Heresy 180

[Black Crow]

Welcome to Heresy 180, the latest edition of the thread where we take an in-depth look at the story and in particular what GRRM has referred to as the real conflict, not the Game of Thrones, but the threat which lies the North, in the magical otherlands above the Wall.

 

Heresy is not of itself a theory. There is occasional consensus but no “Heretic view” on matters. Instead Heresy is a free-flowing and above all a very friendly series of open discussions and arguments about the Song of Ice and Ice and Fire.

 

If new to the thread, don’t be intimidated by the size and scope of Heresy, or by some of the many ideas we’ve discussed here over the years. This is very much a come as you are thread with no previous experience required. We’re very welcoming and we’re very good at talking in circles and we don’t mind going over old ground again, especially with a fresh pair of eyes, so just ask. You will neither be patronized nor directed to follow links, but will be engaged directly. Just be patient and observe the local house rules that the debate be conducted by reference to the text, with respect for the ideas of others, and above all with great good humour

 

The strength and the beauty and ultimately the value of Heresy as a critical discussion group is that it reflects diversity and open-ness. This is a thread where ideas can be discussed – and argued – freely, because above all it is about an exchange of ideas and sometimes too a remarkably well informed exchange drawing upon an astonishing broad base of literature ranging through Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and so many others all to the way to the Táin Bó Cúailnge and the Mabinogion.

 

If new to Heresy you may also want to refer to to Wolfmaid's essential guide to Heresy: http://asoiaf.wester...uide-to-heresy/, which provides annotated links to all the previous editions of Heresy, apart from those lost in the migration to the new site. The Centennial Project essays in the run-up to Heresy 100 are particularly recommended, but be  warned however that Heresy is constantly moving and evolving and that what was once regarded as important may now be exploded. Live in the moment and the current thread.

 

Beyond that, read on…

[Black Crow]

And as ever the full text of GRRM's 1993 letter to his agent, Ralph Vicinanza:

 

October 1993

 

Dear Ralph,

 

Here are the first thirteen chapters (170 pages) of the high fantasy novel I promised you, which I'm calling A Game of Thrones. When completed, this will be the first volume in what I see as an epic trilogy with the overall title, A Song of Ice and Fire.

 

As you know, I don't outline my novels. I find that if I know exactly where a book is going, I lose all interest in writing it. I do, however, have some strong notions as to the overall structure of the story I'm telling, and the eventual fate of many of the principle [sic] characters in the drama.

 

Roughly speaking, there are three major conflicts set in motion in the chapters enclosed. These will form the major plot threads of the trilogy, intertwining with each other in what should be a complex but exciting (I hope) narrative tapestry. Each of the conflicts presents a major threat to the peace of my imaginary realm, the Seven Kingdoms, and to the lives of the principal characters.

 

The first threat grows from the enmity between the great houses of Lannister and Stark as it plays out in a cycle of plot, counterplot, ambition, murder, and revenge, with the iron throne of the Seven Kingdoms as the ultimate prize. This will form the backbone of the first volume of the trilogy, A Game of Thrones.

 

While the lion of Lannister and the direwolf of Stark snarl and scrap, however, a second and greater threat takes shape across the narrow sea, where the Dothraki horselords mass their barbarians hordes for a great invasion of the Seven Kingdoms, led by the fierce and beautiful Daenerys Stormborn, the last of the Targaryen dragonlords. The Dothraki invasion will be the central story of my second volume,A Dance with Dragons.

 

The greatest danger of all, however, comes from the north, from the icy wastes beyond the Wall, where half-forgotten demons out of legend, the inhuman others, raise cold legions of the undead and the neverborn and prepare to ride down on the winds of winter to extinguish everything that we would call "life." The only thing that stands between the Seven Kingdoms and and endless night is the Wall, and a handful of men in black called the Night's Watch. Their story will be the heart of my third volume, The Winds of Winter. The final battle will also draw together characters and plot threads left from the first two books and resolve all in one huge climax.

