Heresy 200 The bicentennial edition

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, Frey family reunion said:

The parallels to Barristan are very interesting, I never picked up on that before.  I'm curious if there are any clues in the text as to a time or place where Qyburn would have met up with Barristan.  Of course Barristan was perhaps the most famous knight in the land, and Qyburn could have viewed him in any of the tourneys around Oldtown.  We also have another parallel, Qyburn was expelled from the Citadel and Barristan was expelled from the Kingsguard.  If this was a conscious decision by Qyburn to alter his appearance to more closely resemble Barristan, it is an interesting choice.

I really don't know what to make of Qyburn.  That's not a Westerosi name but something from Qarth or Ashaai perhaps.   His gambit is designed to create trust and dependence in Cersei's case. Bold blue eyes and Barristan the Bold came to mind... he reminds her of someone, she just can't put her finger on it.  Someone she has trusted before whom he now replaces in a sense.  His robes are as white as the kingsguard cloaks and that's deliberate on his part.

Is there some kind of sorcery at work?  I think so.  The hint is in Qyburn's white robes with the whorls of gold stitching.  Stitching, sewing and weaving are all euphamisms for woven spells.   Whorls of gold show up on dragon eggs and in the House of Undying:

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A Game of Thrones - Daenerys IX

"Bring me … egg … dragon's egg … please …" Her lashes turned to lead, and she was too weary to hold them up.When she woke the third time, a shaft of golden sunlight was pouring through the smoke hole of the tent, and her arms were wrapped around a dragon's egg. It was the pale one, its scales the color of butter cream, veined with whorls of gold and bronze, and Dany could feel the heat of it.

A Clash of Kings - Daenerys IV

The fourth room was oval rather than square and walled in worm-eaten wood in place of stone. Six passages led out from it in place of four. Dany chose the rightmost, and entered a long, dim, high-ceilinged hall. Along the right hand was a row of torches burning with a smoky orange light, but the only doors were to her left. Drogon unfolded wide black wings and beat the stale air. He flew twenty feet before thudding to an undignified crash. Dany strode after him.

The mold-eaten carpet under her feet had once been gorgeously colored, and whorls of gold could still be seen in the fabric, glinting broken amidst the faded grey and mottled green.

A Feast for Crows - Cersei IV

"I have informers sniffing after the Imp everywhere, Your Grace," said Qyburn. He had garbed himself in something very like maester's robes, but white instead of grey, immaculate as the cloaks of the Kingsguard. Whorls of gold decorated his hem, sleeves, and stiff high collar, and a golden sash was tied about his waist. "Oldtown, Gulltown, Dorne, even the Free Cities. Wheresoever he might run, my whisperers will find him."

 

 

 

[Frey family reunion]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

I really don't know what to make of Qyburn.  That's not a Westerosi name but something from Qarth or Ashaai perhaps.   His gambit is designed to create trust and dependence in Cersei's case. Bold blue eyes and Barristan the Bold came to mind... he reminds her of someone, she just can't put her finger on it.  Someone she has trusted before whom he now replaces in a sense.  His robes are as white as the kingsguard cloaks and that's deliberate on his part.

Is there some kind of sorcery at work?  I think so.  The hint is in Qyburn's white robes with the whorls of gold stitching.  Stitching, sewing and weaving are all euphamisms for woven spells.   Whorls of gold show up on dragon eggs and in the House of Undying:

 

 

Changing from grey to white also calls to mind another wizard,  the transformation of Gandalf from Gandalf the grey to white.  

[Melifeather]

10 hours ago, wolfmaid7 said:

Does one have to be one of the principals to be QOW?And that's if there is even going to be such a prevent figure in this series .

Mel is certainly not a principal character yet she though hot has revised the Queen of night role with Stannis.

The QON figure was(even though she may have been influencing him) the woman behind the man.

No more than Mel with Stannis.Val was trying to set herself up as the woman beside Jon.Mel was trying to do the same.

This is not to say that Sansa can't be such a figure on her own.But I see that exclusive of Jon.

I know what the letter said and the story then could have gone that way with Arya.

But in this story even though Sansa and Jon aren't close the idea of them being siblings is to engrained in them. I don't see anything romantic having time to develop on that front.

That seems to be the case.And we also have to look at where these characters are in the story in relation to each other.Sure, some of them may be reunited at some point.Ultimately,they have their parts to play.

GRRM didn't just pull Val out the hat to be insignificant to Jon.She'll possibly give Jon the son to hold in his arms before he sits his icy throne beneath some hill/The black gate.

