The Duality of Fire in Mythology

[ravenous reader]

4 hours ago, thehandwipes said:

But Hodor's name isn't Hodor, its Waldur (Baldr).  Bloodraven makes the better Loki which makes the God of Winter (Hodr)... Bran, maybe. 

There are many permutations you could come up with.  That one also works:  Bloodraven (trickster) manipulating Bran (dupe) to kill Jon (prize).  Why would Bloodraven want Jon dead?

36 minutes ago, Unchained said:

I doubt my opinion matters, but the author disagrees with you.

You have such a delicious understated way of being passive aggressive!  (Are you sure you can always get away with it?  )

4 hours ago, LmL said:

By the way Bloodstone Emperor is nobody's fool. He would be the manipulator, I am thinking. Who knows I guess.

I'm not sure about this.  If I'm correct, then Dany in relation to Drogo is the Bloodstone Emperor and Amethyst Empress, respectively (GRRM's favorite gender inversion spiel).  Dany basically usurped Drogo's position, ousting him from power.   (I can elaborate if you want, but few appreciate my non-yoda-style-haiku posts...)

 In effect, Drogo played the role of Nissa Nissa, baring his breast wound lovingly to the poison she unleashed on him unwittingly via Mirri.  So there was a third unseen player -- the trickster a la Mirri -- in the equation.

On the other hand, maybe I'm a 'known Dany-hater' -- it is known -- so I dunno what I'm talkin' about!

Actually, that reminds me of a poem...

[thehandwipes]

33 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

There are many permutations you could come up with.  That one also works:  Bloodraven (trickster) manipulating Bran (dupe) to kill Jon (prize).  Why would Bloodraven want Jon dead?

Oh, I don't think BR and Bran killed Jon.  Though I do think that Bran's chapters in ADWD cut out halfway through because they will fundamentally alter the way in which we look at Jon's death and resurrection.

I was actually referring to Hodor-Waldur as the prize, and really who can doubt it.  Baldr is the god of light and innocence and awesomeness, not sullenness, it can only be Hodor.  What exactly his role might be, I don't know.

[chrisdaw]

5 hours ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

I genuinely think that you are wrong. LmL has a pretty good essay on his site outlining why he thinks The George is writing mythology, and why it's important. Furthermore, if what you're saying is indeed the case, my interest in the story diminishes by about 1000%. Times when writers have done what you've said include Battlestar Galactica and Lost, both of which ended so shittily that they are bywords among writers for lack of payoff. Incidentally, The George specifically cites Lost as a garbage can full of mistakes that he does not intend to make. If he doesn't realise what the root of the mistake actually is (as you seem not to), then his tale will be consigned to the same garbage can. Finally, if he doesn't have a clear history and mythology that he is carefully weaving into the books, as our passtime is rooting out, then how the fuck does it take so long to write them? 

History and mythology are my primary interests in life and in texts. That's why I read these books.

No it's nothing like Lost because in the case of the Bloodstone Emperor it's a paragraph in a supplementary text to a seven book series. And it is literally supplementary, in that it's only relevance is in how it relates to the main text. You are through symbolism trying to provide context to, among other things, the Blood Emperor, who very well could never be mentioned in anything again. What would be more fulfilling, and likely to at least one day have an answer (because it's been thought of) is providing context to how the Bloodstone Emperor relates to the main text. He is a Euron parallel, and it is in Euron that you will find meaning for your symbolism such as corrupted fire, green fire, sun swallowing, familial murder and the like. 

[Jon Ice-Eyes]

Yeah, I understand your point quite well. I just totally differ from you on a couple of things. 

1) It's just like Lost because the entire context of the story is supernatural, and how and why these things work in the way they do is absolutely crucial to the story being complete. That requires background. 

2) The story that I give a fuck about, much more than what happens to the current characters, is this background. 

That boils down to a difference of opinion. I want the context; it's what interests me. 

Also, quit hijacking my thread. You don't like the methodology, pick another thread. 

[Unchained]

1 hour ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

Yeah, I understand your point quite well. I just totally differ from you on a couple of things. 

1) It's just like Lost because the entire context of the story is supernatural, and how and why these things work in the way they do is absolutely crucial to the story being complete. That requires background. 

2) The story that I give a fuck about, much more than what happens to the current characters, is this background. 

That boils down to a difference of opinion. I want the context; it's what interests me. 

Also, quit hijacking my thread. You don't like the methodology, pick another thread. 

Don't feed them or they will just keep coming back for more.  

 

Anyway, I am on board with your green fire = uncontrolled fire idea.  Cersei is a great example.  However, in ASoIaF I see green fire's foil being a grey, white, aging, winter sun rather than the red one from alchemy.  I may be wrong, but that is what I see GRRM using.  He is all about the seasons.  The green summer king is supposed to be succeeded by the Grey winter one, just like King Robert dying in his hunting greens after a long summer is supposed to be followed by grey eyed Ned.  However, we are being shown a corrupted version of the seasons.  Jaime does eventually go against his sister, but by then he seems to be doing a white winter sun symbolism thing with his dressing like a kingsguard.  Just my opinion.  

 

Maybe we should read it as out of control summer green fire Cersei trying to make summer last too long and that antagonizes winter in the form of Robb.  The long night could be summers fault in fact that is what @Crowfood's Daughter has said.  Garth threw the flaming comet spear for some reason.  

[Jon Ice-Eyes]

Yes! It's all because fire threw everything out of whack.

Also thanks for the upbraiding about trolls; I get worked up sometimes. Powering down. 

I am totally on board with the grey-green duality. It's a great call and the evidence is good.

Something has bothered me for some time about the grey side, though. The Iron Islands. They are pretty evil. 'Toxic Masculinity' is the term for it; slaughter, rape, and slavery are mainstays of their way of life, and every one of them except maybe Asha is just a terrible shadow of a human being. 

