Bolton's Burnt Book: Mysterious Reading

[Lollygag]

31 minutes ago, hiemal said:

Completely out of left-field:

Does anyone else think the scene in the same chapter where Arya all unknowingly hopes herself dead to her erstwhile betrothed is really really funny? I don't know why it tickles me so, but I wonder if the questions of hidden identities it raises could be connected.

There's a lot of interpretation here, actually.

Arya wishes herself dead may be foreshadowing that she's dies. Arya becomes no one and symbolically dies (she thinks about Jaqen's coin a lot in this chapter). Arya's fought against being a lady, a queen, a princess, any girly-girl type, so maybe Arya gets her wish here and the "princess" persona dies. Also, a raven is received and it says Robb married Jeyne Westerling. He's a dead man walking. So if Robb the king dies and the Bolton's take over, then in a way, so does Arya as a literal princess. We also see Arya wearing the Bolton sigil, in a Bolton cloak, etc, so it may foreshadow Jeyne Poole the fArya princess' death.  

All of that aside, I agree, it's a really cute scene on the surface.

[Seams]

9 hours ago, hiemal said:

Completely out of left-field:

Does anyone else think the scene in the same chapter where Arya all unknowingly hopes herself dead to her erstwhile betrothed is really really funny? I don't know why it tickles me so, but I wonder if the questions of hidden identities it raises could be connected.

Yes, very funny.

I think @Lollygag hit the major points about the underlying meaning, but I would note that this possibly connects to the "death" of Old Nan's fairy tales represented by the book burning: if the princess dies, the tale would almost certainly come to an end. The symbolic death in this chapter of Arya's hope to return to Winterfell represents a major turning point in her arc - because of news that Winterfell is burned and the map she takes from Bolton's solar, she is now aiming toward Riverrun instead of Winterfell. She also breaks her broomstick sword and asks Gendry to get her a real sword. And her evolution to a Faceless Man begins in earnest as she uses the coin from Jaqen as a ruse (hey!) to kill the guard. The princess had to die.

And very nice point about Arya wearing the Bolton colors and sigil evoking the future marriage of fArya / Jeyne Poole to Ramsay. I saw a possible (twisted) sexual image in the scene of Arya removing the pale, blood-engorged leeches from Roose's naked body. (GRRM, you really push me to my limit sometimes.) That may have been a symbolic "bedding," with Arya jerking off the Lord of the Dreadfort - a notion that fits with the opening image of the chapter, with Pia horribly punished for having slept with Lannister soldiers and Amabel telling Arya she will suffer similar punishment for supporting the northmen once the Lannisters retake control of Harrenhal.

In a weird way, maybe Arya's rebirth as a Faceless Man in this chapter is a result of her close encounter with the naked Roose's engorged . . . leeches, as well as her wearing the colors of the Boltons as a bride would do. The Flayed Man and the Faceless Men might be two sides of the same coin, so to speak. Arya is reborn as Roose's murderous trueborn heir.

In addition to the similarity in book destruction prior to their escapes, Sansa and Arya might both be spurned "wives" - Joffrey married Margaery instead of Sansa, and Roose Bolton was going to leave Arya with Vargo Hoat instead of taking her along on his next campaign.

8 hours ago, Lord Wraith said:

Also I really don't think Bolton married into Frey with the express interest of betraying the Starks. I mean Robb Stark was supposed to marry a Frey and Bolton was just trying to get ahead in the new Stark/Frey regime.

The OP pointed out that Roose had Arya burn the letter from Fat Walda earlier in the chapter. That letter (like all other letters from Walda) outlined her dream of giving Roose true-born sons who would become lords of the Dreadfort. Having Arya burn the letters might have been a symbolic way of showing that the Starks are going to destroy the Frey hopes of raising a generation of lords.

Later in the series, we will also see Roose tell Theon that he knows Ramsay will eventually kill Walda's baby. So the burning of that letter also represents that Roose doesn't see a Bolton-Frey heir in his future. (This might also explain why his body is hairless - there is a pun in ASOIAF on hair / heir.)

