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Castlery Rock, Tintagel, Castlerock - exploring references


Castellan

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(I'm posting this in the references thread but here as well. The references thread is such a mixed bag and endless, it feels like throwing a pebble down a chasm when you post there.)

Half of the fun of looking for references is in the looking for them, you learn all sorts of literary, historical and geographic tit-bits, even if you do not prove anything.

So, we don’t need a reason why GRRM would name a massive great castle built on a massive great rock Castlery Rock, but I have had fun roaming about the internet in search of castle rocks….

Tintagel, the Whispers and Castlery Rock

I think of Tintagel when I think of Castlery Rock. I mean the medieval ruin on (almost off) the Cornish coast now called Tintagel, which has had Arthurian legends attached to it over time. It was built on a small headland which is now turning into an island due to the collapse of the connecting land. It very atmospheric to walk on with the sea spray and wind whipping around. To quote English Heritage

The site at Tintagel is dominated by its natural topography, particularly the eroded neck of land dividing the island from the mainland. The castle lies on both sides of the chasm. Centuries of erosion have taken many parts of the castle and earlier buildings with them.

a few pics:

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/content/properties/tintagel-castle/1149756/Tintagel-mainland
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xF7xxH4ht1c/maxresdefault.jpg
http://druidstone.deviantart.com/art/Tintagel-Castle-Door-177267812

I tend to think of the Whispers, which is likewise falling into the sea, as a reminder of what Castlery Rock must become eventually.

In the atmospheric scenes at the Whispers, I was reminded specifically of the scene in Prince Caspian, where the Pevensey children fall into Narnia again and find themselves in a ruined castle, and only after some time realise it is the castle Cair Paravel where they reigned as Kings and Queens hundreds of years ago, Narnian time. More generally, it reminded me of many scenes in fiction by the likes of Daphne DuMaurier where we have a sense of time and decay, or rather its almost like timelessness and decay - two different clocks - nature and the petty life-spans of particular man, lords and kings.

So, I went looking for Castle Rocks and found something connected to Narnia:

There is a coastal village Castlerock, in Ireland near Coleraine, which was the place C S Lewis went on holidays as a child. The ruin of the 18th palace of Earl Hervey on the headland, Downhill House is said to have inspired scenes in Narnia. . The ruins do remind one of the ruined Cair Paravel. (The village was not names after the palace, though, but after a 19th century boat wreck in which Robert Castles and his crew died after hitting a rock close to the seashore.)

There is another location which also inspired Lewis, Dunluce Castle, where the ruins are more prominently on the edge of headland and visible from below. However, Castlerock the village seems to have held memories and inspiration for Lewis, it was where he spent some long summer holidays with his mother and brother and responded to the sea and landscape.

So I think its possible GRRM was putting a bit of CS Lewis into the Lannister's stronghold. If not, it just shows the strange coincidences that arise when people with a similar mental bent drawing similarly on history create their imaginative worlds.

here are some pics of Downhill house and its lion gates

http://www.abandonedireland.com/Downhill_1_files/Downhill1609.jpg

 

http://lh6.ggpht.com/-BR5gnZHQy0I/TShg7qv7rPI/AAAAAAAAA-Q/9uDHhwHFLXI/2010-1205-05%25252014-17-16.jpg

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Downhill+house&safe=active&biw=1680&bih=964&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=g-yZVee7HeXDmwWm6ID4CA&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&dpr=1#imgrc=pwqB8ouArcgBsM%3A

 

Now that we are floating round other fantasy novels, there is also Castle Rock in Alan Garner's Weirdstone of Brisingamen (or its sequel) but this is ra ock formation, part of Garner's detailing of the landscape and its connection to his fantasy beings who exist in hidden places in the earth.

Its a common name for rock formations, the one of most interest is one which Sir Walter Scott used in a ballad, and which subsequently was nicknamed after it.

To quote wikipedia

Standing at the top of the Vale of St John's, the nearly vertical Castle Rock juts out from the hillside with rock faces on three sides. The castle-like profile is made still more picturesque by a garland of mixed woodland around the lower slopes. This rock has attracted the admiring views of visitors since the start of tourism to the Lakes. Thomas West in 1778 referred to the valley "nobly terminated by the castle-like rock of St. John."[4] Jonathan Otley in 1823 knew the rock as "the massive rock of Green Crag, sometimes called the Castle Rock of St. John's."[5] The Scottish lawyer and novelist Sir Walter Scott, wrote his romantic narrative-poem The Bridal of Triermain in 1812. In this, Castle Rock appears as the setting for the Enchanted Castle from which the hero, Sir Roland de Vaux of Triermain, must rescue the maiden, Gyneth. Triermain was the name of a fiefdom in the barony of Gilsland in north-east Cumberland; a pele-tower near Birdoswald still bears the name.[6]The association with Walter Scott's poem has sometimes led Castle Rock to be called Castle Rock of Triermain, especially by rock climbers in order to distinguish it from another Castle Rock in Gloucestershire.

So, I have amused myself, I think the C S Lewis is the most likely possible conscious reference, but this other stuff has made for an interesting ramble across the landscape of fantasy fiction.

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It's really interesting. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who spends my free time looking this stuff up! My husband thinks I'm nuts lol I just came across some interesting things about seven pointed stars and green men. The green men are related to natural vegetative deities. They are a symbol of rebirth,cycles of growth & being reborn anew each spring. Maybe we will finally hear more about these in ADoS. But I've found that the pages with Wiccan/Pagan symbols are really informative. Thanks for the tidbit!
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For me Casterly Rock is very reminiscent of Tintagel. I thought so from the moment I read the description of where it is situated. More importantly, it is where King Arthur was born as the result of a trick. High King Uthor lusted for and coveted his subject king, Gorlois's, wife, Igrainne. Martin means it to sound familiar. King Aerys lusted for and coveted his subject lord, Tywin's wife, Joanna. That much - the castle similarity and the similarity between Aerys's lust and Uthor's - is a clear parallel.

What Uthor did next was have his wizard Merlin shapechange him to look like Gorlois, so Igrainne had sex with him believing him to be her husband. Arthur was the result.

What Aerys did next is the subject of some speculation. There are many people that think one or two of the Lannisters are Aerys's children. I don't give those stories much credence except that I know the King Arthur birth story and either George is purposely misleading us or he is riffing on the old story. Tyrion, small dwarf but whose shadow is 'as tall as a king's' and whose father Tywin tells him he only recognizes him as his son because he 'can't prove otherwise' (a whole castle full of people tell him he was in the castle, and his wife says she had sex with him, on a night he knows he wasn't there?), the little clues are there but don't add up to anything solid.

Anyway, the only reason I believe Tyrion might be Aerys's son is because George planted these Arthurian seeds about his heritage with Casterly Rock-Tintagel and the Uthor-Igrainne-Gorlois/Aerys-Joanna-Tywin love triangles.
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