The place itself has oily black stone and dead weirwoods. Shit doesn't grow there. I get all the Lovecraft horror references and all, but the association between it and the grey side (grey iron, Greyjoys, etc.) is hard to swallow. This isn't regular death stuff... it's too evil. 

I think that the lack of weirwoods has something to do with it. Maybe this is what tainted ice looks like?

[Archmaester_Aemma]

2 hours ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

I am totally on board with the grey-green duality. It's a great call and the evidence is good.

Something has bothered me for some time about the grey side, though. The Iron Islands. They are pretty evil. 'Toxic Masculinity' is the term for it; slaughter, rape, and slavery are mainstays of their way of life, and every one of them except maybe Asha is just a terrible shadow of a human being. 

The place itself has oily black stone and dead weirwoods. Shit doesn't grow there. I get all the Lovecraft horror references and all, but the association between it and the grey side (grey iron, Greyjoys, etc.) is hard to swallow. This isn't regular death stuff... it's too evil. 

I think that the lack of weirwoods has something to do with it. Maybe this is what tainted ice looks like?

It's not just grey-green: we also have the (scarlet) red and black of the waves of night and moon blood, and the frequent pairings of white and blue (or occasionally silver and/or purple respectively). I think these correspond roughly to "types" of magic (for want of a better word): earth, fire and ice respectively. The duality in each of them reflects the same duality you've outlined in your OP: benevolence and treachery, creation and destruction, life and death. So if grey is associated with the latter aspect of this duality... welp, you've got yourself some evil Ironborns. 

As a slight aside, I think this may explain why green fire is so treacherous in book: it's an unatural perversion of the natural order, the green of earth associating itself with fire and flame. 

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A few pines along the edge of the wood had been scorched, but deeper in the damp soil and green wood had defeated the flames. "There is a power in living wood," said Jojen Reed, almost as if he knew what Bran was thinking, "a power strong as fire." (ACOK, Bran VII)

 

 

[Unchained]

7 hours ago, Jon Ice-Eyes said:

Yes! It's all because fire threw everything out of whack.

Also thanks for the upbraiding about trolls; I get worked up sometimes. Powering down. 

I am totally on board with the grey-green duality. It's a great call and the evidence is good.

Something has bothered me for some time about the grey side, though. The Iron Islands. They are pretty evil. 'Toxic Masculinity' is the term for it; slaughter, rape, and slavery are mainstays of their way of life, and every one of them except maybe Asha is just a terrible shadow of a human being. 

The place itself has oily black stone and dead weirwoods. Shit doesn't grow there. I get all the Lovecraft horror references and all, but the association between it and the grey side (grey iron, Greyjoys, etc.) is hard to swallow. This isn't regular death stuff... it's too evil. 

I think that the lack of weirwoods has something to do with it. Maybe this is what tainted ice looks like?

Yea they may be supposed to show us what out of control winter forces look like just like Valyria was out of control summer.  They come in the winter to steal your food you grew all summer.  They are like watery more northern Valyrians without dragons (for the moment) in some ways.  Before the Andals came they seem to have been pretty terrifying.  Their singular seafaring ability made them almost as untouchable in a boat as a dragon-rider in the air and they seem to have had better weapons than the bronze ones the first men fought with.  'Dragons plant no trees' sounds a lot like 'We do not sow'.  The Grey King may have taken his death relation too far or something and contributed to the unnatural winter we call the LN.  

[LmL]

Great comments all; well, mostly all. I just wanted to make a 50,000 feet, broad view observation: I see Martin doing interesting things with pairings of opposites. Ice and fire is the most obvious, so consider. Dragons are team fire, and they seem pretty much like the opposite of the Others. One is ice made flesh, the other fire made flesh. But then we have Frozen fire, which is still basically the element of fire but it has been moderated by a certain amount of ice or freezing. And the others, they have those eyes like cold burning stats, and there is much general talk of how the cold burns and nothing burns like the cold. So even on team fire, we have a bit of ice, and even on team ice, we have a bit of Fire. Also, fire is generally associated with light, and cold is associated with dark. But that gets flipped around too - the swords of team fire are all black or smoke dark. The others are called pale shadows, and their crystal swords shine with luminescence. The most famous dragons are the black ones whose flame is even black as well. 

So there is an ice and fire Duality, but within each side we have hot and cold, light and dark. We have light and dark fire, hot and cold fire. The others are armored in ice and they are pale, but Jon dreams of being armored in black ice with a burning red sword. In other words, he's armored in ice but he's not on the side of the others.

We see something similar when we look harder at the life-and-death dichotomy with Team Green and team Gray, the Garth people and the ironborn. Most ironborn are Reapers, but there's also clues about fertility here and there. The Baratheon and Storm Kings show us a green horned Lord turning into the black stag by committing the great sin. Basically, it's the yin yang, where the black side contains a dot of white and vice versa. The Oak and Holly king of Miss is instructive, because in one sense they are two rival brothers who kill each other, but in another sense, they're both aspects of Cerrunos, turning into one another. 

As for the grey and green cycle, both seem to have fire. I think fire is the catalyst, the reacting agent. @ravenous reader has been making this case for a while and I think she may be right.

[Darry Man]

On 4/14/2017 at 0:54 PM, LmL said:

I just wanted to say that I agree with the MMOL = Amaterasu thing, but I think the Lion of Night is not the moon. Rather, the lion of night is the normal solar lion, but inverted. The dark sun, the sun of night. This is a weird mythological concept which pops up here and there, but it is a thing. The Night sun is seen as either the absence of the sun - the night sky as a whole - or the udea fo the sun going into a "cave of night" underground during the nighttime, something which Martin makes reference to. Essentially, the lion is pretty much always solar, so a black lion of night is a dark sun. That fits with the Long Night in theme and effect. It also jibes with the idea of a solar king turning evil, black fire, shadow fire, all that stuff. 

