Wow, I Never Noticed That, v. 14

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

2 hours ago, dornishdame said:

When Stonesnake says that to Jon, we get this:

Soon they were high enough so that looking down was best not considered. There was nothing below but yawning blackness, nothing above but moon and stars. "The mountain is your mother," Stonesnake had told him during an easier climb a few days past. "Cling to her, press your face up against her teats, and she won't drop you." Jon had made a joke of it, saying how he'd always wondered who his mother was, but never thought to find her in the Frostfangs. It did not seem nearly so amusing now. One step and then another, he thought, clinging tight. (Jon VI in Clash)

At the top of the mountain, Jon meets Ygritte (in a manner I believe to be similar to Rhaegar unmasking Lyanna as Knight of the Laughing Tree, but that's another story) and Ygritte tells him the story of Bael the Bard - who stole a Stark maiden; a maiden returned to her family a year later with a baby son.  So, Jon is told a story that correlates very closely to that of Lyanna and Rhaegar while in the Frostfangs.  He did find his mother there, just not in a way he expected and through a story that he does not realize the significance of. 

 

Nice!

[Seams]

3 hours ago, dornishdame said:

When Stonesnake says that to Jon, we get this:

Soon they were high enough so that looking down was best not considered. There was nothing below but yawning blackness, nothing above but moon and stars. "The mountain is your mother," Stonesnake had told him during an easier climb a few days past. "Cling to her, press your face up against her teats, and she won't drop you." Jon had made a joke of it, saying how he'd always wondered who his mother was, but never thought to find her in the Frostfangs. It did not seem nearly so amusing now. One step and then another, he thought, clinging tight. (Jon VI in Clash)

At the top of the mountain, Jon meets Ygritte (in a manner I believe to be similar to Rhaegar unmasking Lyanna as Knight of the Laughing Tree, but that's another story) and Ygritte tells him the story of Bael the Bard - who stole a Stark maiden; a maiden returned to her family a year later with a baby son.  So, Jon is told a story that correlates very closely to that of Lyanna and Rhaegar while in the Frostfangs.  He did find his mother there, just not in a way he expected and through a story that he does not realize the significance of. 

 

And I find parallels between Ygritte and the White Witch from The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, with Jon Snow playing the part of Edmund. So there's this creepy layer of "other mother" seduction going on in his interactions with Ygritte.

[Lost Melnibonean]

4 hours ago, Seams said:

And I find parallels between Ygritte and the White Witch from The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, with Jon Snow playing the part of Edmund. So there's this creepy layer of "other mother" seduction going on in his interactions with Ygritte.

[Seams]

48 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

I know. Surprised me, too. (Or is that dismay I detect in your expression?)

[Lost Melnibonean]

4 hours ago, Seams said:

I know. Surprised me, too. (Or is that dismay I detect in your expression?)

Disbelief. 

[Goldhands]

I'm pretty sure lots of people already noticed that but for those who didn't:

In the prologue of AFFC Pate sells Maester Walfrave's key for a gold dragon to an alchemist, who seems to be a Faceless Man, probably Jaqen H'ghar himself. To prove that the gold dragon is real he bites on it like he's seen other men doing. However, after that he falls to the ground and dies, so it's likely that the gold dragon was actually poisoned and used to kill him.

In ADWD Arya uses exactly the same trick to kill the insurance man, the kindly man gave her as target. It must've definetely been very impressive to the kindly man that Arya on her own comes up with such a ploy, which seems to be commonly used among the FM.

[Isobel Harper]

Sansa isn't the only Stark with dove associated with her!  

Squab, one of the names Arya goes by in Clash, is also the name of a baby dove. 

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

Only recently I realized that Maester Aemon was not as isolated from what all that stuff that happened south, as it might appear. Not only did he send and receive ravens, but also had plenty of time to chat with, say, the First Ranger, Benjen Stark. Who had first-hand knowledge of, among other things, what went down at Harrenhal. And Lyanna's kidnapping, maybe. 

What did the two men talk about, I wonder?

[Cersei's Nachos]

I'm sure someone probably beat me to it but here's my 2 cents lol

 

AFFC p.684 Arianne

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That left her more baffled than ever. "The old ones are so frail. Was it a broken hip, a chill, the gout?"

Now let's consider the death toll in Cersei's two previous chapters:

Broken hip - Lady Tanda

A chill - Lord Rosby

So with Doran getting visibly worse, yeah he's a total goner.

