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Heresy 196 and a look at the Wall


Black Crow

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@LynnS

That's the first time I think to reliate Daenerys's red door with the "black gate" and the Wall, because of the insistant dichotomy beyond/behind (and also the red color who remind the red sap of the weirwood, red as blood). That's very interesting and reinforce the link between the Stark and the Targaryen. 

I always wondered if queen Alysanne made some dragon's dreams in which she had identified the North and the Starks. 

 

[Note also that in this Dany's dreams, we find again the trio Viserys-Rhaegar-Rhaego who appears in a vision of the HOTU (I had totally forgotten that this trio had a first appearance ): 

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Viserys screamed as the molten gold ran down his cheeks and filled his mouth. A tall lord with copper skin and silver-gold hair stood beneath the banner of a fiery stallion, a burning city behind him. Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest of a dying prince, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a woman's name. . . . mother of dragons, daughter of death . . . 

So the visions could resume the life of the dragon from the birth to the "death"

End of parenthesis]

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2 minutes ago, GloubieBoulga said:

@LynnS

That's the first time I think to reliate Daenerys's red door with the "black gate" and the Wall, because of the insistant dichotomy beyond/behind (and also the red color who remind the red sap of the weirwood, red as blood). That's very interesting and reinforce the link between the Stark and the Targaryen. 

I always wondered if queen Alysanne made some dragon's dreams in which she had identified the North and the Starks. 

 

[Note also that in this Dany's dreams, we find again the trio Viserys-Rhaegar-Rhaego who appears in a vision of the HOTU (I had totally forgotten that this trio had a first appearance ): 

So the visions could resume the life of the dragon from the birth to the "death"

End of parenthesis]

I associate the above quote and that trio more with war than anything else all of them failed or eliminated in one way or the other. None of the are the true dragon, the one who shares a soul with the dragon in her dreams.   It's curious that she dreams of home on the Dothraki plains or is this the dream of the dragon itself.   The reason why Drogon heads to the plains when he escapes.  A dragon that has it's lair in a great stone cavern with high stone arches; might see the opening of the cavern as a door; the red light of sunrise or sunset showing through. I'm reminded of the direwolf POV's and how they see the world of men.

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15 minutes ago, LynnS said:

I associate the above quote and that trio more with war than anything else all of them failed or eliminated in one way or the other. None of the are the true dragon, the one who shares a soul with the dragon in her dreams.  

Yes, that's true, but I'm now wondering if they don't represent the 3 heads of the dragon. I mean that Daenerys could have need these three death to make a entire dragon. 

 

17 minutes ago, LynnS said:

  It's curious that she dreams of home on the Dothraki plains or is this the dream of the dragon itself.   The reason why Drogon heads to the plains when he escapes. 

For me, that's because Drogo's soul went inside Drogon during the pyre, and Dany anticipate this in her dream, like she anticipates the waking of the dragon.  

 

19 minutes ago, LynnS said:

A dragon that has it's lair in a great stone cavern with high stone arches; might see the opening of the cavern as a door; the red light of sunrise or sunset showing through. I'm reminded of the direwolf POV's and how they see the world of men.

Yes, vision of Winterfell, very true. 

But in the same time, dragons are not only "winged beast" but also "chthonic" beasts : they come from mountains, Targaryen had chosen the site of Dragonstone for their house and dragon's egg were kept inside the mountain like a mother's belly, Valyria was a land of mountains too... Normally, at this point, we come back to the Wall as an Icedragon :D

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19 minutes ago, GloubieBoulga said:

Yes, that's true, but I'm now wondering if they don't represent the 3 heads of the dragon. I mean that Daenerys could have need these three death to make a entire dragon. 

 

For me, that's because Drogo's soul went inside Drogon during the pyre, and Dany anticipate this in her dream, like she anticipates the waking of the dragon.  

 

Yes, vision of Winterfell, very true. 

