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The pregnant woman and the sacrificial victim.


The Commentator

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I'm not ready to write off Bloodraven as a bad guy.  His personal history shows a dedicated man who served the royal family.  But I have to ask.  What was the reason for showing Bran these visions?  Who was the pregnant woman and who was her enemy?  What is the significance of the human sacrifice to the current story?  

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There is no clear answer to that question.  We have the Stark family tree but it doesn't give us a clear answer.  We can narrow it down quite a bit, but that is only if we make a rather large assumption that the woman is a pure blooded stark/Stark wife and not someone else perhaps a paramour or hostage even which could make more sense in the revenge regard.  But it is possible we will get our answer in the next Dunk and Egg novel when they go to WF.  However it is also possible we don't because we seemingly get a vision of that event also...

Edit: I would hazard a guess that if we don't get an answer in the next D&E that we won't get an answer.

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I think the visions are fairly random. Magic is dangerous and untrustworthy in this series, and just like how Mel isn't able to choose what she sees in her flames, Bran probably won't be able to choose what he sees through the Weirwoods. I do think more may be revealed when Dunk and Egg go to Winterfell, however. 

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27 minutes ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

I'm not ready to write off Bloodraven as a bad guy.  His personal history shows a dedicated man who served the royal family.  But I have to ask.  What was the reason for showing Bran these visions?  Who was the pregnant woman and who was her enemy?  What is the significance of the human sacrifice to the current story?  

Bloodraven is not a bad guy. None of the Targaryens are. They are the only ones who are both superior and trying to save humanity. That is what Bloodraven is doing. 

We only see one sacrifice in the books IIRC. Maybe the next book Bran will get another vision that explains it. 

I thought the woman in the vision kissing the tall guy was Nan. What color is Hodor's hair? 

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I think it may show that the Starks and the old gods' religion is really not much like the view of it that readers would tend to get from Ned's POV. Based only on Ned's attitude, his faith is pretty vague and airy-fairy nature worship. Those visions show some pretty savage practices historically. 

See also: ADWD, Davos IV, where he is imprisoned in the Wolf's Den in White Harbor. "He took the Wolf's Den back, stripped the slavers naked, and gave them to the slaves he'd found chained up in the dungeons. It's said they hung their entrails in the branches of the heart tree, as an offering to the gods. The old gods, not these new ones from the south." (This is the castellan of the Wolf's Den, Ser Bartimus, giving Davos a history lesson.)

 

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17 minutes ago, The Ned's Little Girl said:

I think it may show that the Starks and the old gods' religion is really not much like the view of it that readers would tend to get from Ned's POV. Based only on Ned's attitude, his faith is pretty vague and airy-fairy nature worship. Those visions show some pretty savage practices historically. 

See also: ADWD, Davos IV, where he is imprisoned in the Wolf's Den in White Harbor. "He took the Wolf's Den back, stripped the slavers naked, and gave them to the slaves he'd found chained up in the dungeons. It's said they hung their entrails in the branches of the heart tree, as an offering to the gods. The old gods, not these new ones from the south." (This is the castellan of the Wolf's Den, Ser Bartimus, giving Davos a history lesson.)

 

What happened to those slavers is just as awesome as Queen Danaerys burning the slavers in slavers bay. That isn't so bad. 

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1 hour ago, Sea Dragon said:

What happened to those slavers is just as awesome as Queen Danaerys burning the slavers in slavers bay. That isn't so bad. 

I didn't say it was bad (which I specifically did not say because that is not the purpose of this topic). I said it was savage and represents how readers possibly need to re-think previous opinions about Ned's religion, which in Ned's thoughts likely didn't depict the totality of its practices and beliefs.

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9 hours ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

I'm not ready to write off Bloodraven as a bad guy.  His personal history shows a dedicated man who served the royal family.  But I have to ask.  What was the reason for showing Bran these visions?  Who was the pregnant woman and who was her enemy?  What is the significance of the human sacrifice to the current story?  

Edit: further digging has pended my post 

 

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5 hours ago, Dorian Martell's son said:

The visions were Bran's. The pregnant woman was most likely Lynara Stark who lost her husband, Barthogan in the Skagos uprising
http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/Barthogan_Stark  during the Reign of King Daeron

Hm, Lynara wasn't Barthogan's wife but his mother. And I don't think her being pregnant with Brandon at the time of Barth's death fits the timeline very well.

