Children caused the Long Night

[Lady Barbrey]

The uncertainty about the years of the Long Night and the flooding of the Dornish arm was interesting to me - both could have been around the same time. It seemed there was also evidence of rising sea levels in more places than just Westeros, with whole cities underwater.

The main cause of rising sea levels in the real world is melted ice caps.

I suspect that when the children did their magic to flood the arm, they messed with the polar ice caps. The ice melted, then the Arm flooded, and so did many other areas of the world.

This messed with not only the physical balance of the world but the magical balance.

So the Others appear bringing ice/darkness with them. These are not amicable beings to humans.

But are they necessary to save the world?

What if the Long Night was absolutely necessary to try to restore the planet's climate after the Children messed with it. Melted polar ice is part of a positive feedback loop. Melt some of it and it doesn't just raise sea levels, but more ice melts and on and on.

Then the problem is the Others'power gets out of hand and goes on too long.

A new magical force appears - dragons - lightbringers - and the earth starts warming up again?

And on it goes but because of the original magical cataclysm, it's magically erratic. The temperature isn't following physical laws it relies on magical interference to keep it in balance between two antithetical magical sources. Two races, the Others and the Valyrians,who interbreedto keep the magical affinity gene viable - the Crasters and the Targaryans being two such families- playing out this back and forth imperfect and erratic balance that is actually necessary so the world doesn't freeze or fry.

Each side not really even knowing perhaps that they're involved in this balancing act.

So we need one hero that carries both magical affinities in his blood to put the world back on track. I imagine the children will have to work their magic through Jon as they're the ones that screwed things up in the first place. Jon as a Stark probably has the same magical affinitiesas the Crasters do, and as a Targ the same as the Targaryans And Bloodraven as a Target and Bran as a Stark will likely channel this somehow.

That's my theory. It all kind of came together reading WoIaF. Sorry if it's been posited before to all the long-term posters on here. I read the first book fifteen years ago but only recently joined.

[Ramsay's Penguins]

Its a good one.
if you are one of those people who suspect that the Others are corrupted Children or controlled by the Children (and are just a peaceful species) or are corrupted First Men, it would still work. Maybe they are an ancient species that were let loose when the ice caps melted.

I kinda think that the breaking of the Arm and Neck were actually the land sinking, not the sea rising. The Children have more power over the earth displayed then with water.

Another thing is rising sesa levels melt ice cap further, similar to an ice cube in water.

I'm conflicted...

[Lady Barbrey]

I think that the people back then might conceive of it as the earth sinking. It would likely seem like that because it would happen quite slowly. But earth sinks rarely compared to sea levels rising. You're right about the ice cubes melting. That's why the Long Night was necessary. I think of the Others as actually spreading coldness (like the ice dragon in Martin's story) so they are necessary to freeze things up again and stop the melting.

But I doubt they know this themselves. They just know someone's been messing with their habitat.

Climate change can be slow. This latest incursion by them might have originated in the Doom. They seem to have started agitating not too long ago, and breeding more of themselves through Craster's sons. It might have taken some time for the boiling seas of the Doom to have started another melt in the polar regions. Don't really know the science behind that!

[Ramsay's Penguins]

Science has little basis here, considering it is a magic world. (Magic as in unknown to science, but still scientific).

The earth sinking is the direct actions of the Children, and is magical.

So Children sink Earth causing sea levels to rise, causing ice to melt, making the Others reappear, which spawns the dragons to balance it out. But when Valyria rose and the dragons spread the world was unnbalanced and so the Others are coming back?

It's is not impossible.

I think the Others used the Long Night as a cover, they didn't cause it. It was just a normal (aka long) Winter.

There is science for that too, but perhaps the presence of the Others cause Winters anyway.

[Lady Barbrey]

Yes its a bit of a debate about whether they arrive with the long winter or cause it. The books say nobody knows which, but because people say the cold increases in the presence of the others I'm of the latter impression mostly b

[Lady Barbrey]

Re the dragons - they emit heat but also possibly radiation. Someone, I think it was Ran on this forum, said that it's likely the presence of dragons could affect wombs, in a radiation effect, which is a possible reason for the many deformed Targaryans babies.