On a separate note: In this chapter, Bolton's frey squire asks Arya to help him push the barrel of sand in which Bolton's chain mail is being cleaned of rust. When he pulls the mail out of the barrel, there is still rust on it but the squire says it's good enough. I have settled on mail as a really important symbol in ASOIAF - maester's chains represent the recurring pattern of life, with one circle connecting to the next but with the substance of each link different from the others. Mail is made of links in all directions, not just the two dimensions of a chain. I believe that mail represents stories and history and belief and intermarriage and other social connections in the present. So Roose's rusty mail is another symbol that he cannot be trusted and that he has a dirty past or bad intentions. It's an, "Out, out! Damn spot," moment except the squire says the spot doesn't really matter. At the Red Wedding, Catelyn noticing that Roose is wearing mail under his clothes is one of her first signs that something seriously bad is going to happen.

There is probably also a pun on mail / mail, so the rusty mail is juxtaposed with the letter from Fat Walda and the raven revealing that Robb will not marry a Frey, as promised. Bad mail.

[mormont]

I think you're all overcomplicating the book issue a bit.

Look at the point in the story this occurs. Roose is about to switch sides, yes, as symbolised by the wolf hunt. Stannis has sent out his letters questioning Joffrey's parentage. Now, we know where to find the truth of that issue, because we've been shown it previously. In a book.

Roose is reading a copy of that book, probably found in the Harrenhal library, because he wants to know if the accusation is true. And he destroys it because allying with the Lannisters means it's now to his advantage that other people can't read it.

[Lollygag]

2 hours ago, Seams said:

There is probably also a pun on mail / mail, so the rusty mail is juxtaposed with the letter from Fat Walda and the raven revealing that Robb will not marry a Frey, as promised. Bad mail.

I thought of dark wings, dark words when I read this at the beginning of the chapter.

The heads never lacked for attendants. The carrion crows wheeled about the gatehouse in raucous unkindness and quarreled upon the ramparts over every eye, screaming and cawing at each other and taking to the air whenever a sentry passed along the battlements. Sometimes the maester's ravens joined the feast as well, flapping down from the rookery on wide black wings. When the ravens came the crows would scatter, only to return the moment the larger birds were gone.

I apparently completely blocked out Roose’s engorged...leech. I didn’t connect it before, but with the Bloodraven feeding off Roose imagery here, the leeches are perhaps Roose’s way of offering blood sacrifice to the old gods.

This also makes me think of Mel’s king’s blood leeches.

On stories, some traditions hold that written word is, for lack of a better term, dead. It is locked, trapped, unchanging. Meaning can be altered, but only by adding new words elsewhere. Reading is also consumed alone, and in the quiet. Cultures which value oral storytelling view stories as alive. They are reborn every time they are told, and they are told out in the open and in the community. So burning a book, and meaning very much depends on the content of the book, can be interpreted as setting those tales not just free, but giving rebirth and resurrection, bringing them into the world. So in this scene, we may have rebirth/resurrection by fire if the book (very old book!) contained Roose’s now accomplished plans which have been birthed into the world from Roose’s engorged...yeah. If this was in fact the content of the book, then Roose’s true “heirs” are in his plans, though Arya was maybe an unanticipated heir. And since Arya is pulling off the leeches and holding them in her hand, if Arya is an unintended heir, then this may foreshadow Arya castrating Roose, her “father”.

I’ve always thought of Mel’s shadow babies as a sort of slow castration due to decreasing health and vitality of Stannis. If Arya symbolically castrates Roose, and if he has King’s blood, and then she is symbolically reborn, she becomes a shadow baby! Always hiding in shadows, being “quite as a shadow” and murder is now starting to add up. Roose does have both feminine and masculine qualities. His voice is described as soft, and his body is soft and hairless. Perhaps indicating hermaphroditic qualities and Roose not needing a woman to birth heirs?

 

[Lollygag]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

I think you're all overcomplicating the book issue a bit.

