HERESY 50

[Black Crow]

Seven Hells! These threads are running fast...

Thanks to all of you, who gave my brain the necessary wheatstones.

Some thoughts about the Walker's armour beeing a glamour or a kind of stealt-armour - my guess is still the latter.

The glamour of the red lot seems to cover the whole body (mel appears young but is most likely very old, no slave-tattoos are seen), the Walkers are described as having milk-white skin, only their armour seems to change colour while moving.

These shifting patterns resembles me suspiciously at Valyrian Steel - which is spell-forged steel.

Could this armour be a kind of equivalent of valyrian steel? A kind of "spell-forged" ice?

Nah, I'm still in favour of a glamour, but rather that its working differently from Mel and Moquorro's. They are using a glamour in plain sight to hide their true appearance, which to judge by Victarion's arm will be something not unlike a roasted hog. Craster's boys on the other hand are using glamours to hide themselves entirely, uncloaking only for combat, presumably because sustaining the glamour is hard work.

[The Chequered Raven]

Could it be a combination of both?

Wearing a kind of armour (something really existent) for battle - piercible only by Obsidian and "Dragonsteel" (whatever this may be...), and also using a glamour to make themselves invisible if needet. Something like the "Cloak of invisibly" of Alberich in Richard Wagners "Niebelungenlied", but created by magic.

[Bran Vras]

Some of you might have come across an extensive study of the late Winterfell chapters, already mentioned by redriver in his thread Winter fell. Black Crow has solicited me to reproduce some of the ideas for the 50th edition of his Heresies. I have tried to do my best in my choice of an excerpt. Perhaps other parts would be of interest as well (see the table of contents, in particular the prologue).

I left the board a year ago and don't plan to resume being a regular participant here. Hence this is going to be a single contribution. (However I am interested in feedback on my project, for those who don't mind a long read.)

I reread the post that initiated all the brain storming. At its root the Heresy project attempts to answer a central question: What were the original purposes of the Wall and of the Watch?

Here are a few interesting bits about old traditions for getting rid of unwanted children in Westeros.

Here are Davos and Lord Godric.

“When there were kings on the Sisters, we did not suffer dwarfs to live. We cast them all into the sea, as an offering to the gods. The septons made us stop that. A pack of pious fools. Why would the gods give a man such a shape but to mark him as a monster?”

(Davos I, ADwD)

So giving unwanted children as offering to the gods was once a common practice, later abolished by the church of the Seven.

Here is Tyrion thinking about the Westerlands.

The countryside had no grotesqueries or mummer shows ... though it did have wells aplenty, to swallow up unwanted kittens, three-headed calves, and babes like him.

(Tyrion II, ADwD)

He invents a little story for Duck.

“You are not the first to try and drown me,” he told Duck, as he was pouring river water from his boot. “My father threw me down a well the day I was born, but I was so ugly that the water witch who lived down there spat me back.”

(Tyrion IV, ADwD)

I suspect there is a continuity from the practices of offering children to the gods of the sea and to the custom of throwing malformed babies and bastards into wells.

Here is now Roose Bolton about Ramsay's birth.

A year later this same wench had the impudence to turn up at the Dreadfort with a squalling, red-faced monster that she claimed was my own get. I should’ve had the mother whipped and thrown her child down a well.

(Reek III, ADwD)

Why is Ramsay undesirable? Is it because he is a bastard born of the Lord's right to the First Night? The notion of throwing such a child down a well seems natural to Roose. But which well? After all, nobody wants to drink corpse water.

Let's turn to the Nightfort. The most remarkable building there is, in my opinion, the kitchen.

The Reeds decided that they would sleep in the kitchens, a stone octagon with a broken Dorne. it looked to offer better shelter than most of the other buildings, even though a crooked weirwood had burst up through the slate floor beside the huge central well, stretching slantwise toward the hole in the roof, its bone-white branches reaching for the sun. It was a queer kind of tree, skinnier than any other weirwood that Bran had ever seen and faceless as well, but it made him feel as if the old gods were with him here, at least.

That was the only thing he liked about the kitchens, though. The roof was mostly there, so they’d be dry if it rained again, but he didn’t think they would ever get warm here. You could feel the cold seeping up through the slate floor. Bran did not like the shadows either, or the huge brick ovens that surrounded them like open mouths, or the rusted meat hooks, or the scars and stains he saw in the butcher’s block along one wall. That was where the Rat Cook chopped the prince to pieces, he knew, and he baked the pie in one of these ovens.

