The Name of Ice, House Stark's Greatsword

[mediterraneo]

3 hours ago, Curled Finger said:

Thanks for your thoughts. .......

THanks to everybody's ones too!

3 hours ago, Seams said:

I don't know about any SSM, but this is in the World book:............................snip

My mistake then, thanks to Seams: it is in the World Book.

 

PS: we'd really need a thematic index for the SSM!

[Seams]

1 hour ago, cgrav said:

I think another there's another thread that broke down the numbers claim on the basis of there being 227 Valyrian steel weapons, but only the dozen or so actual swords. 

I thought we'd been over this. Funny how we keep returning to the same mysteries over and over.

1 hour ago, cgrav said:

Can we even place the event on a rough timeline? We know that the present Ice came right before the Doom of Valyria (timing which I suspect is significant), but was it an immediate replacement, or had they been long without a hereditary sword?

This is all that I can recall from the books:

Catelyn had no love for swords, but she could not deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had been forged in Valyria, before the Doom had come to the old Freehold, when the ironsmiths had worked their metal with spells as well as hammers. Four hundred years old it was, and as sharp as the day it was forged. The name it bore was older still, a legacy from the age of heroes, when the Starks were Kings in the North.

(AGoT, Catelyn I)

So the first Ice was gone from Stark hands sometime between the Age of Heroes and 400 years ago. Not a very narrow timeframe.

3 hours ago, cgrav said:

is it possible that the original Ice wasn't actually lost, but discarded? Like the original somehow became obsolete.

I just did some searching of Catelyn POVs - she is our source of information on the original crown of the Kings of Winter (and the reproduction made for Robb at Riverrun) as well as the source for the history of the first Ice (above). I was interested to see that she has a lot of swords in her scenes - Ned's greatsword, the death of Renly with a shadow sword, Robb laying out a greatsword on a table that Catelyn sees as his "true bride" and many other mentions.

Here's the "true bride" quote:

He had pledged himself to marry a daughter of Walder Frey, but she saw his true bride plain before her now: the sword he had laid on the table.

(AGoT, Catelyn XI)

A couple of thoughts about this Catelyn connection:

• If Catelyn is worried about Robb's devotion to this "true bride" greatsword (he does not have Ice but another greatsword), did she also see Ice as Ned's "true bride"? The idea of a sword as a bride would fit the previous suggestion in this thread that the Night's Queen and the sword were one and the same.
• If Robb's "true bride" was a sword, maybe we need to analyze Jeyne Westerling to see if there are symbols or hints about Ice. (Although the fact that Robb never possesses Ice might mean that Jeyne symbolizes a different sword.)
• If there are echoes and cycles of history that repeat, as we have been discussing in other threads, the Lannister theft (?) and reforging of Ice might be a clue to the fate of the previous Ice. We would probably need to find an echo of a Lann the Clever story, or a predecessor of Tywin Lannister's character who lived hundreds of years ago, to figure out the fate of the previous Ice. Or maybe examine the story arcs of the current Oathbreaker and Widow's Wail to see if they provide clues about the legendary Ice.

This isn't necessarily directly relevant to Ice, but maybe it provides a clue about Brightroar or about the nature of missing swords:

Between them they dragged Ser Jaime Lannister. They threw him down in front of her horse. "The Kingslayer," Hal announced, unnecessarily.

Lannister raised his head. "Lady Stark," he said from his knees. Blood ran down one cheek from a gash across his scalp, but the pale light of dawn had put the glint of gold back in his hair. "I would offer you my sword, but I seem to have mislaid it."

"It is not your sword I want, ser," she told him. "Give me my father and my brother Edmure. Give me my daughters. Give me my lord husband."

"I have mislaid them as well, I fear."

(AGoT, Catelyn X)

This would refer to Jaime's gold sword, on the surface, but there are constant references to Jaime's "sword hand," so the "mislaid" sword might be foreshadowing of the amputation coming up for him. But I bolded the phrase that carries several important symbols - Dawn and golden hair. Lann the Clever stole gold from the sun to brighten his hair. Here we see "dawn" apparently voluntarily putting gold in Jaime's hair. There's a pun on "hair" and "heir" throughout the books, so we may be seeing a hint about Jaime as an heir or Jaime's heirs in this phrase. But maybe the gash on Jaime's head is just a symbolic way of splitting heirs.

