The Grey King fought Garth the Greenhand

[aryagonnakill#2]

4 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

 

You said they were like each other, not that they looked like each other.   The quote you just used says they look like each other, not that they are like each other.  All evidence is to the contrary.

[Pain killer Jane]

22 minutes ago, aryagonnakill#2 said:

1 hour ago, Pain killer Jane said:

And you forget that Stannis is a middle brother and the younger brother of Robert. Renly and Robert should be considered as the same symbolism because many people in universe state that Robert and Renly are almost the same person in looks and demeanor. 

Take the example of the Uncle killing his nephew. That is a not a clear cut Younger Brother killing his Older Brother but when you consider that a son is representative of his father (Like how Genna says that Tyrion is Tywin writ small-regardless of his sire Tyrion is the most like Tywin out of the three siblings), than an uncle killing his nephew would be a Younger Brother killing his Older Brother by both killing the seed of his Older Brother and a Shadow/Representative of his Older Brother.

So with the in universe statements of Robert and Renly being shown to have the same symbolism, and Stannis having pronounced issues with his older brother Robert, you can look at Stannis killing Renly as Stannis acting out his most darkest desire which is to kill his older brother Robert. 

No they don't, you made that up.

12 minutes ago, aryagonnakill#2 said:

You said they were like each other, not that they looked like each other.   The quote you just used says they look like each other, not that they are like each other.  All evidence is to the contrary.

If you actually read what I wrote, I did say they look like each other. 

And here is Maester Cressen

Quote

 The youngest of Lord Steffon's three sons had grown into a man bold but heedless, who acted from impulse rather than calculation. In that, as in so much else, Renly was like his brother Robert, and utterly unlike Stannis.

-Prologue, aCoK

And Stannis's own words

Quote

"All you need," his wife promised. "The swords of Storm's End and Highgarden for a start, and all their lords bannermen."

"Davos would tell you different," Stannis said. "Those swords are sworn to Renly. They love my charming young brother, as they once loved Robert . . . and as they have never loved me."

-Prologue, aCoK

Regardless of what Renly looks like it is his charm that won him support like Robert. So it would stand to reason that Robert and Renly are alike in demeanor aka personality. 

[Unchained]

@Crowfood's Daughter

 

This is a top notch post.  I had some notes about rival sky and sea gods being about a greenseer vs greenseer fight, but you just blew it wide open.  I will come back later with more, but I am not sure if I have a whole lot to add.  I wondered if what we have referred to as the  weirwoodnet is actually all one network or if there are more than one, separate from each other.  The grey king goes into the sea/see, but the God-on-Earth goes into the sky.  They may be the same thing, but perhaps not.  Euron having the Dragonbinder horn matching the Goodbrother's horn sigil makes more sense now.  The horn is a tool to use air magic in some way which is what you would expect from the storm/sky team.  Although it may be more complex than that are there are other horns mentioned that may go with other elements.  Do you have an opinion about what will happen when that horn is blown?  The purpose of the hammer of the waters being to target the Iron islands, if I understand correctly is what you are wondering, is an interesting new possibility to go with @LmL's ideas.  Could the whole moon breaking thing be to get the upper hand in a greenseer civil war?  That would be the ultimate incarnation of what Jorah told Danny about the people wanting to be left out of the games Lords play but never getting to.  I am not sure if I am totally onboard, but I am thinking about it.  I had thought before that weirwood boat turned Longhall must have arrived after the hammer or it would not be there.  Either way, this essay is significant for being the first best case I have seen laid out that someone from the age of heroes is NOT someone else.  Brandon the Builder = Night King = AA = Last Hero = etc and Durran = Grey King are ideas I keep seeing and they have very real evidence behind them.  You are starting the long path breaking them apart, which I really hope is something that is possible to do by the end.  

 

Something I am not clear on is how do you think think the actual murdering, usurping interaction between the Grey and Green brothers went.  Who killed who first or is that a dumb question because they are the seasons?  It sounds like you are making the case that the stormy brother was the murderer, but the Grey King is the one that turned grey due to the curse the Barrow King who is definitely Garth made suggesting the Grey King lived and he died.  There will definitely be resurrections of a sort, so I am sure to the extent they were people and not abstract representatives of the seasons they probably killed each other at least once.  Stannis seems to have symbolically been reborn several times. It   He has the whole Lightbringer scene and his new fiery sigil tells me is is already a fiery reborn person from the start.  Then he kills Renly and gets older all at once, possibly another symbolic death.  Then he is defeated by resurrected Renly and goes North to the Nightfort, perhaps showing us how an already dead and reborn in fire horned lord is again reborn in ice as the Night's King.  I need to go to bed, damn work, but I will come back.     

 

 

[Pain killer Jane]

50 minutes ago, aryagonnakill#2 said:

You said they were like each other, not that they looked like each other.   The quote you just used says they look like each other, not that they are like each other.  All evidence is to the contrary.

So.......I made it up that Renly and Robert have been likened to each other in both demeanor and looks by characters in universe.........And up in my other comment, we have Robert and Renly's brother explicitly saying that they both due to their nature/demeanor/personality inspired the same type of feeling in their followers. And before that Maester Cressen, who has known all three of them since they were little and raised them states that Renly is like Robert by stating that they share personality traits. 

I didn't make this up. Robert and Renly are supposed to represent each. Sansa proves this as well

Quote

They set up the quintain at the far end of the lists while the prince's pony was being saddled. Tommen's opponent was a child-sized leather warrior stuffed with straw and mounted on a pivot, with a shield in one hand and a padded mace in the other. Someone had fastened a pair of antlers to the knight's head. Joffrey's father King Robert had worn antlers on his helm, Sansa remembered . . . but so did his uncle Lord Renly, Robert's brother, who had turned traitor and crowned himself king.