So, before the LN, the MMOL and LoN were in harmony. Dayn and night, summer and winter. But during the Long Night, the sun (the MMoL) did something she was ashamed of (the sun killed the moon), and so she hid her face and the LoN came out to ravage and punish. That's consistent with them as a solar duality, day and night. During the Long Night, the sun hid, and the LoN ruled. His "demons" would be the black meteors, which of course I also believe to be aligned with the 'dark solar' character of Azor Ahai 'reborn,' the transformed AA. 

Yes, I am also coming to think this is where the most important battle of the war for the dawn occurred - under the see. 

Yep and yep.

There seem to be a line of clues about the weirwoods as being able to transmute meteor corruption. The idea of the weirwood roots as graveworms implies this - think of the black meteors like toxic corpses. The graveworm roots eat the corruption and absorb it. They might suffer in the process - they certainly look to be in pain. But to your point, the reason Westeros might be different in regards to magical toxicity is the weirwoods having an ability to purify or cleanse. 

It's kind of semantics; I think of AA = BSE as "dad," while "AA reborn = the last hero" is the son. They are both Azor Ahai - the last hero fought the long night with a magic dragon sword, after all, very similar to the fable of AA. So we are basically saying the same thing. My main thing in saying "AA = BSE" is to propose that the events recounted in the forging of Lightbringer refer to the cause of the Long Night - the use of blood magic and the cracking of the moon. Also, killing other people to work magic = bad. 

If the LoN is a corrupted (or transformed) version of a greenseer as represented by the moon over the sun, then it could be supported by my theory that persimmon ebony is a symbolic antithesis of the weirwood. The LoN in the HotUD is carved out of ebony and sits on a throne (also presumably made from ebony), which runs counter to greenseers sitting on a weirwood throne. 

[ravenous reader]

8 minutes ago, Darry Man said:

The LoN in the HotUD is carved out of ebony and sits on a throne (also presumably made from ebony), which runs counter to greenseers sitting on a weirwood throne. 

It doesn't really matter what color the throne or the gate.  The 'black gate' is a white weirwood because it's black magic.  'White' objects are not automatically pure of heart.

[Darry Man]

15 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

It doesn't really matter what color the throne or the gate.  The 'black gate' is a white weirwood because it's black magic.  'White' objects are not automatically pure of heart.

I understand this. A corrupted greenseer doesn't mean that a greenseer is pure of heart or that a corrupted or transformed greenseer is necessarily evil. The ebony thrones we are the LoN, Dany's Meereenese bench, Doran's wheelchair, and Dany's palaquin. All these references are quite specific, especially given the ebony/persimmon context.

[ravenous reader]

2 hours ago, Darry Man said:

I understand this. A corrupted greenseer doesn't mean that a greenseer is pure of heart or that a corrupted or transformed greenseer is necessarily evil. The ebony thrones we are the LoN, Dany's Meereenese bench, Doran's wheelchair, and Dany's palaquin. All these references are quite specific, especially given the ebony/persimmon context.

I've said before, 'the heart of ice is fire' and 'the heart of fire is ice.'  So, in Essos, Dany the silver Targ lady with her white coloring sits on an ebony/persimmon throne or black dragon -- she represents the icy heart of fire.  Similarly, Aerys sitting on the black iron throne.  On the other side, in Westeros, we have Bran the firebrand kissed-by-fire Summer child sitting on a weirwood throne or skinchanging a silver wolf -- he represents the fiery heart of ice.  One could make a similar analogy for Jon the black Night's Watchman crow entombed in his white glass coffin (i.e. the Wall as Gloubie Boulga has compared it, referencing Snow White) or skinchanging his white wolf Ghost -- also the fiery heart of ice.

I like your connection of ebony to persimmon, especially the persimmon as the price of entry Dany must pay to the 'Opener of the Door'.  A persimmon opens the door -- analogous to the weirwood portal.

If not to highlight good vs. evil, why is GRRM playing this dizzying 'piebald' game with us?!  The great subversion of the good guys wearing white hats vs. bad wearing black?  After your research into the ebony, what's your assessment regarding why GRRM has chosen to allude to two magical trees instead of one?

[LmL]

13 hours ago, Darry Man said:

I understand this. A corrupted greenseer doesn't mean that a greenseer is pure of heart or that a corrupted or transformed greenseer is necessarily evil. The ebony thrones we are the LoN, Dany's Meereenese bench, Doran's wheelchair, and Dany's palaquin. All these references are quite specific, especially given the ebony/persimmon context.

Walder Frey and Lord Blackwood also have the black wood chairs, also the LC commander's chain in the KG chamber is oddly black oak, since everything else is white. 

@ravenous reader, not to be grumpy, but you referring to Dany as icy anything is almost as bad as you wanting to discard Jaime's "armored like the sun" description to make him not-a-sun. Dany is fire made flesh, has the fire, and even her silver coloring is "molten silver." I understand the yin and yang, black dot in the white and vise versa thing - we've talked about it a lot - but Dany is not icy in any sense. She really is not. She is like white fire, perhaps. 

Although the white lion symbol does seem to apply to the ice moon, and can be icy, we also have white fire and white dragon symbolism which overlaps with the white lion, or may, until we sort out those symbols. And Dany wears the skin of the white lion, so if anything, she could be seen as a moon meteor or comet stuck in the ice moon. But I can't be sure how we are supposed to interpret these types of delineations  - is she the white lion or the thing inside the white lion? Is the white lion always an icy symbol, or is it more like 'when the ice moon burns?'

 

[ravenous reader]

13 hours ago, LmL said:

Walder Frey and Lord Blackwood also have the black wood chairs, also the LC commander's chain in the KG chamber is oddly black oak, since everything else is white. 