ADWD Jon IV

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The men will love that. “If we must. We’ll cut each man’s portion by a quarter.” If my brothers are complaining of me now, what will they say when they’re eating snow and acorn paste?

Throw back to Bran's first ADWD chapter where that is exactly the only thing they have been eating for some time.

[Isobel Harper]

]"Dragons," Moqorro said in the Common Tongue of Westeros. He spoke it very well, with hardly a trace of accent. No doubt that was one reason the high priest Benerro had chosen him to bring the faith of R'hllor to Daenerys Targaryen. "Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all."

There is only one other passage where the pairings "old and young" "true and false" and "bright and dark" are given.  It's also in Dance.

Beneath the weeping Wall, Lady Melisandre raised her pale white hands. "We all must choose," she proclaimed. "Man or woman, young or old, lord or peasant, our choices are the same." Her voice made Jon Snow think of anise and nutmeg and cloves. She stood at the king's side on a wooden scaffold raised above the pit. "We choose light or we choose darkness. We choose good or we choose evil. We choose the true god or the false."

[Isobel Harper]

1 hour ago, Isobel Harper said:

]"Dragons," Moqorro said in the Common Tongue of Westeros. He spoke it very well, with hardly a trace of accent. No doubt that was one reason the high priest Benerro had chosen him to bring the faith of R'hllor to Daenerys Targaryen. "Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all."

There is only one other passage where the pairings "old and young" "true and false" and "bright and dark" are given.  It's also in Dance.

Beneath the weeping Wall, Lady Melisandre raised her pale white hands. "We all must choose," she proclaimed. "Man or woman, young or old, lord or peasant, our choices are the same." Her voice made Jon Snow think of anise and nutmeg and cloves. She stood at the king's side on a wooden scaffold raised above the pit. "We choose light or we choose darkness. We choose good or we choose evil. We choose the true god or the false."

That is to say, like the Gods, there is no real "true" or "false" dragon, just a side to choose. 

[Lost Melnibonean]

This has to be aimed at Sansa...

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A maid has to be mistrustful in this world, or she will not be a maid for long.

That's from Brienne's Whispers chapter in Feast. Does it suggest that Sansa will let down her guard and lose her maidenhood? To Petyr? 

[Isobel Harper]

2 hours ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

This has to be aimed at Sansa...

That's from Brienne's Whispers chapter in Feast. Does it suggest that Sansa will let down her guard and lose her maidenhood? To Petyr? 

I personally doubt she'll lose her virginity to Petyr, although I'm certain that's what he intends.  She still calls him Littlefinger (the "face" he wears that she mistrusts) when he kisses her or makes advances towards her. 

Wow:

Spoiler

Even in her spoiler chapter.  In fact, the one time she refers to him as Littlefinger in her inner thoughts is when he kisses her on the forehead.  Or is it her cheek?

 

[Walda]

Wow, @Cersei's Nachos that is fascinating. Welcome to the forum! So welcome.

I'm not 100% convinced Lady Tanda has died yet, partly because she is a pretender to the Rosby inheritance, so when she dies could potentially matter a lot. You've made a link between Doran and the Rosby inheritance, and that is interesting too. His gout is at least as suspicious as Tanda's hip, and people don't die of gout. And Gyles was one of Arrianne's suitors. It makes me wonder if there was more to Gyles cough than what we saw - TB generally kills younger, poorer people who live in overcrowded places.  They don't usually cough out as many years as Gyles did. And I had thought of him as the only old man in this series that clearly died a natural death, but not any more. Thank you.

I love that chapter because it shows Doran being a masterly inquisitor, and reveals Arianne is just a foolish child. Her only friends are childhood friends: Garin, Drey, Spotted Sylva, Tyene; children he watched her play with in the Watergardens, and their families. He watched then as he watches now, he knows them all. While she demands to know who betrayed her, he wrings out the names of the Fowler sisters and Frynne,  who he was fishing for, knowing she might still be at large, gossiping about Quentyn's voyage or Arianne's queen (although, Quentyn is not more discreet than Arianne - Garin's mother is now almost certainly Doran's silenced spy in Planky Town, and the 'hostages' taken supposedly to keep Arianne's treason secret were most likely the ones who 'had grown curious as to why a prince and a lord’s son might be traveling under false names and seeking passage across the narrow sea'). By the end of it we know who betrayed Arianne, he knows every secret she has, and she does not even know she has surrendered them. He ends with his daughter an ally again, and his friends more bound to him than ever, with Myrcella safe and the Iron Throne none the wiser about Dornish affairs. Fate might not favour him, but he plays to win. And here he wins.

