Heresy 195 and the Mists of Time

[LynnS]

I suppose that he might find an account of Lyanna Stark reported by Maester Walys or an alternate account of the Night's King.  Possibly even more complete geneaological records of House Stark

1 hour ago, JNR said:

(she was wrong about the giants being manlike and having huge swords)

Are we sure she was talking about giants?  Or that Maege Mormont is talking about bears for that matter?

[Lady Dyanna]

On 1/29/2017 at 0:52 PM, JNR said:

Instead, he is trying to calculate when it was written.  This he could only do by assuming a certain age of the Watch and the Wall, such as eight thousand years, and thus determining the average tenure of an LC, such as eight years.

Is he trying to calculate that? Or is it possible that it's actually recorded when it was written? (Even though Sam doesn't specifically mention this) That when it was written might not match up to the time when it should have been written in order to contain that many names? What if the list was actually written earlier than anticipated and already had that many LC listed. Could there actually be more than 998? 

[Black Crow]

9 hours ago, JNR said:

Anything's possible, but the odds aren't good. 

This is a pre-science culture and the maesters, judging by what we've heard in both the canon and the World book, are not just routinely wrong, they're often spectacularly wrong.

It was Maester Luwin who said with absolute confidence that magic does not work at all any more (but we know for sure that Varamyr has always been a strong skinchanger)... that the CotF were all dead (I'm waving hi at Leaf)... that the Others never existed (just as wrong as he could possibly be).  This sort of inadvertent hilarity reminds me of the similarly confident assertions made by those in another place on this very site. 

Or, in the World book, we have the first page of the first chapter, which informs us the world is perhaps 500,000 years old --- only off by four orders of magnitude!  It then proceeds to such skeptical remarks as:

But Sam, who met and slew an Other and watched it melt to death when stabbed by dragonglass, would get quite a hearty laugh out of that. I'm afraid the Citadel is about the last place Sam should go if he wants to find the truth, with the limited exception of Marwyn. 

Best results come not from questioning that the timeline is a long one -- a thing Sam certainly never does, in stating "thousands of years" passed between the Long Night and Andal invasion -- but rather, questioning the literal truth of some of the myths. 

Just because someone in the canon says something like "the Black Gate is as old as the Wall" does not make it so.  It only means that that person said it, and it's up to us to assess how accurate that person was.  My guess for instance is that Coldhands was right when he said that to Sam and therefore Sam was right too, but that's as far as I could go.

While some myths are largely accurate (the Others, for instance, do closely parallel Old Nan's account) that's not always the case (she was wrong about the giants being manlike and having huge swords).  So the lesson of the Sealord's cat is a good one to keep in mind.

On one level I'd agree, that's a fairly sensible interpretation, but we're also dealing with a story, which is why I said that in literary terms by way of taking the plot forward the reason why Sam is going to the citadel is to learn the truth - because somebody has to.

Similarly on the timelines I'd argue that Sam is starting to have doubts in that passage and more importantly GRRM is reinforcing the point not only through those comments by Hoster Blackwood and Rodrik Harlaw but above all through that unprecedented repetition of the passage about history and lists of lord commanders.

[Black Crow]

5 hours ago, Lady Dyanna said:

Is he trying to calculate that? Or is it possible that it's actually recorded when it was written? (Even though Sam doesn't specifically mention this) That when it was written might not match up to the time when it should have been written in order to contain that many names? What if the list was actually written earlier than anticipated and already had that many LC listed. Could there actually be more than 998? 

As I said earlier he's not actually calculating that at all. The passage as written down by GRRM in both Feast for Crows and again in Dance with Dragons needs to be read in its entirety to put the list in context.

What Sam says is that the histories written down by the septons is mince; its full of stories of kings who reigned for hundreds of years, knights when there were no knights [and steel swords when there was no steel?] and so on, so why should the Lord Commander list be any different when the oldest version he can find already has 674 names on it. Some of the more recent names are likely to have been in the memory of man, but most of them are likely to be as fabulous as Ser Serwyn of the of the Mirror Shield and Bob the Builder. 