[Queen‍‍‍‍‍‍ Alysanne‍‍™]

I actually like this theory. It makes sense and it connects with the main story as to why Dany was able to hatch her dragons, perhaps as a backlash to the others returning. This doesn't mean they are natural enemies but that they just exist to balance out each other out.

Fourteen flames was probably a backlash to the Long NIght, it's a coincidence that they came right after the long night.

[complexphoenix]

I've been wondering for a while if perhaps the Others are returning now because the ten-year summer was devastating to them, as devastating as a ten-year winter would be to humanity, and they are venturing southward in an effort to find the source of the problem and fix it.

[Lady Barbrey]

Yes, I think it all ties together. Also why fire magic is getting stronger all around - it has to in order to combat the coming threat. Melisandre's conception of R'llor locked in a battle with the Great Other is metaphorically correct if we see this as a literally fire and ice, not a good/evil, combat, but one that Ultimately should never be won because it will be the death of the planet. That's why the Wall, I think,for containment but not destruction. That's why the Valyrians didn't bring their dragons originally to Westeros, the only continent with a true north. Some kind of containment of themselves. Maybe even spells that stopped working. When fire actually meets ice, the Others and the Dragons, then Ragnarok because of the climate repercussions.

[Black Crow]

With ideas like this you might find Heresy to be interesting.

[Lady Barbrey]

Heretic, Ive seen Heresy referenced but I'm not quite sure what it is? I will check it out. Thanks for the tip.

I like your quote! Craster's sons are coming. Dany is coming. And oblivious Westeros plays her games of thrones completely ignoring the real threat, just as George says in an interview people today completely ignore the threat of climate change. He uses the threat of climate change and global warming as direct corollaries to the Others and the Dragons personifying ice and fire.

I do think the dragons and the others will meet in an epic battle, and either right the world or completely destroy it. The only way it can be righted is through some transformation via Jon, but I suspect it will take lots of blood magic as well soaking up through Ygg - sorry the weirwood - to effect the transformation. So the Children want the battle to happen for the blood. Lots of death. And perhaps the complete destruction of anyone with fire or ice magical affinity genetics. Not all Targs and not all Starks, but those that carry the genes to tame dragons or become Others.

[Farwynds Oceanseer]

Lady Barbrey, I think this is a good working hypothesis for explaining the Hammer of the Waters, the Long Night, and the muddled seasons in one fell swoop (as you know from seeing my parallel post on the Others and the COTF thread).

I think it is likely that the Children brought about the Hammer of the Waters slowly by raising the sea levels magically, and what you said about waters levels rising elsewhere, as in the Thousand Islands, was a nice connection that I hadn't made. Since the Maesters dismiss the possible role of magic in historical events whenever possible, it makes sense that one of the main theories at the Citadel takes note of the rising sea levels but makes no mention of spells:

Archmaester Cassander suggests elsewise in his Song of the Sea: How the Lands Were Severed, arguing that it was not the singing of greenseers that parted Westeros from Essos but rather what he calls the Song of the Sea— a slow rising of the waters that took place over centuries, not in a single day, and was caused by a series of long, hot summers and short, warm winters that melted the ice in the frozen lands beyond the Shivering Sea, causing the oceans to rise.

The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire) (Kindle Locations 6722-6725)

One of the standard objections that Yandel raises to the legend that the COTF broke the Arm if Dorne to stop the influx of First Men is that so many First Men had already arrived when the Arm was flooded. We readers also know that the COTF green seers really could see the future, so we ought to wonder why they didn't break the arm before the 1st Men ever came. Both these objections lose their power if the COTF had to spend decades, if not a couple of centuries, lengthening the summers and shortening the winters to raise the oceans. The Greenseers might not have seen the coming of the 1st Men until it was less than 100 years away; during the initial migrations, when there were few humans and probably little conflict because of there being enough land for everyone, they might not have seen the coming conflict until there were already so many humans, reproducing so much faster than the COTF, that the conflict was already inevitable. The difficulty of seeing far into the future is implied when Bran asks Bloodraven when he will be able to see beyond the eyes of the heart trees, and BR says

“In a year, or three, or ten. That I have not glimpsed...