 

The thirteen chapters on hand should give you a notion as to my narrative strategy. All three books will feature a complex mosaic of intercutting points-of-view among various of my large and diverse cast of players. The cast will not always remains the same. Old characters will die, and new ones will be introduced. Some of the fatalities will include sympathetic viewpoint characters. I want the reader to feel that no one is ever completely safe, not even the characters who seem to be the heroes. The suspense always ratchets up a notch when you know that any character can die at any time.

 

Five central characters will make it through all three volumes, however, growing from children to adults and changing the world and themselves in the process. In a sense, my trilogy is almost a generational saga, telling the life stories of these five characters, three men and two women. The five key players are Tyrion Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, and three of the children of Winterfell, Arya, Bran, and the bastard Jon Snow. All of them are introduced at some length in the chapters you have to hand.

 

This is going to be (I hope) quite an epic. Epic in its scale, epic in its action, and epic in its length. I see all three volumes as big books, running about 700 to 800 manuscript pages, so things are just barely getting underway in the thirteen chapters I've sent you.

 

I have quite a clear notion of how the story is going to unfold in the first volume, A Game of Thrones. Things will get a lot worse for the poor Starks before they get better, I'm afraid. Lord Eddard Stark and his wife Catelyn Tully are both doomed, and will perish at the hands of their enemies. Ned will discover what happened to his friend Jon Arryn, but before he can act on his knowledge, King Robert will have an unfortunate accident, and the throne will pass to his sullen and brutal son Joffrey, still a minor. Joffrey will not be sympathetic and Ned will be accused of treason, but before he is taken he will help his wife and his daughter escape back to Winterfell.

 

Each of the contending families will learn it has a member of dubious loyalty in its midst. Sansa Stark, wed to Joffrey Baratheon, will bear him a son, the heir to the throne, and when the crunch comes she will choose her husband and child over her parents and siblings, a choice she will later bitterly rue. Tyrion Lannister, meanwhile, befriend both Sansa and her sister Arya, while growing more and more disenchanted with his own family.

 

Young Bran will come out of his coma, after a strange prophetic dream, only to discover that he will never walk again. He will turn to magic, at first in the hope of restoring his legs, but later for its own sake. When his father Eddard Stark is executed, Bran will see the shape of doom descending on all of them, but nothing he can say will stop his brother Robb from calling the banners in rebellion. All the north will be inflamed by war. Robb will win several splendid victories, and maim Joffrey Baratheon on the battlefield, but in the end he will not be able to stand against Jaime and Tyrion Lannister and their allies. Robb Stark will die in battle, and Tyrion Lannister will besiege and burn Winterfell.

 

Jon Snow, the bastard, will remain in the far north. He will mature into a ranger of great daring, and ultimately will succeed his uncle as the commander of the Night's Watch. When Winterfell burns, Catelyn Stark will be forced to flee north with her son Bran and her daughter Arya. Hounded by Lannister riders, they will seek refuge at the Wall, but the men of the Night's Watch give up their families when they take the black, and Jon and Benjen will not be able to help, to Jon's anguish. It will lead to a bitter estrangement between Jon and Bran. Arya will be more forgiving... until she realizes, with terror, that she has fallen in love with Jon, who is not only her half-brother but a man of the Night's Watch, sworn to celibacy. Their passion will continue to torment Jon and Arya throughout the trilogy, until the secret of Jon's true parentage is finally revealed in the last book.

 

Abandoned by the Night's Watch, Catelyn and her children will find their only hope of safety lies even further north, beyond the Wall, where they fall into the hands of Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall, and get a dreadful glimpse of the inhuman others as they attack the wildling encampment. Bran's magic, Arya's sword Needle, and the savagery of their direwolves will help them survive, but their mother Catelyn will die at the hands of the others.

 

Over across the narrow sea, Daenerys Targaryen will discover that her new husband, the Dothraki Khal Drogo, has little interest in invading the Seven Kingdoms, much to her brother's frustration. When Viserys presses his claims past the point of tact or wisdom, Khal Drogo will finally grow annoyed and kill him out of hand, eliminating the Targaryen pretender and leaving Daenerys as the last of her line. Daenerys will bide her time, but she will not forget. When the moment is right, she will kill her husband to avenge her brother, and then flee with a trusted friend into the wilderness beyond Vaes Dothrak. There, hunted by Dothraki bloodriders [?] of her life, she stumbles on a cache of dragon's eggs [?] of a young dragon will give Daenerys the power to bend the Dothraki to her will. Then she begins to plan for her invasion of the Seven Kingdoms.