Look at the point in the story this occurs. Roose is about to switch sides, yes, as symbolised by the wolf hunt. Stannis has sent out his letters questioning Joffrey's parentage. Now, we know where to find the truth of that issue, because we've been shown it previously. In a book.

Roose is reading a copy of that book, probably found in the Harrenhal library, because he wants to know if the accusation is true. And he destroys it because allying with the Lannisters means it's now to his advantage that other people can't read it.

AGOT Eddard VI:

In his chambers he stripped off his council silks and sat for a moment with the book while he waited for Jory to arrive. The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, With Descriptions of Many High Lords and Noble Ladies and Their Children, by Grand Maester Malleon. Pycelle had spoken truly; it made for ponderous reading. Yet Jon Arryn had asked for it, and Ned felt certain he had reasons. There was something here, some truth buried in these brittle yellow pages, if only he could see it. But what? The tome was over a century old. Scarcely a man now alive had yet been born when Malleon had compiled his dusty lists of weddings, births, and deaths.

 

He opened to the section on House Lannister once more, and turned the pages slowly, hoping against hope that something would leap out at him. The Lannisters were an old family, tracing their descent back to Lann the Clever, a trickster from the Age of Heroes who was no doubt as legendary as Bran the Builder, though far more beloved of singers and taletellers. In the songs, Lann was the fellow who winkled the Casterlys out of Casterly Rock with no weapon but his wits, and stole gold from the sun to brighten his curly hair. Ned wished he were here now, to winkle the truth out of this damnable book.

 

The descriptions of the books do match. But several interpretations can be accurate at the same time.

 

This being simply about playing the Game works for a lot of characters in the series, but it feels hollow with Roose. There's so much unusual going on with him and just dismissing the book as Joff's genealogy seems like ignoring the rest of the unusual context of the chapter.

 

 

[zandru]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

I think you're all overcomplicating the book issue a bit.

Thank you for this. The discussions of the "symbolism" were interesting, but I think many of the speculations went too far. Also, your idea that this ancient book was a copy of the geneology of the great houses is a good guess, in my opinion. I can hardly believe that Roose, a fairly young man (by our standards) would have detailed "plans to defeat House Stark" - and written them out, in detail, and published them in BOOK FORM - so long ago that the pages yellowed and the leather cover cracked. Even if he was some kind of a baby-genius...

6 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

This being simply about playing the Game ...

I strongly doubt that Roose holds much interest in the "game" for the Iron Throne. Rather, he'd be content with the North, an ancient kingdom that the Boltons and the Starks contended over for literally millennia. With Robb Stark having assumed King of the North position and crown, the North has become its own nation once again - and its crown is up for grabs. Plus, it's a big enough and independent enough region that the petulant child-king down in King's Landing has little control over it. House Bolton's time has come!

[hiemal]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

I think you're all overcomplicating the book issue a bit.

Look at the point in the story this occurs. Roose is about to switch sides, yes, as symbolised by the wolf hunt. Stannis has sent out his letters questioning Joffrey's parentage. Now, we know where to find the truth of that issue, because we've been shown it previously. In a book.

Roose is reading a copy of that book, probably found in the Harrenhal library, because he wants to know if the accusation is true. And he destroys it because allying with the Lannisters means it's now to his advantage that other people can't read it.

Could be- that's definitely a vice of mine, but I have a hard time believing Roose would care enough about Joffrey's legitimacy to even open a book. His phlegmatic attitude towards the murder of both his once and future trueborn children show a ruthless pragmatism that doesn't line up for me. He wouldn't require a band-aid for his honor.

[Lollygag]

2 minutes ago, zandru said:

Thank you for this. The discussions of the "symbolism" were interesting, but I think many of the speculations went too far. Also, your idea that this ancient book was a copy of the geneology of the great houses is a good guess, in my opinion. I can hardly believe that Roose, a fairly young man (by our standards) would have detailed "plans to defeat House Stark" - and written them out, in detail, and published them in BOOK FORM - so long ago that the pages yellowed and the leather cover cracked. Even if he was some kind of a baby-genius...

