Heresy 191 The Crows

[LordImp]

1 hour ago, Feather Crystal said:

I don't think this is that far-fetched as I would expect an inversion to the Wall and the Watch for the fire side.

Yes. We have the five forts in Yi Ti , but i dont know where it fits in. If there is a supernatural threat in Essos it should be in Asshai and the Shadowlands , and 5 forts does not stop anything from Asshai as its pretty far away from each other . So im leaning towards Asshai being the fire version of the Wall and the shadowbinders the fire Nights watch .

Who do you think , Asshai or Five forts ? 

 

 

[LordImp]

32 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

I don't know about Jon binding them to his will in a magical sense, but surely his role as King of Winter will require him to bridle them.

Yes. It's most likely a connection between King of winter and the Others , dont you think ? 

[Black Crow]

52 minutes ago, LordImp said:

Yes. We have the five forts in Yi Ti , but i dont know where it fits in. If there is a supernatural threat in Essos it should be in Asshai and the Shadowlands , and 5 forts does not stop anything from Asshai as its pretty far away from each other . So im leaning towards Asshai being the fire version of the Wall and the shadowbinders the fire Nights watch .

Who do you think , Asshai or Five forts ? 

I think that there might well be some kind of link is not a connection, but GRRM has warned before about his world building, for example saying that there's no significance to the Moondancers. They just exist as part of his world. Similarly I'm not convinced that Asshai is of any significance. Sure there are parallels aplenty and heroes of legend and prophecy abounding; but this is a story about Westeros.

[Black Crow]

As to the heroes abounding, in British myth and legend we have King Arthur and his knights asleep in a cave, ready to wake and defend the realm. Similarly there is a legend that if his drum is beaten Sir Francis Drake will return; "If the Dons strike Devon, I'll quit the port of Heaven and we'll drum them up the Channel as we drummed them long ago." Their legends are as alike as Azor Ahai, the Prince that was Promised and all the other prophesied heroes in GRRM's world, but yet [whether we believe them or not] they are not one and the same.

Resolving this is not going to be a universal single hero saving the world - its only about saving Westeros.

[LynnS]

10 hours ago, Black Crow said:

 

Its one of the curiosities of this that Mel needs to go to Asshai to learn the art and mystery of shadow-binding in order to be able to cast Stannis' shadows, and then in the World Book we learn that those seeking the mystery must not only pass under the shadow but literally go up the river and into the Heart of Darkness.

Conversely when Bran is taken [albeit in a vision] into the Heart of Winter, it is a blaze of Light.

I've played with the notion that the cave of the greenseer is the heart of winter as you contend.  The bones impaled on ice spears represented by the wights surrounding the cave; the curtain of light, the warding around the cave and/or the veil of time within the cave.  I suspect that the terrible knowledge Bran can't escape is a vision of the death or sacrifice of his companions.   

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

I've played with the notion that the cave of the greenseer is the heart of winter as you contend.  The bones impaled on ice spears represented by the wights surrounding the cave; the curtain of light, the warding around the cave and/or the veil of time within the cave.  I suspect that the terrible knowledge Bran can't escape is a vision of the death or sacrifice of his companions.   

I've long suggested that what Bran saw was not the demon king surrounded by all the legions of Hell, but the future, and that terrible future is why he must fly

[wolfmaid7]

22 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I've long suggested that what Bran saw was not the demon king surrounded by all the legions of Hell, but the future, and that terrible future is why he must fly

I agree with this,though for some reason i think his crying out isn't because he saw a future event happening to something else.I think what he saw was something personally happening to him.

[Balerion06]

On October 19, 2016 at 11:09 AM, Black Crow said:

I don't know about Jon binding them to his will in a magical sense, but surely his role as King of Winter will require him to bridle them.

I feel like Bran fits the King of Winter mould better. He simply has too much regal imagery surrounding him, especially as it pertains to being the true lord of Winterfell.

Jon's future role, I suspect, will allude more to the Night's King, and that both him and Bran will be necessary to bridle the Others.

[JNR]

23 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I've long suggested that what Bran saw was not the demon king surrounded by all the legions of Hell

Not unless Hell had frozen over.