 

Tyrion Lannister will continue to travel, to plot, and to play the game of thrones, finally removing his nephew Joffrey in disgust at the boy king's brutality. Jaime Lannister will follow Joffrey on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms, by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of succession and blaming his brother Tyrion for the murders. Exiled, Tyrion will change sides, making common cause with surviving Starks to bring his brother down, and falling helplessly in love with Arya Stark while he's at it. His passion is, alas, unreciprocated, but no less intense for that, and it will lead to a deadly rivalry between Tyrion and Snow.

 

[7 Lines Redacted]

 

But that's the second book...

 

I hope you'll find some editors who are as excited about all of this as I am. Feel free to share this letter with anyone who wants to know how the story will go.

 

All best,

George R.R. Martin

 

And then continuing the story with what was the synopsis/publisher’s blurb for the third book in the proposed trilogy:

 

Continuing the most imaginative and ambitious epic fantasy since The Lord of the Rings Winter has come at last and no man can say whether it will ever go again. The Wall is broken, the cold dead legions are coming south, and the people of the Seven Kingdoms turn to their queen to protect them. But Daenerys Targaryen is learning what Robert Baratheon learned before her; that it is one thing to win a throne and quite another to sit on one. Before she can hope to defeat the Others, Dany knows she must unite the broken realm behind her. Wolf and lion must hunt together, maester and greenseer work as one, all the blood feuds must be put aside, the bitter rivals and sworn enemies join hands. The Winds of Winter tells the story of Dany’s fight to save her new-won kingdom, of two desperate journeys beyond the known world in to the very hearts of ice and fire, and of the final climactic battle at Winterfell, with life itself in the balance.

 

 

Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom's protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens.

 

 Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; and a determined woman undertakes the most treacherous of journeys. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

 

Synopsis:
 

The kingdom of the royal Stark family faces its ultimate challenge in the onset of a generation-long winter, the poisonous plots of the rival Lannisters, the emergence of the Neverborn demons, and the arrival of barbarian hordes

 

[Black Crow]

The now lost discussion on Heresy 179 was looking at the possibilities that Bloodraven has been waiting so long for Bran because he [Bran] is the real Prince that was Promised.

[TheMiddleHero]

Damn.. updated site. Was hoping for a little back and forth on my post, but now I can't even tell if anyone responded. Damn you cursed technology!

 

Need a good shaking fist at the heavens emoticon.

[Isobel Harper]

Damn.. updated site. Was hoping for a little back and forth on my post, but now I can't even tell if anyone responded. Damn you cursed technology!

 

Need a good shaking fist at the heavens emoticon.

You just made me check to see if there were any new emoticons.  There's not. 

Till then, the ol' asterisks will have to do.

[The Snowfyre Chorus]

New site.  Can't tell if I'm actually signed in, so...

ETA:  Welp.  Looks like I'm signed in.  Though I'm pretty sure the site gave me an error message after I completed the login. Anyway.  Hello, folks!  

[Melifeather]

Been rereading Dunk and Egg and really struck with Dunk's thoughts about Bloodraven. He was a feared sorcerer and spy and believed to be the true power ruling the realm. His position as greenseer was a way for him to extend his influence, and I wouldn't expect that he's abandoned any of his aspirations from when he was Hand.

[wolfmaid7]

This is just a test post because I have no clue if im signed in.

[TheButcherCrow]

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

-Mark Twain

I'm back baby !!!   Sooooo what's up y'all ?  A couple of things to start;

• BC (or anyone), when did that letter under the OP drop ?  That thing is like crack and I'll need to digest it all before commenting. One thing I will say is that the line about (I'm paraphrasing) Arya and Jon's love for each other being altered by the truth about Jon's parentage makes me wonder if R+L =/= J?  But in fact that H + L = J.  I'll return to that below.
• Wofmaid you were on The South Bank Show !! How cool is that ?!?

