A guide to solving prophecy and the solution to the girl in grey.

[rustythesmith]

The Girl in Grey

This is Spoilers Published. If you are avoiding TWOW spoilers I have placed tags to make this friendly-ish to you. When you see [Spoilers TWOW] just skip to the next paragraph.

This essay is purely about the books.

For the bulk of this essay I'm going to visit every character that I have ever heard proposed as the solution to the girl in grey prophecy while sharing my personal thoughts, interpretations, and methodology. I have read and listened to many theories, essays, and podcasts to be able to combine my research and ideas with those of other people. I'll try to credit as many of those people and theories as I can at the end.

I use the words vision and prophecy interchangeably because a vision is one of many mediums for a prophecy.

A vision or prophecy can have many parts to it, but it is all one connected thing. For example, with Cersei's Valonqar prophecy we don't separate "gold will be their shrouds" from "you will wed the king." They come together as parts of the same prophecy. All parts of a prophecy must come true in order for us to call the prophecy satisfied. If ever a single part doesn't come true, we can say with absolute certainty that the whole conclusion is either incorrect or incomplete. In fact, we must - no matter how painful it may be - otherwise we will not find the answer.

There's a cool theme in the story that magic is as treacherous as a sword without a hilt. Despite this theme, (really the source of it) it isn't acceptable if a prophecy doesn't have a solution. Neither is it acceptable if that solution is unsatisfying. The reader should not have to make stretches, allowances, and leaps in logic in order to make the prophecy fit the solution. These rules for prophecies aren't my own invention, however I won't ask you to take my word for it. I think the books do a great job demonstrating how prophecy works and I hope I'm able to help bring that out. And to find the girl in grey, of course.

The Telling

To begin, we must gather and build a list of criteria for the girl in grey as defined by the vision. The first time we hear about the vision of the girl in grey is when Melisandre speaks to Jon beneath the shadow of the Wall.

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"I have seen your sister in my fires, fleeing from this marriage they have made for her. Coming here, to you. A girl in grey on a dying horse, I have seen it plain as day. It has not happened yet, but it will." (ADWD Jon VI)

This is our first heads-up from the author. He's telling us through Melisandre that this is the beginning of a puzzle and reassuring us that we will be able to solve it. He will make sure every part of the prophecy is carefully hidden and satisfying to find. He's inviting us to play the puzzle. "It has not happened yet, but it will."

The next time we hear about the vision of the girl in grey, Melisandre is in her private room preparing to look into her fire. She thinks

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Many a priest and priestess before her had been brought down by false visions, by seeing what they wished to see instead of what the Lord of Light had sent. (ADWD Melisandre I)

Then we get some new pieces of the vision.

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The girl. I must find the girl again, the grey girl on the dying horse. Jon Snow would expect that of her, and soon. It would not be enough to say the girl was fleeing. He would want more, he would want the when and where, and she did not have that for him. She had seen the girl only once. A girl as grey as ash, and even as I watched she crumbled and blew away. (ADWD Melisandre I)

When new parts of the prophecy are introduced, we have to check them for conflicts against the original telling. The horse and fleeing are new pieces that don't conflict with what we already know about the vision, so we can add them to the list of criteria.

With these passages we see that Melisandre is in bad form. She doesn't know for certain that the girl in grey is Arya Stark because she calls her "the girl" rather than Arya Stark. Rather than communicating her visions as they appear, she is molding them into something Jon wanted to hear. This gives us insight into her mistakes, guides us away from trusting Melisandre's interpretations and from making the same mistakes.

The next piece of the vision we get is small but we can't leave anything out.

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“The girl,” she said. “A girl in grey on a dying horse. Jon Snow’s sister.” Who else could it be? She was racing to him for protection, that much Melisandre had seen clearly. (ADWD Melisandre I)

Whoever this girl is, she is racing to Jon Snow for protection. Due to Melisandre's Arya-bias and her apparent line of reasoning here, (Who else could it be?) I'm going to assume "sister" is not part of the vision itself but rather part of her interpretation. And we do not trust her interpretation. Here is our list of criteria so far.

• Racing to Jon Snow for protection
• A girl in grey, grey as ash
• On a dying horse
• Fleeing from a marriage they have made for her
• Even as I watched she crumbled and blew away

A common occurrence with prophecies in the books is that they are interpreted incorrectly, especially when the interpreter is being hasty with the interpretation. So we should be wary of hasty interpretations.

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Did your fires show you where to find this girl?”

“I saw water. Deep and blue and still, with a thin coat of ice just forming on it. It seemed to go on and on forever.”

“Long Lake. What else did you see around this girl?”

“Hills. Fields. Trees. A deer, once. Stones. She is staying well away from villages. When she can she rides along the bed of little streams, to throw hunters off her trail.”

He frowned. “That will make it difficult. She was coming north, you said. Was the lake to her east or to her west?”

Melisandre closed her eyes, remembering. “West.”

“She is not coming up the kingsroad, then. Clever girl. There are fewer watchers on the other side, and more cover. And some hidey-holes I have used myself from time—” He broke off at the sound of a warhorn and rose swiftly to his feet. (ADWD Melisandre I)

That seems like a hasty interpretation. I don't doubt Mance's knowledge of the geography. Still, the only certainty any reasonable person can draw from Melisandre's description is that the body of water is some lake. It can't be an ocean because it is still and freezing.

Melisandre sees a freezing body of water to the west of the girl, placing her on the eastern shore. West is not a context sensitive direction like left or right. No matter if the girl is traveling north or south, the water is west of her.

There is some debate about how Melisandre could possibly know which direction the girl is traveling. This isn't a problem for three reasons. (1) The vision could have a source of light and the position of the sun would give away the direction. (2) Visions and dreams are impressionistic. In a dream, it isn't about what you see but what you feel. I may not see what is chasing me, but I feel a sense of knowing that something is chasing me. This dream feeling is supported in the text.

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They thought they were hunting her, she knew with all the strange sharp certainty of dreams, but they were wrong. (ASOS Arya I)

Maybe the vision feels northward bound.

(3) Either way, "north" is a re-telling of the vision that could conflict with the original telling. We have to leave it out. The original telling is "Coming here, to you." The girl in grey will be traveling whichever direction she needs to in order to reach Jon at Castle Black. North, south, east, west, up, down, or anything inbetween.

Let's update the list.

• Water deep blue still. Thin coat of ice just forming on it. Seemed to go on forever. West of the girl.
• There are hills fields trees stones streams villages. A deer once. Staying away from villages.
• Racing to Jon Snow for protection
• A girl in grey, grey as ash
• On a dying horse
• Fleeing from a marriage they have made for her
• Even as I watched she crumbled and blew away

If a prophecy is well written, we will not be able to solve it by taking all of its meanings at face value. Just like a riddle, its use of language is often designed to play against our expectations of language. For example, when we read "Racing to Jon Snow for protection" we naturally think of all the girls in need of Jon Snow's protection. However, if we suppose that Jon Snow is the one in need of protection, now we're in the right frame of mind for solving prophecy - even if that line of thinking leads us to a dead end.

When playing a game of prophecy, a common trap that characters and readers fall into is that we change the prophecy over time. The characters will communicate the prophecy back and forth, making assumptions, additions and subtractions until the reader begins to do it too. Bits like "just forming on it" are forgotten based on a sensible conclusion or for the sake of brevity. Pieces that seem irrelevant like "even as I watched" and "they have made for her" and "once" are easy to dismiss, but those minor details are vital in finding the solution. We and the characters have a tendency to warp the original wording of the prophecy. Gods and authors alike delight to use that against us. So it's extremely important that we protect the wording of the original telling from beginning to end of the game.

Due to this tendency, we should always trust the original telling of the vision more than re-tellings. Melisandre says that she has only seen the girl in grey once, and that line might be a clue that we should prioritize the original telling.

Another important thing to remember is the prophecy can only come from the prophet. In this case Melisandre. We won't worry about whether or not the girl in grey is staying away from the King's Road because that comment came from Mance Rayder. The King's Road isn't part of the prophecy.

Above is our checklist for finding the identity of the girl in grey. Everything we need is listed there. Without further ado, let's dig into the details of every potential girl in grey.

The Search

[[ When we find the solution to a prophecy, we should feel as though we have just reached the end of a scavenger hunt or found the solution to a riddle that we have been pondering for days or years. There should be a feeling of revelation or accomplishment and I try to be uncompromising with that expectation. ]]

Alys Karstark

Alys Karstark is the first person to almost satisfy the prophecy. Here is her arrival at Castle Black.

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“Ty and Dannel came on her two leagues south of Mole’s Town. They were chasing down some wildlings who scampered off down the kingsroad. Brought them back as well, but then they come on the girl. She’s highborn, m’lord, and she’s been asking for you.”

“How many with her?” He moved to his basin, splashed water on his face. Gods, but he was tired.

“None, m’lord. She come alone. Her horse was dying under her. All skin and ribs it was, lame and lathered. They cut it loose and took the girl for questioning.”

A grey girl on a dying horse. Melisandre’s fires had not lied, it would seem. But what had become of Mance Rayder and his spearwives? “Where is the girl now?”