@ravenous reader, not to be grumpy, but you referring to Dany as icy anything is almost as bad as you wanting to discard Jaime's "armored like the sun" description to make him not-a-sun. Dany is fire made flesh, has the fire, and even her silver coloring is "molten silver." I understand the yin and yang, black dot in the white and vise versa thing - we've talked about it a lot - but Dany is not icy in any sense. She really is not. She is like white fire, perhaps. 

Ha ha -- you are a great champion for Dany when the 'known Dany haters' strike!  

The contradictions you point out are why any attempt at color coding is always so problematic.  Generally, though, thinking only in terms of color associations, silver falls into a relatively 'cooler' color grouping (including silver, grey, white, blue and purple) than gold for example.  

Taking Jaime, since you brought him up, I agree that when we first meet him he's the immature young lion, the young sun in his flashy golden armor and resplendent blonde mane of hair; but then later in his evolution he gets burnt and burnt out and starts to resemble an Other, which you can hardly claim to associate with anything other than ice... The 'otherization' phase is associated with colors evoking a dead or cool fire, the ash left over after the fire, snow, ice, pallor, the silvering of moonlight, night, winter, milkglass, the swords of the Others, etc.  Herewith, some evidence of the transformation from a 'tawny lion' into a 'white lion':

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A Game of Thrones - Catelyn X

Eons seemed to come and go. The sounds grew louder. She heard more laughter, a shouted command, splashing as they crossed and recrossed the little stream. A horse snorted. A man swore. And then at last she saw him … only for an instant, framed between the branches of the trees as she looked down at the valley floor, yet she knew it was him. Even at a distance, Ser Jaime Lannister was unmistakable. The moonlight had silvered his armor and the gold of his hair, and turned his crimson cloak to black. He was not wearing a helm.

He was there and he was gone again, his silvery armor obscured by the trees once more. Others came behind him, long columns of them, knights and sworn swords and freeriders, three quarters of the Lannister horse.

 

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A Feast for Crows - Jaime III

"Robert's beard was black. Mine is gold."

"Gold? Or silver?" Cersei plucked a hair from beneath his chin and held it up. It was grey. "All the color is draining out of you, brother. You've become a ghost of what you were, a pale crippled thing. And so bloodless, always in white." She flicked the hair away. "I prefer you garbed in crimson and gold."

 

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A Storm of Swords - Jaime VIII

As pale as the room, Jaime sat by the book in his Kingsguard whites, waiting for his Sworn Brothers. A longsword hung from his hip. From the wrong hip. Before he had always worn his sword on his left, and drawn it across his body when he unsheathed. He had shifted it to his right hip this morning, so as to be able to draw it with his left hand in the same manner, but the weight of it felt strange there, and when he had tried to pull the blade from the scabbard the whole motion seemed clumsy and unnatural. His clothing fit badly as well. He had donned the winter raiment of the Kingsguard, a tunic and breeches of bleached white wool and a heavy white cloak, but it all seemed to hang loose on him.

Jaime had spent his days at his brother's trial, standing well to the back of the hall. Either Tyrion never saw him there or he did not know him, but that was no surprise. Half the court no longer seemed to know him. I am a stranger in my own House. His son was dead, his father had disowned him, and his sister . . . she had not allowed him to be alone with her once, after that first day in the royal sept where Joffrey lay amongst the candles. Even when they bore him across the city to his tomb in the Great Sept of Baelor, Cersei kept a careful distance.

He looked about the Round Room once more. White wool hangings covered the walls, and there was a white shield and two crossed longswords mounted above the hearth. The chair behind the table was old black oak, with cushions of blanched cowhide, the leather worn thin. Worn by the bony arse of Barristan the Bold and Ser Gerold Hightower before him, by Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, Ser Ryam Redwyne, and the Demon of Darry, by Ser Duncan the Tall and the Pale Griffin Alyn Connington. How could the Kingslayer belong in such exalted company?

Other quotes in which silver is associated with cold, ice, snow, moon, night, etc.:

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A Storm of Swords - Jon VII

He found Ygritte sprawled across a patch of old snow beneath the Lord Commander's Tower, with an arrow between her breasts. The ice crystals had settled over her face, and in the moonlight it looked as though she wore a glittering silver mask.

 

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A Dance with Dragons - Jon VIII

The road beneath the Wall was as dark and cold as the belly of an ice dragon and as twisty as a serpent. Dolorous Edd led them through with a torch in hand. Mully had the keys for the three gates, where bars of black iron as thick as a man's arm closed off the passage. Spearmen at each gate knuckled their foreheads at Jon Snow but stared openly at Val and her garron.

When they emerged north of the Wall, through a thick door made of freshly hewn green wood, the wildling princess paused for a moment to gaze out across the snow-covered field where King Stannis had won his battle. Beyond, the haunted forest waited, dark and silent. The light of the half-moon turned Val's honey-blond hair a pale silver and left her cheeks as white as snow. She took a deep breath. "The air tastes sweet."

"My tongue is too numb to tell. All I can taste is cold."

 

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A Feast for Crows - Arya I

"Sealords," said Yorko. "The Isle of the Gods is farther on. See? Six bridges down, on the right bank. That is the Temple of the Moonsingers."

It was one of those that Arya had spied from the lagoon, a mighty mass of snow-white marble topped by a huge silvered dome whose milk glass windows showed all the phases of the moon. A pair of marble maidens flanked its gates, tall as the Sealords, supporting a crescent-shaped lintel.

Beyond it stood another temple, a red stone edifice as stern as any fortress. Atop its great square tower a fire blazed in an iron brazier twenty feet across, whilst smaller fires flanked its brazen doors. "The red priests love their fires," Yorko told her. "The Lord of Light is their god, red R'hllor."

Take a look at the contrast here.  The red temple is fiery; the temple of the moonsingers is icy.