There are theories out there that Roose has lived for a very long time and isn't normal, hence his disinterest in heirs. I'm not sure I ascribe to those theories, but there's most definitely a story behind the Boltons. If it's not literally true, then it could speak to the very old feud between the Starks and Boltons. In the same chapter, Roose discusses ancient ways where wolves are concerned, so this was on his mind. So if either Roose is extremely old himself, or if the book is just a general Bolton record on the Starks and how to defeat them, then yes, the book may in fact be very old.

Also, multiple interpretations may be true. See the above post on interpreting Arya's wishing herself dead. The book may literally be about Joff, and symbolically about several other things at once.

As for writing down plans, a lot of people do that. Especially when it gets complicated. And no such a book wouldn't be published, it would be a blank book and function as a journal. In such a case, burning it is more significant.

As for "going too far", well a lot of people do that on this forum in a lot of different ways.Stones and glass houses and all that.

[hiemal]

18 minutes ago, zandru said:

Thank you for this. The discussions of the "symbolism" were interesting, but I think many of the speculations went too far. Also, your idea that this ancient book was a copy of the geneology of the great houses is a good guess, in my opinion. I can hardly believe that Roose, a fairly young man (by our standards) would have detailed "plans to defeat House Stark" - and written them out, in detail, and published them in BOOK FORM - so long ago that the pages yellowed and the leather cover cracked. Even if he was some kind of a baby-genius...

 

That would be strange, but incriminating evidence of either past or future treachery, if that is what the book represents, needn't be in the form of a detailed timetable or labeled "Roose's Plans to Win the North" nor need it have originated with young lord Roose. The Boltons have always been reluctant subjects and their savage history of dominating their own lands as they see fit far exceeds their time under the Stark yoke. Who knows how long they've been nursing their grudges and possibly writing out wish lists and contingency plans or detailing small acts of rebellion to bolster their feelings of independence?

 

 

[mormont]

10 minutes ago, hiemal said:

He wouldn't require a band-aid for his honor.

He doesn't. But knowing the truth is useful.

Writing down his betrayal, on the other hand, would be stupid.

[hiemal]

Just now, mormont said:

He doesn't. But knowing the truth is useful.

Writing down his betrayal, on the other hand, would be stupid.

Roose is certainly not that, but see above.

[zandru]

2 minutes ago, hiemal said:

Who knows how long they've been nursing their grudges and possibly writing out wish lists and contingency plans or detailing small acts of rebellion to bolster their feelings of independence?

 

Then why would Roose be burning it, instead of adding to it? It's no more "incriminating" now than it was a century ago. Per mormont again, "Writing down his betrayal ... would be stupid." And I don't hold with the theory that Roose is a zillion-year old vampire.

[hiemal]

2 minutes ago, zandru said:

 

Then why would Roose be burning it, instead of adding to it? It's no more "incriminating" now than it was a century ago.

Dramatic effect? Why would he burn any book, any resource that could possibly be of future use to him, and in a fashion that suggests that is an important, possibly pivotal act? Exploring that idea is kind of the point of this thread.

5 minutes ago, zandru said:

 Per mormont again, "Writing down his betrayal ... would be stupid."

I'm not sure anyone has ever suggested that Roose wrote down his impending betrayal simply to turn around and burn it. That would be stupid. And pointless. And unworthy of inclusion in such a pivotal chapter.

7 minutes ago, zandru said:

 And I don't hold with the theory that Roose is a zillion-year old vampire.

I have never been a Bolt-On man myself, but I try to keep an open mind.

[Lollygag]

I wasn't suggesting that Roose had a "dear diary" where his plans were laid out as "1. Take Winterfell for ourselves...

Roose talked about the wolves of old, so it would likely function as more of a notebook/reference book/map for laying out Roose's plans which wouldn't incriminate him outright, but would still be something that he wouldn't want seen. Not unlike how the genealogy book didn't outright say "Joff's a bastard", but laid out the background for such a conclusion to be made. 