 

Ok so I'm mainly here to post an update to my pet theory regarding the status of Bran.  In short my theory states that Bran inherited the title of King of Winter upon Robb's death at, or around the time he arrived at The Nightfort. What's significant about that you say?  Well if the King of Winter was conveyed through a magic portal in The Wall by a brother of the NW (a brother who took his oaths before the Old Gods no less) then the whole event itself takes on much more of a ritual significance.  So what's new then?  Well first and foremost, during a reread I noticed that for no apparent reason during Storm of Swords (roughly about when Bran, Meera and Jojen arrive at Queen's Crown)  Jojen starts calling Bran "Your Grace".

“Your Grace,” said Jojen, “we must avoid Castle Black, just as we avoided the kingsroad. There are hundreds of men there.”

“By night all cloaks are black, Your Grace. And the flash came and went too fast for me to tell what they were wearing.”

Both Bran IV, SoS

(side note: The crack about "by night all cloaks are black" is cool, implying that when the long NIGHT comes, everyone is a member of the NW)

Say what?  The correct term for addressing a prince is "My Prince", Martin himself establishes this in aGoT during the Joffrey/Nymeria incident.  After a quick kindle search I'm 99% certain that the only other people addressed as "Your Grace" in ALL THE BOOKS are kings and queens.  So what the hell is going on here ?  Simple explanation, Martin cocked up.  Not having that, sorry.  Better explanation, Jojen knows Robb  is dead and Bran is King.  

So what does this all mean?  Well take the title "King of Winter".  Blatantly it evocates thoughts of The Green Man/The Horned God/The Young Oak King from celtic paganism and Dany is doing a passable impersonation of the May Queen/Summer Queen/Flora just now so a conflict between the two I see as inevitable, Dany commanding her army of dragons, acolytes and freed slaves and Bran commanding the Walkers.

 

On a slight tangent let's look at what I said at the top about H+L=J:

The feast at Harrenhall bears a passing resemblance to a form of Beltane, coming as it did in Spring.  That the spring turned out to be a false one may be significant.  Many forms of the Beltane festival exist and many more variations of rituals but here is a description of a specific ritual performed at the Beltane festival still held in Edinburgh:

Every year on 30th April on Calton Hill in Edinburgh thousands of people come together for a huge celebration to mark the coming of summer. 
The evening begins with a procession to the top of the hill led by people dressed as the May Queen and the Green Man 
(ancient God and Goddess figures representing fertility and growth).The May Queen crowns the Green Man, in a ritual similar to that 
carried out by Wiccan Pagans (who follow a structured set of rituals). The winter ends when the Green Man's winter costume is taken from him 
and he is revealed in his spring costume. A wild dance takes place and the Green Man and the May Queen are married.

So in this ritual the Queen does the crowning, at Harrenhall of course Rhaegar (infamously) did the crowning.  So how do I get from this to H=L=J?  Well Howland reputedly went to the Isle of Faces, he may well literally be a "Green Man".  Lyanna was crowned "Queen of Love & Beauty, or "May Queen".  The part where the Green Man's winter costume is taken from him could relate to Lyanna unmasking Howland as the mystery knight or, given the switch in who crowns who, Howland unmasking Lyanna as such.  What if Lyanna and Howland slept together at Harrenhall and Jon is the result?  

As it is this theory currently contradicts my first one, as in celtic beliefs the child of the May Queen and the Green Man (Jon) is the the one that ultimately comes into conflict with the May Queen (Dany), is defeated and then becomes the new Green Man, marrying the May Queen the following spring.

 

Anyway, enough for now.   Thoughts as ever would be greatly appreciated, especially re Jojen and his use of "Your Grace".  Cheers

 

 

[TheNorthernWarrior]

Bloodraven is a rather suspicious character. In his hay day as hand he was definitely a major game of thrones player. A person into that sort of power and politics doesn't just retire. His time in prison at the Red Keep gave him ample time to contemplate the future and plot and everything we know puts to him being into the lore and magic of the world. So that is his background. 