 

[cgrav]

I think  "true bride" there refers to warfare more than a sword in particular. It's one of Catelyn's thoughts that hint at her nagging doubt of Robb's maturity and leadership; he cared only about winning on the battlefield. The fact that the Warden of the North did not possess his own ancestral sword is symbolic corroboration of Catelyn's thoughts.

[Curled Finger]

8 hours ago, mediterraneo said:

THanks to everybody's ones too!

My mistake then, thanks to Seams: it is in the World Book.

 

PS: we'd really need a thematic index for the SSM!

We do need an index.   And there is no SSM.   There is mention in both the Wiki and World book citing 227 Valyrian Steel Blades. As I say take it or leave it.   I hang my hat on the omission of any mention of any sword other than the named swords.   I looked for other swords, VS swords any way.   They aren't there and it seems to me that as often as Lamentation or Brightroar are mentioned someone would have said something over the course of 6 novels and 2 short stories.   There are no other swords, by my reasoning.   I hope you become engaged in the wonderful mystery of the swords.   Ice has something of a counter part in Lady Forlorn as far as ancestral swords replaced with VS goes. The more we uncover about these swords the bigger the mysteries become.   It's good stuff man.    

[cgrav]

14 minutes ago, Curled Finger said:

Ice has something of a counter part in Lady Forlorn as far as ancestral swords replaced with VS goes. 

The description of Lady Forlorn and Sansa's reaction made me at first suspicious that it was actually widow's Wail, as if Littlefinger had smuggled it and used it to bribe Lyn Corbray. But I think someone would have noticed the switch.

Odd though that both Oathkeeper/WW and Forlorn are described as "smoky" and both now have rubies in their hilts. 

[Curled Finger]

11 hours ago, cgrav said:

The description of Lady Forlorn and Sansa's reaction made me at first suspicious that it was actually widow's Wail, as if Littlefinger had smuggled it and used it to bribe Lyn Corbray. But I think someone would have noticed the switch.

Odd though that both Oathkeeper/WW and Forlorn are described as "smoky" and both now have rubies in their hilts. 

I was told GRRM said Widows Wail was still at the Red Keep but again, no link, quote or supporting SSM was offered to back up the claim.  Widows Wail being smuggled to the Vale within the tapestries is a popular idea.  I tend to think it's still in Kings Landing.  However it is the type of similarities between blades that you picked up on that makes the hunt for the VS swords whereabouts so intriguing.  You find a black VS blade and you get bonus points!  

[Lord Wraith]

On 8/28/2016 at 9:20 PM, King Merrett I Frey said:

Errr, maybe the Night's Queen was actually a sword 'pale as milk', like Dawn, that posessed the Night's King. Maybe Dawn is actually THAT sword, that somehow managed to get down to Dorne. Who knows.

I have read several theories that claim that is the case.

[cgrav]

12 minutes ago, Lord Wraith said:

I have read several theories that claim that is the case.

People think the Night's Queen was a metaphor for a sword? I think it's going pretty damn deep for a sword metaphor to say "... when he gave his seed to her...". I could understand any number of other metaphors about having affection for a sword, but that really seems like something we're supposed to understand literally.

[Lurid Jester]

6 hours ago, cgrav said:

People think the Night's Queen was a metaphor for a sword? I think it's going pretty damn deep for a sword metaphor to say "... when he gave his seed to her...". I could understand any number of other metaphors about having affection for a sword, but that really seems like something we're supposed to understand literally.

Maybe... And I'm reaching here, he use her to kill his children?

yeah, far fetched, I know.  

[Jon Fossoway]

If the Night's Queen was originally a sword that morphed into a woman with strange appearance over the centuries, the metaphor of the sword, and then a "woman" possesing the owner fits with "giving the seed". 

In spanish, sword is a feminine word.