-Sansa I, aCoK

 

A quintain is supposed to represent a person in its physical function but also symbolically. Look at the simplistic rendering of Renly and Robert as represented by the quintain, Sansa says about, that it had antlers like Robert and Lord Renly and then Sansa says Renly turned traitor and crowned himself king which is exactly what Robert did. Yes there are differences in the detail but that those are the basics. And those basics are what we call an archetype, which the quintain is literally telling us that we should consider Robert and Renly in their basic symbolism as being the same archetype. 

Now there is also another way that this archetype/shadow/representation of a person is shown as well. 

Quote

Brienne turned, and saw a ghost.

Renly. No hammerblow to the heart could have felled her half so hard. "My lord?" she gasped.

"Lord?" The boy pushed back a lock of black hair that had fallen across his eyes. "I'm just a smith."

The person Brienne is talking to is Robert's son Gendry, who she thinks is the ghost of Renly. What is a ghost but a shadow/representation of a person. Brienne even alludes to Robert's victory at the Trident with the 'hammerblow to the heart' comment. And this further alludes back to Ned's comment about seeing Renly as Robert after his victory at the Trident. 

However they are not the same person, that is why I said they are ALMOST the same person. There are differences to Renly and Robert but since we don't see inside their heads we can only nominally say that. But my point still stands that Renly represents Robert in basic symbolism in key traits such as looks and demeanor. 

[Pain killer Jane]

On 3/4/2017 at 6:01 PM, Crowfood's Daughter said:

Brother versus brother is obviously a recurring archetype that can be seen throughout ASOIAF.  Some examples include:

 

13 minutes ago, Unchained said:

Something I am not clear on is how do you think think the actual murdering, usurping interaction between the Grey and Green brothers went.  Who killed who first or is that a dumb question because they are the seasons?  It sounds like you are making the case that the stormy brother was the murderer, but the Grey King is the one that turned grey due to the curse the Barrow King who is definitely Garth made suggesting the Grey King lived and he died.  

So while I was proving my point to Aryagonakill#2 about Renly representing Robert and we are supposed to consider them having the same symbolism, I found this:

Quote

She had also heard other things, scary things, things that made no sense to her. Some said her father had murdered King Robert and been slain in turn by Lord Renly. Others insisted that Renly had killed the king in a drunken quarrel between brothers. Why else should he have fled in the night like a common thief? 

-Arya V,aGoT

This is in Arya's POV, she heard the rumor that her father, Ned Stark, Lord of the Dead killed Robert. And of course, Robert calls Ned his brother on a few occasions. And in the other rumor Renly killed his older brother in a drunken fight. I think it is interesting that Renly and Robert are fighting drunk and therefore share another trait to reinforce the drunken greenman archetype of Dionysus. 

[Crowfood's Daughter]

5 hours ago, Unchained said:

@Crowfood's Daughter

 

This is a top notch post.  I had some notes about rival sky and sea gods being about a greenseer vs greenseer fight, but you just blew it wide open.  I will come back later with more, but I am not sure if I have a whole lot to add.  I wondered if what we have referred to as the  weirwoodnet is actually all one network or if there are more than one, separate from each other.  The grey king goes into the sea/see, but the God-on-Earth goes into the sky.  They may be the same thing, but perhaps not.  Euron having the Dragonbinder horn matching the Goodbrother's horn sigil makes more sense now.  The horn is a tool to use air magic in some way which is what you would expect from the storm/sky team.  Although it may be more complex than that are there are other horns mentioned that may go with other elements.  Do you have an opinion about what will happen when that horn is blown?  The purpose of the hammer of the waters being to target the Iron islands, if I understand correctly is what you are wondering, is an interesting new possibility to go with @LmL's ideas.  Could the whole moon breaking thing be to get the upper hand in a greenseer civil war?  That would be the ultimate incarnation of what Jorah told Danny about the people wanting to be left out of the games Lords play but never getting to.  I am not sure if I am totally onboard, but I am thinking about it.  I had thought before that weirwood boat turned Longhall must have arrived after the hammer or it would not be there.  Either way, this essay is significant for being the first best case I have seen laid out that someone from the age of heroes is NOT someone else.  Brandon the Builder = Night King = AA = Last Hero = etc and Durran = Grey King are ideas I keep seeing and they have very real evidence behind them.  You are starting the long path breaking them apart, which I really hope is something that is possible to do by the end.  

 

Something I am not clear on is how do you think think the actual murdering, usurping interaction between the Grey and Green brothers went.  Who killed who first or is that a dumb question because they are the seasons?  It sounds like you are making the case that the stormy brother was the murderer, but the Grey King is the one that turned grey due to the curse the Barrow King who is definitely Garth made suggesting the Grey King lived and he died.  There will definitely be resurrections of a sort, so I am sure to the extent they were people and not abstract representatives of the seasons they probably killed each other at least once.  Stannis seems to have symbolically been reborn several times. It   He has the whole Lightbringer scene and his new fiery sigil tells me is is already a fiery reborn person from the start.  Then he kills Renly and gets older all at once, possibly another symbolic death.  Then he is defeated by resurrected Renly and goes North to the Nightfort, perhaps showing us how an already dead and reborn in fire horned lord is again reborn in ice as the Night's King.  I need to go to bed, damn work, but I will come back.     

 

 

with the murdering and usurping, there seems to be hints at a third player sowing discourse which is something I realized after reading a quote about Robin Flint. Lml has also seen hints at a third player/brother in the BSE/LH struggle, so this is a possibility I haven't explored, but plan to. 

As far as who died in the brother v brother struggle, It was Garth who died and laid down the curse.  If you look at the story of Cain and Abel, Cain's punishment after he killed Abel, was that he was forced to live with his shame and he was marked so that no man would kill him.  He was forced to live his life in misery. This is where the term "mark of cain" comes from.  likewise, the Grey King's punishment was to become like a corpse even though he lived.  We have all seen in the books about the idea that dying can be a mercy and that living can be worse than death.  Nothing illustrates death being a mercy better than the HoBaW. Basically, the Grey King got to live, but living became his punishment  . 