But in the same time, dragons are not only "winged beast" but also "chthonic" beasts : they come from mountains, Targaryen had chosen the site of Dragonstone for their house and dragon's egg were kept inside the mountain like a mother's belly, Valyria was a land of mountains too... Normally, at this point, we come back to the Wall as an Icedragon :D

I'm not in agreement with the standard interpretation of the three heads of the dragon.  Aemon suggests that the three heads are advisors rather than riders.  I'm more inclined to think that 'the dragon has three heads' refers to Bloodraven a dragon with three apprentices: Jon, Bran and Arya.

I don't agree that Drogo's soul went into one of the dragon eggs.  Dany sees his soul rising into the stars on his stallion.  It's the dragon dream and the last dragon (before the birth of her three children); that confers on her the ability to withstand the fire.  She shares a soul with that dragon.  I think this is separate from the three eggs.  They are given to her to be their mother in a sense by the dragon in her dream.  It's curious that once there were dragons worshipped as gods.  I think this is the last dragon god, possibly even R'hllor whom Melisandres says is male and exists.  That Dany shares a soul with this dragon in the same way as the Starks do with their direwolves, marks this dream as something different.  She doesn't have that relationship with Drogon or any of her other dragon children.  But they know who she is even if she has forgotten.   

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3 hours ago, Prof. Cecily said:

Lucky you!

Britain has many barrows; I once spent a winter hunting them out.

Spain also has some amazing barrows, starting with the barrow of Antequera 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolmen_of_Menga

While Stonehenge, which also lies in the barrow lands, gets all the publicity, there is far more magic in Silbury Hill - especially in the clear moonlight of a summer night.:commie:

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2 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

While Stonehenge, which also lies in the barrow lands, gets all the publicity, there is far more magic in Silbury Hill - especially in the clear moonlight of a summer night.:commie:

I don't doubt it for a moment! Then there's Avebury...

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4 hours ago, Prof. Cecily said:

I don't doubt it for a moment! Then there's Avebury...

There is, but its not Silbury...

It raises an interesting point though. The Great Barrow and the Barrowlands are transferred without alteration to Westeros, but the stone circles are become weirwood groves. Now, most of the stone circles, like the weirwoods north of Castle Black and that destroyed one on top of High Heart are closely spaced. Might there be larger ones like Avebury where the circle is so large that unless you know the secret .you might think they were simply individual weirwoods.

And that, naughtily leads back to the Wall and one of the symbols inserted by the mummers - a circle bisected by a line.

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10 hours ago, Black Crow said:

There is, but its not Silbury...

It raises an interesting point though. The Great Barrow and the Barrowlands are transferred without alteration to Westeros, but the stone circles are become weirwood groves. Now, most of the stone circles, like the weirwoods north of Castle Black and that destroyed one on top of High Heart are closely spaced. Might there be larger ones like Avebury where the circle is so large that unless you know the secret .you might think they were simply individual weirwoods.

And that, naughtily leads back to the Wall and one of the symbols inserted by the mummers - a circle bisected by a line.

Well spotted on the phi.

Have you seen this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4Oo9jAo5ug

 

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1 hour ago, Prof. Cecily said:

Well spotted on the phi.

Have you seen this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4Oo9jAo5ug

 

No, I'd missed that one, but while we're obviously coming at the theme from a different angle it still makes me wonder about the Wall - the circle represents the whole - whether or not it is physically marked as a great stone weirwood circle - and the Wall is the line dividing it Ice from Fire.

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North and north and north.... Sansa looks at Winterfell.  Where is Bran looking if the Wall is the 'end of the world'?

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A Game of Thrones - Sansa VI

From the high battlements of the gatehouse, the whole world spread out below them. Sansa could see the Great Sept of Baelor on Visenya's hill, where her father had died. At the other end of the Street of the Sisters stood the fire-blackened ruins of the Dragonpit. To the west, the swollen red sun was half-hidden behind the Gate of the Gods. The salt sea was at her back, and to the south was the fish market and the docks and the swirling torrent of the Blackwater Rush. And to the north …

 

She turned that way, and saw only the city, streets and alleys and hills and bottoms and more streets and more alleys and the stone of distant walls. Yet she knew that beyond them was open country, farms and fields and forests, and beyond that, north and north and north again, stood Winterfell.

 

A Game of Thrones - Bran III

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.