*

The reason I'm posting today is, it just occurred to me that so far, Dany has miscarried two promised princes:

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“The stallion is the khal of khals promised in ancient prophecy, child. He will unite the Dothraki into a single khalasar and ride to the ends of the earth, or so it was promised. All the people of the world will be his herd.”(AGoT, Ch.46 Daenerys V)

and:

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“We are an old people. Ancestors are important to us. Wed Hizdahr zo Loraq and make a son with him, a son whose father is the harpy, whose mother is the dragon. In him the prophecies shall be fulfilled, and your enemies will melt away like snow.”(ADwD, Ch.23 Daenerys IV)

 

[Rhaenys_Targaryen]

7 hours ago, Walda said:

The reason I'm posting today is, it just occurred to me that so far, Dany has miscarried two promised princes:

Or are they two different prophecies about the same promised prince?

[Walda]

14 hours ago, Rhaenys_Targaryen said:

Or are they two different prophecies about the same promised prince?

Well, for the Dothraki one there was "some mummer’s show of a prophecy for the whelp in her belly"(AGoT, Ch.36 Daenerys IV), as uncle Viserys put it, that identified that particular unborn child as the 'Stallion who Mounts the World' and as the fulfilment of the ancient prophecy about the Khal of Khals. The prophecy the Green Grace specifically mandates a Ghiscari father and a Valyrian mother. (and might even mandate a Loraq, or at least, to combine the ancestry of Mazdhan the Magnificent, Hazrak the Handsome, and Zharaq the Liberator, in a way that a Kandaq can't.)

So the second prophecy never applied to the first child, and while both prophecies might have been fulfilled by the second child (if it had been born, and been a son), the first prophecy applied to its stillborn sibling.

I personally suspect the concept that all religion came from one religion/all languages from a common tongue/all mythology from a common key. It is like claiming that nobody can do anything really new any more - by claiming that anything new people do is non-essential or a corruption of something purer, and, if not a distortion to be corrected, non-transformative. In the real world, concordance in the historic record of an event usually indicates revisionism, in the form of a methodical destruction of records that were not part of that concordance - just like terrorist Islam is doing/has done this century, in Mali, Syria, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia.

While that isn't an issue in the context of the SoIaF, where all the languages do come from GRRM's American English understanding of the world, and likewise all religion and all culture and all mythology, even in fiction a concordance of ancients reduces the diversity and limits the dimensions of even an invented world. It is common enough in fiction, that every ancient prophecy is applicable to the one character, thanks to authors including only what serves the plot, or editors insisting on it. It still lends the chosen one a messianic quality that makes them upstage and mesmerise their company and tends to focus the reader (or me, at any rate) on their actual banality. Dany would have fewer haters among her readers if she had fewer prophecies and in-book worshippers. We know she won't be the PtwP, because (the prophet Walda has foretold) if she did all our eyes would simultaneously roll to the back of our heads, and half a million copies of Winds of Winter would be thrown across the room. But I don't want Jon Snow to go the way of Paul Atriedes or Bella Swan either. Since season six of the show, I've been hoping he stays dead, dead, dead as Ned.

Personal objections aside, it is possible that the ancients of the Dothraki and the Ghiscari agree, and are in concordance with the tale of Azor Ahai, and what was written in the Seven Pointed Star, and the prophecies that Marwyn, Melisandre, Aemon, Rhaegar, Haldon, Benerro, have studied, and any from any random ancient culture the author finds convenient to mention. But it isn't possible that the child the Dosh Khaleen said would fulfil their prophecy is the same child that the Green Grace said would fulfil hers. Different dads.

[Lost Melnibonean]

@Walda, You might find this very short thread of some very marginal interest...

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/96388-galazza-galare-prophecy/

[Walda]

Thanks, @Lost Melnibonean

Yeah, very interesting. So many thoughts. That thread is archived, so I'll share them here, if that is OK (this will be a long post though.)

That "enemies will melt away like snow" bit teases me as well.

In the first place, enemies that melt away like snow are persistent enemies. The white walkers, Robb's northern army, the wildling clans of the Mountains of the Moon. Not a desirable kind of enemy. And Dany is currently getting the most grief from the Sons of the Harpy, who are also good at melting away, although they have not been associated with snow.