“Maester Aemon’s chambers, m’lord.” The men of Castle Black still called it that, though by now the old maester should be warm and safe in Oldtown. “Girl was blue from the cold, shivering like all get out, so Ty wanted Clydas to have a look at her.” (ADWD Jon IX)

The way Jon thinks that the prophecy is fulfilled seems to me like a hasty interpretation. Much like Melisandre and Mance Rayder, Jon is jumping to a conclusion.

After Alys Karstark arrives at Castle Black, both Jon and Melisandre consider the vision satisfied.

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“Daggers in the dark. I know. You will forgive my doubts, my lady. A grey girl on a dying horse, fleeing from a marriage, that was what you said.”

“I was not wrong.”

“You were not right. Alys is not Arya.”

“The vision was a true one. It was my reading that was false. I am as mortal as you, Jon Snow. All mortals err.” (ADWD Jon X)

[[ Both Jon and Melisandre have already warped the words of the prophecy by referring to her as the grey girl. The original wording is the girl in grey. It's a natural thing to do and I was doing it myself for a long time. We have to be diligent and check ourselves constantly on the wording of the prophecy.

As of ADWD and TWOW sample chapters, all of the candidates for the girl in grey are missing parts of the prophecy. I think we can expect that to be the case until the series is entirely finished. Martin plays his cards close to the chest when it comes to mysteries. Though Melisandre has her vision in the 5th book, this puzzle is a tapestry that weaves into threads from every book before it and likely every book to come after it. ]]

Alys Karstark is a girl who was riding a dying horse and fleeing from a marriage to her cousin Cregan Karstark. She does ask Jon for protection. The path from Karhold to Castle Black could place a body of still water, Long Lake, to her west. I don't know much about deer in the winter, but I don't see any reason why there wouldn't be trees, streams, stones, villages and so on. Alys almost fits the vision, but she isn't grey as ash. She's specifically described as blue here. Her hair is brown, her eyes are blue-grey, and her clothes are black. The Karstark arms aren't grey but a white sunburst on black. Alys hasn't crumbled and blown away. That doesn't mean she couldn't in the future, but let's keep searching. Alys is 5/7 for the vision and therefore either incorrect or incomplete.

[[ We gave Alys Karstark credit for the water part of the prophecy because her likely route could have placed Long Lake to her west. We don't actually know that it did. This is what I call an allowance. However, we made many more allowances than just that. Long Lake's depth, blueness, and stillness are missing textual support. We gave Alys credit for the "deer once" because it's logical that she might have encountered a deer once, but we don't know for sure that she actually has. She may have encountered several deer or none. The solution to a prophecy will never force us to make these allowances. ]]

Jeyne Poole

Alys is thought by many to be a red herring. Jeyne Poole makes sense in many ways. Melisandre mistakes the girl in grey for Arya Stark, and this may be a clue of Jeyne Poole because Jeyne is currently at Winterfell pretending to be Arya Stark. If we follow this clue, it connects Jeyne to the color grey because Theon notes often that Jeyne's eyes are the wrong color to be Arya Stark. Jeyne's eyes are brown and Arya's eyes are grey.

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Jeyne, her name is Jeyne, and her eyes are the wrong color. (ADWD Theon I)

The connections between Jeyne Poole and the color grey don't stop there. Her clothes are the grey roughspun that were given to her by Squirrel, meant to disguise Jeyne as a washerwoman in order to escape Winterfell.

[[ Let's take a moment to talk about the journey of sleuthing that has led us to where we are now. In order to consider Jeyne as the girl in grey, the reader has first had to consider and discard Alys Karstark even when she was a 5/7 match. Some pieces of the puzzle fell into place easily for Jeyne Poole, such as fleeing from a marriage, but the color of her clothes are much harder to find. Clothes can change and we want to know the color of Jeyne's clothes at the time and place of the vision, so the search begins in [ADWD 54 Theon I] when they make their escape from Winterfell. We reread the chapter and get to the part with Jeyne to find her wearing wolf skins. Wolves can be grey but no color is mentioned. As the scene unfolds, Jeyne and the wildling Squirrel strip and swap clothes, but still no color is mentioned. Now we must find the color of Squirrel's clothes. Unless our memories are sharp, we will have to comb the chapter again to find the spot several pages earlier that mentions nonchalantly that all the wilding spearwives, including Squirrel, are wearing grey roughspun.

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When Squirrel returned, the other four were with her: gaunt grey-haired Myrtle, Willow Witch-Eye with her long black braid, Frenya of the thick waist and enormous breasts, Holly with her knife. Clad as serving girls in layers of drab grey roughspun, they wore brown woolen cloaks lined with white rabbit fur. (ADWD Theon I)

Phew! That shows us the extent to which the author is willing to go in order to hide clues to his prophecies. The care with which the clue was hidden could strongly indicate that we're on the right track. However, the clothes are not only grey. They are also brown and white. While it is tempting to settle with a near match, we have to resist the urge. ]]

Additionally, the husband that Jeyne is fleeing from happens to own a hound named Grey Jeyne. There is a little bit of grey on the arms of House Poole but not enough to matter, in my opinion. House Poole's arms are a blue plate on white with a grey tressure.

Jeyne [Spoilers TWOW] matches the "crumbled and blew away" part of the vision because the tip of her nose has gone black with frostbite. Her escort thinks that she will lose that part of her nose soon. It's such a small part of her body that it doesn't match the prophecy well enough for me, personally. What Melisandre described seems to imply something significant such as death or transformation, but I'll digress. The frostbite works with the prophecy. Jeyne and Theon arrive at Stannis's camp and Stannis sends Jeyne "Arya" Poole with an escort to Jon at Castle Black. We will have to wait and see if she arrives on a dying horse, but it seems likely considering the poor state of Stannis's army. The wilderness hills fields trees deer stones streams and villages match well enough with the vision. It remains to be seen if the escort will avoid villages or if a freezing lake will be west of her. Jon plans to send Arya across the sea to keep her safe, which could come to match the "blew away" part of the prophecy. Jeyne is 5/7 for the vision and looking hopeful.

[[ Like before, Jeyne required us to make allowances and assumptions for certain parts of the prophecy, and that is a bad sign. We cannot say for certain that she actually did encounter hills, fields, trees, stones, streams, and a deer once unless they appear in the text. We don't know for certain that she was avoiding villages because the text never told us that she was avoiding villages, even though it is entirely reasonable to assume that a runaway would avoid villages. From now on I won't stop to point out allowances. They are identifiable by a lack of exact or synonymous verbiage used in the prophecy. ]]

Asha Greyjoy

Asha Greyjoy's name fulfills one part of the vision itself. She's a girl as Grey as Ash fleeing from her marriage to Erik Ironmaker. Asha wasn't present for the wedding ceremony, but her uncle Euron was kind enough to substitute her with a seal.

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Tris Botley said that the Crow's Eye had used a seal to stand in for her at her wedding. "I hope Erik did not insist on a consummation," she'd said. (ADWD The Wayward Bride)

[Spoilers TWOW] Asha is captured by Stannis and held captive at the crofter's village, so it wouldn't be fair to say she's avoiding villages. It remains to be seen where Asha will go next. Maybe there is a dying horse, a Castle Black, and some crumbling in her future. The crofter's village has two frozen lakes, but they aren't west of Asha. Asha is actually on top of a lake, ice fishing.

Her hair is black and her eyes unknown. The Greyjoy sigil is a golden Kraken on black. Asha is 2/7 for the vision.

[[ The reason we check everyone's sigil, hair, and eye color is because Martin loves to use heraldry to symbolize people. Lannisters are called lions, Starks are wolves, and the characters frequently refer to these affiliations as if they were talking about animals.

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"You found a body?"

"We found parts of many bodies. The wolves were there before us . . . the four-legged sort, but they showed scant reverence for their two-legged kin. (AFFC The Kraken's Daughter)

He has been known on occassion to use hair and eye color symbolically too. ]]

Shireen Baratheon

Shireen Baratheon's greyscale makes her an interesting candidate. The greyscale side of her face matches her with the color grey. The afflicted flesh stiffens, calcifies, cracks and is described as mottled black and grey.

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The child had her lord father's square jut of jaw and her mother's unfortunate ears, along with a disfigurement all her own, the legacy of the bout of greyscale that had almost claimed her in the crib. Across half one cheek and well down her neck, her flesh was stiff and dead, the skin cracked and flaking, mottled black and grey and stony to the touch. (ACOK Prologue)

If the stories of greyscale are true, we can see how she might crumble and blow away. However, the spread of her greyscale was stopped many years ago. She's neither riding a dying horse nor fleeing from a marriage. Melisandre sees Shireen on a regular basis and should have recognized her in the vision. Even if her face is obscured, I would expect Melisandre to recognize Shireen's size, shape, or profile. Since Shireen is at Castle Black, she isn't riding along streams, through fields, avoiding villages, racing to Jon for protection, or any of the rest. Shireen is 1/7 for the vision.