 

Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live.

 

 

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6 hours ago, Black Crow said:

No, I'd missed that one, but while we're obviously coming at the theme from a different angle it still makes me wonder about the Wall - the circle represents the whole - whether or not it is physically marked as a great stone weirwood circle - and the Wall is the line dividing it Ice from Fire.

Of course we come from different angles- it's what make the forum so lively! 

Your posts have reminded me of my impressions of Silbury Hill, though you know it in high summer, and I, in deep winter.

I found that video to be most satisfying as it confirms a long-held belief that proportions and aesthetics affect us profoundly. 

Anyway, time to cook up a tasty meal for a very cold and windy March afternoon!

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Hey folks, I saw the convo about the man limned in flame and the wolf. Pardon me if someone has put this forward already, but there are two quotes which I believe link to that scene in Mirri's tent with  “the shadow of a great wolf and a man wreathed in flames” :

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Up above them, flaming figures were dancing in the snow. The wights, Bran realized. Someone set the wights on fire. Summer was snarling and snapping as he danced around the closest, a great ruin of a man wreathed in swirling flame. He shouldn’t get so close, what is he doing?

Then he saw himself, sprawled facedown in the snow. Summer was trying to drive the thing away from him. What will happen if it kills me? the boy wondered. Will I be Hodor for good or all? Will I go back into Summer’s skin? Or will I just be dead?

 

and

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Death, thought Melisandre. The skulls are death.

The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half-seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was a man, now a wolf, now a man again. But the skulls were here as well, the skulls were all around him. Melisandre had seen his danger before, had tried to warn the boy of it. Enemies all around him, daggers in the dark. He would not listen.

 

I have my own interpretation of what these connections mean - I think it all has to do with the King of Winter figure, who is both a burning man and a shadow wolf.  I believe this symbolism primarily applies to Jon, and I have always liked the idea that Drogo's botched resurrection type thing was actually a skinchanger resurrection ceremony used as if Drogo was bonded to his horse. If you swap Jon and Ghost into that scene I think we have the recipe, or something close to it. Jon goes into Ghost, Ghost is sacrificed to send the merged man-wold spirit back into the corpse, which is in turn resurrected by fire magic. Presto, a man that is a wolf and then a man again who is also limned in flames, or "wreathed" in flames like a proper King of Winter. 

Does everyone know the King of Winter mythology as a burning wicker man? He's made of dead green things - formerly green things you might say - and his destiny is to burn when the winter gives way to spring (which it just did!)  That is our special snowflake. 

Anyway, whether or not you like my interpretation, these quotes do seem linked so I thought I would share them so you all can make of them what you will, and in case anyone had not shared them yet. If anyone is interested, my full thoughts on these issues can be found in my Sacred Order of Green Zombies series, which addresses things related to horned gods, green men, resurrection, skinchangers, Coldhands, Jon Snow, the King of Winter, the last hero and his 12, etc. 

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@LML Hey folks, I saw the convo about the man limned in flame and the wolf. Pardon me if someone has put this forward already, but there are two quotes which I believe link to that scene in Mirri's tent with  “the shadow of a great wolf and a man wreathed in flames”

I'm guessing that with Jon dead, that he is 'split in two' and that he will be resurrected in a ritual something similar to MMD's with Jon in a bath of saltwater.  The difference being that Melisandre will force the combined soul of Jon/Ghost back into his body with fire magic; sacrificing Ghost in the process, not unlike Orel's eagle.  I think you mentioned this before.  So Jon may well return with a soul of fire in an ice preserved body.       

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The shadows of the wolf and man in flames that Mirri conjured were old spirits so IMO they were not Rickard or Jon or anybody in recent history. Like Melisandre said the struggle between ice and fire, light and dark, etc is very old, but what I don't get is that no one has realized that each side needs to accept the other to achieve harmony. Eliminating one side is disastrous. Never ending summer would be just as bad as never ending winter. 