Looking at melting snow, it isn't just Robb's army, but Robb himself - in particular, the memory of him

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standing in the yard with snow melting in his auburn hair. (AGoT, Ch.70 Jon IX)

He was a king now, not the boy she’d left at Winterfell with snow melting in his hair. (ASoS, Ch.39 Arya VII)

Nice simpatico with Jon and Arya, but Sansa remembers in her own way:

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Robb had melting flakes in his hair when he hugged me, and the snowball Arya tried to make kept coming apart in her hands.(ASoS, Ch.80 Sansa VII)

Jon remembers him most, though. After he is dead and gone,he dreams of Robb:

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“I am the Lord of Winterfell,” Jon screamed. It was Robb before him now, his hair wet with melting snow. Longclaw took his head off. Then a gnarled hand seized Jon roughly by the shoulder. He whirled …
 … and woke with a raven pecking at his chest. “Snow,” the bird cried.(ADwD, Ch.58 Jon XII)

Bloodraven, is there nothing he can't foreshadow?

In his next PoV chapter, Jon thinks of returning to Winterfell:

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What you propose is nothing less than treason. He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair.(ADwD, Ch.69 Jon XIII)

Of course, Robb is not the only person with blood hot enough to melt the snowflakes in his hair.

There's Tormund (ASoS, Ch.15 Jon II), and Sam (AFfC, Ch.05 Samwell I; ADwD,Ch.07 Jon II), and Sir Richard.

Sir Richard Horpe, that is, second in command to Stannis, knight of ash and bone, and of moths that flirt with flame: He knows he has it coming, and so do we

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“Death is part of war, Justin.” Ser Richard Horpe stood inside the door, his dark hair damp with melting snow.(ADwD, Ch.62The Sacrifice)

He is on his way to Bolton-held Winterfell, Tormund is greeting the giants as they near the ravaged remains of the Fist of the First Men, and it's the last thing Jon says to Sam before Sam leaves for Oldtown. Pretty sure this means they are all goners.

There is another thing with snow melting on people's cheeks - especially but by no means exclusively Stark cheeks. It seems to symbolise tears like Alyssa's, that never fall (most noticeably when Jaime reads Cersei's letter Ch.44 Jaime VII).

But the other thing that bugs me about this talk of snow melting is that this is supposedly an ancient Ghiscari prophecy.

Coming from a temperate zone place where it has never snowed (like, not in the ice ages, not in the Cambrian, not ever), I'm familiar with expressions like 'snow on the water' and 'snowed under', but they are self-evidently imports from places where snow is common, not part of the ancient culture of this place. @tze points out that such saying don't make sense in a place where the snow never melts, either.

Meereen can't be much further north than Selhorys (where the last time it snowed was probably when the Rhoyne froze, in the last Long Night, according to tWoIaF), or Oldtown (which didn't have any snow last winter, as far as Sam can remember, and according to GRRM, 'almost never' has snow.)

Anyway, Meereen does not seem to have been of a high enough latitude to have seen snow since the long night, and Old Ghis is still further south,  south even of the southern tip of the Isle of Cedars, where the Selaesori Qhoran was wrecked in a tornado, and where Victarion waited for his ships. Victarion has taken the northernmost route to slavers bay, steering south only to avoid the smoking seas of Valyria, and his descriptions of the Summer seas in Autumn is not one of a place that knows winter is coming:

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Victarion did not like this sea, nor these endless cloudless skies, nor the blazing sun that beat down on their heads and baked the decks until the boards were hot enough to scorch bare feet. He did not like these storms, which seemed to come up out of nowhere...These southron storms were as treacherous as women. Even the water was the wrong color—a shimmering turquoise close to shore, and farther out a blue so deep that it was almost black. Victarion missed the grey-green waters of home, with their whitecaps and surges.(ADwD, Ch.56 The Iron Suitor)

Of course, latitude might not be relevant in this world. Although there are lots of weather clues that lead us to suspect it is, the seasons are skewed by magic, not physics. So while (in late summer) Bran clearly identified the North as a cold place:

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North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid (AGoT, Ch.17 Bran III)

and that is not absolutely inconsistent with the notion that his planet has a tilt and a magnetosphere like ours, it could also be cold because there are a whole heap of white-walkers hibernating, and the curtain is so they can shut out the light and sleep, and if it wasn't for their bodies making the place so cold, their north would be like our equator or something like that, that makes no sense. Magic doesn't have to make sense.

Still, we know they have days, and one moon for sure, with phases like our moon, and as the Maesters study the sky and consult shadow maps, and send their results in to the Citidel, to determine the seasons, and things get colder with altitude, and what comes up must come down - in most respects, their physics seems to work the same as ours.