[Brad Stark]

9 hours ago, Black Crow said:

As I said earlier he's not actually calculating that at all. The passage as written down by GRRM in both Feast for Crows and again in Dance with Dragons needs to be read in its entirety to put the list in context.

What Sam says is that the histories written down by the septons is mince; its full of stories of kings who reigned for hundreds of years, knights when there were no knights [and steel swords when there was no steel?] and so on, so why should the Lord Commander list be any different when the oldest version he can find already has 674 names on it. Some of the more recent names are likely to have been in the memory of man, but most of them are likely to be as fabulous as Ser Serwyn of the of the Mirror Shield and Bob the Builder. 

I don't understand how you reaching this conclusion.   The list SHOWS 674 Lord Commanders, it doesn't say it has that many names, it might, but that isn't the impression I have after rereading it.  That doesn't make sense.  The only way those names could be on the list is if they came from oral history or a list on runes strangely not mentioned,  both unlikely. 

Unlike the above,  it is very clear Sam is calculating when the list was written by the number of Lord Commanders.  I don't see how that passage could be interpreted any other way. 

[Black Crow]

No, you've completely got me here, I don't understand your difficulty because it really is straightforward.

The oldest list has 674 names on it, simple as that. The next oldest one will have those 647 names + say 30 and the next one after that, the 674 names + 50 and so on. That's all there is to it.

Sam is reckoning the age of the list not by those 674 names but by the supplementary calculation that it can only have been written 324 lord commanders ago which in terms of a supposed history of close on 1,000 lord commanders isn't very long ago at all. He's found no older books or manuscripts. There is no recorded history of the Watch earlier than that. Just legends.

[Brad Stark]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

No, you've completely got me here, I don't understand your difficulty because it really is straightforward.

The oldest list has 674 names on it, simple as that. The next oldest one will have those 647 names + say 30 and the next one after that, the 674 names + 50 and so on. That's all there is to it.

Sam is reckoning the age of the list not by those 674 names but by the supplementary calculation that it can only have been written 324 lord commanders ago which in terms of a supposed history of close on 1,000 lord commanders isn't very long ago at all. He's found no older books or manuscripts. There is no recorded history of the Watch earlier than that. Just legends.

Nothing in the text explicitly states the list has the names of the first 674 Lord Commanders, considering more than half this period there was no writing on paper, and we've seen no evidence of names on runes, no evidence of oral history that had names, and the first 674 names would have to include the Night's King which we are explicitly told no one knows if he was a Stark, a Bolton, etc - as well as how GRRM chose to phrase this, having the list of 674 names makes no sense.  We're going to have to agree to disagree.  

[Black Crow]

'fraid so, you really are over-analysing this one. 

[shizett]

I see merit to both of your accounts, but I also think GRRM hasn't really decided what it is that he is saying.
I myself had an understanding more like @Brad Stark when I was reading the passage, as at the time I thought the "oldest list" meant the furthest reaching one (with two open ends). Given how Sam talks about people out of legends that lived for hundreds or thousands of years and then proceeds to the calculation of when the list must have been written (originally), I thought maybe he recognizes most of the people on the list, or they might have Andal names that should not have been around Westeros at the time.

But that chapter has some very confusing information that just really bugs me.

We start the story with Mormont treating the sighting of whiteshadows quite ordinarily but a bit unsettling. But then during the telling of the story, the Others become the "Monsters out of the legend". In DwD we are still dealing with a NW that is treating the Others as a non-issue, so much so that they are more afraid of the realm than the Others. We have multiple people (in and out of the watch) losing their mind thinking about the Others as not just a story but a reality.

And then we have that chapter, where Sam in looking in the "annals" for records of the Others and is unhappy when he founds some! because there should have been more!

Quote

“They are mentioned in the annals, though not as often as I would have thought.” (aFfC, Samwel I)

What?! 5mins ago they were treating the issue as if it was a completely new realization, now he is finding records in the annals of the NW and he is just fine with it? Then why were they thinking the Others were just a "LEGEND"? If there was enough sightings of the Others until a few hundred years ago to the point of making it just a mention in the annual reports: 1. What happened that they vanished to the point that no one treats them as a historical reality anymore? 2. What exactly happened that lead to the end of Long Night, as apparently Others were not defeated and were regularly sighted for thousands of years after? 3. (As I have mentioned in a previous post) why do we never hear from Maester Aemon about any of this?