A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series)(Kindle Location 73444). R

Given that Jojen's green dreams of the future take the same symbolic form as Melisandre's oft misinterpreted visions, I suspect that even the best green seers had trouble seeing accurately into the far future. Just as we won't see the initial effects of climate change until it is already too late to prevent it, the Children could not see the portents of their conflict with the 1st men until it was already too late to begin the decades long process of raising the oceans in time to prevent the 1st men coming at all. But it stands to reason that preventing further migration allowed them to keep the fight with the first men even enough to eventually negotiate the Pact.

The "Long Summers" theory and the "blood sacrifice" theory don't have to be mutually exclusive. After raising the oceans enough to drown the city in the Thousand Islands, the Children could have completed the process by awakening the giants of the earth (whether Firewyrms or something else) to tear rifts in the Arm of Dorn for the ocean to rush through; and they may have repeated the process at Moat Cailin when the Andals kept advancing. So after raising the oceans with long summers, the COTF went to Phase 2, which the maesters consider an alternate possibility:

An unforeseen consequence of this magic ecological warfare was the shrinking of the area habitable by the Others (who, presumably, no one knew about). The symbolic nature of future-vision (perhaps getting vaguer as one looks further into the future) again prevented any green seers from suspecting the existence of the Others until they were already working their own magic to save their own section of the world. Their response caused the Long Night, and the seasons have never been free of magical forces since.

One alternate theory about the Long Night might also dovetail into this scenario. The Yi Ti equivalent of the Long Night legend claims it began when an envious younger brother cast down his sister, the Amethyst Empress, and began worshipping a strange stone that fell from the sky:

When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky. (Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world). In the annals of the Further East, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night.

The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones (Kindle Locations 8498-8504).

There seem to be a number of meteors in the Age of Heroes, including the one that provided the materials for Dawn at Starfall. This possible rain of meteors makes me think of the Qartheen legend of the Dragon Moon, which went to close to the sun and shattered, releasing dragons into the world. So, the last part of my hypothesis is that the Others magically altered the seasons and shattered the second moon so that the ash would block the sun and bring on an ice age. Either dragons came directly from a hollow in this moon, or the Strange Stone that now is found at Old Town, Pyke, the 5 Forts, Lorath, Asshai and elsewhere has the power to magically create dragons.

I don't know if all Strage Stones come from the shattered moon--perhaps much of it is belched up from the oceanic trenches and was once placed there by the Lovecraftian Deep Ones rumored to have left behind the foundation for the Hightower and the Seastone chair. When you think about it, our own moon is supposedly a chunk of the Ocean floor. So perhaps R'hlor, the Drowned God, and the Great Other are all either metaphors or actual entities behind various forms of magic emanating from Strange Stone that either comes from the shattered moon, the ocean floor, or volcanic activity. There are various magical forces of the natural world that the COTF controlled, but there are older and more dangerous ones deep in the earth, deep in the sea, and up among the stars. The COTF struck the seasons out of balance in an attempt to save their species from the incursions of human beings, the Others struck them further out of balance to save themselves from a warming world, and the shattering of the moon released other forces into the world that are even more ancient and dangerous.

[Aetta]

Heretic, Ive seen Heresy referenced but I'm not quite sure what it is? I will check it out. Thanks for the tip.

I like your quote! Craster's sons are coming. Dany is coming. And oblivious Westeros plays her games of thrones completely ignoring the real threat, just as George says in an interview people today completely ignore the threat of climate change. He uses the threat of climate change and global warming as direct corollaries to the Others and the Dragons personifying ice and fire.

I do think the dragons and the others will meet in an epic battle, and either right the world or completely destroy it. The only way it can be righted is through some transformation via Jon, but I suspect it will take lots of blood magic as well soaking up through Ygg - sorry the weirwood - to effect the transformation. So the Children want the battle to happen for the blood. Lots of death. And perhaps the complete destruction of anyone with fire or ice magical affinity genetics. Not all Targs and not all Starks, but those that carry the genes to tame dragons or become Others.

It's the most luscious thing ever. Based on some of your recent quotes that I have read, your thoughts would be an awesome addition to that thread.

