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Heresy 191 The Crows


Black Crow

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5 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I suppose it depends on what's actually going on. We seem to be agreed that there is some kind of blood pact between the Starks and Ice just as between Targaryens and Fire. What's going on stems from that and not from any sort of magical formula requiring a quart of Stark, a pint of Blackwood and a tincture of Tully.

I'm inclined to agree that this is more about the original concept of the great wolf and the man limned in flame from MMD's ritual.  But then why do we have skinchangers at all?  It does seem to me that the wolves and the crows are sent to recruit the Stark kids and it takes persistence from the 3EC to open Bran's third eye.  The direwolves are dominant in making the additional connection or strengthening skin changer abilities.  The Starks are the designated instruments for Ice.  Just as Dany is the fiery equivalent.  Although I question Dany's skinchanger abilities at this point.  She is accused by Qotho of being a Maegi before entering the tent ritual.  She might be more akin to Melisandre at this point.

Which begs the question of why R'hllor shows Jon as his instrument in the flames.  Unless the great wolf and the man limned in flame are the same thing.   Jon and Ghost.   Jon has been set apart from the Stark kids in a sense. I can see him being both Bran's instrument and Dany's instrument at some point.  I'm not sure that bloodlines are relevant unless Jon and Dany are both Aerys' progeny.  It's AAR who forges the sword. 

Dany, at least, can be said to have been reborn amidst smoke and salt tears during MMD's ritual.  Jon, perhaps.  Bran tastes a salty tear when he passes through the Black Gate and Jon's lies on the ground spilling his blood, which smokes in the cold.

It seems to me that Dany has attempted one forging of a sword in water.  If Drogo had lived, he would essentially be her instrument, her sword for regaining Westeros.  Drogo was plunged into a bath of water and he was broken in two, his body separated from his soul.

That she seems unaware of the prophecy, rather than trying to force the prophecy, or make it happen like Rhaegar and Euron; the prophecy seems to be more about her than anything else.   

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9 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

It can be both. Ultimately if GRRM wants something to happen it will, especially early on when he only intended for a trilogy and there wasn't as much world building intended. As he continued to write he probably asked himself why their blood is important for magic and not satisfied with "because it needs to be," he decided to flesh that out. So now we're at the point where you can really trace back all this stuff if you want.

I did some research on the family trees and I tend to agree with @Frey family reunion, there's definitely patterns that can be recognized but are really subtle or seem like white noise to someone not accustomed to that wheelhouse. It's a big reason I think there's more going on in the D&E novellas in regards to bloodlines. There are many characters with at least one unknown parent or questionable parentage, most often on the mother's side. Personally I can't figure out how it all fits, the skills I use in analyzing just aren't suited for it. But I'm glad someone is taking that route, it seems interesting as hell.

Like I said earlier, I definitely agree with the Ice/Fire King idea but what makes you think the Starks have both, wouldn't it make more sense to have Stark/Targ as Ice/Fire Kings?

As to families and blood I think that you're probably right but only up to a point and that is that there's a disconnection between cause and effect here. The effect is what GRRM wants to happen, retrospectively filling in the background is not quite the same thing as revealing the original reason why.

Continued: by which I mean that Bran is a greenseer because GRRM wrote it that way, not because his father was a wolf and his mother was a fish and who knows what that great aunt that nobody speaks about might have been.

As to the last I don't think Fire comes into it; rather that Summer and Winter are a duality in which Ice represents the natural cycle. Fire is what threatens the cycle by consuming everything.

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10 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

It can be both. Ultimately if GRRM wants something to happen it will, especially early on when he only intended for a trilogy and there wasn't as much world building intended. As he continued to write he probably asked himself why their blood is important for magic and not satisfied with "because it needs to be," he decided to flesh that out. So now we're at the point where you can really trace back all this stuff if you want.

I did some research on the family trees and I tend to agree with @Frey family reunion, there's definitely patterns that can be recognized but are really subtle or seem like white noise to someone not accustomed to that wheelhouse. It's a big reason I think there's more going on in the D&E novellas in regards to bloodlines. There are many characters with at least one unknown parent or questionable parentage, most often on the mother's side. Personally I can't figure out how it all fits, the skills I use in analyzing just aren't suited for it. But I'm glad someone is taking that route, it seems interesting as hell.