I think @LmL gave a good example with Beric who is an AA figure with Greenseer powers who is also a "Lord of Corpses" and is kind of forced to continue life with a corpse body.  This is basically the same concept, the grey king suffers through life with this corpse-like curse.  You are right in that the concept of resurrection seems like a crucial part of this with a hint in the Ironborn religion with their saying, what is dead may never die.  BTW, Guess what else is at the Nightfort?  The Black gate with the weirwood/corpse face.

The Black Gate, Sam had called it, but it wasn’t black at all. It was white weirwood, and there was a face on it. A glow came from the wood, like milk and moonlight, so faint it scarcely seemed to touch anything beyond the door itself, not even Sam standing right before it. The face was old and pale, wrinkled and shrunken. It looks dead. Its mouth was closed, and its eyes; its cheeks were sunken, its brow withered, its chin sagging. If a man could live for a thousand years and never die but just grow older, his face might come to look like that. The door opened its eyes.

 

[Pain killer Jane]

5 hours ago, Crowfood's Daughter said:

As far as who died in the brother v brother struggle, It was Garth who died and laid down the curse.  If you look at the story of Cain and Abel, Cain's punishment after he killed Abel, was that he was forced to live with his shame and he was marked so that no man would kill him.  He was forced to live his life in misery. This is where the term "mark of cain" comes from.  likewise, the Grey King's punishment was to become like a corpse even though he lived.  We have all seen in the books about the idea that dying can be a mercy and that living can be worse than death.  Nothing illustrates death being a mercy better than the HoBaW. Basically, the Grey King got to live, but living became his punishment  . 

There is a reason why the seat of House Marbrand is called Ashemark. Its related to the burning/bloody palms/hands of the Hearttrees and the real life religious rite of Ash Wednesday (Wednesday being Odin's day) and the other ritual of covering yourself in ash to wash yourself of sin and only outwardly appearing repentant. 

[Unchained]

On 3/7/2017 at 8:34 AM, Crowfood's Daughter said:

with the murdering and usurping, there seems to be hints at a third player sowing discourse which is something I realized after reading a quote about Robin Flint. Lml has also seen hints at a third player/brother in the BSE/LH struggle, so this is a possibility I haven't explored, but plan to. 

As far as who died in the brother v brother struggle, It was Garth who died and laid down the curse.  If you look at the story of Cain and Abel, Cain's punishment after he killed Abel, was that he was forced to live with his shame and he was marked so that no man would kill him.  He was forced to live his life in misery. This is where the term "mark of cain" comes from.  likewise, the Grey King's punishment was to become like a corpse even though he lived.  We have all seen in the books about the idea that dying can be a mercy and that living can be worse than death.  Nothing illustrates death being a mercy better than the HoBaW. Basically, the Grey King got to live, but living became his punishment  . 

I think @LmL gave a good example with Beric who is an AA figure with Greenseer powers who is also a "Lord of Corpses" and is kind of forced to continue life with a corpse body.  This is basically the same concept, the grey king suffers through life with this corpse-like curse.  You are right in that the concept of resurrection seems like a crucial part of this with a hint in the Ironborn religion with their saying, what is dead may never die.  BTW, Guess what else is at the Nightfort?  The Black gate with the weirwood/corpse face.

The Black Gate, Sam had called it, but it wasn’t black at all. It was white weirwood, and there was a face on it. A glow came from the wood, like milk and moonlight, so faint it scarcely seemed to touch anything beyond the door itself, not even Sam standing right before it. The face was old and pale, wrinkled and shrunken. It looks dead. Its mouth was closed, and its eyes; its cheeks were sunken, its brow withered, its chin sagging. If a man could live for a thousand years and never die but just grow older, his face might come to look like that. The door opened its eyes.

 

Gotcha, so you are saying that the Grey King killed Garth first, then he or other horned storm people may have gotten revenge via the moon explosion.

 

I am not really intending this as a counter argument, more a complication that there may be more than one theme going on.  At King's Landing, the jade demon resurrected Renly is not only getting revenge on inverted solar king Stannis, but also kills Guyard Morrigan (formerly the Green) for some green on green violence.  A green demon coming back to defeat his murderer is the brother vs. brother fight, but Renly with fire reflecting in his antlers killing a green man sounds like he came back as something like his killer and is fulfilling the same role.  I have not seen this mentioned before, but Morrigan's name black crow sigil is a reference to the Morrigan Celtic triple goddess of war.  They are similiar to the Celt version of Norns or Valkyries.  @ravenous reader  I have been meaning to tell you I came across a 'sea as a symbol of the Otherworld' example a while ago.  One of Morrigan's death/war goddess sisters named Macha has this written about her.

 http://orderwhitemoon.org/goddess/Macha/index.html

Her son ran to the sea, which we interpret as dying and going to the Otherworld.  I can't connect it to ASoIaF, but I am tempted to try.  She sounds like Lyanna (sometimes dies in childbirth, crow associated, on a different site wolf associated, and of course horses) more than a little right?  Plus she had twins and one died at childbirth while one lived, interesting.  

 

The fast aging inverted solar king Stannis killing Renly, resurrected Renly killing Guyard, and the death of King Bob in his hunting greens are all the winter Grey King defeating the summer.  However we see the opposite at least once when King Bob kills Rhaegar at the trident.  A black dragon is as inverted solar king as you can get.  King Robert wears yellow which is a good color for the uncorrupted sun.  However he has a conspicuous lack of green.  @Pain killer Jane was comparing and contrasting Renly and Robert's symbolism on here maybe you can help.  I agree they often are interchangeable, but an individual's symbolism is usually not a static object.  In my last OP I go over a few transformational scenes.  They often involve dead kings, pyres (or pies that are pyres through wordplay), and bells.  The transformed party is set free and flies to their destiny.  The battle of the bells seems like Robert's version of this event.  He was hiding in a house (horned lord trapped in wood), there was no pyre, but Jon Connington thinks about how Tywin would have burnt the whole town (that would have been a King's funeral pyre just like the dragon hatching), but instead the bells start ringing just like the ones in King's Landing after all royal deaths and weddings and Robert comes storming out to later win the battle and later the rebellion.  He clinches the win at the trident where he, with no green coloring at all, kills a black dragon.  He is referred to as the 'demon of the trident' just like resurrected Renly is the 'jade demon'.  I guess I am not saying Robert and Renly have different symbolism, but they have different stages in their life cycle as I see it.  Although, Renly is still green after resurrection.   