The well was the thing he liked the least, though. It was a good twelve feet across, all stone, with steps built into its side, circling down and down into darkness. The walls were damp and covered with niter, but none of them could see the water at the bottom, not even Meera with her sharp hunter’s eyes. “Maybe it doesn’t have a bottom,” Bran said uncertainly.

(Bran IV, ASoS)

We'll return to the design of the kitchen later. Let's turn now to the well inside. The stair inside leads to the Black Gate. It's said that the Nightfort is the oldest castle on the Wall. It might even predate the Wall. It's likely that the Black Gate had once been used to communicate with the other side before the various tunnels were digged.

Some of the little legends attached to the Nightfort are dark stories about the death of a son: the seventy nine sentinels (Lord Ryswell burying his own son in the ice of the Wall), the Rat Cook (who has served to the Andal King his own son). Most interesting is the story of Night's King.

The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another of Old Nan’s stories, the tale of Night’s King. He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night’s Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. “And that was the fault in him,” she would add, “for all men must know fear.” A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.

He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night’s King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night’s King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.

“Some say he was a Bolton,” Old Nan would always end. “Some say a Magnar out of Skagos, some say Umber, Flint, or Norrey. Some would have you think he was a Woodfoot, from them who ruled Bear Island before the ironmen came. He never was. He was a Stark, the brother of the man who brought him down.” She always pinched Bran on the nose then, he would never forget it. “He was a Stark of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his name was Brandon. Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very room.”

(Bran IV, ASoS)

We don't know what was sacrificed to the Others. But, under all likehood, the sacrifices were offered through the Black Gate. A most interesting detail concerns the list of possible origins for Night's King according to Old Nan (Bolton, Skagos, Umber, Flint, Norrey, Woodfoot, Stark). Let's return to Roose Bolton and his account of the First Night custom.

The maesters will tell you that King Jaehaerys abolished the lord’s right to the first night to appease his shrewish queen, but where the old gods rule, old customs linger. The Umbers keep the first night too, deny it as they may. Certain of the mountain clans as well, and on Skagos ... well, only heart trees ever see half of what they do on Skagos.

(Reek III, ADwD)

The lists match, if one considers that House Woodfoot is extinct and we accept that the certain mountain clans designate Norrey and Flint. Of course the coincidence proves nothing, but it is quite suggestive.

Perhaps it's worthwile to mention a remark made by Ronnel Harclay (Harclay is a mountain clan).

“His roof, his rule,” the ranger Ronnel Harclay had reminded them. “Craster’s a friend to the Watch.”

(Samwell II, ASoS)

Two remarks about Old Nan's list of suspects (Woodfoot, Bolton, Umber, Flint, Norrey, Skagos, and Stark):

• These houses are precisely those who reside at the closest proximity to the Wall, and suffer the most from winter.
  
• Many of them do not have maesters or have difficulties with maesters.
  

So there seems to be a relation between: the First Night, sacrifices of unwanted children and the Nightfort. One wonders if the practice of the First Night was not, in fact, a way of producing children to be sacrificed to the gods, through the Black Gate. Had Roose the well of the Nightfort in mind when he considered throwing Ramsay?

Perhaps the most important conclusion to be drawn from this analysis, is that Bran's story is exactly the story of a crippled child sacrified at the Black Gate. Sam officiated the sacrifice by opening the gate, like brothers of the Watch used to do in the old days. Coldhands took the offering like he might have done so many times in the past. Moreover Bran was King in the north at the time he passed the gate.

Recall how many northmen thought Bran should have given up on life.

Harrion Karstark, the oldest of Lord Rickard’s sons, bowed, and his brothers after him, yet as they settled back in their places he heard the younger two talking in low voices, over the clatter of wine cups. I’ll... sooner die than live like that,” muttered one, his father’s namesake Eddard, and his brother Torrhen said likely the boy was broken inside as well as out, too craven to take his own life.

(Bran VI, AGoT)

It's interesting that the opinion comes from the Karstark household. It is tempting to see in the Karstarks an echo of what the Starks were before the branches separated, a thousand years ago. However House Karstark is not rumored to continue the custom of the first night. This seems confirmed by the choice of the name of the daughter of the house: Alys (which seems to refer to queen Alysanne).

The notion that unneeded mouthes are unwelcome in the north are stressed several times. Old people go "hunting" in winter.