At present day... a series of seemingly unpredictable and unlikely events have occurred that have lead to one Bran Stark entering a CoTF cave north of the wall to the waiting Bloodraven. Bran could never be expected to travel to the cave without somehow directing events to push him there. Yes the dreams Bran has are an intervention, but they wouldn't have worked without all the other events in AGOT, ACOK, and ASOS. So the only logically conclusion is that Bloodraven has been influencing present day events to push Bran towards the cave or that he is lying about waiting for Bran and just got lucky that he some how ended up in his cave. 

So if Bloodraven is influencing events... my questions are how? when? why? Does he have influence over people in the story or hidden agents? When did he disappear as Lord Commander and become a Greenseer? Did he have a role in Robert's Rebellion? What are his motives?

 

[wolfmaid7]

Butcher its nice to see you back,just in time for the switch!!! You would like Frey Family Reunion's and maybe my essay as well,both of us have brought up the Beltane ritual in our essays.Which brings me to this .The first Heresy X+Y=J essay is up in this section.

[TheButcherCrow]

Butcher its nice to see you back,just in time for the switch!!! You would like Frey Family Reunion's and maybe my essay as well,both of us have brought up the Beltane ritual in our essays.Which brings me to this .The first Heresy X+Y=J essay is up in this section.

Already read and posted in the new thread Wolfie, good stuff.  Yeah, I know I'm a total neophyte when it comes to all this Celtic/Pagan stuff but I watched the recent BBC docos on celtic culture and a bunch of lightbulbs just started going off.  What was really interesting to me, outside of the rituals and beliefs was the fact that celts shared a culture that stretched from Portugal to Eastern Europe, a culture that persisted for nearly 5000 years.  This leads me to wonder if the same isn't true about the FM in Martin's world?  When we look at the Dothraki are we perhaps seeing what remains of that culture? 

[wolfmaid7]

Already read and posted in the new thread Wolfie, good stuff.  Yeah, I know I'm a total neophyte when it comes to all this Celtic/Pagan stuff but I watched the recent BBC docos on celtic culture and a bunch of lightbulbs just started going off.  What was really interesting to me, outside of the rituals and beliefs was the fact that celts shared a culture that stretched from Portugal to Eastern Europe, a culture that persisted for nearly 5000 years.  This leads me to wonder if the same isn't true about the FM in Martin's world?  When we look at the Dothraki are we perhaps seeing what remains of that culture? 

Neophyte you? Heck no,you having that parallel and imagery jump out at you,pretty awesome.I won't give anything away but i think you'll enjoy Frey family reunion's essay,he proposes Howland as Jon's daddy.The Dany angle is intriguing especially now,you've missed some really nice Dany origin conversation.

[TheButcherCrow]

Neophyte you? Heck no,you having that parallel and imagery jump out at you,pretty awesome.I won't give anything away but i think you'll enjoy Frey family reunion's essay,he proposes Howland as Jon's daddy.The Dany angle is intriguing especially now,you've missed some really nice Dany origin conversation.

Looking forward to FFR's essay.  Another thing I was thinking about was Torrhen Stark.  To be fair, it's a topic that passes through my conciousness on a fairly regular basis.  Why kneel?  The North is fricking huge, the northmen could easily have applied the Flavian strategy, much like the Dornish did and simply refused to engage the Targs, inviting them instead to attempt to take and hold an unmanageable territory with shit weather, massive empty spaces and no people.  Puzzling indeed.  Not so puzzling if you operate from the position that Torrhen was waiting for Aegon, waiting for the coming of the dragons.  Perhaps he received a message from a weirwood?  Perhaps he was even a greendreamer himself and had a few interesting conversations with a certain optically-endowed avian?  There's quite a few "perhaps" in that theory I know but it does explain an otherwise puzzling question.