Meereen we know is only a little above sea-level, but I suppose the Khyzai mountains might be high enough for snow, and once a part of the Ghiscari Empire. Maybe the ancient prophet came from Khyzai.

Still, it seems as utterly out of place as when Pyatt Pree promises to petition the undying ones for an interview, assuring Dany it was:

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“A honor rare as summer snows.” (ACoK, Ch.27 Daenerys II)

At the time there is every reason to suppose the guy has spent most of his life playing butler to the House of the Undying in Qarth. Sure, he probably studied heaps, has seen every dimension of inner space thanks to the Warlock wine and the visions of the house of the undying, but Qarth is clearly further south than any place in Westeros, or any of the Free Cities. It is "The centre of the world, the gate between north and south, the bridge between east and west" to hear Pyat tell it. He speaks to Dany in Dothraki, and perhaps, after she tells him of her desire to claim the Iron Throne, he looks up his book of common Westerosi sayings and finds this one?

Really, I wouldn't expect an idiom like 'summer snows' to be common anywhere below Barrowtown. Maybe the Ibbenese have a phrase like it. King Robert had lived at the Eyrie half (well, a third) of his life, and he seemed astonished by summer snows. He might have been playing the point up, as he was trying to sell Ned on going south with him at the time. Pycelle is not ignorant of them - he referred to them in his courtesies to Ned when he visited. Baelish talked less courteously of Ned 'melting' below the Neck (in fact, bloody rude, but not as rude as taking Ned's coin to pay the Goldcloaks, to chop off his head), Still, these southerners clearly regard this as a northern phenomena in Westeros. And Daenarys had never seen Westeros, when she saw Qarth.  It is probably the strangest thing Pyat Pree has said. Although Dany is just as weird back:

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“Then why do men lower their voices when they speak of the warlocks of Qarth? All across the east, their power and wisdom are revered.”(ACoK, Ch.27 Daenerys II)

Qarth is as far east as she has ever been in her life. Where did she learn about this reverence for their wisdom? The Eastern markets of Vaes Dothrak? That is the only time we know she has interacted with people from the East. The Dothraki treat Pyat Pree, and all maegi, with nothing but contempt. (and I wonder if she is ever going to use the spirits of the air ointment he gave her).

So, perhaps the 'melt like snow' bit of the Ghiscari prophecy might be a sign that it really originated from somewhere to the north of Ghis.

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If I marry Hizdahr before the sun comes up, will all these armies melt away like morning dew (ADwD, Ch.36 Daenerys VI)

seems a much better fit for the Meereenese climate.

Most strongly associated with summer snows are the direwolf pups born in them. There is a motif of blood, red as fire, on the snow, that applies to both the Red God and the Old Gods. The Red God is another reason to be suspicious of the 'melting away' bit: not only are his followers beseeching that dark flame to 'melt these snows', there seems to be a motif of molten gold and red in people being burnt alive - well, at least in the case of Viserys and Rickard Stark. Admittedly, neither were offered specifically to R'hollr. Although Moqorro, in his Greyjoy black and gold, with the red flames on his face, might be.

There is a hint of the 'red and gold' motif in

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“If you were grown,” she told Drogon, scratching him between the horns, “I’d fly you over the walls and melt that harpy down to slag.”(ASoS, Ch.57 Daenerys V)

Anyway, Mully's grandmother seems to have the measure of friends like Pyat Pree and the Galazza Galare:

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"Summer friends will melt away like summer snows” (ADwD, Ch.69 Jon XIII)

 Summer friends, and all Dany's enemies.

Mind you, Mully's grandma didn't mention that Winter Brothers are stabby.

TL;DR Now I notice that knights of Westeros are given golden spurs (Ergo, Lord Rickard is a knight). And apparently everyone spurs their horses - not just shits like Theon and Obara pushing horses already going as fast as they can. Jon spurs his obedient little garron, Tyrion spurs his piebald nag, Tommen spurs his little pony. It's sickening.

[Lost Melnibonean]

During the showdown at The Whispers in Brienne IV, Feast 20, Shagwell the fool is hiding up in a slender, young weirwood, described as a pale stranger. Any guesses as to the significance of Shagwell coming at Brienne from a weirwood? 

[TheDrunkenDornishman]

That if Daenerys suddenly becomes a political and/or military genius under Tyrion's guidance , then she'd basically be Marla Wolfblade with dragons