 

If there is an as yet unidentified Other that is also a different 3EC other than Bloodraven, then it would make sense, at least to me, that it's a woman. With all of the dualities in the story, black and white, night and day, ice and fire, moon and sun, we have a male fire magic deity named R'hllor, so shouldn't the ice magic deity be female? Will Val be the one to tell us her name?

[wolfmaid7]

2 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

If there is an as yet unidentified Other that is also a different 3EC other than Bloodraven, then it would make sense, at least to me, that it's a woman. With all of the dualities in the story, black and white, night and day, ice and fire, moon and sun, we have a male fire magic deity named R'hllor, so shouldn't the ice magic deity be female? Will Val be the one to tell us her name?

If it is a woman that would make sense from a duality standpoint.When we look at the elements surrounding the ice aspect some of them could be viewed in the feminine light.Especially if you superimpose real world myths about cold being feminine.

Also,we have seen and heard of two prominent females with mysterious blue eyes.Val and the Nk's queen.

I could see the Watch doing some carp like entoming the NK as a punishment.Who knows how they dealt with him.But i wonder if the woman got out of dodge before the axe fell,or did she suffer what ever faith the NK got.

As for Val there's now way she's "just a chick, from beyond the wall.

[Lady Dyanna]

17 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

If there is an as yet unidentified Other that is also a different 3EC other than Bloodraven, then it would make sense, at least to me, that it's a woman. With all of the dualities in the story, black and white, night and day, ice and fire, moon and sun, we have a male fire magic deity named R'hllor, so shouldn't the ice magic deity be female? Will Val be the one to tell us her name?

And don't forget.... When Bran wakes up from his coma dream the 3EC turns into what? A serving LADY with long dark hair bent over him. It just seems like that piece should mean something...

[MaesterSam]

8 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

I lean towards thinking Jon is dead and that it's necessary for him to be dead in order to become the Nights King and lead the army of the dead. In Old Nan's story the Lord Commander gave the Other his seed, which likely is referring to the sacrifice of a child, so I don't think Jon will ever father children.

So, I know we aren't allowed to discuss the mummer's version on here, but... umm.... if we're gonna talk about sacrificing a child to a god....

Spoiler

Stannis, anyone? He fits in many other ways as well, and if we interpret this passage the way Feather Crystal suggests, that points to him even more. 

 

[Frey family reunion]

1 hour ago, MaesterSam said:

So, I know we aren't allowed to discuss the mummer's version on here, but... umm.... if we're gonna talk about sacrificing a child to a god....

  Reveal hidden contents

Stannis, anyone? He fits in many other ways as well, and if we interpret this passage the way Feather Crystal suggests, that points to him even more. 

 

I'm glad you brought this up, because I'm beginning to see the method behind Melisandre's alleged madness.   I think Melisandre's talk of sacrificing Kingblood goes deeper than whoever may be sitting on the Iron Throne.  I think she is eying potential sacrifices who's lineage reaches back to the blood of the Kings of the First Men.

She was obsessed about sacrificing Edric Storm, but the question is why?  Is it because Robert was king when he bedded the Flovent girl?  Or is it because she sees in Edric a confluence of king's blood from two different sources?

We know that the Baratheons are descended from a maternal line of the original Durandon Storm Kings.  The Florents on the other hand are rumored to have the best claim to the blood of the Gardner Kings, who's paternal line was extinguished in the Field of Fire.

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“You Starks were kings once, the Arryns and the Lannisters as well, and even the Baratheons through the female line, but the Tyrells were no more than stewards until Aegon the Dragon came along and cooked the rightful King of the Reach on the Field of Fire. If truth be told, even our claim to Highgarden is a bit dodgy, just as those dreadful Florents are always whining.”

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“Who would father these children? Ser Patrek? You?”
“Who better? We Florents have the blood of the old Gardener kings in our veins. Lady Melisandre could perform the rites, as she did for Lady Alys and the Magnar.”

So why is Melisandre so insistent on using Edric Storm as a sacrifice?  I think it's because she believes he has the bloodlines of both the Storm Kings and the Gardner Kings.

Now if she can't sacrifice Edric, what child would also have the same bloodlines?  It would be Shireen who has the same ancestry as Edric.  

Her interest in the King's bloodlines, may also explain her interest in Jon Snow as well.

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

  Her interest in the King's bloodlines, may also explain her interest in Jon Snow as well.

