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Cycles, Balance and the Others


Dorian Martell

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   In the years I have been on this forum I have read a number of theories about the others, their motivitation and why they have returned. Most of them are entirely crackpot and require writing a whole section of a book to work.  A popular idea is that the others are a response to an imbalance in the world, like the cutting down of weirwoods or the death of dragons. For timeline reasons alone they do not work, unless you are willing to rewrite the timeline of the books. The same goes for the theory that the others were created by the children to fight humanity. Why would the children wait 2000 years after a peace pact to unleash a weapon of mass destruction on humanity and then help the very people defeat said weapon targets? 
  I propose that the Others and their invasions are cyclical in nature and that the last invasion was not the first to happen but the first to be witnessed by humanity. The others are the ancient enemy of the children of the forest. They are easily defeated by simple obdisian weaponry and the children have the magical power to literally hold them at bay as witnessed by Bran in the children's cave. According to legend, the children's magic is in the wall making it a magical as well as a physical barrier and why a corpse like coldhands cannot enter the black gate or the childrens cave. Then there is the story of the last hero and his quest to seek out the children for help. He was successful, but why would the children possess any knowledge the humans did not, unless the children had seen the others before.
The others are in essence anti-life as we know it. They are extremely cold and they thrive in ice, where as life in the book is warm. They seem to love death. They cause it, harness it and can control it to be their minion. Their natural opposite is the children. The CTOF thrive in warmth. They exist in green and verdant nature and running streams.  The Others are the opposite of the CTOF.  
   I beleieve that the balance that was disturbed was the Children themselves. The Weirnet as it is setup would let the children know when the others moved south and then appropriate measures could be taken to stop them.  Humans were a very different enemy though and by cutting down the weirwoods and killing the children,  the tools and knowledge to stop the others almost died as well. While the first men were eventually able to defeat the others, the Andals repeated the things that the First men did when they crossed the arm of Dorne, rendering innefective the tools and the knowledge that had been learned by the first men and enshrined in the watch. This is why Bran is living a story similar to the last hero. He is now the link from the past to the present to help defeat he ancient enemy. 
Thoughts?

   

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First, in my eyes I am still new to the forum and I don't do social media or ASOIAF talk anywhere else online. So when I have stupid questions, I have to grin and bare it because they have rattled around in my head for years. 

Second. Wow! Thank you for this because it's always a good time to revisit the true threat to Westeros. 

You mentioned this in your OP: "The others are in essence anti-life as we know it. They are extremely cold and they thrive in ice, where as life in the book is warm. They seem to love death. They cause it, harness it and can control it to be their minion. Their natural opposite is the children. The CTOF thrive in warmth. They exist in green and verdant nature and running streams.  The Others are the opposite of the CTOF. "

Question: Do you think GRRM is using the Others as an allegory for different periods in time, like an ice age that ends one time and ushers in a new? I'd say it was a cyclical force required if there was overpopulation, or something, but that doesn't seem to be a Planetos problem. Maybe a morality problem that needs to be wiped out? 

Thats my big question: why? 

I have always thought that the Others viewed the humans as a threat to them and they are doing their own work to stop their own  prophecized demise from happening.

 

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And just a sidenote: I know we, the readers, are suposed to question the existance of the religions and gods and magic on Planetos... but what we know about the CotF, and you mentioned, about them holding the wights form the cave, and helping build the wall the Other's can't pass... well, this makes it hard for me to think magic is only in the believers head.

Or, maybe I am falling for it :lol:

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One thing I find interesting is the time cycle the OP tentatively introduced to the equation.

Basically, the First Men arrived 12000 years ago, cut down a bunch of weirwood trees, and the Others appeared 4000 years later. Then, if we accept the version of history adhered to by some Maesters - I think it is called the True History - then the Andal arrival is dated around 4000 years ago. They cut down a bunch of additional weirwood trees. And lo and behold, once again, 4000 years later the Others arrive.

So it could be argued that the Others are a 4000 year delayed reaction to the cutting down of a large number (as in many thousands) of weirwood trees.