[e1kabong]

I'm still working through Dracula. Originally struck by the almost identical nature of the described powers of Bloodraven and Dracula (Can change into Wolves/Dogs, have packs of wolves that hunt their enemies, can change into mist, etc.), I've found some further similarities. What strikes me is that Bran's journey to Bloodraven has some striking comparisons to John Harker's travel to Dracula's castle.

The first part of the trip, Harker is troubled by strange dreams and hounds howling outside of his window. Of course, this mirrors Bran's coma, where he suffers dreams while the wolves howl outside his window.

I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night under my window, which may have had something to do with it...

Later in his journey, a superstitious peasant villager pleads with him to reconsider his journey. Harker proceeds on, not because he outright dismisses the superstitions, offhand, but because he has a sense of duty. Very much like Osha and Bran's interaction on the subject of his journey..

"Must you go? ...Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to?" ... Finally, she went down on her knees and implored me not to go...However, there was business to be done, and I could allow nothing to interfere with it.

Later, a carriage driver is given instructions to bring Harker to a meeting point where Dracula's personal driver will be waiting to take him the rest of his journey. Flashes of Samwell leading Bran to Coldhands, perhaps? In the Dracula novels, it's made very clear that this driver, who wears a disguise to cover his face, was Dracula, himself. Does this confirm that Coldhands is not an intelligent entity, but one controlled solely by Bloodraven?

Moreover, in Dracula, Harker's purpose is to act as a solicitor for Dracula on the purchase of an estate in England. If Dracula is an influence, could Bran's role to Bloodraven be to acquire him a new "home". What about the body of a giant that's already been broken in? Perhaps Bloodraven intends to hijack Hodor and leave Bran stuck where he is now, with the Children acting as jailors.

More to come as I read on.

[e1kabong]

Also, while on the subject of Bloodraven being no good: I was re-reading these chapters and can't believe I missed this (though, even Jojen doesn't pick it up, either):

(Meera speaking to Coldhands) “Who sent you? Who is this three-eyed crow?”

 “A friend. Dreamer, wizard, call him what you will. The last greenseer.” The longhall’s wooden door banged open. Outside, the night wind howled, bleak and black. The trees were full of ravens, screaming. Coldhands did not move.

“A monster,” Bran said.

The ranger looked at Bran as if the rest of them did not exist. “Your monster, Brandon Stark.”

“Yours,” the raven echoed, from his shoulder. Outside the door, the ravens in the trees took up the cry, until the night wood echoed to the murderer’s song of “Yours, yours, yours.”

“Jojen, did you dream this?” Meera asked her brother. “Who is he? What is he? What do we do now?” “We go with the ranger,” said Jojen. “We have come too far to turn back now, Meera. We would never make it back to the Wall alive. We go with Bran’s monster, or we die.”

Coldhands turned it around through subtle word-play, but Bran wasn't saying just Coldhands was a monster. They were on the subject of Bloodraven. 

[e1kabong]

Another thing I picked up on my reread of those chapters is this little bit of tie-in to Jon Snow's fate, hidden in a place I didn't see it. I think an argument can be made that when Bran is warging, he is touching the power that will (we assume) let him see into past/future. I think a very relevant example is when he sees a dragon over Winterfell. I think that Bran is, at that moment, blending into timelessness and seeing something that isn't presently there. With that in mind, here's an interesting passage when Bran is inside of Summer and thinking of his family:

No, the boy whispered, we have another pack. Lady’s dead and maybe Grey Wind too, but somewhere there’s still Shaggydog and Nymeria and Ghost. Remember Ghost? Falling snow and feasting wolves began to dim. Warmth beat against his face, comforting as a mother’s kisses. Fire, he thought, smoke. His nose twitched to the smell of roasting meat.

Is Bran, during his warging state, free-associating the future and telling us exactly what will happen to Jon (resurrected by the kiss of life after someone/something is burned as an offer?) even if he doesn't overtly realize it? The mother's kisses bit was a very intriguing addition to this set of words. Lest we forget Bran's mother:

The Freys slashed her throat from ear to ear. When we found her by the river she was three days dead. Harwin begged me to give her the kiss of life, but it had been too long. I would not do it, so Lord Beric put his lips to hers instead, and the flame of life passed from him to her. And... she rose. May the Lord of Light protect us. She rose.