That would be ironic to the point of hilarity, given the expectation in some quarters that she will resurrect him as Azor Ahai

[Matthew.]

20 hours ago, MaesterSam said:

So, I know we aren't allowed to discuss the mummer's version on here, but... umm.... if we're gonna talk about sacrificing a child to a god....

I do think we'll see Stannis go down that road before his arc is over. If we're discussing parallels between Stannis' relationship with Melisandre and the NK's relationship with the NQ, we might also note that Stannis intends to make the Nightfort his seat at the Wall, which doesn't seem to bode well for his future, as far as foreshadowing goes.

IMO, the aftermath of the Battle for Winterfell is going to be Stannis' breaking point--even if he wins, his army will be severely weakened, winter is coming, and I'm not sure that there will be many Houses in the North that would willingly die on Stannis' behalf in the South. Even those that might make a more formal commitment - eg, the Manderlys - probably have a shrinking pool of soldiers to offer, after Robb's failed cause, and the losses they'll presumably suffer if they fight the Boltons.

I believe we're going to see Stannis survive the battle, but return to the Wall - the Nightfort - dejected and desperate, with no hope of claiming the Iron Throne, much less stopping the Others--which is when Melisandre's pitch will finally win out.

In addition to the NK parallels, the story of Azor Ahai itself is about a man who had to give up what he loved most in the world to get his Lightbringer; to forge his phony Lightbringer, Stannis only 'sacrificed' some statues of the Seven, and gave some consideration to sacrificing a bastard nephew that he doesn't particularly care about--these aren't Nissa Nissa level sacrifices for Stannis.

18 hours ago, Frey family reunion said:

So why is Melisandre so insistent on using Edric Storm as a sacrifice?  I think it's because she believes he has the bloodlines of both the Storm Kings and the Gardner Kings.

I think it's possible that the prophecy of king's blood has been misunderstood, and that it is the blood of the First Men that truly matters (after all, we've not seen the actual text of TPTWP, we've only seen biased in-world interpretations), but I'm not sure Melisandre herself is thinking along those lines. Her own stated goal is to "wake dragons from stone," so it seems more likely that she'd value Stannis being a quarter Targ if her interest is dragons.

[Black Crow]

Anent this Kings Blood and First Men; its contextually plausible both as to what has happened and what's to come. There has been an assumption from the beginning that the real danger, as suggested by GRRM himself in his original synopsis, is the horror from the North and that that the Prince that was Promised [Azor Ahai] needs to be found and pointed in the right direction to save the world.

While that's also how Mel sees it, her concept of saving the world isn't quite the same as ours, with she and Master Benero seemingly anticipating a fiery holocaust from which only the elect will emerge triumphantly and probably no longer human.

On the other hand we have a curiously phantom enemy in the Ice who has not been revealed; we have the outriders; Craster's sons and their thralls, but in terms of the main event it seems a bit slow, as if they too are waiting for their champion to be awakened.

We have Danaerys, the last of the dragonlords, and her not very nice beasties awakened from stone.

She looks in every way to be Azor Ahai come again, but is the Prince that was Promised not one and the same but the adversary, who will keep Fire in check, and things will only really get going when the Prince of the blood of the First Men appears?

If so does that explain Torrhen's surrender, because the Prince that was Promised to fight the Dragons was not yet come?

[Brad Stark]

What is the significance of Kings blood?  She seems interested in Mance, but that could be fake interest, since she didn't burn him.  Mance has no pedigree.  Are certain bloodlines important,  or can you put a crown on the head of any poor shmuck and sacrifice him?  

[Brad Stark]

The phantom enemy was revealed,  or at least Melisandra thought so - Bloodraven and Bran.  Most readers seem to think this was just her mistake, but I really believe these are the 2 sides of the war to come.

[Black Crow]

Melisandre has her problems and I think that one of them, given how heavily mistakes and unintended consequences are emphasised in this story, may be in waking the wrong champion.

[JNR]

9 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

The phantom enemy was revealed,  or at least Melisandra thought so - Bloodraven and Bran.

Well, she wondered, very briefly, if Bloodraven was the Great Other.  Then she decided he was not:

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But beyond the Wall, the enemy grows stronger, and should he win the dawn will never come again. She wondered if it had been his face that she had seen, staring out at her from the flames. No. Surely not. His visage would be more frightening than that, cold and black and too terrible for any man to gaze upon and live. The wooden man she had glimpsed, though, and the boy with the wolf's face … they were his servants, surely … his champions, as Stannis was hers.

