon's sister, she sees Jon's brother:

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 wolf’s face threw back his head and howled.

First, it's interesting that when she spots Bloodraven, her first instinct is to think that she's seeing Stannis. Why? Though Bloodraven and Stannis are distantly related (and Stannis echoes Bloodraven's nephew Maekar Targaryen in so many ways), Mel says Bloodraven does not have Stannis's features. It could be a hint that Bloodraven is tied to the destiny that Mel assumes is reserved for Stannis---I've speculated elsewhere that Bloodraven is the dragon that will be woken from stone (his personal sigil is a dragon and he's hanging out in a stone cave).

And second, she wants to see one sibling in order to manipulate him, and instead, sees a different (even more powerful) sibling who "howls". Is he howling at her? Mel has made it her calling to attack the Old Gods, and when she looks for a way to get her claws into Jon, two representatives of the Old Gods show up instead. I think it's possible that Bran and Bloodraven show up in this vision (instead of the real Arya, or one of Jon's other siblings---hell, even the "grey girl" vision Mel wanted to see in the first place) specifically because Mel is trying to manipulate Jon, and it's time for an Old Gods smackdown. Because immediately after seeing Bran and Bloodraven in the fires, some interesting things start happening to her:

The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover’s hand. Strange voices called to her from days long past. “Melony,” she heard a woman cry. A man’s voice called, "Lot Seven." She was weeping, and her tears were flame. And still she drank it in.

Let's not forget that Melisandre is the same person who almost burned alive because of Rattleshirt's pyre because 1) she didn't know the consequences of her own damn spell and 2) fire can absolutely burn her. I don't think it's a coincidence that her ecstatic ruminations on the fire (which, coincidentally, remind me of Dany's fire-based delusions), and her sexualization of the fire, only start after Bloodraven and Bran appear. In seeking a way to manipulate Jon, did Melisandre find herself being magically manipulated instead? Are they trying to teach her a lesson which just goes completely over her deluded head? Let's not forget how frequently Mel tries to sexually manipulate people---is she getting a taste of her own medicine here? When she sees Bran and Bloodraven, two things happen: first, she starts waxing poetic about how she's totally experiencing (and reveling in) the power of the fire . . . and she starts hearing echoes of her past sale as a slave. The implication seems clear: while she's reveling in her supposed power, she's being reminded (or would be, if she was more observant) that she's still a slave. She thinks she's in control, that she's powerful----but she isn't. It's like she's being hijacked here, power-wise, because she sees Bran/Bloodraven, starts experiencing a level of fire-based power which she wasn't experiencing prior to this, all while simultaneously being reminded that she's not really powerful. And, of course, this is when she starts experiencing some unsolicited visions:

Snowflakes swirled from a dark sky and ashes rose to meet them, the grey and the white whirling around each other as flaming arrows arced above a wooden wall and dead things shambled silent through the cold, beneath a great grey cliff where fires burned inside a hundred caves. Then the wind rose and the white mist came sweeping in, impossibly cold, and one by one the fires went out. Afterward only the skulls remained.

Death, thought Melisandre. The skulls are death.

The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half-seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was a man, now a wolf, now a man again. But the skulls were here as well, the skulls were all around him. Melisandre had seen his danger before, had tried to warn the boy of it. Enemies all around him, daggers in the dark.

Melisandre does not seek out or in any way ask for these visions. I think their placement heavily implies Bloodraven's involvement, and it's interesting to examine them in that context. The description of the first vision sounds quite a bit like what we assume Hardhome looks like: dead things shambling ("dead things", not "dead people" or "dead animals"---"dead things" is the same term Cotter Pyke will later use in his letter from Hardhome), fires in caves, flaming arrows (presumably being used against the "dead things"). Cotter Pyke might have beached his ships to make the "wooden wall" that Mel sees here, or the people at Hardhome might have cut down trees to do it themselves. But the implication of Hardhome, if this indeed is Hardhome, would logically be to give Mel a glimpse of the stakes: Mel has never seen a single wight, never encountered a single Other, and thousands of people are dying (and from Mel's perspective, will be dying) at Hardhome. If this vision is Bloodraven's work, he's making her look petty. She's trying to manipulate a teenager to make herself feel powerful, and he's showing her what's really important here.