But the Nightfort has been closed for two hundred years. Let's recall the circumstances:

“Twice as old as Castle Black,” Bran said, remembering. “It was the first castle on the Wall, and the largest.” But it had also been the first abandoned, all the way back in the time of the Old King. Even then it had been three-quarters empty and too costly to maintain. Good Queen Alysanne had suggested that the Watch replace it with a smaller, newer castle at a spot only seven miles east, where the Wall curved along the shore of a beautiful green lake. Deep Lake had been paid for by the queen’s jewels and built by the men the Old King had sent north, and the black brothers had abandoned the Nightfort to the rats.

(Bran IV, ASoS)

The Old King Jaehaerys brought a long peace to the seven kingdoms thanks to an agreement with the Church of the Seven and the governance of his Hand, Septon Barth. Barth is a fascinating character. Whatever role he played in the reform of the north is unclear. I suspect he was himself a northman. In any case, not long after Barth's tenure as Hand, a lord Stark was named Barth, as Bran saw in the crypts.

When the shadows moved, it looked for an instant as if the dead were rising as well. Lyanna and Brandon, Lord Rickard Stark their father, Lord Edwyle his father, Lord Willam and his brother Artos the Implacable, Lord Donnor and Lord Beron and Lord Rodwell, one-eyed Lord jonnel, Lord Barth and Lord Brandon and Lord Cregan who had fought the Dragonknight. On their stone chairs they sat with stone wolves at their feet. This was where they came when the warmth had seeped out of their bodies; this was the dark hall of the dead, where the living feared to tread.

(Bran VII, ACoK)

So Barth Stark was a brother of Cregan Stark, himself a contemporary of the Dragonknight, brother of Aegon the Unworthy, and born around one hundred and sixty years ago. Tyrion recalls that Barth's tenure gave the realm forty years of peace. So it's likely that Barth was still Hand of the King at the end of Jaehaerys' reign.

Queen Alysanne has played a major role in the reform of the Night's Watch. The visit of the royal couple, with half the court and six dragons seems like an intimidation. Jaehaerys and Alysanne (and probably Barth as well) appear to have been close to the church of the Seven, since a peace was reached between the militant orders and the Iron Throne during their reign. So the abolition of the First Night in the north fits well with the abolition of child sacrifices by the sistermen.

It's interesting to look at a few details of the Nightfort. First, the story of the rat cook involves explicitly the Andal King (I don't know whether the definite article has a meaning here. If it has one, it might refer to the King who led the Andals to Westeros.) The story might encapsulate well the horrors of the Nighfort for the Andals.

Now let's look at the kitchen.

There were trees growing where the stables had been, and a twisted white weirwood pushing up through the gaping hole in the roof of the burned kitchen.

(Bran IV, ASoS)

And later.

The Reeds decided that they would sleep in the kitchens, a stone octagon with a broken Dorne. it looked to offer better shelter than most of the other buildings, even though a crooked weirwood had burst up through the slate floor beside the huge central well, stretching slantwise toward the hole in the roof, its bone-white branches reaching for the sun. It was a queer kind of tree, skinnier than any other weirwood that Bran had ever seen and faceless as well, but it made him feel as if the old gods were with him here, at least.

That was the only thing he liked about the kitchens, though. The roof was mostly there, so they’d be dry if it rained again, but he didn’t think they would ever get warm here. You could feel the cold seeping up through the slate floor. Bran did not like the shadows either, or the huge brick ovens that surrounded them like open mouths, or the rusted meat hooks, or the scars and stains he saw in the butcher’s block along one wall. That was where the Rat Cook chopped the prince to pieces, he knew, and he baked the pie in one of these ovens.

The well was the thing he liked the least, though. It was a good twelve feet across, all stone, with steps built into its side, circling down and down into darkness. The walls were damp and covered with niter, but none of them could see the water at the bottom, not even Meera with her sharp hunter’s eyes. “Maybe it doesn’t have a bottom,” Bran said uncertainly.

(Bran IV, ASoS)

The design of the kitchen is odd. Why would the well be in the middle of it? Why would the Black Gate arrive in a kitchen? The kitchen has a dome, a very rare feature in Westeros. (They are to be found at the Citadel, in the Dragonvault in King's Landing, at tower of the Sun, in Sunspear, and in certain septs. Domes are more common across the Narrow Sea.) So, in Westeros, a dome indicates a building of an extraordinary nature or a sept.