[Farwynds Oceanseer]

I just had a thought about the Thousand Islands: interesting that they are so near the forest of the Ifequevron! It makes me wonder if the COTF in Essos (the Ifequevron) didn't send a quake through the Thousand Islands when it was still the north coast of Essos. You'd think they would have torn Ib to pieces too, but perhaps the Ibbenese invaded and slaughtered the COTF too quickly for the COTF to begin raising the seas and/or smashing Ib to pieces. Green seers on both sides of the Narrow Sea could have coordinated their efforts against the First Men and the Thousand Islanders.

Weird that the green, squamous people of the Thousand Islands fear to touch the ocean. It makes me think that in whatever natural or COTF-made disaster splintered their coast into islands, something nasty crawled out of the oceans. Whatever it was seems to have cross-bred with the people there. Yech. But I do suspect there is a pattern of COTF pushing their power over nature to its uttermost limits in desperate self defense, with unforeseen but gruesome consequences.

[Lady Barbrey]

Lady Barbrey, I think this is a good working hypothesis for explaining the Hammer of the Waters, the Long Night, and the muddled seasons in one fell swoop (as you know from seeing my parallel post on the Others and the COTF thread).

I think it is likely that the Children brought about the Hammer of the Waters slowly by raising the sea levels magically, and what you said about waters levels rising elsewhere, as in the Thousand Islands, was a nice connection that I hadn't made. Since the Maesters dismiss the possible role of magic in historical events whenever possible, it makes sense that one of the main theories at the Citadel takes note of the rising sea levels but makes no mention of spells:

One of the standard objections that Yandel raises to the legend that the COTF broke the Arm if Dorne to stop the influx of First Men is that so many First Men had already arrived when the Arm was flooded. We readers also know that the COTF green seers really could see the future, so we ought to wonder why they didn't break the arm before the 1st Men ever came. Both these objections lose their power if the COTF had to spend decades, if not a couple of centuries, lengthening the summers and shortening the winters to raise the oceans. The Greenseers might not have seen the coming of the 1st Men until it was less than 100 years away; during the initial migrations, when there were few humans and probably little conflict because of there being enough land for everyone, they might not have seen the coming conflict until there were already so many humans, reproducing so much faster than the COTF, that the conflict was already inevitable. The difficulty of seeing far into the future is implied when Bran asks Bloodraven when he will be able to see beyond the eyes of the heart trees, and BR says

Given that Jojen's green dreams of the future take the same symbolic form as Melisandre's oft misinterpreted visions, I suspect that even the best green seers had trouble seeing accurately into the far future. Just as we won't see the initial effects of climate change until it is already too late to prevent it, the Children could not see the portents of their conflict with the 1st men until it was already too late to begin the decades long process of raising the oceans in time to prevent the 1st men coming at all. But it stands to reason that preventing further migration allowed them to keep the fight with the first men even enough to eventually negotiate the Pact.

The "Long Summers" theory and the "blood sacrifice" theory don't have to be mutually exclusive. After raising the oceans enough to drown the city in the Thousand Islands, the Children could have completed the process by awakening the giants of the earth (whether Firewyrms or something else) to tear rifts in the Arm of Dorn for the ocean to rush through; and they may have repeated the process at Moat Cailin when the Andals kept advancing. So after raising the oceans with long summers, the COTF went to Phase 2, which the maesters consider an alternate possibility:

An unforeseen consequence of this magic ecological warfare was the shrinking of the area habitable by the Others (who, presumably, no one knew about). The symbolic nature of future-vision (perhaps getting vaguer as one looks further into the future) again prevented any green seers from suspecting the existence of the Others until they were already working their own magic to save their own section of the world. Their response caused the Long Night, and the seasons have never been free of magical forces since.

One alternate theory about the Long Night might also dovetail into this scenario. The Yi Ti equivalent of the Long Night legend claims it began when an envious younger brother cast down his sister, the Amethyst Empress, and began worshipping a strange stone that fell from the sky:

There seem to be a number of meteors in the Age of Heroes, including the one that provided the materials for Dawn at Starfall. This possible rain of meteors makes me think of the Qartheen legend of the Dragon Moon, which went to close to the sun and shattered, releasing dragons into the world. So, the last part of my hypothesis is that the Others magically altered the seasons and shattered the second moon so that the ash would block the sun and bring on an ice age. Either dragons came directly from a hollow in this moon, or the Strange Stone that now is found at Old Town, Pyke, the 5 Forts, Lorath, Asshai and elsewhere has the power to magically create dragons.