Do the skulls in this vision represent wights? Possibly. But look at that section again:

. . . [D]ead things shambled silent through the cold, beneath a great grey cliff where fires burned inside a hundred caves. Then the wind rose and the white mist came sweeping in, impossibly cold, and one by one the fires went out. Afterward only the skulls remained.

Presumably the shambling "dead things" represent wights---but if the point of this vision is to show the fires going out and only wights remaining, then why would the vision switch the imagery from "shambling dead things" in one sentence to "skulls" in the next sentence, if in fact they represent the same thing? That seems weird to me. I could see "skulls" representing wights if the vision hadn't already shown a much clearer representation of wights (shambling dead things) in the immediately preceding sentence . . . but I think that juxtaposition could very easily be a hint that the "skulls" here aren't actually representing wights. Mel's first instinct is to claim that the skulls represent death, and I don't think readers are supposed to assume her interpretation is necessarily correct.

So what could the skulls represent? Skulls are prominently displayed in Bloodraven's cave, a place where multiple greenseers sit entombed; Bran was never told why those skulls were those, but if they are important in some way to the greenseers, it's possible that the skulls in Mel's vision could actually represent greenseer power. If that's true, then the "skulls" surrounding Jon and the skulls found in the caves after the white mist comes in and the fires die could actually indicate greenseer interference (i.e., Mel sees the skulls in places where greenseer power will manifest in the future, so she's seeing skulls around Jon because of a future connection to the greenseers---the same with the skulls she claims to see, elsewhere, around Patchface). That could have interesting implications for Hardhome, if this is indeed Hardhome: the white mists (Others) come in, the fires die, but at the end the skulls remain. Is this a vision telling Mel that the greenseers have power to combat the Others, and will do so at Hardhome?

For that matter, skulls have been repeatedly associated with the destruction of the wights:

It was the face that haunted him most; surrounded by a nimbus of fire, hair blazing like straw, the dead flesh melting away and sloughing off its skull to reveal the gleam of bone beneath.

This is Jon's memory of what happened when he set the wight on fire in the Lord Commander's Tower. When the eyeless heads are found,

To the men struggling with the spears Snow said, "Take the heads and burn them. Leave nothing but bare bone."

In other words, transform those heads into skulls. If skulls, objects found in the greenseers' cave, represent the destruction of wights, the implication of this vision would be to point out that, hey, Bloodraven and Bran represent the power defeating the wights at Hardhome. But Melisandre doesn't seem to understand anything she's really seeing. We know that later on she'll refuse to help Jon gain support for the mission to Hardhome---did she realize later this vision was Hardhome and (possibly) misinterpret it? Or is the point that she's being flat-out shown the greenseers' power vis a vis the wights and is simply unable to recognize that?

Immediately after looking at the skulls and telling herself they must mean death, Mel hears "the whispered name Jon Snow" in the crackling flames. Which is kind of odd, given that none of her other visions have names attached (the closest being when Mel hears her own name in the vision/memory of her sale as a child slave), and given that she sees Jon's actual face here, why bother with the name? I wonder if the point is that she's actually being shown this set of visions by Bloodraven, and Bloodraven is getting kind of disgusted here. As in, she's looked at the skulls and misinterpreted them, so for the next vision, he makes sure to spell out exactly who the fuck it's referring to because he thinks she's so incredibly stupid that there's a reasonable chance that she'll see the face of someone she's frequently seen and could actually assume it's someone else (like the inverse of her misinterpretation of the "towers by the sea" vision). (And actually, I wonder if verbal cues, possibly via interference from Bloodraven, could explain how Melisandre apparently successfully interpreted visions of the deaths of the other kings for her leech project---maybe she saw their deaths and Bloodraven whispered "Balon Greyjoy" over Balon's death, "Robb Stark" over Robb Stark's death, etc., etc., and that's why she was right about those when she's right about so little else?) It would be kind of awesome if Bloodraven is treating Mel like a mentally challenged child, vision-wise.