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A Dance with Dragons - Epilogue

Pycelle's chambers were beneath the rookery, a spacious suite of rooms cluttered with racks of herbs and salves and potions and shelves jammed full of books and scrolls. Ser Kevan had always found them uncomfortably hot. Not tonight. Once past the chamber door, the chill was palpable. Black ash and dying embers were all that remained of the hearthfire. A few flickering candles cast pools of dim light here and there.

The rest was shrouded in shadow … except beneath the open window, where a spray of ice crystals glittered in the moonlight, swirling in the wind. On the window seat a raven loitered, pale, huge, its feathers ruffled. It was the largest raven that Kevan Lannister had ever seen. Larger than any hunting hawk at Casterly Rock, larger than the largest owl. Blowing snow danced around it, and the moon painted it silver.

Not silver. White. The bird is white.

I predict that the day Dany sets foot (or wing) in Westeros, the Wall comes down.  Dany like the white raven is a harbinger of Winter!

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A Dance with Dragons - Prologue

Fear drove him to his feet, reeling. Holding his side to staunch the seep of blood from his wound, Varamyr lurched to the door and swept aside the ragged skin that covered it to face a wall of white. Snow. No wonder it had grown so dark and smoky inside. The falling snow had buried the hut.

When Varamyr pushed at it, the snow crumbled and gave way, still soft and wet. Outside, the night was white as death; pale thin clouds danced attendance on a silver moon, while a thousand stars watched coldly. He could see the humped shapes of other huts buried beneath drifts of snow, and beyond them the pale shadow of a weirwood armored in ice. To the south and west the hills were a vast white wilderness where nothing moved except the blowing snow. "Thistle," Varamyr called feebly, wondering how far she could have gone. "Thistle. Woman. Where are you?"

Far away, a wolf gave howl.

 

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A Game of Thrones - Catelyn VII

"Lannister is my prisoner," she told Ser Rodrik as they descended the tower stairs and made their way through the Eyrie's cold white halls. Catelyn wore plain grey wool with a silvered belt. "My sister must be reminded of that."

 

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A Clash of Kings - Jon VIII

"Back." Qhorin mounted his weary garron one more time. "The fire will draw them past, I hope. Come, brother."

Jon pulled on his gloves again and raised his hood. Even the horses seemed reluctant to leave the fire. The sun was long gone, and only the cold silver shine of the half-moon remained to light their way over the treacherous ground that lay behind them. He did not know what Qhorin had in mind, but perhaps it was a chance. He hoped so. I do not want to play the oathbreaker, even for good reason.

 

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A Clash of Kings - Jon VIII

The farther in they went, the closer the cliffs pressed to either side. They followed the moonlit ribbon of stream back toward its source. Icicles bearded its stony banks, but Jon could still hear the sound of rushing water beneath the thin hard crust.

A great jumble of fallen rock blocked their way partway up, where a section of the cliff face had fallen, but the surefooted little garrons were able to pick their way through. Beyond, the walls pinched in sharply, and the stream led them to the foot of a tall twisting waterfall. The air was full of mist, like the breath of some vast cold beast. The tumbling waters shone silver in the moonlight. Jon looked about in dismay. There is no way out. He and Qhorin might be able to climb the cliffs, but not with the horses. He did not think they would last long afoot.

 

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A Clash of Kings - Jon VIII

He took off his wet cloak, but it was too cold and damp here to strip down any further. Ghost stretched out beside him and licked his glove before curling up to sleep. Jon was grateful for his warmth. He wondered if the fire was still burning outside, or if it had gone out by now. If the Wall should ever fall, all the fires will go out. The moon shone through the curtain of falling water to lay a shimmering pale stripe across the sand, but after a time that too faded and went dark.

Sleep came at last, and with it nightmares. He dreamed of burning castles and dead men rising unquiet from their graves. It was still dark when Qhorin woke him. While the Halfhand slept, Jon sat with his back to the cave wall, listening to the water and waiting for the dawn.

 

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A Feast for Crows - Sansa I

Robert did not need to know that, though. He was only a sick little boy who'd loved his mother. "There," Sansa said, "you look a proper lord now. Maddy, fetch his cloak." It was lambswool, soft and warm, a handsome sky-blue that set off the cream color of his tunic. She fastened it about his shoulders with a silver brooch in the shape of a crescent moon, and took him by the hand. Robert came meekly for once.

The High Hall had been closed since Lady Lysa's fall, and it gave Sansa a chill to enter it again. The hall was long and grand and beautiful, she supposed, but she did not like it here. It was a pale cold place at the best of times. The slender pillars looked like fingerbones, and the blue veins in the white marble brought to mind the veins in an old crone's legs. Though fifty silver sconces lined the walls, less than a dozen torches had been lit, so shadows danced upon the floors and pooled in every corner. Their footsteps echoed off the marble, and Sansa could hear the wind rattling at the Moon Door. I must not look at it, she told herself, else I'll start to shake as badly as Robert.

You see, the problem is that GRRM may refer to 'molten silver' and 'liquid silver' in relation to Dany's brushed-out hair exactly twice, but it pales in comparison with the mountain of other references we've been given linking 'silver' more generally to the cold, dark, moonlit rather than sunlit side of things.  Dany's own horse, the 'silver,' is compared to a 'winter sea', for example; and then Drogo links the symbolism of the horse to Dany specifically by saying 'silver for the silver of your hair,' thereby linking Dany to Winter!  I think Dany's going to bring the Winter with her to Westeros...The fire brings the ice in tow!

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys II

She was a young filly, spirited and splendid. Dany knew just enough about horses to know that this was no ordinary animal. There was something about her that took the breath away. She was grey as the winter sea, with a mane like silver smoke.

Hesitantly she reached out and stroked the horse's neck, ran her fingers through the silver of her mane. Khal Drogo said something in Dothraki and Magister Illyrio translated. "Silver for the silver of your hair, the khal says."