Like I said earlier, I definitely agree with the Ice/Fire King idea but what makes you think the Starks have both, wouldn't it make more sense to have Stark/Targ as Ice/Fire Kings?

I don't think it us a matter of skills.  Too much information is missing.  Who is Jojen and Mira's mother?  What about Euron?  Other than BR and the Starks, how much family history do we have on anyone with magic?

I agree the main characters have the power they do because GRRM wants to tell the story he does.  But the same can be said about the houses and families.  Unlike some other fantasy authors, GRRM's world mostly makes sense.  He isn't going to to randomly give people powers that aren't consistent with the world he set up.

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3 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

The wording is a little ambiguous. Do you mean the reason why he's filling in the background or the reason why magic works the way it does?

Essentially what I'm saying is that the magic works as and when it does because GRRM wants to. If he's fleshing out a background that's interesting and part of his world building, but the magic isn't founded on that background.

Think of it as a colouring book. We can see the picture of the wolf and the boy, but just because GRRM sits down of an evening and paints parts of the background in different and perhaps strange colours doesn't alter the fact its a picture of a wolf and a boy. 

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7 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

The bloodlines is an explanation as to why magic works for certain people and not others. Explaining how magic works because of having a certain bloodline would cease to be magic and just become a weird medieval science so I'm with you in that sense.

If we want to get pedantic technically everything in the series is how it is because GRRM wants it to be. That doesn't mean there's not a logic to why things occur the way they do, even with something seemingly illogical like magic. I definitely think that we won't ever get explained how magic works in-universe though, that ruins all the fun! It's just gonna do things and people gotta deal with it.

There certainly needs to be an internal [if sometimes flexible] logic to how things work otherwise we'd effectively be in "with one bound Jack was free" country.

I think that there are two levels on which its working. On the Ice side its being managed by the direwolves and the crows. That's not to say that they're running the whole show, but rather that they make things happen; the direwolves come to the Stark kids and change them; the crows lure Bran to his fall and afterwards a crow comes to lead him down the primrose path; other crows intervene at critical moments.

At a background level we are slowly learning why families and often intermarried families are the ones involved and why the direwolves and crows have come for the Starks rather than anybody else; but its that first level rather than the second one which is important.

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Black Crow -- who in your opinion are Jon's biological parents? 

If you think more than one combination might be possible, how would you ballpark the odds of each combination?

Perhaps a themed Heresy edition on "the song of ice and fire" would be interesting.  It's the title of the series, and the exact phrase only turns up in one context... and yet the fanbase seems to have spent relatively little time discussing it.

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1 hour ago, JNR said:

Black Crow -- who in your opinion are Jon's biological parents? 

If you think more than one combination might be possible, how would you ballpark the odds of each combination?

Perhaps a themed Heresy edition on "the song of ice and fire" would be interesting.  It's the title of the series, and the exact phrase only turns up in one context... and yet the fanbase seems to have spent relatively little time discussing it.

 

Oh, just for the record I think there's no doubt that Jon's mother was Lyanna Stark and that trumps anything that may be discovered of his father.

Of the available alternatives I think Ser Arthur Dayne is probably a little more likely than Prince Rhaegar; a lot of the evidence and more than a little wishful thinking points to the latter, but while he certainly offers a strong possibility I feel that he's the red herring in this mystery, hiding Ser Arthur.

Without going into textual nuances and argument I think that Rhaegar ultimately falls because notwithstanding the stories in the World Book, this story is about Westeros and in terms of its history and its families the Targaryens are intrusive interlopers; they don't belong in a story of First Men, Green Men, Singers, direwolves, crows and Ice. As I said in an earlier post we have a natural cycle in play of Winter Kings and Summer Kings and it is Targaryen Fire which threatens the cycle.

Granted the fitting of Jon into this as the son of the Sword of the Morning and a future Son may be a little problematic as we understand its place now [not a lot], but in terms of the conflict a Jon Targaryen has little relevance at all.

As to Ice and Fire as a theme; a good idea. It would do nicely as the final one in Heresy 199. Are you volunteering to write the OP? If so I accept.

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Edit:

GRRM has said that the "Fire and Ice" has multiple meanings, with one of his more recent interviews flatly stating that (as might be guessed), Ice is embodied by the Others, and Fire is embodied by Dany and the Dothraki.

I believe he's also said that the Lannister vs. Stark conflict was another way to interpret the title.