 

 

 

  

 

        

 

[Pain killer Jane]

15 minutes ago, Unchained said:

King Robert wears yellow which is a good color for the uncorrupted sun.

Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn were reported to wear yellow when Catherine of Aragon died. I only point this out because aside from it being a color for joy in England, it was consider the color of mourning in Spain at the time. And since many parallel Robert to Aegon IV and Aegon IV is a rather direct parallel to Henry VIII (with Walder Frey being even better), so it could be that this could be a source of Robert wearing yellow. 

35 minutes ago, Unchained said:

However we see the opposite at least once when King Bob kills Rhaegar at the trident.  A black dragon is as inverted solar king as you can get.  King Robert wears yellow which is a good color for the uncorrupted sun.

Hmmmm then what do we make of these scenes between Cersei and Ned

Quote

She came to him at sunset, as the clouds reddened above the walls and towers. She came alone, as he had bid her. For once she was dressed simply, in leather boots and hunting greens. When she drew back the hood of her brown cloak, he saw the bruise where the king had struck her. The angry plum color had faded to yellow, and the swelling was down, but there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was.

"Why here?" Cersei Lannister asked as she stood over him.

"So the gods can see."

She sat beside him on the grass. Her every move was graceful. Her curling blond hair moved in the wind, and her eyes were green as the leaves of summer. It had been a long time since Ned Stark had seen her beauty, but he saw it now. "I know the truth Jon Arryn died for," he told her.

"Do you?" The queen watched his face, wary as a cat. "Is that why you called me here, Lord Stark? To pose me riddles? Or is it your intent to seize me, as your wife seized my brother?"

"If you truly believed that, you would never have come." Ned touched her cheek gently. "Has he done this before?"

"Once or twice." She shied away from his hand. "Never on the face before. Jaime would have killed him, even if it meant his own life." Cersei looked at him defiantly. "My brother is worth a hundred of your friend."

"Your brother?" Ned said. "Or your lover?"

"Both." She did not flinch from the truth. "Since we were children together. And why not? The Targaryens wed brother to sister for three hundred years, to keep the bloodlines pure. And Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We are one person in two bodies. We shared a womb together. He came into this world holding my foot, our old maester said. When he is in me, I feel … whole." The ghost of a smile flitted over her lips.

"My son Bran …"

To her credit, Cersei did not look away. "He saw us. You love your children, do you not?"

Robert had asked him the very same question, the morning of the melee. He gave her the same answer. "With all my heart."

"No less do I love mine."

Ned thought, If it came to that, the life of some child I did not know, against Robb and Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon, what would I do? Even more so, what would Catelyn do, if it were Jon's life, against the children of her body? He did not know. He prayed he never would.

"All three are Jaime's," he said. It was not a question.

"Thank the gods."

The seed is strong, Jon Arryn had cried on his deathbed, and so it was. All those bastards, all with hair as black as night. Grand Maester Malleon recorded the last mating between stag and lion, some ninety years ago, when Tya Lannister wed Gowen Baratheon, third son of the reigning lord. Their only issue, an unnamed boy described in Malleon's tome as a large and lusty lad born with a full head of black hair, died in infancy. Thirty years before that a male Lannister had taken a Baratheon maid to wife. She had given him three daughters and a son, each black-haired. No matter how far back Ned searched in the brittle yellowed pages, always he found the gold yielding before the coal.

"A dozen years," Ned said. "How is it that you have had no children by the king?"

She lifted her head, defiant. "Your Robert got me with child once," she said, her voice thick with contempt. "My brother found a woman to cleanse me. He never knew. If truth be told, I can scarcely bear for him to touch me, and I have not let him inside me for years. I know other ways to pleasure him, when he leaves his whores long enough to stagger up to my bedchamber. Whatever we do, the king is usually so drunk that he's forgotten it all by the next morning."

How could they have all been so blind? The truth was there in front of them all the time, written on the children's faces. Ned felt sick. "I remember Robert as he was the day he took the throne, every inch a king," he said quietly. "A thousand other women might have loved him with all their hearts. What did he do to make you hate him so?"

Her eyes burned, green fire in the dusk, like the lioness that was her sigil. "The night of our wedding feast, the first time we shared a bed, he called me by your sister's name. He was on top of me, in me, stinking of wine, and he whispered Lyanna."

Ned Stark thought of pale blue roses, and for a moment he wanted to weep. "I do not know which of you I pity most."

The queen seemed amused by that. "Save your pity for yourself, Lord Stark. I want none of it."

"You know what I must do."

"Must!" She put her hand on his good leg, just above the knee. "A true man does what he will, not what he must." Her fingers brushed lightly against his thigh, the gentlest of promises. "The realm needs a strong Hand. Joff will not come of age for years. No one wants war again, least of all me." Her hand touched his face, his hair. "If friends can turn to enemies, enemies can become friends. Your wife is a thousand leagues away, and my brother has fled. Be kind to me, Ned. I swear to you, you shall never regret it."

"Did you make the same offer to Jon Arryn?"

She slapped him.

"I shall wear that as a badge of honor," Ned said dryly.

"Honor," she spat. "How dare you play the noble lord with me! What do you take me for? You've a bastard of your own, I've seen him. Who was the mother, I wonder? Some Dornish peasant you raped while her holdfast burned? A whore? Or was it the grieving sister, the Lady Ashara? She threw herself into the sea, I'm told. Why was that? For the brother you slew, or the child you stole? Tell me, my honorable Lord Eddard, how are you any different from Robert, or me, or Jaime?"