A sept would have a dome and seven sides. But the kichen has eight side, seemingly a blasphem for the septons (and by extension the Old King etc). And the Nightfort had no sept, indicating thus that followers of the Faith of the Seven did not accomplish their Watch at the Nightfort.

At this point, I understand the dark practices as a mean to repeal or appease the forces of Winter.

If the sacrifices stopped two hundred years ago, there must have been some retribution for the north. I can see two.

I suppose that at that point men like Craster began to emerge, and they were tolerated, even supported, by the Watch. Here is Mormont, who has respect and even deference for Craster.

“You think I ought to stop him. Kill him if need be.” The

Old Bear sighed. “Were it only that he wished to rid himself of some mouths, I’d gladly send Yoren or Conwys to collect the boys. We could raise them to the black and the Watch would be that much the stronger. But the wildlings serve crueler gods than you or I. These boys are Craster’s offerings. His prayers, if you will.”

(Jon III, ACoK)

Craster seems well respected by the rangers.

Thoren Smallwood swore that Craster was a friend to the Watch, despite his unsavory reputation. “The man’s half-mad, I won’t deny it,” he’d told the Old Bear, “but you’d be the same if you’d spent your life in this cursed wood. Even so, he’s never turned a ranger away from his fire, nor does he love Mance Rayder. He’ll give us good counsel.”

(Jon III, ACoK)

In the first chapter of the book we read.

Theon Greyjoy said, “There’s not been a direwolf sighted south of the Wall in two hundred years.”

(Bran I, AGoT)

Alysanne's reform happened at about the same time than the disappearance of direwolves south of the Wall. In the crypts, all statues of the Lords and Kings of Winterfell were represented in company of direwolves. We can guess that direwolves stopped coming to the Lords of Winterfell as a mark of a loss of support from some force beyond the Wall. Two hundred years is also Leaf's age. What did Leaf do south of the Wall during those years?

[A somewhat related idea is discussed in this thread by Dr Pepper.]

No castle on the Wall has a godswood, especially not a weirwood. Indeed the brothers who follow the old gods need to go beyond the Wall to say theirs vows. Considering that all castles in Westeros have a godswood, and most places in the north have a weirwood as heart tree, how is it that the old gods are absent from the Wall? There is a sept at Castle Black. I guess that the magic of the Wall prevents weirwoods to grow near the castles… except in the kitchen of the Nightfort. As if the kitchen were a sanctuary. That would make sense since the well in the kitchen leads to a weirwood door, obviously the magic of the Wall does not quite apply in this special passage.

[Harlan]

If we keep up the current rate of a 20 page thread every week - this time next year, just in time for Season 4

I bet the thread will begin to move even faster in the future. I`ll go through the old threads to see if i can get an accurate growth rate.

Does anyone else feel like bloodraven will die by the end of WoW? He seems to fit the mentor arceotype which means he shouod probably die.

[Balerion06]

So about Jon.... if he is ultimately going to be a Son of Winterfell (and perhaps King of Winter), then what, if any, relevance is there to his parentage? What makes Lyanna's son any more special than Ned's in terms of Starkiness? And what excludes Ned's children from being "true" children of winter?

[Iceborn]

Balerion, if he becomes king of winter and Rhegar is his father then he is on a footing to marry Danny as a equal king and her half-brother, if he subscribes to that Targaryen stuff, which I don't think he will, but without Dany he as a pretty good claim to the throne, he has been legitimized, however we still don't know what as or who the rightful king in the north is.

[Black Crow]

I bet the thread will begin to move even faster in the future. I`ll go through the old threads to see if i can get an accurate growth rate.

Does anyone else feel like bloodraven will die by the end of WoW? He seems to fit the mentor arceotype which means he shouod probably die.

Gods, I hope not. Its bad enough cobbling up an OP once a week...

Bloodraven dying off during WoW is pretty well predicted by Leaf saying he has hung on long past his time waiting for Bran, and I see no reason to doubt it but it'll pretty well put the kybosh on the popular theory that its the dead man in the tree who's warging and manipulating everything in sight.

[Iceborn]

Off - topic Bran Vras is back, will he continue to be back? he gives us some good stuff.

[Black Crow]

So about Jon.... if he is ultimately going to be a Son of Winterfell (and perhaps King of Winter), then what, if any, relevance is there to his parentage? What makes Lyanna's son any more special than Ned's in terms of Starkiness? And what excludes Ned's children from being "true" children of winter?