And Dany also has eyes like amethysts, possibly like those famous amethysts from Asshai which 'drink the sun'.  She will bring the Long Night.  Purple stones like purple eyes are associated with silver, here for example:

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A Clash of Kings - Sansa VIII

"You've waited so long, be patient awhile longer. Here, I have something for you." Ser Dontos fumbled in his pouch and drew out a silvery spiderweb, dangling it between his thick fingers.

It was a hair net of fine-spun silver, the strands so thin and delicate the net seemed to weigh no more than a breath of air when Sansa took it in her fingers. Small gems were set wherever two strands crossed, so dark they drank the moonlight. "What stones are these?"

"Black amethysts from Asshai. The rarest kind, a deep true purple by daylight."

The amethysts in question are said to 'wink' like gemstone eyes, further connecting them to the Targaryens, Daynes and gemstone emperors:

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A Storm of Swords - Tyrion VIII

Tyrion resolved to get very, very drunk tonight. "Very well, young Podrick, let us go make me festive."

Shae was helping Sansa with her hair when they entered the bedchamber. Joy and grief, he thought when he beheld them there together. Laughter and tears. Sansa wore a gown of silvery satin trimmed in vair, with dagged sleeves that almost touched the floor, lined in soft purple felt. Shae had arranged her hair artfully in a delicate silver net winking with dark purple gemstones. Tyrion had never seen her look more lovely, yet she wore sorrow on those long satin sleeves. "Lady Sansa," he told her, "you shall be the most beautiful woman in the hall tonight."

Dany's eyes are referred to as 'amethysts,' more specifically described by Barristan as similar to Ashara's, therefore 'Dayne'-like eyes:

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A Dance with Dragons - The Iron Suitor

"Aye, Captain," said Wulfe One-Ear. He was not half the man that Nute the Barber was, but the Crow's Eye had stolen Nute. By raising him to Lord of Oakenshield, his brother made Victarion's best man his own. "Is it still to be Meereen?"

"Where else? The dragon queen awaits me in Meereen." The fairest woman in the world if my brother could be believed. Her hair is silver-gold, her eyes are amethysts.

 

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A Dance with Dragons - The Kingbreaker

Even after all these years, Ser Barristan could still recall Ashara's smile, the sound of her laughter. He had only to close his eyes to see her, with her long dark hair tumbling about her shoulders and those haunting purple eyes. Daenerys has the same eyes. Sometimes when the queen looked at him, he felt as if he were looking at Ashara's daughter …

 

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A Feast for Crows - The Queenmaker

"They trembled," said Ser Gerold, "then they killed him. If I led a quarter of a million men to death, would they call me Gerold the Great?" He snorted. "I shall remain Darkstar, I think. At least it is mine own." He unsheathed his longsword, sat upon the lip of the dry well, and began to hone the blade with an oilstone.

Arianne watched him warily. He is highborn enough to make a worthy consort, she thought. Father would question my good sense, but our children would be as beautiful as dragonlords. If there was a handsomer man in Dorne, she did not know him. Ser Gerold Dayne had an aquiline nose, high cheekbones, a strong jaw. He kept his face clean-shaven, but his thick hair fell to his collar like a silver glacier, divided by a streak of midnight black. He has a cruel mouth, though, and a crueler tongue. His eyes seemed black as he sat outlined against the dying sun, sharpening his steel, but she had looked at them from a closer vantage and she knew that they were purple. Dark purple. Dark and angry.

 

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A Storm of Swords - Arya VIII

"You have a knife," Gendry suggested. "If your hair annoys you so much, shave your bloody head."

He doesn't like Ned. The squire seemed nice enough to Arya; maybe a little shy, but good-natured. She had always heard that Dornishmen were small and swarthy, with black hair and small black eyes, but Ned had big blue eyes, so dark that they looked almost purple. And his hair was a pale blond, more ash than honey.

"How long have you been Lord Beric's squire?" she asked, to take his mind from his misery.

 

Dany's 'not icy in any sense'?

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys VI

"Me?" The man laughed. "I am not worthy of this vintage, my lord. And it's a poor wine merchant who drinks up his own wares." His smile was amiable, yet she could see the sheen of sweat on his brow.

"You will drink," Dany said, cold as ice

She's also quite cold watching her brother die an agonizing death in front of her:

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys V

She did not know if she had enough words, yet when she was done Khal Drogo spoke a few brusque sentences in Dothraki, and she knew he understood. The sun of her life stepped down from the high bench. "What did he say?" the man who had been her brother asked her, flinching.

It had grown so silent in the hall that she could hear the bells in Khal Drogo's hair, chiming softly with each step he took. His bloodriders followed him, like three copper shadows. Daenerys had gone cold all over. "He says you shall have a splendid golden crown that men shall tremble to behold."

...

When the gold was half-melted and starting to run, Drogo reached into the flames, snatched out the pot. "Crown!" he roared. "Here. A crown for Cart King!" And upended the pot over the head of the man who had been her brother.

The sound Viserys Targaryen made when that hideous iron helmet covered his face was like nothing human. His feet hammered a frantic beat against the dirt floor, slowed, stopped. Thick globs of molten gold dripped down onto his chest, setting the scarlet silk to smoldering … yet no drop of blood was spilled.

He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon.

Finally, if she's made of fire, why does she feel the cold?

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys V

They rode to the lake the Dothraki called the Womb of the World, surrounded by a fringe of reeds, its water still and calm. A thousand thousand years ago, Jhiqui told her, the first man had emerged from its depths, riding upon the back of the first horse.