But as a practical matter I think it amounts to much the same thing.  The threat from the heart of winter in the uttermost north is the reason Bran has a bigger destiny than remaining in a coma forever.

1 hour ago, wolfmaid7 said:

i think his crying out isn't because he saw a future event happening to something else.I think what he saw was something personally happening to him.

Something horrible, you mean?  Maybe it was the show.  (BRAN: "I see myself played by an actor who is far taller and older than he should be!  I see the actor being grabbed on the arm by a noncanonical Popsicle with a spiky hairstyle like Ryan Seacrest circa 2007!  It's horrible, horrible!")

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

I agree with this,though for some reason i think his crying out isn't because he saw a future event happening to something else.I think what he saw was something personally happening to him.

Losing half his family can't be good, but the point is that the Crow shows something to him and then tells him that is why he must fly, ie; something bad's about to happen and he's got to do something about it.

[Black Crow]

59 minutes ago, Balerion06 said:

I feel like Bran fits the King of Winter mould better. He simply has too much regal imagery surrounding him, especially as it pertains to being the true lord of Winterfell.

Jon's future role, I suspect, will allude more to the Night's King, and that both him and Bran will be necessary to bridle the Others.

Up to a point, but Bran is Bendigeidfran - Bran the Blessed - to his half brother Jon/Efnisien the warrior.

[wolfmaid7]

10 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Losing half his family can't be good, but the point is that the Crow shows something to him and then tells him that is why he must fly, ie; something bad's about to happen and he's got to do something about it.

I agree to a point and i'm excluding his family and thinking what could have made him personally scream out.Could for instance seeing a battle do so? I'm not sure.If the scene is seeing himself about to get kill or seeing a loved one about to get it,i can see him screaming.This is what i meant.

[LynnS]

I wonder if Bran saw deep into the heart of Winterfell.  Bran’s coma dream and Jojen’s instruction are surprising similar given that Bran doesn’t meet Jojen until a Clash of Kings:

Then he raised his hand to the spot, Bran felt only the smooth unbroken skin. There was no eye, not even a closed one. "How can I open it if it's not there?"

"You will never find the eye with your fingers, Bran. You must search with your heart." Jojen studied Bran's face with those strange green eyes. "Or are you afraid?"  - aCoK Bran V

 ******

"I only have two."

there. With three you could see the acorn the oak grew from and the stump that it will one day become. With two you see no farther than your walls. With three you would gaze south to the Summer Sea and north beyond the Wall." aCoK – Bran IVtree With two you can see that oak With three you could see my heart."You have three. The crow gave you the third, but you will not open it." He had a slow soft way of speaking. "With two eyes you see my face.

Bran’s coma dream just as Jojen later describes the power of seeing with  the 3^rd eye; something Bran has already experienced: 

He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise.

Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. 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, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks. aGoT Bran III

Bran’s coma dream is a tree dream although he doesn’t recognize himself at the Winterfell heart tree.

Bran looked down, and felt his insides turn to water. The ground was rushing up at him now. The whole world was spread out below him, a tapestry of white and brown and green. He could see everything so clearly that for a moment he forgot to be afraid. He could see the whole realm, and everyone in it.

He saw Winterfell as the eagles see it, the tall towers looking squat and stubby from above, the castle walls just lines in the dirt. He saw Maester Luwin on his balcony, studying the sky through a polished bronze tube and frowning as he made notes in a book. He saw his brother Robb, taller and stronger than he remembered him, practicing swordplay in the yard with real steel in his hand. He saw Hodor, the simple giant from the stables, carrying an anvil to Mikken's forge, hefting it onto his shoulder as easily as another man might heft a bale of hay. At the heart of the godswood, the great white weirwood brooded over its reflection in the black pool, its leaves rustling in a chill wind. When it felt Bran watching, it lifted its eyes from the still waters and stared back at him knowingly.  aGoT Bran III

It isn’t just the eagle’s eye view; he expands it to the god’s eye view to see across entire continents not requiring a crow or an eagle.  Something he learns to do later at will in the cave of the greenseer.  The tree dreams frighten him the most because he has to ability to pierce the veil of time.