"For a start," said Ned, "I do not kill children. You would do well to listen, my lady. I shall say this only once. When the king returns from his hunt, I intend to lay the truth before him. You must be gone by then. You and your children, all three, and not to Casterly Rock. If I were you, I should take ship for the Free Cities, or even farther, to the Summer Isles or the Port of Ibben. As far as the winds blow."

"Exile," she said. "A bitter cup to drink from."

"A sweeter cup than your father served Rhaegar's children," Ned said, "and kinder than you deserve. Your father and your brothers would do well to go with you. Lord Tywin's gold will buy you comfort and hire swords to keep you safe. You shall need them. I promise you, no matter where you flee, Robert's wrath will follow you, to the back of beyond if need be."

The queen stood. "And what of my wrath, Lord Stark?" she asked softly. Her eyes searched his face. "You should have taken the realm for yourself. It was there for the taking. Jaime told me how you found him on the Iron Throne the day King's Landing fell, and made him yield it up. That was your moment. All you needed to do was climb those steps, and sit. Such a sad mistake."

"I have made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine," Ned said, "but that was not one of them."

"Oh, but it was, my lord," Cersei insisted. "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground."

She turned up her hood to hide her swollen face and left him there in the dark beneath the oak, amidst the quiet of the godswood, under a blue-black sky. The stars were coming out.

And then this scene again between Cersei and Ned

Quote

Five knights of the Kingsguard—all but Ser Jaime and Ser Barristan—were arrayed in a crescent around the base of the throne. They were in full armor, enameled steel from helm to heel, long pale cloaks over their shoulders, shining white shields strapped to their left arms. Cersei Lannister and her two younger children stood behind Ser Boros and Ser Meryn. The queen wore a gown of sea-green silk, trimmed with Myrish lace as pale as foam. On her finger was a golden ring with an emerald the size of a pigeon's egg, on her head a matching tiara.

And then later Sansa sees Cersei wearing this 

Quote

All of them were clad in black, she realized with a feeling of dread. Mourning clothes …

The queen wore a high-collared black silk gown, with a hundred dark red rubies sewn into her bodice, covering her from neck to bosom. They were cut in the shape of teardrops, as if the queen were weeping blood. 

 

[Crowfood's Daughter]

7 hours ago, Unchained said:

Gotcha, so you are saying that the Grey King killed Garth first, then he or other horned storm people may have gotten revenge via the moon explosion.

 

I am not really intending this as a counter argument, more a complication that there may be more than one theme going on.  At King's Landing, the jade demon resurrected Renly is not only getting revenge on inverted solar king Stannis, but also kills Guyard Morrigan (formerly the Green) for some green on green violence.  A green demon coming back to defeat his murderer is the brother vs. brother fight, but Renly with fire reflecting in his antlers killing a green man sounds like he came back as something like his killer and is fulfilling the same role.  I have not seen this mentioned before, but Morrigan's name black crow sigil is a reference to the Morrigan Celtic triple goddess of war.  They are similiar to the Celt version of Norns or Valkyries.  @ravenous reader  I have been meaning to tell you I came across a 'sea as a symbol of the Otherworld' example a while ago.  One of Morrigan's death/war goddess sisters named Macha has this written about her.

 http://orderwhitemoon.org/goddess/Macha/index.html

Her son ran to the sea, which we interpret as dying and going to the Otherworld.  I can't connect it to ASoIaF, but I am tempted to try.  She sounds like Lyanna (sometimes dies in childbirth, crow associated, on a different site wolf associated, and of course horses) more than a little right?  Plus she had twins and one died at childbirth while one lived, interesting.  

 

The fast aging inverted solar king Stannis killing Renly, resurrected Renly killing Guyard, and the death of King Bob in his hunting greens are all the winter Grey King defeating the summer.  However we see the opposite at least once when King Bob kills Rhaegar at the trident.  A black dragon is as inverted solar king as you can get.  King Robert wears yellow which is a good color for the uncorrupted sun.  However he has a conspicuous lack of green.  @Pain killer Jane was comparing and contrasting Renly and Robert's symbolism on here maybe you can help.  I agree they often are interchangeable, but an individual's symbolism is usually not a static object.  In my last OP I go over a few transformational scenes.  They often involve dead kings, pyres (or pies that are pyres through wordplay), and bells.  The transformed party is set free and flies to their destiny.  The battle of the bells seems like Robert's version of this event.  He was hiding in a house (horned lord trapped in wood), there was no pyre, but Jon Connington thinks about how Tywin would have burnt the whole town (that would have been a King's funeral pyre just like the dragon hatching), but instead the bells start ringing just like the ones in King's Landing after all royal deaths and weddings and Robert comes storming out to later win the battle and later the rebellion.  He clinches the win at the trident where he, with no green coloring at all, kills a black dragon.  He is referred to as the 'demon of the trident' just like resurrected Renly is the 'jade demon'.  I guess I am not saying Robert and Renly have different symbolism, but they have different stages in their life cycle as I see it.  Although, Renly is still green after resurrection.   

I think we might have to look at this as unRenly fighting Guyard the Green rather than Renly fighting Stannis.  That Renly symbolizes a murdered Green horned figure and the character we see in the battle is more like Renly's ghost in a sense.  If we look at it as kind of a resurrection, we see Renly as more of an AA figure with his possession of the fire of the Gods.  Likewise LmL suggests the Grey King is very AA connected.  Also, Guyard fits the 12+1 pattern for the LH.  Take a look at his resurrection, unRenly is not as green as he appears. his fire resurrection has turned his armor grey through the ashes of the burning crops. Sounds Grey King to me.  As LmL and I have been discussing, the supposition that the Grey king was at least at one point "green" connected is there.  He is Garth's brother and has the long lifespan as well as god-like attributes. 