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The visions run backward in time. The first few visions are fairly recent, back to presumably Brandon Snow who fashioned the 3 weirwood arrows 300 years ago to assassinate Aegon's dragons. But if one reads the passage carefully, Martin gives us a vast timeleap from there to the white haired woman making the sacrifice. He notes that the weirwood grows smaller and smaller (note the bolded part below).

After that the glimpses came faster and faster, till Bran was feeling lost and dizzy. He saw no more of his father, nor the girl who looked like Arya, but a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenge her. Then there came a brown-haired girl slender as a spear who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor. A dark-eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. The tree itself was shrinking, growing smaller with each vision, whilst the lesser trees dwindled into saplings and vanished, only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn. And now the lords Bran glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail. Some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts, but they were gone before he could put a name to them.
Then, as he watched, a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree. A white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves, a bronze sickle in her hand.
"No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. And through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth … but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide, Brandon Stark could taste the blood.

And while the tree grows ever smaller, Bran has other visions that we aren't given detail of, but which involve old Kings in the North from long before Torhenn knelt. And only at the very end do we get the vision of the human sacrifice. We can safely say this is many thousands of years ago, and quite possibly may represent the very founding of Winterfell. Perhaps the first sacrifice that "activated" the Winterfell Heart Tree. Perhaps the first Stark who was sacrificed to bond the Tree to the Stark bloodline for everafter? Or perhaps a defeated rival petty King, who was sacrificed to power the spell which bound the Starks to the Winterfell tree? Or perhaps some other dark mystery that lies at the beginning of the mystical Stark backstory.

Personally I believe in the "Bran spiritual time traveler" theory. Meaning that I think Bran will have the power to affect the past through his magic, probably limited to the bloodline that runs through the Winterfell Heart Tree. In that way I believe he was Brandon the Builder himself. And the fact that Bran tastes the blood himself seems to hint that Bran himself may have had a hand in the sacrifice. So perhaps he directed the white haired woman - a distant ancestor of his, perhaps -  to make the sacrifice, to seal the link between the Starks and the Tree for all eternity.
We won't know for sure until it is revealed, as the possibilities are myriad, but I think it will be revealed as a highly significant event about the Stark origins.
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14 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

<snip>

After that the glimpses came faster and faster, till Bran was feeling lost and dizzy. He saw no more of his father, nor the girl who looked like Arya, but a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree, and begged the old gods for a son who would avenge her.
<snip>

Perhaps she was raped and wants her son to avenge her?

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5 minutes ago, The Wondering Wolf said:

Lynara would still be Jonnel's mother and we know of only one Lord of Winterfell dying in the fighting against the Skagosi (Barth), so I don't think Jonnel died in the same way as Barth did.

That was another mistake. It turns out that Jonnel had no kids so that is out. nvrmnd.

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9 hours ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

I'm not ready to write off Bloodraven as a bad guy.  His personal history shows a dedicated man who served the royal family.  But I have to ask.  What was the reason for showing Bran these visions?  Who was the pregnant woman and who was her enemy?  What is the significance of the human sacrifice to the current story?  

I think Bloodraven was like Varys, he served "the realm" and did what he thought was necessary; I'd also like to think that after spending almost a 100 years under a tree and seeing all the things he probably saw, the man is beyond loyalties to Targs. As for the human sacriface, I always found suspicious that the Starks could held power mostly uncontested for 8000 years, and the Wolf's den story that is told to Davos, is really telling. I think that the Starks have a creepy bond with The Others, for what i understand they started to gather roughly at the time that Rickard, Brandon and Lyanna died...so maybe they have some bond or are bounded to the Starks

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10 hours ago, Widowmaker 811 said:

I'm not ready to write off Bloodraven as a bad guy.  His personal history shows a dedicated man who served the royal family.  But I have to ask.  What was the reason for showing Bran these visions?  Who was the pregnant woman and who was her enemy?  What is the significance of the human sacrifice to the current story?  

 

  • Obviously Bloodraven wants Bran to fully accept and use his powers.  Like someone who wants to get a customer addicted to their product.  Warging birds is addictive according to Hagon.
  • The naked woman could be one of two ladies.  Rickard's mother or grandmother.  The scenes are presented in reverse chronological method and this one was a recent event.  The enemy is probably Dunk or Egg.  Which explains why Rickard Stark hated the Targs.
  • To encourage Bran to bring back the old ways and start back human sacrifice. 
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