 Trees ought not have eyes, Bran thought, or leaves that looked like hands. His wolf came sprinting at his heels. "You stay here," he told him at the base of the sentinel trees; The heart tree had always frightened him grew. He raced across the godswood, taking the long way around to avoid the pool where the

What is interesting is Jon’s characterization of the godswood tree as the heart of Winterfell in association with the kings of  winter.

His friends were still out in the practice yard, but Jon was in no fit state to face them. He left the armory by the back, descending a steep flight of stone steps to the wormways, the tunnels that linked the castle's keeps and towers below the earth. It was short walk to the bathhouse, where he took a cold plunge to wash the sweat off and soaked in a hot stone tub. The warmth took some of the ache from his muscles and made him think of Winterfell's muddy pools, steaming and bubbling in the godswood. Winterfell, he thought. Theon left it burned and broken, but I could restore it. Surely his father would have wanted that, and Robb as well. They would never have wanted the castle left in ruins.

You can't be the Lord of Winterfell, you're bastard-born, he heard Robb say again. And the stone kings were growling at him with granite tongues. You do not belong here. This is not your place. When Jon closed his eyes he saw the heart tree, with its pale limbs, red leaves, and solemn face. The weirwood was the heart of Winterfell, Lord Eddard always said . . . but to save the castle Jon would have to tear that heart up by its ancient roots, and feed it to the red woman's hungry fire god. I have no right, he thought. Winterfell belongs to the old gods.  aSoS Jon XII

Could it be that looking deep into the heart of ‘winter’ is peering back into the past/present/future at Winterfell? 

The last fortnight of their journey had been a misery. Sansa blamed Arya and told her that it should have been Nymeria who died. And Arya was lost after she heard what had happened to her butcher's boy. Sansa cried herself to sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and Eddard Stark dreamed of a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell.  aGoT Eddard IV

A frozen hell is a feature of Dante’s Satan (from Wikipedia):

In Dante’s Inferno, Satan is portrayed as a giant demon, frozen mid-breast in ice at the center of Hell. Satan has three faces and a pair of bat-like wings affixed under each chin. As Satan beats his wings, he creates a cold wind which continues to freeze the ice surrounding him, and the other sinners in the Ninth Circle. The winds he creates are felt throughout the other circles of Hell. Each of his three mouths chews on Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. (Reminiscent of the devouring mouths of Trios)

Dante’s Hell is divided into nine circles, the ninth circle being divided further into four rings, their boundaries only marked by the depth of their sinners' immersion in the ice; Satan sits in the last ring, Judecca. It is in the fourth ring of the ninth circle where the worst sinners, the betrayers to their benefactors, are punished. Here, these condemned souls, frozen into the ice, are completely unable to move or speak and contorted into all sorts of fantastical shapes as a part of their punishment.

Unlike many other circles of Dante’s Hell, these sinners remain unnamed. Even Dante is afraid to enter this last circle, as he nervously proclaimed, "I drew behind my leader’s back again.”

Uncharacteristically of Dante, he remains silent in Satan’s presence. Dante examines the sinners who are “covered wholly by ice, / showing like straw in glass- some lying prone, / and some erect, some with the head towards us, / the others with the bottoms of the feet; another like a bow bent feet to face.” This circle of Hell is a complete separation from any life and for Dante, “the deepest isolation is to suffer separation from the source of all light and life and warmth.

Is Bran cast in a Dante-esque role when he peers into the heart of winter; the heart of darkness devoid of light and life and warmth, at what lies at the center of frozen hell reserved for Starks?

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

.If the scene is seeing himself about to get kill or seeing a loved one about to get it,i can see him screaming.This is what i meant.

I can see him screaming if that was so but wouldn't that be a disincentive to get involved. There's no doubt he sees something terrible but the implication of that business of now you know why you must fly seems more in the nature of something really baaad is going to happen but you - yes you - are going to have to deal with it.

[wolfmaid7]

6 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I can see him screaming if that was so but wouldn't that be a disincentive to get involved. There's no doubt he sees something terrible but the implication of that business of now you know why you must fly seems more in the nature of something really baaad is going to happen but you - yes you - are going to have to deal with it.