And then there is this:

Quote

“By his elbow rested a massive leather-bound copy of Annals of the Black Centaur, Septon Jorquen’s exhaustively detailed account of the nine years that Orbert Caswell had served as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. There was a page for each day of his term, every one of which seemed to begin, “Lord Orbert rose at dawn and moved his bowels,” except for the last, which said, “Lord Orbert was found to have died during the night.”(aFfC, Samwel I)

And the chapter started by this sentence:

Quote

“Sam was reading about the Others when he saw the mouse.”(aFfC, Samwel I)

It is not clear whether Sam was reading about Others in the "Annals of the black Centaur" or not, but his account of the book suggests a maester obsessed with bodily functions that would differentiate a wight from a living human. And then the LC dies in the night (as Mormont would have if Jon and Ghost hadn't saved him). Sam doesn't pick up on this (probably because he doesn't know about Mel or other fire wights), but I think we are meant to. Were functioning wights a regular concern in the NW until a few hundred years ago?

[Black Crow]

And just to throw another spanner in the works:

This is the second Arya chapter in A Feast for Crows:

 

"How many years have you?" the waif asked her once, in the Common Tongue. "Ten," said Arya, and raised ten fingers. She thought she was still ten, though it was hard to know for certain. The Braavosi counted days differently than they did in Westeros. For all she knew her name day had come and gone.

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, shizett said:

I see merit to both of your accounts, but I also think GRRM hasn't really decided what it is that he is saying.
I myself had an understanding more like @Brad Stark when I was reading the passage, as at the time I thought the "oldest list" meant the furthest reaching one (with two open ends). Given how Sam talks about people out of legends that lived for hundreds or thousands of years and then proceeds to the calculation of when the list must have been written (originally), I thought maybe he recognizes most of the people on the list, or they might have Andal names that should not have been around Westeros at the time.

But that chapter has some very confusing information that just really bugs me.

We start the story with Mormont treating the sighting of whiteshadows quite ordinarily but a bit unsettling. But then during the telling of the story, the Others become the "Monsters out of the legend". In DwD we are still dealing with a NW that is treating the Others as a non-issue, so much so that they are more afraid of the realm than the Others. We have multiple people (in and out of the watch) losing their mind thinking about the Others as not just a story but a reality.

And then we have that chapter, where Sam in looking in the "annals" for records of the Others and is unhappy when he founds some! because there should have been more!

What?! 5mins ago they were treating the issue as if it was a completely new realization, now he is finding records in the annals of the NW and he is just fine with it? Then why were they thinking the Others were just a "LEGEND"? If there was enough sightings of the Others until a few hundred years ago to the point of making it just a mention in the annual reports: 1. What happened that they vanished to the point that no one treats them as a historical reality anymore? 2. What exactly happened that lead to the end of Long Night, as apparently Others were not defeated and were regularly sighted for thousands of years after? 3. (As I have mentioned in a previous post) why do we never hear from Maester Aemon about any of this?

And then there is this:

And the chapter started by this sentence:

It is not clear whether Sam was reading about Others in the "Annals of the black Centaur" or not, but his account of the book suggests a maester obsessed with bodily functions that would differentiate a wight from a living human. And then the LC dies in the night (as Mormont would have if Jon and Ghost hadn't saved him). Sam doesn't pick up on this (probably because he doesn't know about Mel or other fire wights), but I think we are meant to. Were functioning wights a regular concern in the NW until a few hundred years ago?

Given that the "Annals of the Black Centaur" are at his elbow, I think a reasonable interpretation of that particular passage is that he's doggedly ploughed his way through and gratefully pushed it aside for something more interesting.

As to "the annals" more generally, however, I think you have a point. Annals, traditionally, are chronicles set out in the form of a calendar rather than a narrative. "In this year... such and such happened" and so on. Sam might grumble that the blue-eyed lot don't appear in the annals as often as he'd expect, but that in turn implies that he is expecting to find them mentioned periodically, and not just in legends of the Long Night - and also of course that while they don't tool up as frequently as he expected, they are indeed turning up from time to time over the years.