The procession waited on the grassy shore as Dany stripped and let her soiled clothing fall to the ground. Naked, she stepped gingerly into the water. Irri said the lake had no bottom, but Dany felt soft mud squishing between her toes as she pushed through the tall reeds. The moon floated on the still black waters, shattering and re-forming as her ripples washed over it. Goose pimples rose on her pale skin as the coldness crept up her thighs and kissed her lower lips. The stallion's blood had dried on her hands and around her mouth. Dany cupped her fingers and lifted the sacred waters over her head, cleansing herself and the child inside her while the khal and the others looked on. She heard the old women of the dosh khaleen muttering to each other as they watched, and wondered what they were saying.

 

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys VIII

Mirri Maz Duur sat back on her heels and studied Daenerys through eyes as black as night. "There is a spell." Her voice was quiet, scarcely more than a whisper. "But it is hard, lady, and dark. Some would say that death is cleaner. I learned the way in Asshai, and paid dear for the lesson. My teacher was a bloodmage from the Shadow Lands."

Dany went cold all over. "Then you truly are a maegi …"

"Am I?" Mirri Maz Duur smiled. "Only a maegi can save your rider now, Silver Lady."

 

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A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys X

Hizdahr, of the tepid kisses.

The sun was hot this morning, the sky blue and cloudless. That was good. Dany's clothes were hardly more than rags, and offered little in the way of warmth. One of her sandals had slipped off during her wild flight from Meereen and she had left the other up by Drogon's cave, preferring to go barefoot rather than half-shod. Her tokar and veils she had abandoned in the pit, and her linen undertunic had never been made to withstand the hot days and cold nights of the Dothraki sea. Sweat and grass and dirt had stained it, and Dany had torn a strip off the hem to make a bandage for her shin. I must look a ragged thing, and starved, she thought, but if the days stay warm, I will not freeze.

...

The stone wall had endured better than the rest. Though it was nowhere more than three feet high, the angle where it met another, lower wall still offered some shelter from the elements, and night was coming on fast. Dany wedged herself into that corner, making a nest of sorts by tearing up handfuls of the grass that grew around the ruins. She was very tired, and fresh blisters had appeared on both her feet, including a matched set upon her pinky toes. It must be from the way I walk, she thought, giggling.

As the world darkened, Dany settled in and closed her eyes, but sleep refused to come. The night was cold, the ground hard, her belly empty. She found herself thinking of Meereen, of Daario, her love, and Hizdahr, her husband, of Irri and Jhiqui and sweet Missandei, Ser Barristan and Reznak and Skahaz Shavepate. Do they fear me dead? I flew off on a dragon's back. Will they think he ate me? She wondered if Hizdahr was still king. His crown had come from her, could he hold it in her absence? He wanted Drogon dead. I heard him. "Kill it," he screamed, "kill the beast," and the look upon his face was lustful. And Strong Belwas had been on his knees, heaving and shuddering. Poison. It had to be poison. The honeyed locusts. Hizdahr urged them on me, but Belwas ate them all. She had made Hizdahr her king, taken him into her bed, opened the fighting pits for him, he had no reason to want her dead. Yet who else could it have been? Reznak, her perfumed seneschal? The Yunkai'i? The Sons of the Harpy?

Off in the distance, a wolf howled. The sound made her feel sad and lonely, but no less hungry. As the moon rose above the grasslands, Dany slipped at last into a restless sleep.

 

13 hours ago, LmL said:

Although the white lion symbol does seem to apply to the ice moon, and can be icy, we also have white fire and white dragon symbolism which overlaps with the white lion, or may, until we sort out those symbols. And Dany wears the skin of the white lion, so if anything, she could be seen as a moon meteor or comet stuck in the ice moon. But I can't be sure how we are supposed to interpret these types of delineations  - is she the white lion or the thing inside the white lion? Is the white lion always an icy symbol, or is it more like 'when the ice moon burns?'

What's the difference between 'frozen fire' and 'burning ice'?  We can take it from there.

[Darry Man]

On 4/18/2017 at 11:08 AM, ravenous reader said:

If not to highlight good vs. evil, why is GRRM playing this dizzying 'piebald' game with us?!  The great subversion of the good guys wearing white hats vs. bad wearing black?  After your research into the ebony, what's your assessment regarding why GRRM has chosen to allude to two magical trees instead of one?

That's the ultimate question, is it not? 

Recall the moment in AGOT when Dany encounters the Undying:

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Finally, the stair opened. To her right, a set of wide wooden doors had been thrown open. They were fashioned of ebony and weirwood, the black and white grains swirling and twisting in strange interwoven patterns. They were very beautiful, yet somehow frightening. The blood of the dragon must not be afraid. Dany said a quick prayer, begging the Warrior for courage and the Dothraki horse god for strength. She made herself walk forward.

Beyond the doors was a great hall and a splendor of wizards.

...

She took a step forward. But then Drogon leapt to the top of the ebony-and-weirwood door, perched there, and began to bite at the carved wood.

"A willful beast," laughed a handsome young man. "Shall we teach you the secret speech of dragonkind? Come, come."

Doubt seized her. The great door was so heavy it took all of Dany's strength to budge it, but finally it began to move. Behind was another door, hidden. It was old grey wood, splintery and plain … but it stood to the right of the door through which she had just entered. The wizards were beckoning her with voices sweeter than song. She ran from them, Drogon flying back down to her. Through the narrow door she passed, into a chamber awash in gloom.

 

I think the elemental duality in ASOIAF is all a ruse. We like to pick sides in conflicts, black vs white, good vs evil. We are entertained and entranced by the beautiful gallantry of fantasy, of magic and wizards and knights and dragons, but in the end, we are all dead. How we get to this end, either through fire or ice, is the interesting part, and why we read these books.

Ultimately, however, our resplendent white and black is, behind it all, just plain, old, splintery grey.