It depends on the shape it takes and if he fated to be involved. Let's say,and i'll use the pet theory i have as a hypothethical.We have his dream where Ned( who know if it was really Ned) telling him something about Jon that was more disturbing than all the crow dreams.We have the 98 letter that validate our theory that Jon and Bran would be on opposite sides at some point ( how long ).But my point is what if what Bran saw was Jon killing him....And that's it no context, except that glimpse of a cold,pale and hard Jon killing him.How much can Bran be manipulated into something to keep that glimpse form happening?

We know almost certainly that whatever image he saw is the reason given for why he must live.But maybe he thinks he would be helping but in truth not because remember.......All Crows are liars.

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

It depends on the shape it takes and if he fated to be involved. Let's say,and i'll use the pet theory i have as a hypothethical.We have his dream where Ned( who know if it was really Ned) telling him something about Jon that was more disturbing than all the crow dreams.We have the 98 letter that validate our theory that Jon and Bran would be on opposite sides at some point ( how long ).But my point is what if what Bran saw was Jon killing him....And that's it no context, except that glimpse of a cold,pale and hard Jon killing him.How much can Bran be manipulated into something to keep that glimpse form happening?

We know almost certainly that whatever image he saw is the reason given for why he must live.But maybe he thinks he would be helping but in truth not because remember.......All Crows are liars.

I don't see that particular scenario coming around. In the original synopsis we saw a certain degree of estrangement but that was only down to Jon refusing sanctuary to his family. In the version as written Bran comes to Jon in dreams but in physical form consciously avoids asking for sanctuary, conversely, as we see in the cases of Gilly and of Alys Karstark - and indeed the Wildlings generally, Jon shows himself very open to aiding those in need.

No the last thing I see here is Bran and Jon being on opposing sides. This is about the scattered children of Winterfell coming back together and as we roll downhill to the conclusion its too late now to bring in a conflict that doesn't exist in the written book.

[Black Crow]

20 hours ago, LynnS said:

Is Bran cast in a Dante-esque role when he peers into the heart of winter; the heart of darkness devoid of light and life and warmth, at what lies at the center of frozen hell reserved for Starks?

Hell is conventionally depicted as the fiery pit so Dante's vision of ice and cold at its centre is interesting. Its exactly what I pointed to up thread: Mel the priestess of Fire has travelled to the Heart of Darkness while Bran has passed through the circles Ice to arrive in the blaze of light at the Heart of Winter.

Its an inversion of the kind Feather's so fond of and at the same time consistent with the Reeds' assertion that the land is one.

[Matthew.]

8 hours ago, Black Crow said:

...its too late now to bring in a conflict that doesn't exist in the written book.

Why? In the span of a single ASOS conversation, Tyrion flipped from loving his brother to despising him--though it's not clear whether that conflict will hold through until the end of the series. With at least two books worth of story left to tell, Jon and Bran could certainly still come into conflict, depending on what their respective 'roles' are by the end of the series, particularly if one is commanding the army of the dead, and the other is opposing them.

[Black Crow]

12 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

Why? In the span of a single ASOS conversation, Tyrion flipped from loving his brother to despising him--though it's not clear whether that conflict will hold through until the end of the series. With at least two books worth of story left to tell, Jon and Bran could certainly still come into conflict, depending on what their respective 'roles' are by the end of the series, particularly if one is commanding the army of the dead, and the other is opposing them.

All things are possible but I really don't see this one. There might be scope for a temporary absence of sweetness and light at some point but rather than antagonists I'd be more inclined to see Jon as Bran's legs. If we return to the Mabinogion parallel Efnisien caused problems, but he was the one who destroyed the cauldron and so stopped the raising of the dead to fight again.

[LynnS]

On 2016-10-22 at 4:05 AM, Black Crow said:

 

No the last thing I see here is Bran and Jon being on opposing sides. This is about the scattered children of Winterfell coming back together and as we roll downhill to the conclusion its too late now to bring in a conflict that doesn't exist in the written book.

I'm inclined to think so as well.  Bran loves Jon and vice versa.  Bran has already been in contact with him and started him on his path by opening his third eye.  I think Bran will turn out to be Jon's guide and Arya's as well.