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9 hours ago, LynnS said:

I'm guessing that with Jon dead, that he is 'split in two' and that he will be resurrected in a ritual something similar to MMD's with Jon in a bath of saltwater.  The difference being that Melisandre will force the combined soul of Jon/Ghost back into his body with fire magic; sacrificing Ghost in the process, not unlike Orel's eagle.  I think you mentioned this before.  So Jon may well return with a soul of fire in an ice preserved body.       

Yeah, I could see that working too. Whatever happens, it's going to be wicked awesome!

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On 24/03/2017 at 3:07 PM, LynnS said:

I don't agree that Drogo's soul went into one of the dragon eggs.  Dany sees his soul rising into the stars on his stallion. 

In fact, I was not speaking of Drogo's soul going into an egg, but into the dragon after the egg hatched : the sound of "Drogo's whip confounds with the sound of the egg exploding. In her "hallucination", Dany imagines that the whip makes the egg hatching, but I'm tempted to see it as a "visual materialization" of Drogo's blood (and perhaps the moment when soul and body are separated), blood which permit that the egg open. 

As well, and to come back to the Wall, the swords of the Others could be some extentions of themselves, a visual and physical materialization of their substance, like their armor, flesh and bones. The blood would be the material which permit that they have some consistancy, and the cold help to keep this "spell". But fire and hot on the contrary disolves it making the blood evaporating. When Sam kills the Other, this one begin to melt and appears like "rivulets as pale blue blood", and the "hiss" it produces is like the "hiss" of cold water where you tempered very hot thing (for example your saucepan after coooking something). Now, the question is why Others can't pass the Wall if it is icy ? Does the Wall absorb the "blood" ? Perhaps, there are answers with Melisandre as shadowbinder. 

Children's time came back ! 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 3/10/2017 at 8:48 AM, JNR said:

Sure, this is what I had intended to suggest.  If per GRRM the Wall "took thousands of years to be raised to its present height," then clearly it was originally far shorter.  

You also see this in the tale of the Night's King; if he spied his true love from atop the Wall, and knew her to be attractive, he certainly wasn't standing seven hundred feet above her.  Not unless he had military-grade binoculars.

Agreed. The NK's Wall had to have been far shorter than the current iteration. Jeor himself tells us that the watch used to spend the summers building the Wall higher. Take those summers, which last for years, and multiply them by the amount of summers that have occurred since the Long Night, and we have centuries upon centuries, if not millennia upon millennia, during which Sworn Brothers would have been pouring gravel and raising blocks. Each passing winter would galvanize it in a nice fresh layer of ice so that it should shine, all together, like a sparkly blue crystal. :D

 

On 3/10/2017 at 8:48 AM, JNR said:

Bear in mind that following the Long Night, the First Men all over Westeros would have had an incredible incentive to pool resources and build such a barrier.  Half their continent, roughly, had just been devastated. 

This is of course true, but we are given reason to believe that the Night's King's iteration of the Wall existed prior to the end of the Long Night.

As the sun began to set the shadows of the towers lengthened and the wind blew harder, sending gusts of dry dead leaves rattling through the yards. The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another of Old Nan’s stories, the tale of Night’s King. He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night’s Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. “And that was the fault in him,” she would add, “for all men must know fear.” A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.

He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night’s King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night’s King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.

This passage tells a few very clear details.

  1. The Night's King led the Watch
  2. The Night's King glimpsed a woman from atop the Wall
  3. The Night's King had been sacrificing to the Others

I'll spare you the easy correlation that, if the Night's King was the Last Hero, he likely sacrificed his twelve companions, and that this is how he came to be the 13th man to lead the Night's Watch. I won't go into that. I'll stick to canon...

#3 is the point of contention, for me. In order for the NK to have made sacrifices to the Others, the Others had to have been around, and the Others were around during the Long Night.

#2 tells us that the Wall was around when the Others were around.

#1 tells us that the NK led the NW when the Others were around.

 

On 3/10/2017 at 8:48 AM, JNR said:

And they would have done it in the narrowest geographical location of the Far North, if they possibly could, to minimize the work and time, because they couldn't know when the Popsicles and wights would be back.  They would need to get it done as quickly as they could. Sure enough, that's just what we see on a map.  (If the Stark house words stem from the time, I wouldn't be even the least surprised.)