Val

Val has been put forth as the girl in grey. Her eyes are grey, though admittedly they change color to blue. She wears various cloaks, one of which is a grey bearskin cloak. Another is white and another is brown salted with grey. Jon protects Val while she helps deliver Dalla's baby, but Val is never "racing to Jon Snow for protection." Stannis tries to arrange marriages for Val but she doesn't flee from them. She agrees to marry a kneeler if Mance could live.

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"Is it Mance? Val begged the king to spare him. She said she'd let some kneeler marry her and never slit his throat if only Mance could live. (ADWD Jon II)

Melisandre knows Val and should have recognized her in the vision. Jon sends Val north to bring peace terms to Tormund. Her horse is perfectly healthy except for a missing eye. The only water that Val would have passed are rivers not large enough to match the vision's water that "seemed to go on forever." The terrain could match but there aren't many villages to avoid and we don't know that she was avoiding them. She hasn't crumbled and blown away yet. Val is 1/7 or 4/7 depending on how generous you want to be. There are a lot of half matches.

Lyanna Stark

Lyanna Stark is a creative idea because it sets the vision far in the past. Thoros is a red priest and Edric Dayne says that Thoros can see visions of the past, so it follows that Melisandre can see the past too. It matches on both a practical and thematic level with the way Melisandre mistakes the girl in grey for Arya because Arya is sometimes compared to Lyanna.

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"Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. 'The wolf blood,' my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, (AGOT Arya II)

"You ride like a northman, milady," Harwin said when he'd drawn them to a halt. "Your aunt was the same. Lady Lyanna. (ASOS Arya III)

The familial relationship could explain why Melisandre mistakes Jon's mother for his sister. All of the Stark girls fit with the color grey because House Stark's sigil is a running grey direwolf on an ice-white field. The body of water would be the God's Eye, though I don't know if it was west of her or not. The marriage she is fleeing from would be to Robert Baratheon. However, she can't be racing to Jon Snow for protection because Jon wasn't born yet.

When we consider God's Eye as the body of water in the vision, we begin to notice that God's Eye is an overwhelming match with the vision.

I saw water. Deep and blue and still. It seemed to go on and on forever. Hills. Fields. Trees. Stones.

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To the east, Gods Eye was a sheet of sun-hammered blue that filled half the world. Some days, as they made their slow way up the muddy shore (Gendry wanted no part of any roads, and even Hot Pie and Lommy saw the sense in that), Arya felt as though the lake were calling her. She wanted to leap into those placid blue waters, to feel clean again, to swim and splash and bask in the sun. (ACOK Arya V)

Every day they marched, and every night she said her names, until finally the trees thinned and gave way to a patchwork landscape of rolling hills, meandering streams, and sunlit fields, where the husks of burnt holdfasts thrust up black as rotten teeth.(ACOK Arya VI)

God's Eye's water and surrounding landscape don't require us to make assumptions or allowances. The author showed us the lake in detail using the same words of the prophecy or synonyms.

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When she glimpsed the lake ahead between houses and trees, Arya put her knees into her horse, galloping past Woth and Gendry. She burst out onto the grassy sward beside the pebbled shore. The setting sun made the tranquil surface of the water shimmer like a sheet of beaten copper. It was the biggest lake she had ever seen, with no hint of a far shore. She saw a rambling inn to her left, built out over the water on heavy wooden pilings. To her right, a long pier jutted into the lake, and there were other docks farther east, wooden fingers reaching out from the town. But the only boat in view was an upside-down rowboat abandoned on the rocks beneath the inn, its bottom thoroughly rotted out. "They're gone," Arya said, dejected. What would they do now? (ACOK Arya IV)

Gendry suggested building a raft to cross God's Eye and it's described as deep.

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Yoren looked thoughtful. "Lake's too deep to pole across (ACOK 14 Arya IV)

There were dozens of mentions of stones and trees during Arya's chapters near God's Eye, but here are two. Arya climbed a tree and she buried a dead body using stones.

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She watched from the tree for a long time (ACOK Arya V)

They buried him under a mound of stones (ACOK Arya V)

The descriptions of God's Eye match so well with the vision that it serves as a great indication for those of us playing the game that we might be on the right track. So far, we haven't had to find any tricky meaning in the words of the prophecy.

The Rules

We've come a long way, so let's stop for a moment to talk about prophecy in fantasy. I sometimes call prophecy a game or a puzzle because that's essentially its purpose for the reader. It's a fun mystery that the author meant for us to try to solve. Martin calls them puzzles all the time. They are meant to enhance a great story for those of us who like to solve mysteries and predict the story, but participation shouldn't be required in order to enjoy the books.

I think that's the case with A Song of Ice and Fire. The books are perfectly enjoyable without taking part in these wild goose chases. When we embark on a wild goose chase, we enter into an implicit agreement with the author that if we invest ourselves into solving the mystery, it will be worth it. That's his simple and singular promise to us.

Though the reader is motivated by a yearning to predict or find out what happens next, the value in prophecy as a literary device is not in predicting the ending. If the readers solve the puzzle too soon, we may ruin the ending for ourselves. Make no mistake, writers take a great risk when they play with prophecy. They're giving away an ending in code and then betting on their own skill as a writer to conceal the clues well enough that the most observant readers won't be able to solve it until the reveal is imminent. These stakes make the game interesting for both parties, especially since the advent of the internet.

The value of prophecy is in the satisfaction we feel when we find a clue. I don't want to rob anybody of that satisfaction and it's the reason I tried to structure this essay as an organic investigation rather than a bullet point list of solutions. If Martin cheats by outright lying to us, it will not feel satisfying and worth it. We will feel cheated. Martin will try everything in his power to mislead us, but resisting those misdirections is part of the game. So here are the rules of prophecy that the author must follow. (More like guidelines, really.)

1. The prophecy must come true.
2. Every clue must be available to the reader before the solution is revealed.
3. The original telling of the prophecy cannot lie. The author can make it as obscure and confusing as he wants, but it must be completely true in some way. Additionally, the reader will not have to decipher what the original telling was. It will be made explicit at least once.

Without these rules, the puzzle wouldn't be solvable to begin with and victory would never have been a possibility for the reader. That's no puzzle at all.

The Mistake

Despite my attempts to resist misdirection, I made a big error at the beginning of this journey. Based on a sensible conclusion, I dropped a piece of the prophecy. Due to Melisandre's apparent bias towards Arya, I subtracted something from the original telling. The funny thing about bias is that it doesn't necessarily mean the person is wrong. Here's the original telling again.

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"I have seen your sister in my fires, fleeing from this marriage they have made for her. Coming here, to you. A girl in grey on a dying horse, I have seen it plain as day. It has not happened yet, but it will." (ADWD Jon VI)

So let's update the list of criteria and go from there.

• Jon Snow's sister.
• Water deep blue still. Thin coat of ice just forming on it. Seemed to go on forever. West of the girl.
• There are hills fields trees stones streams villages. A deer once. Staying away from villages.
• Racing to Jon Snow for protection.
• A girl in grey, grey as ash
• On a dying horse
• Fleeing from a marriage they have made for her
• Even as I watched she crumbled and blew away

We had a lot of success with God's Eye, so we should follow that lead. Most of the descriptions of God's Eye happened in Arya's chapters and Arya is Jon Snow's sister, so let's continue with Arya.

Arya Stark

Arya's journey at God's Eye took her up the eastern shore of the lake, so the lake was west of her and matches the vision.

Racing to Jon Snow for protection

While it's true that Arya was nowhere near Jon Snow, she did think about him quite a lot. We might be able to make a case that Arya is "racing to Jon snow for protection."

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 . . . but it was Jon Snow she thought of most. She wished somehow they could come to the Wall before Winterfell, so Jon might muss up her hair and call her "little sister." She'd tell him, "I missed you," and he'd say it too at the very same moment, the way they always used to say things together. She would have liked that. She would have liked that better than anything. (ACOK Arya I)

Yoren was going back to the Wall and he promised to drop off Arya at Winterfell. She would rather go to the Wall first.

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"When you ride back to the Wall, would you bring Jon a letter if I wrote one?" She wished Jon were here right now. He'd believe her about the dungeons and the fat man with the forked beard and the wizard in the steel cap. (AGOT Arya III)

The moment Arya sensed things beginning to go awry in King's Landing, she looked to Jon for rescue.

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Everything Syrio Forel had ever taught her vanished in a heartbeat. In that instant of sudden terror, the only lesson Arya could remember was the one Jon Snow had given her, the very first.

She stuck him with the pointy end, driving the blade upward with a wild, hysterical strength. (AGOT Arya IV)

When Arya was most afraid, Jon's words protected her.

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"NO!" Arya and Gendry both said, at the exact same instant. Hot Pie quailed a little. Arya gave Gendry a sideways look. He said it with me, like Jon used to do, back in Winterfell. She missed Jon Snow the most of all her brothers. (ASOS Arya I)

She thinks of Jon fondly and often.

When Arya met Edric Dayne, she considered going to the Wall to see Jon.

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"He's with the Night's Watch on the Wall." Maybe I should go to the Wall instead of Riverrun. Jon wouldn't care who I killed or whether I brushed my hair . . . "Jon looks like me, even though he's bastard-born. He used to muss my hair and call me 'little sister.'" Arya missed Jon most of all. Just saying his name made her sad. "How do you know about Jon?" (ASOS Arya VIII)

When Arya was with Sandor Clegane, she suggested going to the Wall to meet Jon.