 

Ser Dontos laughed and hopped from one leg to the other, almost falling. “They came up through the ashes while the river was burning. The river, Stannis was neck deep in the river, and they took him from the rear. Oh, to be a knight again, to have been part of it! His own men hardly fought, they say. Some ran but more bent the knee and went over, shouting for Lord Renly! What must Stannis have thought when he heard that? I had it from Osney Kettleblack who had it from Ser Osmund, but Ser Balon’s back now and his men say the same, and the gold cloaks as well. We’re delivered, sweetling! They came up the roseroad and along the riverbank, through all the fields Stannis had burned, the ashes puffing up around their boots and turning all their armor grey, but oh! the banners must have been bright, the golden rose and golden lion and all the others, the Marbrand tree and the Rowan, Tarly’s huntsman and Redwyne’s grapes and Lady Oakheart’s leaf. All the westermen, all the power of Highgarden and Casterly Rock! Lord Tywin himself had their right wing on the north side of the river, with Randyll Tarly commanding the center and Mace Tyrell the left, but the vanguard won the fight. They plunged through Stannis like a lance through a pumpkin, every man of them howling like some demon in steel. And do you know who led the vanguard? Do you? Do you? Do you?” “Robb?” It was too much to be hoped, but … “It was Lord Renly! Lord Renly in his green armor, with the fires shimmering off his golden antlers! Lord Renly

 

When we see Renly now, he is grey and coming through the ashes with fire.  This reminds me of the quote about the burning bran and going forth into the world with fire and sword.  So it could be that unRenly is personifying AA/Grey king.  There is something I have been meaning to show @LmL who I'm sure already picked up on this, but if we look at the sigil for the extinct house Greyiron, we see kind of a pre-hex Grey king and he looks a lot like his brother.  http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Greyiron  The Grey King would have been similar to the Manderly progenitor, remember Wylla Manderly with her hair dyed green, they are also Garth connected being part of the Order of the Green Hand. 

 

 

[Pain killer Jane]

1 hour ago, Unchained said:

 @Pain killer Jane was comparing and contrasting Renly and Robert's symbolism on here maybe you can help.  I agree they often are interchangeable, but an individual's symbolism is usually not a static object.  In my last OP I go over a few transformational scenes.  They often involve dead kings, pyres (or pies that are pyres through wordplay), and bells.  The transformed party is set free and flies to their destiny.  The battle of the bells seems like Robert's version of this event.  He was hiding in a house (horned lord trapped in wood), there was no pyre, but Jon Connington thinks about how Tywin would have burnt the whole town (that would have been a King's funeral pyre just like the dragon hatching), but instead the bells start ringing just like the ones in King's Landing after all royal deaths and weddings and Robert comes storming out to later win the battle and later the rebellion.  He clinches the win at the trident where he, with no green coloring at all, kills a black dragon.  He is referred to as the 'demon of the trident' just like resurrected Renly is the 'jade demon'.  I guess I am not saying Robert and Renly have different symbolism, but they have different stages in their life cycle as I see it.  Although, Renly is still green after resurrection.   

I do not think they are static. I think that Renly and Robert at their core are the same; two branches of the same trunk. Those branches do grow differently and change but are still attached to the same trunk. That is what I see in the Sansa scene with the quintain. The quintain is stripped down to its basic representation of a Robert and Renly and Sansa notes that they are the same at the core. It similar to when Ned points out to Arya, that her and Sansa are as different as night and day but the same blood flows through their veins. If you want a different take on it, the quintain is the embodiment of "the bones remember". 

[Crowfood's Daughter]

1 hour ago, Unchained said:

 

The fast aging inverted solar king Stannis killing Renly, resurrected Renly killing Guyard, and the death of King Bob in his hunting greens are all the winter Grey King defeating the summer.  However we see the opposite at least once when King Bob kills Rhaegar at the trident.  A black dragon is as inverted solar king as you can get.  King Robert wears yellow which is a good color for the uncorrupted sun.  However he has a conspicuous lack of green.  @Pain killer Jane was comparing and contrasting Renly and Robert's symbolism on here maybe you can help.  I agree they often are interchangeable, but an individual's symbolism is usually not a static object.  In my last OP I go over a few transformational scenes.  They often involve dead kings, pyres (or pies that are pyres through wordplay), and bells.  The transformed party is set free and flies to their destiny.  The battle of the bells seems like Robert's version of this event.  He was hiding in a house (horned lord trapped in wood), there was no pyre, but Jon Connington thinks about how Tywin would have burnt the whole town (that would have been a King's funeral pyre just like the dragon hatching), but instead the bells start ringing just like the ones in King's Landing after all royal deaths and weddings and Robert comes storming out to later win the battle and later the rebellion.  He clinches the win at the trident where he, with no green coloring at all, kills a black dragon.  He is referred to as the 'demon of the trident' just like resurrected Renly is the 'jade demon'.  I guess I am not saying Robert and Renly have different symbolism, but they have different stages in their life cycle as I see it.  Although, Renly is still green after resurrection.   

The Celts had a way of viewing the Bull in three ways and this is how I see GRRM portraying the three brothers. Bulls I know this is not specifically fertility, but the bull is a strong fertility and sacrificial symbol. Gendry's bull helm kinda reinforces this idea, along with the deaths of Robert and Renly taking on some Taurectomy symbolism

Stannis:  The Celtic bull symbol stands for strong will, an uncompromising nature, and even belligerence. Due to its unbending, stubborn personality traits, we get the term "bull-headed." from the bull.

Robert:The bull is also a virile sign for men, and a sign of fertility for women. Donning the bull symbol in the Celtic bed chamber (depicted on sheets, robes, pillows, etc) is said to enhance the mental state leading to sexual strength and endurance.

Renly:  A third representation of the bull sign is that of riches and wealth. Likely due to the fact that this creature was a great source of food the Celts, it can easily be associated with easier, fairer, and abundant times in the Celtic villages.

Quote

The armorer considered that a moment. “Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He’ll break before he bends. And Renly, that one, he’s copper, bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day.”

So, in a sense I see them differing in the way celtic bulls differ.  Probably not how our beloved writer intended, but it is easy for me to distinguish when put in these terms.