 

[Sly Wren]

Another thing I picked up on my reread of those chapters is this little bit of tie-in to Jon Snow's fate, hidden in a place I didn't see it. I think an argument can be made that when Bran is warging, he is touching the power that will (we assume) let him see into past/future. I think a very relevant example is when he sees a dragon over Winterfell. I think that Bran is, at that moment, blending into timelessness and seeing something that isn't presently there. With that in mind, here's an interesting passage when Bran is inside of Summer and thinking of his family:

No, the boy whispered, we have another pack. Lady’s dead and maybe Grey Wind too, but somewhere there’s still Shaggydog and Nymeria and Ghost. Remember Ghost? Falling snow and feasting wolves began to dim. Warmth beat against his face, comforting as a mother’s kisses. Fire, he thought, smoke. His nose twitched to the smell of roasting meat.

Is Bran, during his warging state, free-associating the future and telling us exactly what will happen to Jon (resurrected by the kiss of life after someone/something is burned as an offer?) even if he doesn't overtly realize it? The mother's kisses bit was a very intriguing addition to this set of words. Lest we forget Bran's mother:

The Freys slashed her throat from ear to ear. When we found her by the river she was three days dead. Harwin begged me to give her the kiss of life, but it had been too long. I would not do it, so Lord Beric put his lips to hers instead, and the flame of life passed from him to her. And... she rose. May the Lord of Light protect us. She rose.

 

Good catch! But I think it may be more about Jon's potential rejuvenating/reuniting role vs. what happens to him post stabbing.

Because Sansa in the Vale thinks of the snow falling on her face "warm as lover's kisses." Bran's a bit young to have a lover, but he misses his mother. Her love. Sansa's longed for a lover who, well, actually loves her. And both Bran and Sansa are thinking of home. Only after they dare to hope and think about home/family do they feel the warm kisses.

In both cases, falling Snow, the memories of home=warm kisses. Rejuvenating to them.

[Black Crow]

Ah that moved a bit last night, even if some of it was wonderment at some of the foibles of the new site.

e1kabong # More very interesting parallels with Dracula there and we do know that GRRM is fascinated by vampires so I think that they are very valid parallels. In theory Coldhands might be Bloodraven. I could easily see that working although personally I'm still looking at his being the Russian to Bloodraven's Kurtz.

 

Bloodraven's taking over Hodor is a twist that hadn't occurred to me, but I think that if it was going to happen it would have happened already and gets us into the limitations of the second life as outlined by Varamyr. Given the individuals concerned I wouldn't see Bloodraven's occupation as passive, but no more access to the outside, no more skinchanging and no escape when Hodor pops his clogs.

[Black Crow]

Bloodraven is a rather suspicious character. In his hay day as hand he was definitely a major game of thrones player. A person into that sort of power and politics doesn't just retire. His time in prison at the Red Keep gave him ample time to contemplate the future and plot and everything we know puts to him being into the lore and magic of the world. So that is his background. 

At present day... a series of seemingly unpredictable and unlikely events have occurred that have lead to one Bran Stark entering a CoTF cave north of the wall to the waiting Bloodraven. Bran could never be expected to travel to the cave without somehow directing events to push him there. Yes the dreams Bran has are an intervention, but they wouldn't have worked without all the other events in AGOT, ACOK, and ASOS. So the only logically conclusion is that Bloodraven has been influencing present day events to push Bran towards the cave or that he is lying about waiting for Bran and just got lucky that he some how ended up in his cave. 

So if Bloodraven is influencing events... my questions are how? when? why? Does he have influence over people in the story or hidden agents? When did he disappear as Lord Commander and become a Greenseer? Did he have a role in Robert's Rebellion? What are his motives?

 

Ah well this is one of the big unknowns and I raised this very point myself recently. I'm still very much inclined, given his current associations to see him as a Blackwood rather than a Targaryen and that if there is a long-term strategy in all of this that he has been waiting so long for Bran not as a straightforward replacement but as the Prince that was Promised.