A lot of the interesting finds are inseparable from the “going too far” moments. Digging into any subject is messy and sometimes ugly. Comparing, contrasting, looking at symbols, character analysis, context, it’s very trial and error. You get a eureka! moment, follow it through, and sometimes it pans out and sometimes it doesn’t. Think of how many times Edison failed before getting the lightbulb right.

It will especially be messy on a discussion board where ideas are worked out in-the-moment. Looking behind the curtain isn’t always pretty. But to give up the going too far moments is to also give up those other interesting tidbits because they can’t be separated. No one is that awesome off the cuff.

 

[hiemal]

12 hours ago, Walda said:

In the time I have taken to write this, there have been half a dozen replies to this thread, so I'm clearly not the only one who thinks the burnt book is significant. Hopefully this isn't an exact repetition of one of them, although if someone else has a better articulated version of this theory, I won't mind a bit.

This is a very interesting theory and reminds me strongly of the old "King in Yellow" trope, which is actually hinted at elsewhere. You might be on to something- I'll be pondering

[Lollygag]

8 minutes ago, hiemal said:

I have never been a Bolt-On man myself, but I try to keep an open mind.

I lean against it as well, but can't rule it out. I prefer the idea that Roose's creepiness is a hint that the Bolton's do remember unlike so many other families in this series who've forgotten something apparently quite important.

Also, if the Boltons are a magical family like the Starks and Targs, they may also be experiencing some new weirdness now that magic is returning.

[hiemal]

7 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I lean against it as well, but can't rule it out. I prefer the idea that Roose's creepiness is a hint that the Bolton's do remember unlike so many other families in this series who've forgotten something apparently quite important.

Also, if the Boltons are a magical family like the Starks and Targs, they may also be experiencing some new weirdness now that magic is returning.

And if their ties are with the Others, as Lady Blizzardborn suggested, that would go a long way to contextualizing Roose's often mentioned sang froid.

[zandru]

8 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

I prefer the idea that Roose's creepiness is a hint that the Bolton's do remember unlike so many other families in this series who've forgotten something apparently quite important.

This. I recall, back in the 1990s, how it bewildered most Americans that folks in the former Yugoslavia could be so obsessed by a few incidents that happened 500-1000 years in the past. Not every people is so driven by past history. But some are, and both Starks and Boltons go way back to the First Men.

I think that the burning of the book, and the book that was burned are probably both significant. George RR has a way of throwing out seemingly trivial things that end up figuring big a book or so down the line.

[zandru]

1 minute ago, zandru said:

Not every people is so driven by past history. But some are, and both Starks and Boltons go way back to the First Men.

Apologies for quoting myself, but it occurs to me that, from what we've seen, the Starks concentrate their family histories on the great things the Starks have done, and that the Starks were once the Kings of the North. I'll bet that the Boltons concentrate on the wrongs done to them by the Starks and the times the Boltons defeated them. Remember, per the World of Ice&Fire, the Boltons dressed in Starkskin robes...

[hiemal]

20 minutes ago, zandru said:

This. I recall, back in the 1990s, how it bewildered most Americans that folks in the former Yugoslavia could be so obsessed by a few incidents that happened 500-1000 years in the past. Not every people is so driven by past history. But some are, and both Starks and Boltons go way back to the First Men.

I think that the burning of the book, and the book that was burned are probably both significant. George RR has a way of throwing out seemingly trivial things that end up figuring big a book or so down the line.

Yep. He has a way of burying the lead, if I might filch a news term, that is both annoying and addictive.

17 minutes ago, zandru said:

Apologies for quoting myself, but it occurs to me that, from what we've seen, the Starks concentrate their family histories on the great things the Starks have done, and that the Starks were once the Kings of the North. I'll bet that the Boltons concentrate on the wrongs done to them by the Starks and the times the Boltons defeated them. Remember, per the World of Ice&Fire, the Boltons dressed in Starkskin robes...

Oh yeah- I suspect that the room where they keep the cloaks made from the skins of their foes that the Stark  children speculate about is very real.