[Pain killer Jane]

On 3/4/2017 at 6:01 PM, Crowfood's Daughter said:

Additionally, the Ironborn are notorious for their tree killing; I mean big time.  These guys had cut down so many trees on the Iron Islands, they then turned to the greenlands for wood.  This would have been a huge violation in the eyes of the greenseers especially if they were using weirwood as the Ironborn legends suggest.  I would say this is bad news all around for the tree worshiping green land folk and their greenseers on so many levels, bad news indeed. 

So what do we make of this little tidbit

Quote

That's a Brandon, the tall one with the dreamy face, he was Brandon the Shipwright, because he loved the sea. His tomb is empty. He tried to sail west across the Sunset Sea and was never seen again. His son was Brandon the Burner, because he put the torch to all his father's ships in grief. 

Oh hey @LmL remember the scene when Nymeria's people burned their ships and some turned into Orphans of the Greenblood. This seems like a reference to that and his father was a dreamer dreaming of the bloody blue-green sea. 

[ravenous reader]

55 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

So what do we make of this little tidbit

Quote

That's a Brandon, the tall one with the dreamy face, he was Brandon the Shipwright, because he loved the sea. His tomb is empty. He tried to sail west across the Sunset Sea and was never seen again. His son was Brandon the Burner, because he put the torch to all his father's ships in grief. 

Oh hey @LmL remember the scene when Nymeria's people burned their ships and some turned into Orphans of the Greenblood. This seems like a reference to that and his father was a dreamer dreaming of the bloody blue-green sea. 

Surely you meant the bloody grey-green sea/see..?!  

[Pain killer Jane]

20 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Surely you meant the bloody grey-green sea/see..?!  

 

[Pain killer Jane]

27 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Surely you meant the bloody grey-green sea/see..?!  

Of course by day.

By night:

Quote

Stannis Baratheon, Lord of Dragonstone and by the grace of the gods rightful heir to the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, was broad of shoulder and sinewy of limb, with a tightness to his face and flesh that spoke of leather cured in the sun until it was as tough as steel. Hard was the word men used when they spoke of Stannis, and hard he was. Though he was not yet five-and-thirty, only a fringe of thin black hair remained on his head, circling behind his ears like the shadow of a crown. His brother, the late King Robert, had grown a beard in his final years. Maester Cressen had never seen it, but they said it was a wild thing, thick and fierce. As if in answer, Stannis kept his own whiskers cropped tight and short. They lay like a blue-black shadow across his square jaw and the bony hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were open wounds beneath his heavy brows, a blue as dark as the sea by night. His mouth would have given despair to even the drollest of fools; it was a mouth made for frowns and scowls and sharply worded commands, all thin pale lips and clenched muscles, a mouth that had forgotten how to smile and had never known how to laugh. Sometimes when the world grew very still and silent of a night, Maester Cressen fancied he could hear Lord Stannis grinding his teeth half a castle away.

 

[LmL]

On 3/6/2017 at 8:53 PM, Pain killer Jane said:

If you actually read what I wrote, I did say they look like each other. 

And here is Maester Cressen

And Stannis's own words

Regardless of what Renly looks like it is his charm that won him support like Robert. So it would stand to reason that Robert and Renly are alike in demeanor aka personality. 

Also, Robert was in his hunting greens when he died, killed by a black devil of a boar. Renly was in his green armor when he died, killed by a black shadow with a burning heart, a demonic shadow image of Stannis and Lightbringer.

Renly and Robert do both indeed play the green, summer king / oak king role which is embodied by Garth the Green. It's hammered home over and over. @aryagonnakill#2, you cannot be so literally minded on these threads. You know how we do this analysis - it's all about archetypes and symbols. The correlations are never one to one, perfect in every detail. They're both green horned lords sacrificed in similar ways, and the text obviously compares them to one another, as @Pain killer Jane has shown.  For purposes of symbolism - the entire premise of the analysis in the OP - they are playing the same role. 

[LmL]

On 3/6/2017 at 10:13 PM, Pain killer Jane said:

So while I was proving my point to Aryagonakill#2 about Renly representing Robert and we are supposed to consider them having the same symbolism, I found this:

Quote

She had also heard other things, scary things, things that made no sense to her. Some said her father had murdered King Robert and been slain in turn by Lord Renly. Others insisted that Renly had killed the king in a drunken quarrel between brothers. Why else should he have fled in the night like a common thief? 

-Arya V,aGoT

This is in Arya's POV, she heard the rumor that her father, Ned Stark, Lord of the Dead killed Robert. And of course, Robert calls Ned his brother on a few occasions. And in the other rumor Renly killed his older brother in a drunken fight. I think it is interesting that Renly and Robert are fighting drunk and therefore share another trait to reinforce the drunken greenman archetype of Dionysus. 

This is really good, it shows the cycle. Ned is the winter king, Bobby and Renly summer kings, so it's s usmmer - winter - summer story. Very cool.

@Unchained, first of all, I am the one saying that everyone is the same person, so blame me, ha ha. I have started to say "horned lords" and "Azor Ahai people" because it's getting a bit much for these all to be the same person. I tend to think of them as a crew, and there definitely seems to be a major split, with one greenseer or group of greenseers turning to fire magic, calling down the fire of the gods to transform the wierwoodnet. I believe this is when they were given faces, when the first naughty Garths (AA people, the Cain / grey king figure) went into the see. 

Now, you asked about the able figuring dying while cain lives on, yet cursed. The answer is everyone dies, and everyone comes back. Again, it's a seasons thing, so summer king has to be reborn at some point. We see Renly as a resurrected green man at Blackwater - his antlers run with flame, and he leads demons, so he seems like my trademark fire sorcerer. We also see tons of wildfire ideas telling us about greenseers with fire, green dragons, etc. Basically, there's a summer king and a winter king, and also an undead version of each. I haven't sorted all of that out to completion yet, but you get the idea. NK is a cooled - down AA in my opinion.