 

[ravenous reader]

23 minutes ago, Darry Man said:

I think the elemental duality in ASOIAF is all a ruse. We like to pick sides in conflicts, black vs white, good vs evil. We are entertained and entranced by the beautiful gallantry of fantasy, of magic and wizards and knights and dragons, but in the end, we are all dead. How we get to this end, either through fire or ice, is the interesting part, and why we read these books.

Ultimately, however, our resplendent white and black is, behind it all, just plain, old, splintery grey.

Very interesting and well said.   Like a black-and-white chessboard set up by a chess master, at the end of which is a checkmate (the 'grey' in your analogy)-- for both players!

The scintillating back-and-forth of the black-and-white is also symbolically how GRRM makes his living, evoking the black ink letters inscribed on a white page (ironically, the only way Jaime and his 'white knight' brothers can record their own history in the 'white book' is by using black ink -- i.e. in the same action symbolically besmirching the purity of the page in order to make meaning).  

For some time, I and others such as Evita have been harping on the significance of the three writers in the Prologue, among which GRRM includes himself  -- WayMAR in his marten=Martin cloak and moleskin (Moleskine like the writer's notebook), who is 'way more' than we think he is!   Martin imagines himself rising above the fray as the only writer of the trio to escape death (the other two are Will Shakespeare and Edgar (Gared) Allan Poe).  However, in the end writing is just a pale imitation of life -- just like the 'wight' -- although undoubtedly a formidable 'killing word' with untold repercussions, which operates beyond the life of the writer who birthed it.

[Darry Man]

2 hours ago, ravenous reader said:

For some time, I and others such as Evita have been harping on the significance of the three writers in the Prologue, among which GRRM includes himself  -- WayMAR in his marten=Martin cloak and moleskin (Moleskine like the writer's notebook), who is 'way more' than we think he is!   Martin imagines himself rising above the fray as the only writer of the trio to escape death (the other two are Will Shakespeare and Edgar (Gared) Allan Poe).  However, in the end writing is just a pale imitation of life -- just like the 'wight' -- although undoubtedly a formidable 'killing word' with untold repercussions, which operates beyond the life of the writer who birthed it.

Yeah, I remember seeing you discussing this theme. Love it.

[Archmaester_Aemma]

If you have a look at the colour symbolism of ice, and colours that are frequently paired together, I do think there is something to be said for Dany having icy colouring. This is a very long and convoluted web and I can't provide quotes for those because I'm out at the moment and all my notes are at home, but here goes:

Ice and ice crystals are most frequently associated with blue and white. You have the blue-white death needles under Bran in his coma dream, the Wall is described at blue and white on a number of occasions (linked to this, the glacier that is the source of the Milkwater is described as a blue-white wall of ice that reminds Jon of the Wall) and the Eyrie is the blue-and-white marble ice-castle that sits atop the Giant's Lance in the Mountains of the Moon. Speaking of the Eyrie, Lysa Arryn wears a cream velvet dress and a rope of sapphires and moonstones about her milk white neck during Tyrion's first trial-by-combat and when she herself is pushed out of the Moon Door by Littlefinger, both of which appear to be extended LB-forging metaphors if I'm not mistaken. And obviously, there are the wights, with their milk-pale skin and their blue star eyes, and the Others themselves: skin as pale as milk, milkglass bones, blue blood, burning blue eyes, glowing blue ice crystal swords that leave Royce's blade "splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning".

Lightning is the only other thing I can find that appears as blue-white. At Queenscrown, "Lightning crashed down from the sky, a searing blue-white bolt that touched the top of the tower in the lake". During Brienne's fight with Rorge and Biter etc, the lightning makes "an axe gleam silvery blue". And as Davos is marched before Lord Borrell, "Lightning split the northern sky, etching the black tower of the Night Lamp against the blue-white sky" and "Lightning flashed outside, making the arrow loops blaze blue and white for half a heartbeat". There are also occurrence of blue-white lightning in The Mystery Knight and The Princess and the Queen.

The only other color of lightning is purple. "The cog was drifting on a sea of dragonglass beneath a bowl of stars, but all around the storm raged on. East, west, north, south, everywhere he looked, the clouds rose up like black mountains, their tumbled slopes and collossal cliffs alive with blue and purple lightning." And House Dondarrion takes the purple lightning bolt as its sigil because of its origin story:

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The Dondarrion line was founded when a messenger from the Storm King was ambushed by two Dornishmen while riding on a stormy night. An arrow killed his horse and his sword broke when he fell. When he thought he was doomed, a bright purple lightning bolt struck the Dornishmen, killing both. The man was thus able to deliver his crucial message on time. For this, the Storm King raised him to lordship, and he became the first Dondarrion.

A broken sword you say? And the lightning came to save you when all was doomed? And the only known member in ASOIAF is the resurrected, kissed-by-fire, Beric Dondarrion who goes around lighting his sword on fire? Huh... That's a coincidence.

So, blue-white is the colour of ice, but it is also the colour of lightning, bringing lightning in to the realm of ice symbolism, especially considering that the Others move "fast as lightning" and leave Waymar Royce's sword splitered like a tree struck by lightning. Given that the lightning makes blades look silvery-blue as well as white-blue, and the only other colour of lightning is purple, we can extend this to see a purple-and-silver motif within lightning as well (and, golly gosh, so many moon maiden clothes and accessories are silver paired with purple). And the Valyrian look - well its silvery hair and purple eyes. There are even lemurs in Essos with this colouring called "Little Valyrians".

Notably, we only find purple lightning around House Dondarrion (a massive LB/AA metaphor), R'hllorist magicians (Moqorro) and Valyrian looks (so dragonlords). I would suggest that this purple-and-silver colour pairing is therefore something to do with fire-transformed iciness.

[Jon Ice-Eyes]

This is awesome. 

You have just expressed spme points I've been thinking about, much more clearly -- and with better text support -- than I was ready to do. 

The implications here are super fucking interesting. Great post.