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My opinion of the Others fits much closer to the OP's than many of the other theories floating around here.  I would add a few additional points:

  • Men entering into Westeros may have further disturbed the balance between the Others and the Children by reducing the total population of the CotF and driving them north, closer to the boundaries of the Others' territories.
  • The introduction of large populations of Men into Westeros may have also provided the Others with a resource that they had not previously had en masse before: meat puppets.  The vast majority of the wight army that we see is composed of (former) humans; other than the occasional polar bear or legendary giant ice spider, the armies of the others are mainly ex-humans.  So, what did the Others use to do their fighting before they had men?  If this cyclic conflict had been going on for millennia between the Others and the CotF, the introduction of men as a zombified fighting force could have caused serious complications that the CotF had not previously encountered.

Both of these factors could have upset what was previously a balanced, cyclic system, offering the Others a number of previously unheld advantages, and forcing the CotF to ally out of necessity with Men.

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On 7/22/2016 at 11:33 PM, Dorian Martell said:

Why would the children wait 2000 years after a peace pact to unleash a weapon of mass destruction on humanity and then help the very people defeat said weapon targets? 

Amen. I hated that explanation from the moment I saw it. 

I like the idea that there's no particular reason the Others are coming now. I don't even really think the Children have to do with it. I see them as an embodiment of elemental power that has always existed. No idea why they show up every few thousand years to raise hell. I know it's dumb, but I like it. 

 

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Do not forget that 1. dating may be icky and 2. things go very slow in the olden days. Think migration of human species... It was basically not a migration, but expansion, at a rate of few kilometers per generation. Village is full? Let's go further down the stream and settle there... So it is fully possible that it took 4000 years since the Peace just for the humans to get into major contact with the Others. Then Others get meat puppets and you have a sudden crisis... Even if Others were created 4000 years prior to that. Heck, or even Others were put on ice by CoTF and then arrival of humans up North disturbed them.

alternatively, Others and them getting out of control might have been crucial for the CoTF actually having to accept the peace.

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21 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

First, in my eyes I am still new to the forum and I don't do social media or ASOIAF talk anywhere else online. So when I have stupid questions, I have to grin and bare it because they have rattled around in my head for years. 

Second. Wow! Thank you for this because it's always a good time to revisit the true threat to Westeros. 

You mentioned this in your OP: "The others are in essence anti-life as we know it. They are extremely cold and they thrive in ice, where as life in the book is warm. They seem to love death. They cause it, harness it and can control it to be their minion. Their natural opposite is the children. The CTOF thrive in warmth. They exist in green and verdant nature and running streams.  The Others are the opposite of the CTOF. "

Question: Do you think GRRM is using the Others as an allegory for different periods in time, like an ice age that ends one time and ushers in a new? I'd say it was a cyclical force required if there was overpopulation, or something, but that doesn't seem to be a Planetos problem. Maybe a morality problem that needs to be wiped out? 

Thats my big question: why? 

I have always thought that the Others viewed the humans as a threat to them and they are doing their own work to stop their own  prophecized demise from happening.

 

I do not think they are an allegory for different time periods.  The Author does like to give supernatural explanations for things that are mundane and geological in the real world though.  I have never thought thee cause was about humans, just exaserbated by them. 
As for the why, The others hate warm life. It is their goal to spread gold and death over hte world. when things die, the others can control them. 
The Others attacking due to their prophecy seems antithetical to the authors take on prophecy.  Also, why would fear of human encroachment cause them to move now? This is why I propose a cyclical invasion. 

21 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

And just a sidenote: I know we, the readers, are suposed to question the existance of the religions and gods and magic on Planetos... but what we know about the CotF, and you mentioned, about them holding the wights form the cave, and helping build the wall the Other's can't pass... well, this makes it hard for me to think magic is only in the believers head.

Or, maybe I am falling for it :lol:

you are correct, magic is very real in the books. The "gods" however? George has said we will never see them. Does tham mean they do not exist? 