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"I know where we could go," Arya said. She still had one brother left. Jon will want me, even if no one else does. He'll call me "little sister" and muss my hair. It was a long way, though, and she didn't think she could get there by herself. She hadn't even been able to reach Riverrun. "We could go to the Wall." (ASOS Arya XII)

Before she set sail for Braavos, she tried to convince the captain to take her to the Wall to see Jon.

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"I want to go north, to the Wall. Here, I can pay." She gave him the purse. "The Night's Watch has a castle on the sea." (ASOS Arya XIII)

Her home was gone, her parents dead, and all her brothers slain but Jon Snow on the Wall. That was where she had wanted to go. She told the captain as much, but even the iron coin did not sway him. (AFFC Arya I)

During her training at the House of Black and White, she tried to reject her real identity but she couldn't. These are the reasons why.

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Needle was too small to be a proper sword, it was hardly more than a toy. She'd been a stupid little girl when Jon had it made for her. "It's just a sword," she said, aloud this time . . .

. . . but it wasn't.

Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell's grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan's stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow's smile. He used to mess my hair and call me "little sister," she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. (AFFC Arya II)

In Braavos, "Blind Beth" misses her brother.

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But they were all dead now, even Arya, everyone but her half-brother, Jon. Some nights she heard talk of him, in the taverns and brothels of the Ragman's Harbor. The Black Bastard of the Wall, one man had called him. Even Jon would never know Blind Beth, I bet. That made her sad.

Most of all, we're reminded frequently that Jon used to mess her hair and call her "little sister." While it's true that Arya may not be Jon's sister by blood, the text supports the "sister" part of the prophecy by reiterating the word "sister."

[[ There is a staggering amount of support for this part of the vision, but it's different than the kind of support we've been looking for. It spans across multiple books. Every book, in fact. Some of these events are separated by in-story years and leagues.

The case for Arya is proving quite strong, but in order to continue with it, we're forced to discard a preconception about the vision that we have held from the first time we heard it. Well I can't speak for you, but it's one I certainly held. I've been trying to fit all the pieces of the vision into one picturesque moment of a girl in grey on a dying horse riding past a lake, but the clues may be demonstrating that it is acceptible for the solution to span the entire map, timeline, and books. It's possible that the pieces of the vision don't all occur at the same time or in the same place, but rather represent symbollically the solution and her whole journey. ]]

Thin coat of ice just forming on it

The descriptions of God's Eye are missing the "thin coat of ice" from the vision. If pieces of the vision can occur at different times in Arya's story, as was the case with "Jon for protection," then perhaps the "thin coat of ice" happened later in Arya's story.

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The world grew ever greyer as they drew near to Harrenhal. They rode beneath slate skies, beside waters that shone old and cold as a sheet of beaten steel. (AFFC 27 Jaime III)

While Jaime was traveling as a captive of Brienne, they took a boat down a river that flows into God's Eye. We can see the water was already getting colder, but this isn't exactly God's Eye and "cold" isn't synonymous with "ice."

Jaime went to Riverrun and we saw that the riverlands were blanketed in snow.

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Instead of closing the shutters he threw them wide. The yard below was covered by a thin white blanket, growing thicker even as he watched. The merlons on the battlements wore white cowls. The flakes fell silently, a few drifting in the window to melt upon his face. Jaime could see his own breath.

Snow in the riverlands. If it was snowing here, it could well be snowing on Lannisport as well, and on King's Landing. Winter is marching south, and half our granaries are empty. Any crops still in the fields were doomed. There would be no more plantings, no more hopes of one last harvest. He found himself wondering what his father would do to feed the realm, before he remembered that Tywin Lannister was dead.

When morning broke the snow was ankle deep, and deeper in the godswood, where drifts had piled up under the trees. (AFFC Jaime VII)

God's Eye is in the riverlands but we still need to see ice on God's Eye before we can call the vision satisfied. This snow wasn't observable by Arya, either.

During Arya's training in Braavos at The House of Black and White, she was expected to return to the kindly man regularly with a list of three new things she has learned while undercover. The information could be anything as long as it was new, and some of her answers included tricks, secrets, and tales from the lips of sailors. Sometimes she spied the secret habits of a citizen or heard word of the happenings in Westeros.

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"Better. And what else do you know?"

It is snowing in the riverlands, in Westeros, she almost said. But he would have asked her how she knew that, and she did not think that he would like her answer. (ADWD The Blind Girl)

Arya couldn't use this piece of information as one of her three because the kindly man can always tell when she's lying. If he asked her how she knew that, she would have had to lie.

Arya learned that it's snowing in the riverlands while she was asleep.

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Her nights were lit by distant stars and the shimmer of moonlight on snow, but every dawn she woke to darkness.

She opened her eyes and stared up blind at the black that shrouded her, her dream already fading. So beautiful. She licked her lips, remembering. The bleating of the sheep, the terror in the shepherd's eyes, the sound the dogs had made as she killed them one by one, the snarling of her pack. Game had become scarcer since the snows began to fall, but last night they had feasted.

Nymeria is still roaming the riverlands and Arya unknowingly wargs into her at night. Through the eyes of Nymeria, Arya saw snow in the riverlands. It isn't ice on God's Eye, however, so I consider this part of the vision incorrect or incomplete.

A girl in grey A girl as grey as ash

Arya's eyes are Stark grey. The Stark sigil is a grey direwolf. However, we're not looking for a girl who is grey. She needs to be in grey to match the prophecy.

During Arya's time at Harrenhal, her bold tongue got her into trouble.

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"I'd sooner tend the horses." Arya liked horses, and maybe if she was in the stables she'd be able to steal one and escape.

[...] [slap]

"Harra, I believe we should give this one to Weese."

"If you think so, Amabel." They gave her a shift of grey roughspun wool and a pair of ill-fitting shoes, and sent her off. (ACOK Arya VI)

They assigned her to the cruel master Weese and provided her with the common servant garb of grey roughspun wool. These were the only clothes Arya owned and she wore them during her time at Harrenhal.

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On the road Arya had felt like a sheep, but Harrenhal turned her into a mouse. She was grey as a mouse in her scratchy wool shift, and like a mouse she kept to the crannies and crevices and dark holes of the castle, scurrying out of the way of the mighty. (ACOK Arya VII)

The author reminded us four chapters in a row that Arya was wearing the grey shift and how its color reflects "Weasel's" identity.

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A shove sent her stumbling to the floor. Her hem caught on a loose nail in the splintered wooden bench and ripped as she fell. "You'll mend that before you sleep," Weese announced as he pulled the last bit of meat off the capon. When he was finished he sucked his fingers noisily, and threw the bones to his ugly spotted dog.

"Weese," Arya whispered that night as she bent over the tear in her shift. "Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling," she said, calling a name every time she pushed the bone needle through the undyed wool. (ACOK Arya VIII)

Arya used her third wish to name Jaqen Hagar, promising to unname him if he would help free the captive northmen.

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The Lorathi brought the blade to Arya still red with heart’s blood and wiped it clean on the front of her shift. “A girl should be bloody too. This is her work.” (ACOK Arya IX)

Arya and Jaqen freed the prisoners and won the castle using Weasel soup.

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The lord waved a hand. “Make her presentable,” he said to no one in particular, “and make certain she knows how to pour wine without spilling it.”

Roose Bolton demanded to know Weasel's real name. Arya told Roose that her name is really Nan. Roose rewarded her for the Weasel soup stunt with a promotion - from servant to cupbearer. She shed her grey rodent identity "Weasel" and her grey clothes with it. Roose ordered no one in particular to change the girl's clothes and Arya reappeared wearing a tunic adorned with House Bolton's flayed man sigil.

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[...] the flayed man on the front of Arya’s tunic. (ACOK Arya X)

So the color grey might be able to represent Arya's time at Harrenhal. But the grey representations continue in Braavos as well. During Arya's time in Braavos, she is a girl in grey because Braavos is a grey city.

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Braavos is all stone, a grey city in a green sea. (AFFC Arya I)

streets of grey stone houses (AFFC Arya I)

a massive grey stone roadway (AFFC Arya I)

windowless temple of dark grey stone (AFFC Arya I)

fog covered the ground like a frayed grey blanket (AFFC Arya II)

The chill off the grey stone walls gave Cat gooseprickles. (AFFC Cat of the Canals)

passing under the immense grey arches of the sweetwater river (AFFC Cat of the Canals)

a second cat appeared, a sad, bedraggled grey thing with a stub tail (AFFC Cat of the Canals)

When at last day came to Braavos, it came grey and dark and overcast. (ADWD The Ugly Little Girl)

Even on a cold grey day like this, the harbor was a busy place. (ADWD The Ugly Little Girl)

[Spoilers TWOW]

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Half-light filled the room, grey and gloomy. (TWOW Mercy)

If the fog was thick there was nothing to see but grey (TWOW Mercy)

In the fog all cats are grey (TWOW Mercy)

The fog opened before her like a tattered grey curtain (TWOW Mercy)

Another way that Arya is a girl in grey is that all throughout her story, she frequently has wolf dreams when she sleeps.