Two things that I find really interesting are the fact that Melisandre shows no interest in the "white mist" she sees (does she even know it connotes the Others? She was supposedly questioning wildlings before they came through the Wall, and the "white mist" thing isn't exactly a secret), instead focusing on Jon---as well as the fact that "daggers in the dark" do not actually appear in this vision set at all. Mel sees skulls around Jon and seems to refer back to a previous "daggers in the dark" vision she's had offscreen, but that doesn't mean the two visions really are the same. (Though I wonder if the reason she's so keen on Jon keeping Ghost with him is because of this vision---she sees him becoming a wolf, and assumes that means the wolf is supposed to physically protect him, rather than seeing it as a hint toward warging?) Though it's worth noting that Mel never specifies the color of the wolf Jon becomes. It might be white, of course, and she just didn't mention it . . . but if it was grey, that would have totally different connotations (Jon taking over House Stark, for example).

He would not listen.

Unbelievers never listened until it was too late.

I think the readership is supposed to take away from this is that Mel herself is the "unbeliever" who just won't listen. (Poor Bloodraven might very well be facepalming in his cave.) She's shown the true danger to her power, and she fails to comprehend it. She's shown true power, and she misinterprets it. She's physically reminded that she doesn't actually control fire-based power (again, she's a slave!) and her reaction is to revel in how totally powerful she is. She's shown the true danger, the Others, and she never seems to even realize it. Her vision of Jon Snow comes long after she's looked for Stannis/R'hllor's Instrument/Azor Ahai and long after she's supposedly stopped looking for that trio and started looking for the grey girl on the dying horse, but she still feels comfortable telling herself:

Yet now she could not even seem to find her king. I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R’hllor shows me only Snow.

The set of visions does indeed start with her praying, and end with a vision of Jon Snow. But quite a bit happens between the former and the latter, and Jon Snow's image doesn't show up when Mel actually asks to see R'hllor's instrument/king/etc. (even if she was subconsciously asking to see AA reborn in the very beginning---and we don't even know if AA reborn and R'hllor's instrument/king are the same thing---as I stated, I think there's reason to believe that that's not really what she was looking for there)---it shows up after literal visions of Bloodraven and Bran, and after the vision of what looks like Hardhome. This might actually be evidence that the whole AA prophecy has nothing to do with what's going on at the Wall at all. And the fact that Mel doesn't seem to recognize the various implications of the wide spectrum of visions she's just experienced could be taken as evidence of just how ignorant she really is: she's so obsessed with Azor Ahai, with the idea of her own specialness and power, that she either can't or won't acknowledge the breadth of what's really going on at the Wall.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@tze

Good post as always

Good catch with the skulls, considering Mel herself said "the bones remember." As for the ships, I also thought that their timber went into the wall, probably after the ships were run aground. CotF were known to dwell in caves, and the caves at Hardhome might have been the home of CotF with their warding spells still being active in the caves, keeping wights away.

The skulls around Jon indicate that while he's out, he will receive a visit from BR and possibly Bran, like Bloodraven visited Bran while he was in a coma.