I don't know if all Strage Stones come from the shattered moon--perhaps much of it is belched up from the oceanic trenches and was once placed there by the Lovecraftian Deep Ones rumored to have left behind the foundation for the Hightower and the Seastone chair. When you think about it, our own moon is supposedly a chunk of the Ocean floor. So perhaps R'hlor, the Drowned God, and the Great Other are all either metaphors or actual entities behind various forms of magic emanating from Strange Stone that either comes from the shattered moon, the ocean floor, or volcanic activity. There are various magical forces of the natural world that the COTF controlled, but there are older and more dangerous ones deep in the earth, deep in the sea, and up among the stars. The COTF struck the seasons out of balance in an attempt to save their species from the incursions of human beings, the Others struck them further out of balance to save themselves from a warming world, and the shattering of the moon released other forces into the world that are even more ancient and dangerous.

Wow, thank you for your post. Really thorough and well thought out. I had actually envisioned one magical cataclysm only that started the chain of events. I considered the dragon moon and meteors but ruled them out mainly because of not enough information and because they just don't seem as fixable. Knowing where the characters are situated now, and what their capabilities are, how do you think the problem of the erratic seasons might be righted by the end of the series?

[Lady Barbrey]

I just had a thought about the Thousand Islands: interesting that they are so near the forest of the Ifequevron! It makes me wonder if the COTF in Essos (the Ifequevron) didn't send a quake through the Thousand Islands when it was still the north coast of Essos. You'd think they would have torn Ib to pieces too, but perhaps the Ibbenese invaded and slaughtered the COTF too quickly for the COTF to begin raising the seas and/or smashing Ib to pieces. Green seers on both sides of the Narrow Sea could have coordinated their efforts against the First Men and the Thousand Islanders.

Weird that the green, squamous people of the Thousand Islands fear to touch the ocean. It makes me think that in whatever natural or COTF-made disaster splintered their coast into islands, something nasty crawled out of the oceans. Whatever it was seems to have cross-bred with the people there. Yech. But I do suspect there is a pattern of COTF pushing their power over nature to its uttermost limits in desperate self defense, with unforeseen but gruesome consequences.

Ib is really far north on my map. Maybe it just lost some coastline? I agree with your last line.

I also suspect Martin of using ideas of population isolation to create environment specific mutated people! Very Lovecraft, who I wish I had never read. Rats in the Wall was the worst!

I'm hesitant to theorize about the black oily rocks, even to begin to, cause I suspect they're another nod to Lovecraft and meant to remain a mystery.

[Lady Barbrey]

I actually like this theory. It makes sense and it connects with the main story as to why Dany was able to hatch her dragons, perhaps as a backlash to the others returning. This doesn't mean they are natural enemies but that they just exist to balance out each other out.

Fourteen flames was probably a backlash to the Long NIght, it's a coincidence that they came right after the long night.

Exactly. And it gets away from the whole good and evil dichotomy. Its a fire and ice dichotomy, and while they're antithetical to each other, it's on an actual physical elemental level, and both are necessary to keep the place going in lieu of a normalized seasonal system.

[Lady Barbrey]

It's the most luscious thing ever. Based on some of your recent quotes that I have read, your thoughts would be an awesome addition to that thread.

Thank you Aetta. I had fun (over) posting on that thread today and like your comments too!

[Queen‍‍‍‍‍‍ Alysanne‍‍™]

Exactly. And it gets away from the whole good and evil dichotomy. Its a fire and ice dichotomy, and while they're antithetical to each other, it's on an actual physical elemental level, and both are necessary to keep the place going in lieu of a normalized seasonal system.

:agree:

It ties in with Jojen's quote from ASOS

“If ice can burn,” said Jojen in his solemn voice, “then love and hate can mate. Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one.”

Ice and fire can co-exist, the land is one.

[DreamSongs]

I've been wondering for a while if perhaps the Others are returning now because the ten-year summer was devastating to them, as devastating as a ten-year winter would be to humanity, and they are venturing southward in an effort to find the source of the problem and fix it.

I like it.