Certainly makes sense to me.

 

On 3/10/2017 at 8:48 AM, JNR said:

The Wall -- even its foundation, meaning the oldest part of it -- is made of blocks. Giants and CotF don't build anything out of blocks; there's no exception anywhere in canon.  So the conclusion that men built the Wall isn't much of a leap.

Indeed. And the text makes this point rather clear. The Wall is seen as the largest feat of human engineering. But there is indeed an exception somewhere in canon regarding giant-builders. From Jon V ASOS:

In legend, Brandon the Builder had used giants to help raise Winterfell, but Jon did not want to confuse the issue. "Men can build a lot higher than this. In Oldtown there's a tower taller than the Wall." He could tell she did not believe him. If I could show her Winterfell . . . give her a flower from the glass gardens, feast her in the Great Hall, and show her the stone kings on their thrones. We could bathe in the hot pools, and love beneath the heart tree while the old gods watched over us.

Now, Brandon's giants might have been earth-movers, clearing the land so that the castle could rise, but there is precedent to assume Brandon the Builder employed migrant-giants as contractors.

 

On 3/10/2017 at 8:48 AM, JNR said:

As for the Watch, the conventional idea is that it was founded after the Long NIght to man the Wall, but that is not the same as the idea that it built the initial Wall.  I think that was a joint effort of the First Men generally, due to their powerful shared incentive.

I agree that the First Men shared incentive to join the effort, but we know that the effort itself predates the Wall. Thus, we can deduce that the Night's Watch began during the Long Night, rather than after it.

We know the NW predates the Wall, because of their vows:

They were white too, and blind. "Who are you?" the door asked, and the well whispered, "Who-who-who-who-who-who-who."

"I am the sword in the darkness," Samwell Tarly said. "I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers. I am the shield that guards the realms of men."

"Then pass," the door said. Its lips opened, wide and wider and wider still, until nothing at all remained but a great gaping mouth in a ring of wrinkles. Sam stepped aside and waved Jojen through ahead of him. Summer followed, sniffing as he went, and then it was Bran's turn. Hodor ducked, but not low enough. The door's upper lip brushed softly against the top of Bran's head, and a drop of water fell on him and ran slowly down his nose. It was strangely warm, and salty as a tear.

The vows of the Black Gate located beneath the Watch's eldest fort (and former seat of power), speak of "walls," not "the Wall."

Therefore, we know that the vow predates the Wall, as does the Black Gate.

This part of the Night's Watch Vow was composed before there was a single Wall to defend. Like the Fist of the First Men, or Winterfell's godswood, the Nightfort likely had a ringwall surrounding it at one time. Pure speculation of course, but clearly, the Vows of the Night's Watch speak of a duty to man several walls, rather than a single Wall made of Ice.

 

On 3/10/2017 at 8:48 AM, JNR said:

Brandon the Builder, who is said in myth to have built the initial version of the Wall, is not said to have belonged to the Watch.  He was, however, the Stark in Winterfell, who gave the Watch the land known as Brandon's Gift.  So this suggests, IMO, that it was not simply the Watch building the Wall back then... not by a long shot.

This assertion is simply unsupported by the text.

A Storm of Swords - Samwell V:

The suggestion outraged some of the others. "Do you want the king to wipe our arses for us too?" said Cotter Pyke angrily. "The choice of a Lord Commander belongs to the Sworn Brothers, and to them alone," insisted Ser Denys Mallister. "If they choose wisely they won't be choosing me," moaned Dolorous Edd. Maester Aemon, calm as always, said, "Your Grace, the Night's Watch has been choosing its own leader since Brandon the Builder raised the Wall. Through Jeor Mormont we have had nine hundred and ninety-seven Lords Commander in unbroken succession, each chosen by the men he would lead, a tradition many thousands of years old."

 

This passage tells us several things.