I don't thonk any of the Stark children are excluded from being "true" children of Winter but they each have different gifts. Jon's I think is the addition of Targaryen blood. There's a broad assumption that as soon as somebody tells him he's the son of Rhaegar he will realise that his true destiny is to sit on the iron throne, but I disagree. He is a son of Winterfell and that isn't going to change, he belongs to the North whether as King of Winter or anything else. The Targaryen blood will turn out to be important in some way but it isn't going to take him away from where he belongs.

[Black Crow]

Off - topic Bran Vras is back, will he continue to be back? he gives us some good stuff.

He does indeed. I'm not sure that I want to buy into the depth of it, but it certainly makes for interesting and sometimes challenging reading.

[King Tyrion VIII]

So are there any mythologies or anything that still need to be looked into? I was thinking maybe a group effort to cover more material would help our cause. If it's something that's needed. I'm new to this so I don't know what hasn't been combed thru yet.

[Black Crow]

Balerion, if he becomes king of winter and Rhegar is his father then he is on a footing to marry Danny as a equal king and her half-brother, if he subscribes to that Targaryen stuff, which I don't think he will, but without Dany he as a pretty good claim to the throne, he has been legitimized, however we still don't know what as or who the rightful king in the north is.

The legitimisation thing I think will be important in providing Jon with a get out of jail free card. If R+L=J he is the rightful Targaryen heir to to the Iron Throne since Rhaegar's children come before his siblings, ie; Jon comes before Dany in the line of succession.

The decree of legitimisation however by definition declares him to be the lawful son of Eddard Stark of Winterfell, and as he can't be both the lawful son of Eddard Stark and the heir to the Iron Throne my guess is that he will in the end rely upon this document proving that Ned Stark was his father and so stay up north rather than try to claim the throne.

[Frey family reunion]

I stumbled upon a book, "Lilith, a romance" by George McDonald that may interest some of the heretics here. Written in 1895, it tells the story of Mr. Vane, who lives in his ancestral house, who starts seeing an elderly gentleman walk in and out of his bookcase. It turns out that the gentleman is the former librarian, Mr. Raven (sometimes mistakenly referred to as Mr. Crow), who lived in the house over a hundred years ago. He next sees a raven that approaches his house and engages him in conversation. The raven changes into the old man and leads him through a mirror that takes him into another world. Apparently it's winter in this other world, and the principal inhabitants appear to be numerous small people referred to as children, and their enemy the giants. In addition, at night spectres and skeletons arise and do battle with each other while a mysterious woman with dead eyes hovers over them and goads them into fighting. In the morning the dead disappear into the ground.

I don't know if this book was one of Martin's inspirations or not but there are some defenite parallels. It's in public domain and free with Kindle if anyone wants to check it out. I'm only a quarter the way through, and it's an interesting read, but more than a little bizarre.

[Black Crow]

Oooh, vaguely heard of it. Sounds very interesting; must see if its been digitised on google, because as you say the parallels are striking - at least with the heretical view of what's really going on.

[King Tyrion VIII]

I found a link between the Morrigan and Barb's/Missy's Teats:

The Dá Chich na Morrigna ('two breasts of the Mórrígan'), a pair of hills in County Meath, suggest to some a role as a tutelary goddess, comparable to Anu, who has her own hills, Dá Chích Anann ('the breasts of Anu') in County Kerry. Other goddesses known to have similar hills are Áine and Grian of County Limerick who, in addition to a tutelary function, also have solar attributes.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Morr%C3%ADgan#section_5

And aren't the Teats near Pennytree? Where that ancient black weirwood is? Maybe something big, like an event in the final battle(s), will happen here.

[King Tyrion VIII]

If we keep up the current rate of a 20 page thread every week - this time next year, just in time for Season 4

Just in time for the release of TWOW :P

[King Tyrion VIII]

Just to answer Tyryan from the last page of 49ers:

Adds another dimension to the fact that he will soon capture Storm's End

Yes this is how I made the connection that Aegon could be an instrument of the Storm God. And so far it doesn't matter if he is real or not.

[Mace Cooterian]

(Bran IV, ASoS)

The Old King, Jaehaerys brought a long peace to the seven kingdoms thanks to an agreement with the Church of the Seven and the governance of his Hand, Septon Barth. Barth is a fascinating character. Whatever role he played in the reform of the north is unclear. I suspect he was himself a northman. In any case, not long after Barth's tenure as Hand, a lord Stark was named Barth, as Bran saw in the crypts.