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Then a grey blur flashed past her, and suddenly Nymeria was there (AGOT Sansa I)

Nymeria's fur is grey.

A deer, once.

There were a few deer in Arya's story, and that doesn't sit well with me. There should only be one deer as the vision specifies.

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Yoren turned to Koss and Kurz, who'd been taken as poachers. He would send them ahead of the column, into the woods, and come dusk they would be back with a deer slung between them on a pole (ACOK Arya III)

A hunting party returned from the wood, carrying a deer’s carcass slung from a pole. (ACOK Arya V)

These two were dead but a deer is a deer, I guess.

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She chased them as she had often chased a red deer through the trees (ASOS Arya XII)

Arya was having a wolf dream here. The deer was just a memory.

The search for the deer is yielding too many deer, so we need to try to find new meaning in the words of the prophecy. We know the author likes to use heraldry to represent people, so the deer in the vision might be the stag on the sigil of House Baratheon. A stag is a male deer and Arya has been traveling in the company of one male Baratheon bastard named Gendry.

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"You don't. You stink." Arya shoved him back against the anvil and made to run, but Gendry caught her arm. She stuck a foot between his legs and tripped him, but he yanked her down with him, and they rolled across the floor of the smithy. He was very strong, but she was quicker. Every time he tried to hold her still she wriggled free and punched him. Gendry only laughed at the blows, which made her mad. He finally caught both her wrists in one hand and started to tickle her with the other, so Arya slammed her knee between his legs, and wrenched free. Both of them were covered in dirt, and one sleeve was torn on her stupid acorn dress. "I bet I don't look so nice now," she shouted. (ASOS Arya IV)

When she can she rides along the bed of little streams, to throw hunters off her trail.

Arya, Gendry, and Hot Pie escaped Harrenhal with horses and a map. They had some difficulty trying to match the rivers with the ones on the map.

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“There’s miles and miles before we reach the Trident,” she said. “We won’t be there for days. This must be some different river, one of these, see.” She showed him some of the thinner blue lines the mapmaker had painted in, each with a name painted in fine script beneath it. “The Darry, the Greenapple, the Maiden... here, this one, the Little Willow, it might be that.”

Hot Pie looked from the line to the river. “It doesn’t look so little to me.”
Gendry was frowning as well. “The one you’re pointing at runs into that other one, see.”

“The Big Willow,” she read.

“The Big Willow, then. See, and the Big Willow runs into the Trident, so we could follow the one to the other, but we’d need to go downstream, not up. Only if this river isn’t the Little Willow, if it’s this other one here...”

“Rippledown Rill,” Arya read.

“See, it loops around and flows down toward the lake, back to Harrenhal.” He traced the line with a finger.

Hot Pie’s eyes grew wide. “No! They’ll kill us for sure.”

“We have to know which river this is,” declared Gendry, in his stubbornest voice. “We have to know.” (ASOS Arya I)

Hot Pie echos my initial thoughts. These "streams" don't look so little to me. They're rivers, aren't they? As it turns out, the way to measure the difference between a stream and a river is in how it can be crossed.

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Generally, the difference is size: you can step over a brook, jump over a creek, wade across a stream, and swim across a river. (Google)

We have better ways to measure and define streams and rivers in the modern day, but maybe this practical metric is how people do it in the story. Arya waded across each stream on horseback and the water only came up to the horse's belly.

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The river, whatever its name, was running brown and fast, and the deep part in the middle came up past the horse’s belly. Water filled her boots, but she pressed in her heels all the same and climbed out on the far bank. (ASOS Arya I)

Horses are 5-6 feet tall, so these streams can certainly be waded by people on foot too.

The group was in distress because they were being hunted by Vargo Hoat's group of sellswords, the Bloody Mummers.

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If they didn’t want to follow, they could find Riverrun on their own, though more likely the Mummers would just find them. (ASOS Arya I)

They were looking for the Trident so they could follow it to Riverrun. Arya has seen the Trident on her journey to King's Landing and she knows how big it is.

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Arya chewed her lip. “I don’t think this is the Trident.” The river was swollen by the rain, but even so it couldn’t be much more than thirty feet across. She remembered the Trident as being much wider. “It’s too little to be the Trident,” she told them, “and we didn’t come far enough.” (ASOS Arya I)

Arya went to sleep and her wolf dream began. When she saw the Bloody Mummers, the author gave us the other word we're looking for.

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They thought they were hunting her, she knew with all the strange sharp certainty of dreams, but they were wrong. She was hunting them. (ASOS Arya I)

While those streams and hunters might match pretty well, the next ones are better matches because the words of the prophecy appear right in the descriptions.    

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That day Arya quickened their pace, keeping the horses to a trot as long as she dared, and sometimes spurring to a gallop when she spied a flat stretch of field before them. That was seldom enough, though; the ground was growing hillier as they went. The hills were not high, nor especially steep, but there seemed to be no end of them, and they soon grew tired of climbing up one and down the other, and found themselves following the lay of the land, along streambeds and through a maze of shallow wooded valleys where the trees made a solid canopy overhead. (ASOS Arya I)

And Arya is certainly "riding along" them.

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We've been going south all day, she wanted to tell him. And yesterday too, when we were riding along that streambed. (ASOS Arya II)

Later, Arya tried to escape the Brotherhood without Banners and encountered more streambeds to ride along.

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"He's just a stupid liar." Arya left the trail, leapt a rotten log and splashed across a streambed, ignoring the shouts of the outlaws behind her. (ASOS Arya VIII)

She was captured by Sandor Clegane, and Sandor had to ride up the middle of a stream to throw the Brotherhood off their trail.

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There's no way across, she thought. Lord Beric will catch us for sure. Clegane had pushed his big black stallion hard, doubling back thrice to throw off pursuit, once even riding half a mile up the center of a swollen stream . . . but Arya still expected to see the outlaws every time she looked back. (ASOS Arya IX)

If we suppose that these events are the "streams" and "hunters" in the vision, wouldn't Melisandre have seen Sandor on the horse beside her? Does it matter that Sandor, not Arya, was holding the reins? The vision doesn't exclude the possibility that the girl in grey was riding double, so it's a match.

[[ We have another overwhelming match, but we've had to discard two more preconceptions about the vision in order to find them. (1) That the girl in grey was riding alone. (2) That the girl in grey was piloting the horse. If Arya is the girl in grey, the vision continues to weave the literal with the symbolic. ]]

She is staying well away from villages

Arya was staying well away from villages during her time as a captive of Sandor Clegane.

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So she stayed with the Hound.

They rode every day, never sleeping twice in the same place, avoiding towns and villages and castles as best they could. (ASOS Arya XII)

[[ Some pieces of the prophecy will appear in the text so literally and with such prevalence that they serve as grappling points for those of us playing the puzzle. They tell the reader "Hey, you might be on the right track. Keep going, but some of the pieces won't be as literal as this one." I think God's Eye was one of those grappling points, and this one might be another. ]]

On a dying horse

Sandor Clegane kidnapped Arya and they spent five chapters together in ASOS traveling through the riverlands on a horse named Stranger. The horse is black and shares a name with the Faith of the Seven's aspect of death.

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She held her tongue and sat stiff as the Hound turned the stallion's head and trotted along the ridgeline, following the river downstream. (ASOS Arya IX)

Stranger's color and temperment could represent an aspect of death very well. He's hostile towards everyone except Sandor.

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He was gentle as an old gelding with his master, but otherwise he had a temper as black as he was. She had never known a horse so quick to bite or kick. (ASOS Arya IX)

After Arya left Sandor for dead, Stranger showed up again at the Quiet Isle.

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You may have seen a big black stallion in our stables. That was his warhorse, Stranger. A blasphemous name. We prefer to call him Driftwood, as he was found beside the river. I fear he has his former master's nature. (AFFC Brienne VI)

Brother Narbert thought the horse was surely whelped in hell.

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The Seven send us blessings, and the Seven send us trials. Handsome he may be, but Driftwood was surely whelped in hell. When we sought to harness him to a plow he kicked Brother Rawney and broke his shinbone in two places. (AFFC Brienne VI)

"Dying" could be a symbolic representation of the stranger. The same way a tree where people are hanged might be called a hanging tree, a horse of death can be called a dying horse even though the horse is perfectly healthy. It plays on our expectation of language without requiring a leap in logic. Considering that Melisandre, the prophet, is not a follower of The Seven, it is understandable why a symbolic representation of The Seven's aspect of death might be interpreted as simply a dying horse.

Fleeing from this marriage they have made for her

At the House of Black and White, Arya was offered three different lives.

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Or if it is marriage and children you desire, tell me, and we shall find a husband for you. Some honest apprentice boy, a rich old man, a seafarer, whatever you desire."

She wanted none of that. Wordless, she shook her head. (AFFC Arya II)

One life in service to a merchant, one as a courtesan, and one of marriage. Maybe we can stretch her refusal to mean "fleeing," but we shouldn't have to. This marriage doesn't match the vision.