  1. The Night's Watch may or may not have selected Brandon the Builder as their own leader
  2. After the tenure of Brandon the Builder, in whatever capacity he ruled (LC or SiW), the Night's Watch was free to choose its own leaders
  3. The Night's Watch was unable to choose its own leader prior to and through the tenure of Brandon the Builder
  4. Brandon the Builder raised the Wall

 

On 3/10/2017 at 8:48 AM, JNR said:

However, if the Watch subsequently raised the Wall, as Jeor Mormont tells us, that would have been an incredibly slow process, taking thousands of years.  Which is exactly what GRRM says it did take.

Jeor Mormont indeed tells us that each Lord Commander left the Wall higher than he found it. :cheers:

And GRRM has JM's back. ;)

But neither Jeor, nor George, tell us that the Night's Watch raised the Wall independently, after the tenure of Brandon the Builder. The canon is quite consistent in this regard. Brandon raised the Wall, raised Winterfell, and raised the Night's Watch.

Based upon the text, I think these risings make far more sense taken as symbiotic, and contemporary, than they do taken apart or at different times.

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1 hour ago, Voice said:

we are given reason to believe that the Night's King's iteration of the Wall existed prior to the end of the Long Night.

In this interpretation, when did the Wall acquire a ward blocking wights -- or did it ever? 

(I think it's there, and cite Coldhands' testimony, but I can't prove it, and some Heretics don't think it's there.  This I expect TWOW to settle conclusively.)

1 hour ago, Voice said:

But there is indeed an exception somewhere in canon regarding giant-builders.

Well, in that scenario the giants are following orders from the human engineering talent (cited as Brandon the Builder, but who knows). 

There's no case in Westeros of giants having built anything out of blocks as a native aspect of their own culture, though... meaning ruins or something similar to Storm's End, built by them, for them, with no help. 

This isn't too surprising if these guys consider a club the bleeding edge of weapons technology.

Quote

[Jon] looked for great swords ten feet long, but saw only clubs. Most were just the limbs of dead trees, some still trailing shattered branches. A few had stone balls lashed to the ends to make colossal mauls.

Not sure they've invented pants, yet, even.  Definitely haven't invented cologne.

1 hour ago, Voice said:

The vows of the Black Gate located beneath the Watch's eldest fort (and former seat of power), speak of "walls," not "the Wall."

Therefore, we know that the vow predates the Wall, as does the Black Gate.

 

Trouble is, there's no sure way to know

1) When the Black Gate was created (Sam has a tale, and that's all)

2) Whether the vow it requires has ever changed, or when (if it was changed)

3) Whether a reference to "walls" would necessarily imply there was or was not a Wall at that time

In fact, I think we can say with confidence that the vow the Black Gate recognizes as valid is not the original vow... because Sam recites it in the Common Tongue, not the Old Tongue, which he doesn't know.

It's impressive that the Black Gate, an apparent polyglot, isn't bothered by this.  Perhaps it's smart enough to know, in addition to new languages, that the Watch's oath has changed.  Or perhaps GRRM just didn't think this bit through as well as Heresy has.

1 hour ago, Voice said:

The Night's Watch may or may not have selected Brandon the Builder as their own leader

Oh, we read that passage fundamentally differently.  I think the idea Mormont expresses there is quite a simple one: that the Watch never had a Lord Commander prior to the existence of the Wall, which Brandon the Builder is credited as having built... not that Brandon the Builder was a Lord Commander. 

We're certainly told that Brandon the Builder was the Stark in Winterfell.  We also know that members of the Watch swear an oath to hold no lands and wear no crowns.  And we know the Stark in Winterfell most certainly held lands and wore a crown, as a petty king at minimum.

We're also told that BtB founded the Stark line.  I don't see how he could have done this if he fathered no children, which of course is another term of the Watch oath.

So I think the odd are awfully high that Brandon the Builder was never a Lord Commander of the Watch, nor belonged to the Watch in any sense.  Building the Wall doesn't imply joining the Watch; after all, he was known as "the Builder," and apparently built stuff all the time.  (Though not weapons or cologne or pants for giants.)

But I don't mean to step on someone's theory that the Night's King/Last Hero/Brandon the Builder are all the same person... if there is such a theory floating around out there, I mean.  As with all this stuff, perhaps we'll eventually find out for sure in canon.

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