As to the infamous list, as I said it needs to be read in context. Sam starts off by complaining that the histories were written down long after the the events they describe and hence are unreliable. The oldest [not the longest] list he can find already has 674 names and therefore was written down long after most of them served and is therefore just as unreliable as all those other septons' histories.

[shizett]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

As to "the annals" more generally, however, I think you have a point. Annals, traditionally, are chronicles set out in the form of a calendar rather than a narrative. "In this year... such and such happened" and so on. Sam might grumble that the blue-eyed lot don't appear in the annals as often as he'd expect, but that in turn implies that he is expecting to find them mentioned periodically, and not just in legends of the Long Night - and also of course that while they don't tool up as frequently as he expected, they are indeed turning up from time to time over the years.

Yes, there is a step missing in Sam developing that expectation, as Others having been around for all this time is not the most intuitive answer to their problem.

It also raises another interesting question as to the nature of the NW's animosity towards the Wildlings. As I understood the story, and I think that was what the narrative pushed forward, the NW shifted their focus from the Others to the Wildlings as the Others were gone and the Wildlings presented a daily threat. But if the Other's were never gone (and were spotted periodically by the NW), then why did the watch treat them as an enemy to the point of "forgetting" their main mission? In general, how can you forget something that you see every couple of years?

[LynnS]

There is also a change in burial customs at some point.  Ygritte worries about all the graves the have opened and the ghosts they have released; while they not longer bury their dead, but cremate them instead.

There is also the business of trading with the Cotf from a sidebar in the WoIaF:

Quote

The archives of the Citadel contain a letter from Maester Aemon, sent in the early years of the reign of Aegon V, which reports on an account from a ranger named Redwyn, written in the days of King Dorren Stark. It recounts a journey to Lorn Point and the Frozen Shore, in which it is claimed that the ranger and his companions fought giants and traded with the children of the forest. Aemon's letter claimed that he had found many such accounts in his examinations of the archives of the Watch at Castle Black, and considered them credible.

What could they possibly trade with the CotF, unless it's dragonglass?  

[Black Crow]

34 minutes ago, shizett said:

Yes, there is a step missing in Sam developing that expectation, as Others having been around for all this time is not the most intuitive answer to their problem.

It also raises another interesting question as to the nature of the NW's animosity towards the Wildlings. As I understood the story, and I think that was what the narrative pushed forward, the NW shifted their focus from the Others to the Wildlings as the Others were gone and the Wildlings presented a daily threat. But if the Other's were never gone (and were spotted periodically by the NW), then why did the watch treat them as an enemy to the point of "forgetting" their main mission? In general, how can you forget something that you see every couple of years?

Wights are the short answer. A few white shadows occasionally glimpsed in the wood are not the threat once posed by their armies of the slain. Harma Dogshead, Alfyn Crowkiller and The Weeper [and their forebears] are a much more immediate threat than an occasional shadow.

[Matthew.]

43 minutes ago, shizett said:

It also raises another interesting question as to the nature of the NW's animosity towards the Wildlings. As I understood the story, and I think that was what the narrative pushed forward, the NW shifted their focus from the Others to the Wildlings as the Others were gone and the Wildlings presented a daily threat. But if the Other's were never gone (and were spotted periodically by the NW), then why did the watch treat them as an enemy to the point of "forgetting" their main mission? In general, how can you forget something that you see every couple of years?

As you say, it makes little sense for the NW to have forgotten their main mission, or for them to encounter the Others on a semi-regular basis (relative to an 8,000 year history), yet have these encounters be reduced to something mundane--it makes little sense because it's very unlikely that they were occasionally encountering white walkers.

To me, that comment from Sam about how little there is about the Others in the annals isn't just a plot device to maintain their air of mystery, it's yet another bit of foreshadowing that's pointing toward a revelation: that the Others are not a race like the giants and CotF, but something else entirely. The Watch lost sight of the enemy because the enemy has been missing for so long that most people doubt that they ever existed in the first place--an absence that would be odd for a biological race, but fits perfectly with the idea that the Others are created by magic, rather than born.