Her "tears were flame" could indicate what she was at the Red Temple where slaves are marked by tattoos. Tears tattoos are used to mark slave prostitutes while flame tattoos are used to mark members of the Red Temple. Mel's tattoo, tears of flame, means that she was a temple prostitute. She tells Davos that she has skills in bed in ASoS: "I could give pleasure such as you have never known", and she probably works those skills on Stannis.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In addition, I think looking at Melisandre's actual thought process (and actual vision process) could give us some hints as to why Mel latched onto Stannis as Azor Ahai reborn in the first place (when it seems so blindingly obvious that he isn't). The implication might be that, way back when Mel joined up with Stannis, she wasn't really (at least, subconsciously) looking for a prophesied hero---she was looking for someone who would raise her up and grant her political power. Stannis was the person who would do just that, and that might be why she (presumably) saw him in her fires (he appeared in her fires because he was a route to personal power, not because he was in any way tied to the prophecy). But as she couldn't admit to herself that she was really only selfishly looking for personal power, she instead told herself it was All About The Prophecy---and that's why she never seems to have a problem forcing the prophecy to "fit" Stannis in such bizarre ways (making him a fake Lightbringer, ignoring the lack of "dragons woken from stone", Stannis not being actually born in a place of smoke and salt, etc.). Stannis "has" to fit the prophecy because otherwise, Mel might have to face up to the fact that she's working to benefit only herself, never "the world", and she simply can't accept that. In fact, Melisandre might never once have actually gotten a vision of AA reborn in her fires, because deep down she really cares about herself, not "the world", and if she's only been capable of looking in her fires for things and people that affect her personal power, there's no reason for AA to show up there in the first place (unless AA ends up posing a threat to her life or her power base, of course).

So if Jon turns out to be Azor Ahai reborn, Mel's "I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R’hllor shows me only Snow" statement would then definitely be foreshadowing that reveal, but would not necessarily serve as proof that her fires have ever actually been showing him to be Azor Ahai. Because the whole point would be that she isn't, and deep down never really was, looking for AA in her fires at all.

Her "tears were flame" could indicate what she was at the Red Temple where slaves are marked by tattoos. Tears tattoos are used to mark slave prostitutes while flame tattoos are used to mark members of the Red Temple. Mel's tattoo, tears of flame, means that she was a temple prostitute. She tells Davos that she has skills in bed in ASoS: "I could give pleasure such as you have never known", and she probably works those skills on Stannis.

Excellent point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Does she actually see Skulls and Daggers surrounding him at the same time? Or are they two seperate visions? I got the impression that they are separate. If so, then I believe her vision of him surrounded by daggers does represent his assassination. She got that part right imo.

This vision I think represents his resurrection. Going off you're idea that Mel's visions are literal, I believe that they will try to burn Jon's body. That's why she sees his face limned in tongues of fire. I think the Skulls will come from his funeral pyre raging out control (this is initiated by someone, BR or perhaps even Mel) killing many of the people at Castle Black. Their deaths will pay for Jon's life, and when Jon "wakes up" he will find himself surrounded by their (burnt) skulls.

Shireen had a vision of a dragon eating her, no? If she dies in said fire, then her dream of being eaten by a dragon (Jon) will have come true I'd think...

Much like Dany a true Targ cannot be burnt by fire :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tze and Fireeater - great posts!

About the last Tze post - I've always had the feeling that Melisandre is more interested in the Game of Thrones, rahter than the Game of ice and fire (either consciously or subconsciously). Great point about the fires burnng in a hundred caves - maybe these are CotF "bases" that either have remnants of the warding spells, or somehow will get warded with Bran/BR's help (fire here as a known means to repel and fight wights).

Also, I wanted to point out about the dragons out of stone - from how she speaks about it, I never thought that she really believes she can do it and this is real. This means that either A - she misinterpreted again (unlikely IMO, she would have been more confident and detailed oriented about the whole thing), she herself is speaking figuratively, or she is outright lying.

In her POV, has she thought about waking dragons from stone even once (I don't think so, but please point me if I am wrong). And another thing - she burned "Mance" - why is nobody like, "Okayn here is your king sacrifice, where the hell are the dragons?". Was there some explanation to this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tze, your ability to find the right connections within the text and apply both intuitive and logical analysis to elucidate the murkiest of passages never ceases to amaze me. I had considered her burning reaction as a result of Bloodraven's appearance but wasn't able to make anything meaningful of it. You not only made sense of it but placed it in a cohesive context with both the vision as a whole and her entire character and history. Wonderfully done.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@tze

To add to what you said, along with Mel's past history as a temple prostitute. She may be devout and thinking she is trying to save the world, but in the end she is little different from Cersei and Shae, or Lord Tytos's mistress. Shae was a prostitute who wanted advancement; a wealthy and powerful man to take care of her while Mel has similar motives for Stannis. Cersei isn't above doing anything to advance her goals, even killing children, to which Mel proves no different when she tries to sacrifice Edric Storm, and both used sex to manipulate men while surrounding themselves with "yes men". Lord Tytos's mistress held a lot of sway over Tytos, and through him she held power at Casterly Rock, while Mel derives her power through Stannis, and holds power as a trusted advisor.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Also this may have been brought up before, but Jon's dream about an attack on the Wall:

It was Robb before him now, his hair wet with melting snow. Longclaw took his head off. Then a gnarled hand seized Jon roughly by the shoulder.