Queen Alysanne has played a major role in the reform of the Night's Watch. The visit of the royal couple, with half the court and six dragons seems like an intimidation. Jaehaerys and Alysanne (and probably Barth as well) appear to have been close to the church of the Seven, since a peace was reached between the militant orders and the Iron Throne during their reign. So the abolition of the First Night in the north fits well with the abolition of child sacrifices by the sistermen.

Alysanne's reform happened at about the same time than the disappearance of direwolves south of the Wall. In the crypts, all statues of the Lords and Kings of Winterfell were represented in company of direwolves. We can guess that direwolves stopped coming to the Lords of Winterfell as a mark of a loss of support from some force beyond the Wall. Two hundred years is also Leaf's age. What did Leaf do south of the Wall during those years?

[A somewhat related idea is discussed in this thread by Dr Pepper.]

@Bran Vras....for those of us new to the Heresy threads (my entrance about H28) the introduction to your Winterfell work by redriver has been an interesting read. I was especially captivated by your latest installment here in H50 on the origins of the Night Fort, the possible explanation of Crasters sacrifices (or more accurately, a time stamp on when they could have begun) and the good Queen Alysanne.

I took your suggestion and read through Dr. Pepper's posts with regards to the disappearance of Direwolves, south of the Wall. It sort of ended as it began (no answer to the question) and I'll not attempt to impart any words of wisdom (for I have none) to try and explain this; perhaps older and wiser Heretics can, as well as draw any comparisons to the disappearance of dragons, which apparently occurred at about the same time.

One last item that I had forgotten about was the ancient crown of the Kings of Winter:

The ancient crown of the Kings of Winter had been lost three centuries ago, yielded up to Aegon the Conqueror when Torrhen Stark knelt in submission. What Aegon had done with it no man could say.

What did he do with any of the crowns he presumably confiscated from defeated kings? Is there a possibility that he let some of them keep their crowns as mementos? Seems unlikely. Did Torrhen even take the 'real' King in the North crown with him when he went to kneel? Or was the real crown hidden down in the depths of the crypts? Did Alysanne find it while she was at Winterfell? Whether she found it or had it, could she have tossed it over the wall? While there is certainly a connection to the timeline when wolves disappeared and when the king and queen came north, it's almost implausible to think that six dragons would have clandestinely swept the north for all direwolves and put them to the flame. So how did they disappear. Too many questions. And we come right back around to how they came back. If it's by use of a crown, who could have crossed the wall with something like that around the time of the direwolves return? I mean, there was Gared who was found hidden in a holdfast near where the direwolves were found.

[Bluemangosteen]

Oh dear, I really got chills reading Bran Vras' comments on Bran in the Nightfort.

Why is that Nightfort well so big?

[Hrafntýr]

So about Jon.... if he is ultimately going to be a Son of Winterfell (and perhaps King of Winter), then what, if any, relevance is there to his parentage? What makes Lyanna's son any more special than Ned's in terms of Starkiness? And what excludes Ned's children from being "true" children of winter?

I think that there's something special about bastards. I posted a while back about the Westerosi customs of naming bastards, that they emphasize nature and the elements (Snow, Stone, Storm, Sand, Rivers, Waters, Pyke, Hill, Flowers). And by denying the patriline, they naturally draw attention to the mother, and possibly link the mother to her land, since the bastard is named according to place (though this would seem to be the case only with highborn bastards, if that's not too oxymoronic). So, I don't really know why a son of Lyanna would be more likely to be King of Winter than a son of Ned, but I do feel like the names of bastards are significant, not to mention conveying some sort of elemental power.

On an only superficially related note, if we follow Bran Vras' speculations regarding First Night and sacrifice of any child it might produce, then there may be a different sort of significance attached to bastards as well, though I'm not really persuaded that First Night was for the sake of producing sacrificial victims. There is lots of Celtic and Norse mythology and hagiography that links wells with decapitation, and sacrifices were made into wells, though mostly dog sacrifices. I like the rest of Bran Vras's questions about the well/kitchen in the Night Fort; it's worth thinking about drowning as a form of sacrifice, since it may link things back up with the distant cousin religion of the Drowned God.

And as for the direwolves: it is a very fine observation that their disappearance south of the Wall roughly coincides with Alysane's visit. But to me, the other question to raise is: what makes possible their reappearance now?