Whether an individual phantom enemy of this sort exists at all (outside Melisandre's imagination) is not at all clear. 

I suppose if mummers in Essos were to do a story of this type on a stage, they would need such a creature to serve as a primary villain for their more unsophisticated audience of groundlings, so they would make one up.  Probably they would imagine him resembling a B-movie villain, with horns on his head, no sense of humor, etc., even though this sort of creature would be comical, as opposed to terrifying.

[Black Crow]

Its also worth bearing in mind that those books in Asshai were written at just the time when the Valyrians and their Fire dragons were working over Old Ghis and aiming at points east.

 

[The Fattest Leech]

18 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Melisandre has her problems and I think that one of them, given how heavily mistakes and unintended consequences are emphasised in this story, may be in waking the wrong champion.

Yeah, this has me intrigued as well. All of the other Rahlooists seem to be moving toward the same direction, except Mel, who seems to be getting very different versions of what the other priests see in their flames. We readers know is on her own mission and this has me wondering if she isn't supposed to be the one to stop the one who stops the "fire" from spreading. (Did that even make sense?)

These details always bugged me:

1. The gangling steward backed away, his hands upraised as if to say, Not me, it was not me.
2. Then Bowen Marsh stood there before him, tears running down his cheeks.

[aDanceWithFlagons]

On 6/20/2017 at 6:34 PM, Feather Crystal said:

Rhaegar's armor had more than seven rubies on it. His whole sigil was made of rubies, so obviously they are referring to something else. It seems logical to conclude that they are referring to something that matches up with the Faith of the Seven. If the rubies came from Rhaegar's death at the Trident, then the seven people who represent the seven aspects of the Faith were born out of the Rebellion, wouldn't you think? I also bolded the fact that the Septon wasn't displeased to see Brienne, so he may have been waiting for a female. Now whether Brienne would be Maiden, Mother or Crone would be up to debate, but she seems like a Maiden Warrior to me.

And to add from your previous post, 

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Six have been found. We are all waiting for the seventh.” 

While I do not have any one in mind for the other Six, the Seventh has always meant the Stranger, to me. It represents the Other side. An in-between - an extra ordinary or rarity.  If it will be a living person or not, im not so sure. Now Brienne does have the "neither woman nor man" vibe going on yet we'll have to see her fate with Stoneheart and Jamie. I always pictured the Seventh as something larger than just a person. 

Anyway, that seventh they are waiting for is the Stranger whether they realize or not. The Stranger is the last on the list of the Seven aspects and is mostly forgotten. It's just a name on the list not many people want to think about. 

 

[Melifeather]

25 minutes ago, aDanceWithFlagons said:

And to add from your previous post, 

While I do not have any one in mind for the other Six, the Seventh has always meant the Stranger, to me. It represents the Other side. An in-between - an extra ordinary or rarity.  If it will be a living person or not, im not so sure. Now Brienne does have the "neither woman nor man" vibe going on yet we'll have to see her fate with Stoneheart and Jamie. I always pictured the Seventh as something larger than just a person. 

Anyway, that seventh they are waiting for is the Stranger whether they realize or not. The Stranger is the last on the list of the Seven aspects and is mostly forgotten. It's just a name on the list not many people want to think about. 

 

I thought Sandor might be their Stranger, but he could be one of the others.

[aDanceWithFlagons]

On 6/22/2017 at 10:22 AM, divica said:

In case of the weirwood trees I agree. However I don t see how r'hllor or the many faced good for example can be skinchangers. It must be a different type of magic... like people very skilled in diferent types or magic use their powers to make others believe they are gods or when they died they used their powers to remain as spirits that try to get their followers to give them sacrifices in order to increase their power.

It would interesting if the others want to kill the living to use them as sacrifices for their god... on the other hand if the gods want to use sacrifices for returning to the living for example it would be meeh...

While I do believe different magical practitioners can counter other practitioners, they seem to be linked in various ways. The Faceless Men use the bodies of the dead by collecting their faces then storing them. The users of said faces experience the life of the one who died. It's a different type of skinchanging. Basically it's a second life. And that's what a lot of the magic is about. Prolonging life through relationships with other beings be it human or animal or plant.

Besides, the old gods are dead - a.k.a. second lifers, and there is power in death. 

[aDanceWithFlagons]

16 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

I thought Sandor might be their Stranger, but he could be one of the others.

Yeah, Sandor could be the Stranger, that's crossed my mind also. He has begun a metaphorical second life.

And he, the grave digger, is taking care of the dead!