____

Personally, I also interpret the word "Song" as having an in world meaning as relates to the way that the CotF understand magic; they speak the True Tongue, which is said to sound musical to an outside observer, and reflects the sounds of nature.

As an example, I read the story of the breaking of the arm of Dorne as the CotF "singing" the song of earth to violent effect, and that one can similarly "sing" to ice and fire, as was done (perhaps) to create the Others.

Edit 2: See also, the story of Brandon the Builder seeking out the CotF to help with raising the Wall, and learning the True Tongue in the process. In my opinion, this is a story that's really about Brandon the Builder learning the Song of Ice.

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16 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

Edit:

GRRM has said that the "Fire and Ice" has multiple meanings, with one of his more recent interviews flatly stating that (as might be guessed), Ice being embodied by the Others, and Fire being embodied by Dany and the Dothraki.

I believe he's also said that the Lannister vs. Stark conflict was another way to interpret the title.

Personally, I also interpret the word "Song" as having an in world meaning as relates to the way that the CotF understand magic; they speak the True Tongue, which is said to sound musical to an outside observer, and reflects the sounds of nature.

As an example, I read the story of the breaking of the arm of Dorne as the CotF "singing" the song of earth to violent effect, and that one can similarly "sing" to ice and fire, as was done (perhaps) to create the Others.

Well put. And the crows and ravens also have their song, I believe. A song of death for life. A continuation of life from death. Perhaps the Kings of Winter were attuned to the Song of Ice then lost it.

It seems to me that wolves and ravens would be kings of winter. 

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The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves, in the True Tongue that no human man could speak. The ravens could speak it, though. Their small black eyes were full of secrets, and they would caw at him and peck his skin when they heard the songs.

Crows with secrets who seem to respond to songs.  All most interesting.

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43 minutes ago, The Snowfyre Chorus said:

Yeah, but... why "no human man?"  Why not just no human... period?

Can human women speak the True Tongue?

Or is GRRM just messing with us again?

Hmm.  Don't really have a whole lot to add to that other than the fact that your statement made Sansa and her fondness of songs pop into my head.  Not to mention her being called "Little Bird..."

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37 minutes ago, Lady Dyanna said:

Hmm.  Don't really have a whole lot to add to that other than the fact that your statement made Sansa and her fondness of songs pop into my head.  Not to mention her being called "Little Bird..."

Ha! Interesting thought, re: Sansa.  I myself was thinking more of Arya, and the way she seems to hear voices from beyond the grave.  Jeor Mormont suggests this is something the CotF can do, as well:

Quote

“Would that bones could talk,” the Old Bear grumbled. “This fellow could tell us much. How he died. Who burned him, and why. Where the wildlings have gone.” He sighed. “The children of the forest could speak to the dead, it’s said. But I can’t.” He tossed the skull back into the mouth of the tree, where it landed with a puff of fine ash.

 

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1 hour ago, The Snowfyre Chorus said:

Ha! Interesting thought, re: Sansa.  I myself was thinking more of Arya, and the way she seems to hear voices from beyond the grave.  Jeor Mormont suggests this is something the CotF can do, as well:

That she does. We also have Sweet Robin hearing a dead Marrillon sing. Cat, I believe, also mentions that the Silent Sisters can talk with the dead when Ned's bones are delivered to her. 

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2 hours ago, The Snowfyre Chorus said:

Ha! Interesting thought, re: Sansa.  I myself was thinking more of Arya, and the way she seems to hear voices from beyond the grave.  Jeor Mormont suggests this is something the CotF can do, as well:

 

I've longed believe that the term "COTF" is not limited to the little tree huggers, and the truer name "those who sing the song of earth" might give a deeper understand to who we are deaking with without the limitation. That being said,that quote by you Snowy does support necromancy,but again extending beyond the little green buggers hmmmmm.

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1 hour ago, wolfmaid7 said:

I've longed believe that the term "COTF" is not limited to the little tree huggers, and the truer name "those who sing the song of earth" might give a deeper understand to who we are dealing with without the limitation. That being said,that quote by you Snowy does support necromancy,but again extending beyond the little green buggers hmmmmm.

I would rather say that the Children of the Forest is the name given to the tree-huggers by men, they call themselves "those who sing the song of earth", but given the underlying philosophy they aren't necessarily the only singers.

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