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12 minutes ago, Dorian Martell said:

I do not think they are an allegory for different time periods.  The Author does like to give supernatural explanations for things that are mundane and geological in the real world though.  I have never thought thee cause was about humans, just exaserbated by them. 
As for the why, The others hate warm life. It is their goal to spread gold and death over hte world. when things die, the others can control them. 
The Others attacking due to their prophecy seems antithetical to the authors take on prophecy.  Also, why would fear of human encroachment cause them to move now? This is why I propose a cyclical invasion. 

you are correct, magic is very real in the books. The "gods" however? George has said we will never see them. Does tham mean they do not exist? 

To me and my little whiskey soaked brain, I feel like there is a deeper need to the Others, kinda like the Morlocks (?) from H.G. Wells' Time Machine, just on a wider time-span. A give and take, but as you say, the first time it happened was not the first time ever, just one witnessed by humans and recorded.

George was first a more classic sci-fi author before dragons were added and the story starts with an introduction to the Others. ;)

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22 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

One thing I find interesting is the time cycle the OP tentatively introduced to the equation.

Basically, the First Men arrived 12000 years ago, cut down a bunch of weirwood trees, and the Others appeared 4000 years later. Then, if we accept the version of history adhered to by some Maesters - I think it is called the True History - then the Andal arrival is dated around 4000 years ago. They cut down a bunch of additional weirwood trees. And lo and behold, once again, 4000 years later the Others arrive.

So it could be argued that the Others are a 4000 year delayed reaction to the cutting down of a large number (as in many thousands) of weirwood trees.

A four millenia delayed reaction could be argued. I have thought about that, and it could work within the cyclical nature of their invasion, or it could be a very long term trigger. It does not jive with me personally though.  

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22 hours ago, Fencer said:

My opinion of the Others fits much closer to the OP's than many of the other theories floating around here.  I would add a few additional points:

  • Men entering into Westeros may have further disturbed the balance between the Others and the Children by reducing the total population of the CotF and driving them north, closer to the boundaries of the Others' territories.
  • The introduction of large populations of Men into Westeros may have also provided the Others with a resource that they had not previously had en masse before: meat puppets.  The vast majority of the wight army that we see is composed of (former) humans; other than the occasional polar bear or legendary giant ice spider, the armies of the others are mainly ex-humans.  So, what did the Others use to do their fighting before they had men?  If this cyclic conflict had been going on for millennia between the Others and the CotF, the introduction of men as a zombified fighting force could have caused serious complications that the CotF had not previously encountered.

Both of these factors could have upset what was previously a balanced, cyclic system, offering the Others a number of previously unheld advantages, and forcing the CotF to ally out of necessity with Men.

I figured the meat puppets they used were dead animals, like wolves and bears and shadowcats in the same way that the children skinchanged these animals to fight men. Don't forget there were plenty of children and giants before men crossed the arm 

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6 hours ago, Lord Vance II said:

Amen. I hated that explanation from the moment I saw it. 

I like the idea that there's no particular reason the Others are coming now. I don't even really think the Children have to do with it. I see them as an embodiment of elemental power that has always existed. No idea why they show up every few thousand years to raise hell. I know it's dumb, but I like it. 

 

It isn't dumb at all. The real world has plenty of warm and cold cycles over the 4 billion year history of the planet.  GRRM just gave a magical origin to the cycles of planetos

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1 hour ago, Runaway Penguin said:

Do not forget that 1. dating may be icky and 2. things go very slow in the olden days. Think migration of human species... It was basically not a migration, but expansion, at a rate of few kilometers per generation. Village is full? Let's go further down the stream and settle there... So it is fully possible that it took 4000 years since the Peace just for the humans to get into major contact with the Others. Then Others get meat puppets and you have a sudden crisis... Even if Others were created 4000 years prior to that. Heck, or even Others were put on ice by CoTF and then arrival of humans up North disturbed them.

alternatively, Others and them getting out of control might have been crucial for the CoTF actually having to accept the peace.

The problem with the ctof creation theory is the weapon would have to be deployed for it to get out of control and once it was out of control, why did it just hang around for 2000 years before moving, if it was in fact a weapon out of control? 