Blackwater was a battle of orange and red fire (stannis) against green fire (team KL, which becomes team resurrected renly). Both sides featuring resurrected stag man figures, but Stannis has the red fire turning to frozen fire symbolism of the King of Winter - it's a story about fiery meteors turning to cold black stone or cold black steel, just like dragonglass which goes from magma to frozen fire. That's why Shadowbaby Stannis's dark lightbringer has a cold touch, as does Ned's black Ice and Jon's Longclaw. But team green fire has that ten armed fire demon dancing on the water, and resurrected Renly. Robert is also called the demon of the Trident.  It's like they went from green plants to green fire by resurrecting. I tend to think the last hero might be a resurrected summer king figure, which would probably be Bran. Or maybe we get two new last heroes, since Jon has LH king of winter symbolism pretty strongly as well. Jon would be the resurrected winter king, and Bran the resurrected summer king. 

I tend to associate the Others with a dead summer king. The blue eyes of all the Baratheons are a clue, as are the fact that their eyes are like blue stars (blue suns), and Craster's wives call them "the sons." Euron's blue, smiling eye is definitely associated with the others imo (his face is like a sky map), and that eye is also called as blue as a summer sky. We also have that weird phrase Martin loves to use, "summer snows." Summer the wolf lands as light and quiet as a snowfall at the scene at the Nightfort I have been talking a lot about lately. So maybe the Others are somehow tied to that concept of a cold summer, summer snow, cold blue sun, etc. 

[aryagonnakill#2]

On ‎3‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 11:53 PM, Pain killer Jane said:

If you actually read what I wrote, I did say they look like each other. 

And here is Maester Cressen

And Stannis's own words

Regardless of what Renly looks like it is his charm that won him support like Robert. So it would stand to reason that Robert and Renly are alike in demeanor aka personality. 

There is a reason Robert and Renly did not get along, and it's because they are nothing alike.  We get ample time with both of them to determine this. 

Robert was a warrior, Renly was not.

Robert was a manly man, Renly was flamboyantly gay.

Robert drinks excessively, Renly does not, he prefers to dance.

Robert has no interest in politics, and Renly enjoys it.

Robert is aggressive, Renly is passive.

Robert is coarse, Renly is kind.

Donal Noye describes Robert as true steal and Renly as copper.

They are literally nothing alike.

That all being said, the night I commented on your post I had a few too many and my tone and choice of words were both rude.  For that I apologize.

 

[LmL]

On 3/8/2017 at 8:25 PM, Crowfood's Daughter said:

I think we might have to look at this as unRenly fighting Guyard the Green rather than Renly fighting Stannis.  That Renly symbolizes a murdered Green horned figure and the character we see in the battle is more like Renly's ghost in a sense.  If we look at it as kind of a resurrection, we see Renly as more of an AA figure with his possession of the fire of the Gods.  Likewise LmL suggests the Grey King is very AA connected.  Also, Guyard fits the 12+1 pattern for the LH.  Take a look at his resurrection, unRenly is not as green as he appears. his fire resurrection has turned his armor grey through the ashes of the burning crops. Sounds Grey King to me.  As LmL and I have been discussing, the supposition that the Grey king was at least at one point "green" connected is there.  He is Garth's brother and has the long lifespan as well as god-like attributes. 

 

Ser Dontos laughed and hopped from one leg to the other, almost falling. “They came up through the ashes while the river was burning. The river, Stannis was neck deep in the river, and they took him from the rear. Oh, to be a knight again, to have been part of it! His own men hardly fought, they say. Some ran but more bent the knee and went over, shouting for Lord Renly! What must Stannis have thought when he heard that? I had it from Osney Kettleblack who had it from Ser Osmund, but Ser Balon’s back now and his men say the same, and the gold cloaks as well. We’re delivered, sweetling! They came up the roseroad and along the riverbank, through all the fields Stannis had burned, the ashes puffing up around their boots and turning all their armor grey, but oh! the banners must have been bright, the golden rose and golden lion and all the others, the Marbrand tree and the Rowan, Tarly’s huntsman and Redwyne’s grapes and Lady Oakheart’s leaf. All the westermen, all the power of Highgarden and Casterly Rock! Lord Tywin himself had their right wing on the north side of the river, with Randyll Tarly commanding the center and Mace Tyrell the left, but the vanguard won the fight. They plunged through Stannis like a lance through a pumpkin, every man of them howling like some demon in steel. And do you know who led the vanguard? Do you? Do you? Do you?” “Robb?” It was too much to be hoped, but … “It was Lord Renly! Lord Renly in his green armor, with the fires shimmering off his golden antlers! Lord Renly

 

When we see Renly now, he is grey and coming through the ashes with fire.  This reminds me of the quote about the burning bran and going forth into the world with fire and sword.  So it could be that unRenly is personifying AA/Grey king.  There is something I have been meaning to show @LmL who I'm sure already picked up on this, but if we look at the sigil for the extinct house Greyiron, we see kind of a pre-hex Grey king and he looks a lot like his brother.  http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Greyiron  The Grey King would have been similar to the Manderly progenitor, remember Wylla Manderly with her hair dyed green, they are also Garth connected being part of the Order of the Green Hand. 

Hey @Crowfood's Daughter and  @Unchained, sorry I have been away so long, I have been having a major brainwave and have been putting some things together, and I just had to step away. I'll respond to thoughts from both of you. As ever, you two are on the same page as I am, though I had never noticed the grey ash armor until recently, and hadn't connected it with Renly directly in this scene. So, they came through the burned trees, through the 'ash.' They had a burning tree banner, or course. This is Azor Ahai the horned lord being reborn through the weirwoodnet, through the ash tree weir-drasil (TM LmL). This is the Grey King stage of the cycle, as you say. Grey King was grey and corpse like, but he possess the living fire of the sea dragon, so he was still a fiery dude. 

This Greyiron thing is fabulous. It shows the transition - a green sea king man putting on the black crown. He'll be drowned in no time, ha ha. That's a great find! 

Don't forget that Nagga's ribs are on the 'crown' of Old Wyk, and a wick is something that catches on fire. So, that hill has a petrified stone crown that is waiting to catch on fire, or probably we should say it did catch on fire (OLD wyk) and is now a dead tree crown.