As Blisscraft noted, gnarled is an interesting word to use as it relates to trees. BR is trying to contact Jon, and the skulls around Jon are indicative of that.

Jon will meet Bloodraven in his dream while he is in a coma. Bloodraven may reveal some things to Jon about the Others or Jon may see things relating to his parentage and destiny.

ACoK Jon VII:

Off in the darkness a shadowcat screamed in fury, it's voice bouncing off the rocks so it seemed as though a dozen other 'cats were giving answer. Once Jon thought he saw a pair of glowing eyes on a ledge overhead, as big as harvest moons.

ADwD Bran III:

Their [CotF] eyes were big too, great golden cat's eyes that could see down passages where a boy's eyes saw only darkness.

BR must have been keeping tabs on all the Stark children for a while. He probably had a CotF follow and watch Jon while he was in the Skirling Pass as evidenced by the pair of eyes Jon saw.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Does she actually see Skulls and Daggers surrounding him at the same time? Or are they two seperate visions? I got the impression that they are separate. If so, then I believe her vision of him surrounded by daggers does represent his assassination. She got that part right imo.

This vision I think represents his resurrection. Going off you're idea that Mel's visions are literal, I believe that they will try to burn Jon's body. That's why she sees his face limned in tongues of fire. I think the Skulls will come from his funeral pyre raging out control (this is initiated by someone, BR or perhaps even Mel) killing many of the people at Castle Black. Their deaths will pay for Jon's life, and when Jon "wakes up" he will find himself surrounded by their (burnt) skulls.

Shireen had a vision of a dragon eating her, no? If she dies in said fire, then her dream of being eaten by a dragon (Jon) will have come true I'd think...

I really hope this happens.. it would be really badass if Jon were just to walk out of his own funeral pyre

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I must say that there are for sure some pretty cool idea out here...however I also believe that it's possible to read too much into certain subtleties that may be a bit forced...

I tend to believe that Mel genuinely wants to help, and believes that she is the best person for the job...she fore doesn't lack in confidence. I also think we can all agree that she isn't nearly as good as she believes herself to be...however her visions to come true, and when they don't it is because of her misinterpretation. Secondly, I think throughout the series we see that the Gods do whatever must be done in order to get certain people into certain positions so that they are ab;e to fulfill their destinies...Mel is at the wall for a reason, and until Davos convinced Stannis to go to the wall, no one saw her ever linking up with jon snow...but she is there via Stannis, and is in a position now to help Jon who may be the true hero she ahs been searching for...

And in regards to her vision of caves, i'm pretty sure that's hardhome and the wildlings...the two bodies together having sex is dany and daario, and the dragon is dany's balerion or whatever his name is...It's just like when she see's the towers but has no idea what the heck it is...the visions arn't based on her knowledge, they are based on relavent future events. She see's what she see's, and then tries to make sense of it as best she can...but it's hard to connect dots without a context...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

If Mel is a thrall, who can her secret master be? Thoros of Myr was sent to convert fire-obsessed Aerys to Red Religion. That he failed but he appears to be an exact match for Robert in drinking, melee fight, probably whoring too.



Is it possible that the one who sent Thoros saw the future and sent him specifically for Robert Baratheon? Then, is it possible that he/she realized that he/she got the wrong Baratheon and sent Mel with that enslaving ruby necklace to Stannis this time? Mel is fine-tuned for Stannis just like Thoros was fine-tuned for Robert.



If Mel thinks that the signs point a Baratheon, other people might consider another Baratheon too.


Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...