If we find new meaning in the words of the prophecy, perhaps the marriage doesn't need to involve Arya at all. The Red Wedding was a marriage from which Arya certainly fled. The logic works even though she wasn't the bride. However, the Red Wedding was not "made for her" in any sense of the words. In fact, Robb believes Arya is dead.

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"So you pray. Have you considered your sisters? What of their rights? I agree that the north must not be permitted to pass to the Imp, but what of Arya? By law, she comes after Sansa . . . your own sister, trueborn . . ."

". . . and dead. No one has seen or heard of Arya since they cut Father's head off. Why do you lie to yourself? Arya's gone, the same as Bran and Rickon (ASOS Catelyn V)

During Arya's time at Harrenhal, she met a boy named Elmar Frey. Elmar was Roose Bolton's squire.

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Elmar Frey was no older than she was, and short for his age besides. He had been rolling a barrel of sand across the uneven stone, and was red-faced from exertion. Arya went to help him. (ACOK Arya X)

In [AGOT Catelyn IX] Robb Stark split his army and bought passage to cross the bridge of House Frey at the Twins. As part of the pact sealed between Catelyn Stark and Walder Frey, they agreed that Robb would marry one of Walder's daughters, and Arya would marry Walder's youngest son Elmar.

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 "Also, if your sister Arya is returned to us safely, it is agreed that she will marry Lord Walder's youngest son, Elmar, when the two of them come of age."

Robb looked nonplussed. "Arya won't like that one bit." (AGOT Catelyn IX)

Arya and Elmar met at Harrenhal, though Arya didn't know that she was arranged to marry him. And Elmar thought she was a serving girl named Nan.

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"My princess," he sobbed. "We've been dishonored, Aenys says. There was a bird from the Twins. My lord father says I'll need to marry someone else, or be a septon."

A stupid princess, she thought, that's nothing to cry over. "My brothers might be dead," she confided.

Elmar gave her a scornful look. "No one cares about a serving girl's brothers."

It was hard not to hit him when he said that. "I hope your princess dies," she said, and ran off before he could grab her. (ACOK Arya X)

It happens quickly and without ceremony, but there is Arya running away from a person who could symbolize a "marriage they have made for her." Since Arya didn't know about the marriage arrangement, she wasn't fleeing from the marriage on purpose. The wording of the prophecy led us to believe that the marriage was the cause of the fleeing, though the wording doesn't exclude the possibility that it was an accident or a coincidence. Another preconception about the prophecy is shed.

Even as I watched she crumbled and blew away

At the House of Black and White, the kindly man tells Arya that she needs to get rid of Arya Stark's belongings if she intends to become no one.

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He picked up her silver fork. "This belongs to Arya of House Stark. All these things belong to her. There is no place for them here. There is no place for her. Hers is too proud a name, and we have no room for pride. We are servants here." (AFFC Arya II)

He explains to Arya what becoming a Faceless Man will cost her.

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He is trying to scare me away, Arya thought, the way he did with the worm. "I don't care about that."

"You should. Stay, and the Many-Faced God will take your ears, your nose, your tongue. He will take your sad grey eyes that have seen so much. He will take your hands, your feet, your arms and legs, your private parts. He will take your hopes and dreams, your loves and hates. Those who enter His service must give up all that makes them who they are. Can you do that?" He cupped her chin and gazed deep into her eyes, so deep it made her shiver. "No," he said, "I do not think you can."

Arya knocked his hand away. "I could if I wanted to." (AFFC Arya II)

This all seems to be a bit too much for Arya because she implies that she doesn't want to. Nevertheless, she proceeds to throw away her belongings.

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At the water's edge she stopped, the silver fork in hand. It was real silver, solid through and through. It's not my fork. It was Salty that he gave it to. She tossed it underhand, heard the soft plop as it sank below the water.

Her floppy hat went next, then the gloves. They were Salty's too. She emptied her pouch into her palm; five silver stags, nine copper stars, some pennies and halfpennies and groats. She scattered them across the water. Next her boots. They made the loudest splashes. Her dagger followed, the one she'd gotten off the archer who had begged the Hound for mercy. Her swordbelt went into the canal. Her cloak, tunic, breeches, smallclothes, all of it. All but Needle. (AFFC Arya II)

Maybe this is Arya's identity crumbling piece by piece as she throws her belongings into the water, but that's a stretch. We haven't seen the word "crumble" or anything close to it.

She hides Needle in a crack of stone outside the House of Black and White, and we see a word we're looking for.

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She padded up the steps as naked as her name day, clutching Needle. Halfway up, one of the stones rocked beneath her feet. Arya knelt and dug around its edges with her fingers. It would not move at first, but she persisted, picking at the crumbling mortar with her nails. Finally, the stone shifted. She grunted and got both hands in and pulled. A crack opened before her. (AFFC Arya II)

Arya isn't crumbling, so this isn't a match.

[[ This seems like a good place to talk about symbolism and degrees of removal. Ideally, we want to find a solution with zero degrees of removal. The God's Eye is a good example of a solution that didn't use any symbolism. It was a literal lake that was literally blue. That's the strongest solution we could hope to find. If it were a symbolic lake that was literally blue, such as a blue sigil of House Lake, I would still accept it as a satisfying solution. That's one degree of removal through symbolism.

In this case, the hiding place is literally crumbling. But remember, we're looking for a crumbling Arya not a crumbling hiding place.

Let's suppose that Needle is a symbolic Arya. I might accept a literal crumbling of a symbolic Arya (Needle crumbles) or a symbolic crumbling of a literal Arya (Identity loss), but I wouldn't accept a symbolic crumbling of a symbolic Arya (Needle's identity loss). What we have here is a literal crumbling of a literal hiding place of a symbolic Arya. It's two degrees removed from the words of the prophecy - once literally and once symbolically. It's unsatisfying because it is too far removed. ]]

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“Will you show me how to change my face?”

“If you wish.” He cupped her chin in his hand and turned her head. “Puff up your cheeks and stick out your tongue.”

Arya puffed up her cheeks and stuck out her tongue.

“There. Your face is changed.” (AFFC Arya II)

Arya constantly reveals her true motivations to the kindly man. She wants to learn how to do the cool face trick like Jaqen Hagar.

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"Why are you here, liar?"

"To serve. To learn. To change my face."

"First change your heart. The gift of the Many-Faced God is not a child's plaything. You would kill for your own purposes, for your own pleasures. Do you deny it?" (ADWD The Ugly Little Girl)

The kindly man explains the cost of becoming a Faceless Man again.

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"What price?"

"The price is you. The price is all you have and all you ever hope to have. We took your eyes and gave them back. Next we will take your ears, and you will walk in silence. You will give us your legs and crawl. You will be no one's daughter, no one's wife, no one's mother. Your name will be a lie, and the very face you wear will not be your own."

She almost bit her lip again, but this time she caught herself and stopped. My face is a dark pool, hiding everything, showing nothing. She thought of all the names that she had worn: Arry, Weasel, Squab, Cat of the Canals. She thought of that stupid girl from Winterfell called Arya Horseface. Names did not matter. "I can pay the price. Give me a face." (ADWD The Ugly Little Girl)

Both Arya and the reader begin to understand how literal this process will be. Arya passed the blind portion of the test, but next she will be deaf, then crawling, then barren.

The kindly man leads her down to the hall of faces and finally changes her face.

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The girl took a deep shuddering breath, and realized it was true. No one was choking her, no one was hitting her. Even so, her hand was shaking as she raised it to her face. Flakes of dried blood crumbled at the touch of her fingertips, black in the lantern light. She felt her cheeks, touched her eyes, traced the line of her jaw. "My face is still the same." (ADWD The Ugly Little Girl)

And Arya crumbled.

Arya has assumed many identities in the story by changing her name, clothes, behavior and other mundane things, but for the first time her identity changed through magic. Maybe that magic ended Melisandre's vision. Maybe that's why it blew away.

The Prophet

I think Arya as the girl in grey fits well with Melisandre's characterization. She considers herself very good at reading and interpreting the flames, but she seems to be wrong very often. However, she always hits some parts with striking accuracy but doesn't receive acknowledgement for them. Her correct interpretations are sometimes obscured from her point of view.

For example, Melisandre sees a vision of Renly smashing Stannis's forces beneath the walls of King's Landing, but Stannis believes that Renly's death has prevented that scenario from happening.

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Melisandre saw another day in her flames as well. A morrow where Renly rode out of the south in his green armor to smash my host beneath the walls of King's Landing. Had I met my brother there, it might have been me who died in place of him." (ACOK Davos II)

Loras's brother, Ser Garlan Tyrell, wears Renly's armor in the Battle of the Blackwater to make it appear that Renly's ghost has returned for vengeance against the kinslaying Stannis. But this fact never finds its way to Melisandre's ears. The tragedy in Melisandre's interpretations isn't that she's always wrong, it's that she doesn't know how terrifyingly right she is the first time.

Melisandre became apologetic to Jon and admitted defeat after the arrival of Alys Karstark.

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“I was not wrong.”

“You were not right. Alys is not Arya.”

