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Skin Changers vs. Skin Peelers


300 H&H Magnum

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I wonder if there is a connection between the two practices.  Let's take a closer look.

  • Skin changers are shunned but feared. 
  • Flaying is outlawed in the north.
  • Many Starks lost their skin to the Boltons.  The Boltons hang them like pelts in their collection.
  • Human sacrifice, flaying, and baby offerings stopped. 

I have not read anything that says you can tell someone was being skinchanged through physical examination including autopsy.  It is possible that inflicting enough pain would cause the skinchanger to leave the body of his host.  Do you see a connection between the Stark skinchanging and the Bolton flaying? 

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I believe it's stated outright somewhere that the Boltons are rumored to have, at some point in the distant past, worn the skins of their enemies. Seems like a reference to skinchanging other people, which we know is considered an abomination. 

If anything I'd say it's a symbolic presentation of the Stark/Bolton dynamic. The Starks are the real deal - wargs/skinchangers, hard, honorable - while the Boltons are basically a poor man's imitation, flaying, cruel, and treacherous. Ramsay has an attachment to his dogs, the Starks are attached to their direwolves. 

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I always saw the practice of flaying by the Boltons to be a sort of parallel to the warging of the Starks. If the Starks, at some point in their long history, had a reputation for warging into the skins of animals, then I can definitely see the Boltons starting a practice to mock them. Or maybe even try to steal their power by literally wearing their skin. 

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2 hours ago, 300 H&H Magnum said:

I wonder if there is a connection between the two practices.  Let's take a closer look.

  • Skin changers are shunned but feared. 
  • Flaying is outlawed in the north.
  • Many Starks lost their skin to the Boltons.  The Boltons hang them like pelts in their collection.
  • Human sacrifice, flaying, and baby offerings stopped. 

I have not read anything that says you can tell someone was being skinchanged through physical examination including autopsy.  It is possible that inflicting enough pain would cause the skinchanger to leave the body of his host.  Do you see a connection between the Stark skinchanging and the Bolton flaying? 

No. The only way that works, if I'm understand your idea correctly, would be if the Boltons were flaying the Starks' bond animals, not the people. 

1 minute ago, Renly's Banana said:

I always saw the practice of flaying by the Boltons to be a sort of parallel to the warging of the Starks. If the Starks, at some point in their long history, had a reputation for warging into the skins of animals, then I can definitely see the Boltons starting a practice to mock them. Or maybe even try to steal their power by literally wearing their skin. 

Put like that, it makes a lot more sense.

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I've always thought there was something very significant about the boltons being skin peelers while the Starks are skin changers. Perhaps peeling is the cheap knock off version and they are just trying to imitate. Or it's a good defense against skin changing. Hopefully there's a lot more we've yet to see that will help explain it.

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I wonder if some of the Stark pelts that the Boltons supposedly have, are animals pelts, from animals that Starks would skinchange.

 

Kind of similar to the discussions of the cannibals on Skagos.  Are they legit cannibals, or does this refer to skinchangers eating other humans/animals while in another animal.

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22 minutes ago, Lame Lothar Frey said:

Skinchanging is definitely on the weird side.  Skinning is not.  Given this is before the days of processed meat the supermarket, a lot of the nobles hunted game.  Skinning is just a task learned early on by men.  The Boltons just applied this to their human captives. 

^This i agree with,its not that unsual thing in the times of westeros...

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