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5 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

To me and my little whiskey soaked brain, I feel like there is a deeper need to the Others, kinda like the Morlocks (?) from H.G. Wells' Time Machine, just on a wider time-span. A give and take, but as you say, the first time it happened was not the first time ever, just one witnessed by humans and recorded.

George was first a more classic sci-fi author before dragons were added and the story starts with an introduction to the Others. ;)

my brain is also a tad whisky soaked. That could be the reason why I enjoy our exchanges 

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I like this theory because it preserves the otherness of the Others.  Everyone seems to want the Others to have a detailed back story that makes them more sympathetic.  To me, this defeats the two main roles the Others serve in the book, which are to personify winter in a kind of ramped-up fantasy way, and in doing so to place human internecine squabbles in context.

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2 hours ago, Dorian Martell said:

I figured the meat puppets they used were dead animals, like wolves and bears and shadowcats in the same way that the children skinchanged these animals to fight men. Don't forget there were plenty of children and giants before men crossed the arm 

Oh, I was thinking that they certainly did have other meat puppets, but the utility of, say, a undead box turtle, is significantly lower than that of a human.  The ones that would be most useful, the wolves, bears and shadowcats are apex predators or near to apex, and have relatively low populations.  Individually useful, but possibly not available in sufficient volume to build an effective army.

On that subject though, I don't believe we've seen wighted CotF?  May that be significant?

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2 hours ago, Dorian Martell said:

The problem with the ctof creation theory is the weapon would have to be deployed for it to get out of control and once it was out of control, why did it just hang around for 2000 years before moving, if it was in fact a weapon out of control? 

Well for one, lack of meat puppets up North at the time of creation. Think Manhattan project: You do not develop superweapon on the frontlines, you do it in safety of your own territory. Far from humans. And then...
Well, the story is not clear, but clearly hammer of water and breaking of land bridge did not work (or even were just natural events assigned to CoTF/credited by or to them, same as any major earthquake was seen as gods being angry on Earth). You run your secret weapn and... Find that it is uncontrollable. Flawed. Whatever... In any case, unusable for you (or even gunning for you)... So you seek peace.

 

Again, the long wait for the large problem is natural. If the CoTF thrown in the towel shortly after the Neck becoming swamp (would be natural, last ditch defence breached etc.) - given the size of North, you will need still hundreds if not thousands of years to populate it densely enough to get people far enough North to encounter the Others - be it gradually, skirmishing with the unknown until critical concentration, or be it "Hmm this is weird cave, let's check what's in it... Oh holy crap on a cracker RUN AWA....". Heck, Others might have been busy fighting the CoTF up North and slowly exterminating them all the time.

 

Do not forget that large fast movements of nations (such as Saxon conquest of England) also took significant time - and that was with sizeable populations being pressed out. With the First Men, it would be far more akin to the initial settlement of Eurasia by human hunters-gatherers. With significant setbacks along the way.

 

So from human history PoV, the delay can be explained quite easily by the time it took humans to settle far enough North to arrive at the Others creation labs at Los CotFos :)

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4 hours ago, Magnar wants said:

I like this theory because it preserves the otherness of the Others.  Everyone seems to want the Others to have a detailed back story that makes them more sympathetic.  To me, this defeats the two main roles the Others serve in the book, which are to personify winter in a kind of ramped-up fantasy way, and in doing so to place human internecine squabbles in context.

Agreed 

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3 hours ago, Fencer said:

Oh, I was thinking that they certainly did have other meat puppets, but the utility of, say, a undead box turtle, is significantly lower than that of a human.  The ones that would be most useful, the wolves, bears and shadowcats are apex predators or near to apex, and have relatively low populations.  Individually useful, but possibly not available in sufficient volume to build an effective army.

On that subject though, I don't believe we've seen wighted CotF?  May that be significant?

On the meat puppet subject, agreed. Apex predators are low in population and that would be a factor in their invasions being regulated by the children. 
Also, the children have magic to fight the others. It is where I suspect condhands comes from.  If my theory holds true, there would have been wighted children in the past when they actually fought, but now there are so few they hide in their cave behind a magical barrier. 

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