“The vision was a true one. It was my reading that was false. I am as mortal as you, Jon Snow. All mortals err.” (ADWD Jon X)

Pressure from Jon and herself caused her to second-guess what she saw in the vision even though she was certain from the beginning that the girl in grey was Jon Snow's sister.

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“The girl,” she said. “A girl in grey on a dying horse. Jon Snow’s sister.” Who else could it be? (ADWD Melisandre I)

One way that characters and readers often misinterpret prophecy is that we simply aren't thinking big enough. Prophecies are presumably sent by a divine being and a god has a much wider gaze than mortals do. Melisandre alludes to this idea in a snarky manner towards Davos.

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"I have worshiped them all my life."

"All your life, Davos Seaworth? As well say it was so yesterday." She shook her head sadly. (ASOS Davos III)

To a god, a lifetime is a blip on the radar and that's reflected in the visions they send. Rivers look like little streams. A series of events that took place over years culminates into a single symbolic image of a girl in grey on a dying horse. The images of prophecy can be so dense with answers that they're impossible to decipher.

After the Hound captured Arya, she tried to leave a trail of breadcrumbs by marking trees.

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She had tried to help them by scratching her name on the trunks of trees when she went in the bushes to make water, but the fourth time she did it he caught her, and that was the end of that. It doesn't matter, Arya told herself, Thoros will find me in his flames. Only he hadn't. Not yet, anyway, and once they crossed the river . . . (ASOS Arya IX)

Thoros may not have found her in the flames, but maybe another red priest did.

As I say goodbye, I want to talk a little bit about flexibility. There were some parts where you may have noticed that I discarded an idea or solution because it didn't match well enough for me, personally. There is a lot of room for opinion when playing a prophecy. If something doesn't feel right to you then don't accept it. If something does then chase it to the ends of the earth. That's the only advice I can give on that front.

Arya's solutions feel right to me, but I know they won't feel right for everybody and that's okay. I'm not satisfied with the "ice" part so I still consider this prophecy unsolved. We may have to wait for more books before this prophecy is entirely solvable, but maybe more likely I am just missing some things. Even when all the books are finished, we may still disagree on the solution to prophecies and that's okay too. Arya is 7/8 for the vision. I hope it was fun and thanks for reading.

Credits, inspirations, references, and thanks (in no particular order):

Melisandre of Asshai by radiowesteros

Prophecies in ASoIaF by Radio Westeros

I think Val's husband is... by cantuse

Lyanna the Grey by cantuse

Grey Girl on a Dying Horse - Mel's Vision in the flames, did she get the right girl? by /u/DutchArya

Who is the "Grey girl" in Mel's vision: Alys, Jeyne, Sansa, Lyanna, Arya? by /u/DutchArya

/r/pureasoiaf

/r/asoiaf

The Girl in Grey: A New Interpretation by radiowesteros

A Search of Ice and Fire

Westeros.org

quartermaester.info Interactive Map

An overlooked red herring in the flames -My first girl in grey theory discussion

The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land by Diana Wynne Jones

[chrisdaw]

Gee, where have I heard this before. The grey and crumbling away represents greyscale which Arya will get. As Nymeria in the end had no choice but to join Garin. The dying horse is symbolic of disease.

Mel will be wrong though, she won't be fleeing to Jon from the marriage they make for her. She'll be fleeing the marriage Jon makes for her.

[rustythesmith]

13 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

Gee, where have I heard this before. The grey and crumbling away represents greyscale which Arya will get. As Nymeria in the end had no choice but to join Garin. The dying horse is symbolic of disease.

Mel will be wrong though, she won't be fleeing to Jon from the marriage they make for her. She'll be fleeing the marriage Jon makes for her.

So rather than finding solutions somewhere in the 5000 pages of the books, you make up your own future scenarios?

[Makk]

I actually have no problem with it being Alys Karstark. It depends what purpose you think the prophecy served the plot. GRRM leaves some prophecies as puzzles or things to reflect on later but I'm not convinced this one was ever intended that way. Rather, assuming it was Alys Karstark, it would serve the following purposes...

Blatantly show the reader that prophecies and visions are treacherous and can be misinterpreted

Show that Melisandre has power but is not omnipotent

Give Jon (another) reason to mistrust Mel but not in a straight forward manner (she did afterall see something)

Give a plot reason for Jon to let Mance go off looking for her (without sending him to Winterfell into direct conflict with the Boltons)

Now I don't think there needs to be, but I will admit there could be a secret second hidden purpose. The description of long lake is a bit odd because it is quite a roundabout way of getting from Karhold to Castle Black. It's possible that Alys was with the Karhold forces travelling to Winterfell and she escaped en-route. Doing it that way would make sure that Mance didn't go off in completely the wrong direction although I'm not completely comfortable with this explanation, it doesn't feel quite right.

If it does turn out there is a second meaning, I still don't think it anymore likely to be one of his sisters (hidden cousins). Mel wanted to believe it was, but there was never any surety about that. She had doubts and imo no actual magical insight hinting that it was. I also think it needs to show mel as being extremely fallible, I don't think GRRM wants to show her actually being completely correct.

[chrisdaw]

2 hours ago, rustythesmith said:

So rather than finding solutions somewhere in the 5000 pages of the books, you make up your own future scenarios?

Yeah that's it, I just pluck it from the air.

You're welcome for the Gendry = deer btw, no need to reference me, but you've got it wrong in its full meaning, it is about a one night stand between them that hasn't happened yet.

[rustythesmith]

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Yeah that's it, I just pluck it from the air.

Apparently. You come here making claims about the future of the story without providing any supporting evidence as if you think you're some kind of prophet. It's embarrassing.

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You're welcome for the Gendry = deer btw, no need to reference me, but you've got it wrong in its full meaning, it is about a one night stand between them that hasn't happened yet.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

 

The first time I heard the Gendry = Deer interpretation was on /r/pureasoiaf. If you want to claim that you are the first one to think of it, that's hilarious but it's fine. I'm not going to argue about it because it doesn't matter and because I made no claim of being the first to begin with.

[rustythesmith]

7 hours ago, Lew Theobald said:

One thing she said, that you did not mention, is that she believes the girl she saw was Snow's "little sister":  "What is her name, this little sister that you do not have?"  Curious that she believes it was a little sister, without knowing much if anything about Jon's family history.

Jon Snow does not have a little sister, unless R+L=J is wrong.  Jon had an older sister, Rhaenys, but the evidence that she is dead is pretty tight.

Or unless ....

... come to think of it, Jon Snow is, from all the evidence, too old to have been born at the time Ned arrived at the Tower of Joy, which was also when Lyanna died in a bed of blood.  This is a huge problem with standard R+L=J that the theorists just brush over, by ascribing it to careless plotting on GRRM's part.  

Lyanna's "abduction" seems to have taken place over a fairly long time.  What if Jon Snow has an "Irish Twin", Jon being the older child, and the other born later (say, 10 months later), at the time of Ned's arrival.

Rhaegar said that there must be one more (for the 3 heads), but with the death of Rhaenys, there must be two more, or else that prophesy is foiled and unfulfilled.

I don't think the girl in grey needs to be Jon's sister by blood. The term little sister comes up so many times in reference to Arya and Jon that I think Arya satisfies "Jon's sister" symbolically if not literally.

I think GRRM has been quoted several times telling people not to get hung up on the exact dates of things. That's why when the logistics of a marriage, birth, or pregnancy don't perfectly add up (give or take a year) people are willing to write it off as an error.

It has been a long time since I delved into the Tower of Joy stuff. How far apart is Jon's birth from the events at the ToJ? Is it a matter of months or more than a year?

[chrisdaw]

43 minutes ago, rustythesmith said:

The first time I heard the Gendry = Deer interpretation was on /r/pureasoiaf. If you want to claim that you are the first one to think of it, that's hilarious but it's fine. I'm not going to argue about it because it doesn't matter and because I made no claim of being the first to begin with.

As I said I don't care to claim it. Really what I want is for the context to persevere with it in the hope that people who are so inclined to write a million words about such things might get on the page.

 

[LynnS]

It's an interesting analysis.  Although I think the business of 'fleeing to Jon for protection' is another mistake since it feeds into Melisandres bias that the girl is Arya.  Fleeing a marriage she does not want could also be projection on Melisandre's part.  What does she actually see:

- a girl in grey fleeing on a dying horse

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“The girl,” she said. “A girl in grey on a dying horse. Jon Snow’s sister.” Who else could it be? She was racing to him for protection, that much Melisandre had seen clearly. (ADWD Melisandre I)

Melisandre is jumping to a conclusion here.  "Who else could it be?" Then projecting motivation that suits her need for Jon to become dependent on her.  She doesn't know what Arya looks like, she is guessing and then convincing herself that this is true. So she builds on it by assuming the girl is fleeing for protection or a marriage she doesn't want, something that will most appeal to Jon if she can convince him that this is in fact Arya. 

A fit horse might be racing for protection, but a dying horse, not so much.  She is now ascribing motivation to the girl in grey.   Melisandre just can't stop herself from making the same mistake she ascribes to others of her order.