[Melifeather]

17 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

As you say, it makes little sense for the NW to have forgotten their main mission, or for them to encounter the Others on a semi-regular basis (relative to an 8,000 year history), yet have these encounters be reduced to something mundane--it makes little sense because it's very unlikely that they were occasionally encountering white walkers.

To me, that comment from Sam about how little there is about the Others in the annals isn't just a plot device to maintain their air of mystery, it's yet another bit of foreshadowing that's pointing toward a revelation: that the Others are not a race like the giants and CotF, but something else entirely. The Watch lost sight of the enemy because the enemy has been missing for so long that most people doubt that they ever existed in the first place--an absence that would be odd for a biological race, but fits perfectly with the idea that the Others are created by magic, rather than born.

I agree with ^^^. Being mentioned in the annuls doesn't necessarily mean they were sighted. It could have been a mention with regard to something else. I agree that they have not been seen and neither have the wights.

[shizett]

58 minutes ago, LynnS said:

There is also a change in burial customs at some point.  Ygritte worries about all the graves the have opened and the ghosts they have released; while they not longer bury their dead, but cremate them instead.

This is exactly why Sam's comment about WW's occasional sightings makes little sense. If WWs are the Others (or at least the important, animating part), why would they treat them as non-existing? The WWs may have been "inactive" for a while, but as long as they existed they could have always attacked.

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

What could they possibly trade with the CotF, unless it's dragonglass?

Any additional info about Aemon bugs me to no end. Why is he there? Why has he ever been there? If there were communication between him and the citadel, why doesn't he share it with the Watch?

The dragon glass kills, and kills only, WWs(not the wights). Sam's reports of the annals renders the WW safe, so why take the glasses on a regular basis?

[shizett]

23 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

To me, that comment from Sam about how little there is about the Others in the annals isn't just a plot device to maintain their air of mystery, it's yet another bit of foreshadowing that's pointing toward a revelation: that the Others are not a race like the giants and CotF, but something else entirely. The Watch lost sight of the enemy because the enemy has been missing for so long that most people doubt that they ever existed in the first place--an absence that would be odd for a biological race, but fits perfectly with the idea that the Others are created by magic, rather than born.

 

8 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Being mentioned in the annuls doesn't necessarily mean they were sighted. It could have been a mention with regard to something else. I agree that they have not been seen and neither have the wights.

This makes complete sense to me and has been my impression of the books. But why would Sam look for any info on the WWs in the annals? I am sorry if I sound too insistent on this point, but looking for info on a "historically" significant race in annals written after the historical event is like looking into newspapers for cure of cancer. One might find useful information there, but that is not the logical place to look for useful info. None the less, that is where Sam looks and brings up, and in a "matter of fact" manner. Don't you find it peculiar?

[shizett]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

Wights are the short answer. A few white shadows occasionally glimpsed in the wood are not the threat once posed by their armies of the slain. Harma Dogshead, Alfyn Crowkiller and The Weeper [and their forebears] are a much more immediate threat than an occasional shadow.

Sorry, I forgot to answer this. As long as the WWs are around, the danger is around as well. I agree with @Matthew. that they would never become a mundane sighting. Why would they? It might be the case that whatever finished the LN did not eradicate the WWs but diminished their ability in raising the dead, but that is NOT a piece of info we've been given, nor Sam states that to be the case.

[Melifeather]

15 minutes ago, shizett said:

 

This makes complete sense to me and has been my impression of the books. But why would Sam look for any info on the WWs in the annals? I am sorry if I sound too insistent on this point, but looking for info on a "historically" significant race in annals written after the historical event is like looking into newspapers for cure of cancer. One might find useful information there, but that is not the logical place to look for useful info. None the less, that is where Sam looks and brings up, and in a "matter of fact" manner. Don't you find it peculiar?

Sam is trying to find information about the white walkers and wights in the library at the Wall. The annuls were just one resource that he's looked at and along the way he found the list of Lord Commanders. I'd like to point out that he didn't go looking specifically for the list of Lord Commanders. He found it while searching for records of the white walkers and wights, because Jon told him to look for any record of how to kill them. That's what was important.