On 8/17/2017 at 7:33 AM, rustythesmith said:

Did your fires show you where to find this girl?”

“I saw water. Deep and blue and still, with a thin coat of ice just forming on it. It seemed to go on and on forever.”

“Long Lake. What else did you see around this girl?”

“Hills. Fields. Trees. A deer, once. Stones. She is staying well away from villages. When she can she rides along the bed of little streams, to throw hunters off her trail.”

He frowned. “That will make it difficult. She was coming north, you said. Was the lake to her east or to her west?”

Melisandre closed her eyes, remembering. “West.”

“She is not coming up the kingsroad, then. Clever girl. There are fewer watchers on the other side, and more cover. And some hidey-holes I have used myself from time—” He broke off at the sound of a warhorn and rose swiftly to his feet. (ADWD Melisandre I)

These are the only reliable bits in information so far and I think you are correct that this is the vicinity of the God's Eye.

On 8/17/2017 at 7:33 AM, rustythesmith said:

The girl. I must find the girl again, the grey girl on the dying horse. Jon Snow would expect that of her, and soon. It would not be enough to say the girl was fleeing. He would want more, he would want the when and where, and she did not have that for him. She had seen the girl only once. A girl as grey as ash, and even as I watched she crumbled and blew away. (ADWD Melisandre I)

This is the last thing that Melisandre sees.  I'm inclined to think that when something crumbles and blows away in a vision, that the person is long dead.   So I think you have found a vision of Lyanna dressed up in Melisandre's unreliable narration.  Placing her at some point in the vicinity of the God's Eye where she disappears or crumbles and blows away.    

[rustythesmith]

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"Sister" could mean "foster sister", sure.  Except that Jon already guessed it was Arya, and was already wrong ... at least he was wrong in the context of his guess.  I suppose it still could turn out to be Arya in a different, later contex.

How can you definitively say Jon was already wrong? Even when Jon or Mel say they are wrong, it doesn't make them wrong. Character dialogue is written specifically to lead us astray sometimes. The actual events determine when a potential solution is right. The best red herrings are the ones that we can't definitively say are wrong. They're the ones like Alys and Jeyne. We're only able to say that, as of right now in the published series, they are incomplete.
 

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Jon seems, from the books, to be roughly a year older than Dany, since she tends to be 13 when he is 14 (etc.).  When asked about this, GRRM answered that no, it is not as much as a full year, but "closer to" eight or nine months (which I suppose does not necessarily rule out 10 months).

Yet Dany was born 9 moons after Rhaella fled KL.  

So if Jon is 9 or 10 months older than Dany, he was born before the Sack.  

If Jon is 8 months older than Dany, then the following things need to happen in 1 month since Rhaella fled KL:  The Lannisters sack KL; Ned arrives ahead of the injured Robert; Robert ultimately arrives and Ned and Robert quarrel over dead babies; Ned rides south to break the siege of Storms End; Ned breaks the siege and ultimately ends up in the Mountains of Dorne. 

Which is a bit tight, to say the least.

 

Ah okay. I don't see why those things couldn't happen in the span of 1 or 2 months. If we start to measure horse speeds and traveling times then we are doing what the author told us not to do, so I think it's safe to say the 1-2 month discrepancy is of no consequence. It's like playing a game of hide & seek where the basement is off limits. We don't need to search the basement because the author told us the basement isn't part of the game. The answer will be found somewhere else or in some other way.

[rustythesmith]

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It's an interesting analysis.  Although I think the business of 'fleeing to Jon for protection' is another mistake since it feeds into Melisandres bias that the girl is Arya.  Fleeing a marriage she does not want could also be projection on Melisandre's part.  What does she actually see:

- a girl in grey fleeing on a dying horse

The rules of the game are an agreement between author and reader rather than character and character. It's the reason why, for example, in the Valonqar prophecy when Maggy says "six-and-ten" we don't need to worry about whether or not Maggy knows how to count.

When the original telling says "Coming here, to you" we can be certain that it will come true in some interpretation of the words. It just happens that there are no other interpretations of "Coming here, to you." She is talking to Jon Snow at Castle Black and the words can't be twisted to mean anything other than Jon Snow and Castle Black.

I think that's what makes Melisandre's Arya bias such a masterful misdirection. It fulfills the contract between author and reader. "Your sister" was part of the original telling. The original telling did not lie, and it was made explicit to us from the beginning. But since we are so keen to spot bias and reject it, we fell victim to our own perceptiveness.

[Damon_Tor]

1 hour ago, rustythesmith said:

The rules of the game

I think we need to be a bit cautious here.

Prophecy is hard to write perfectly, and especially because GRRM has an oft-expressed dislike for planning his stories too far ahead ("once I know how they end I lose all interest in writing them" -paraphrased) I feel like we need to be able to accept some wiggle room. His plans are going to change, so if he wrote a prophecy in 1992 intending for it to be about X doing Y at location Z but now it's twenty-five years later, his outlook on life has changed, his experiences in the world have changed, and we know for a fact his story has changed since he started writing it.

For example, I'm 95% certain he wrote A Game of Thrones intending that Rhaego was alive, and Mirri Maz Duur's prophecy (GRRM has referred to it as such directly) about "When the sun rises in the West and sets in the East" is about Rhaego being returned to her. However, we know he was planning a time-jump between novels which he later scrapped. How much did that scrapped time-jump really change? It's a very different thing introducing an 8-10-year-old to a story (a child old enough to be a character in his own right, as Bran and Arya were in AGoT) than introducing a 3-5 year-old (never more than a Rickon-like plot device). So while I'm quite sure I'm right about his intent when he wrote the first novel, I am not nearly as certain he'll actually go through with it how he originally intended. The prophecy may never be resolved at all because of this, and if it is, it may be drastically different.

[kissdbyfire]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

This is the last thing that Melisandre sees.  I'm inclined to think that when something crumbles and blows away in a vision, that the person is long dead.   So I think you have found a vision of Lyanna dressed up in Melisandre's unreliable narration.  Placing her at some point in the vicinity of the God's Eye where she disappears or crumbles and blows away.    

Lyanna is one of my favourite options for the girl in grey... Part of the problem w/ this vision is Mel. Despite her powers, she sucks at interpreting what she sees and worse, she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. For instance, when she's searching for the GiG again and sees a bunch of stuff - btw, it's "lot seven", not six - she sees a boy w/ a wolf's face who throws back his head and howls, and later she sees Jon as a man, then a wolf, then a man again. She knows about the Starks and direwolves and all that stuff, and she's still unable to connect the dots?

 

 

[kissdbyfire]

2 hours ago, rustythesmith said:

Ah okay. I don't see why those things couldn't happen in the span of 1 or 2 months.

Me neither. 

2 hours ago, rustythesmith said:

If we start to measure horse speeds and traveling times then we are doing what the author told us not to do, so I think it's safe to say the 1-2 month discrepancy is of no consequence. It's like playing a game of hide & seek where the basement is off limits. We don't need to search the basement because the author told us the basement isn't part of the game. The answer will be found somewhere else or in some other way.

Agree wholeheartedly. Here's what Martin said to a fan who asked about it in regards to the attack on the Fist, Jon arriving at CB, and Stannis arriving at the Wall (http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Category/C91/P60)

The reason I am never specific about dates and distances is precisely so that people won't sit down and do this sort of thing.

My suggestion would be to put away the ruler and the stopwatch, and just enjoy the story.

[LynnS]

double post  

[kissdbyfire]

Just now, Lew Theobald said:

I suspect this this is basically, George saying "It's okay; don't look too hard at these clues that I am giving you; after all, I DO want to surprise you with stuff."  But he has devoted more than a chapter to this prophesy, and I cannot see him doing that if it were not significant.

I didn't say it wouldn't be significant... I agree, it is. But Mel is full of it. Both deliberately, when she's manipulating someone, like the burning of the three leeches, but also without realising it. She gets a lot of stuff wrong, in part because of her bias and in part because she fails at connecting the dots. The example I used is perfect. How can she not connect the wolf paw prints everywhere? Because she's not very bright and because she's so wrapped up in her fanatic faith in Red Rahloo that she doesn't see what's right in front of her. 

[LynnS]

3 hours ago, rustythesmith said:

The rules of the game are an agreement between author and reader rather than character and character. It's the reason why, for example, in the Valonqar prophecy when Maggy says "six-and-ten" we don't need to worry about whether or not Maggy knows how to count.

When the original telling says "Coming here, to you" we can be certain that it will come true in some interpretation of the words. It just happens that there are no other interpretations of "Coming here, to you." She is talking to Jon Snow at Castle Black and the words can't be twisted to mean anything other than Jon Snow and Castle Black.

I think that's what makes Melisandre's Arya bias such a masterful misdirection. It fulfills the contract between author and reader. "Your sister" was part of the original telling. The original telling did not lie, and it was made explicit to us from the beginning. But since we are so keen to spot bias and reject it, we fell victim to our own perceptiveness.

I think we must make a distinction between what Melisandre actually sees and the meaning she applies to it.  She is notoriously unreliable with her interpretations. She's driven by a need to have some hold over Jon and so she makes the vision fit for that purpose.  No doubt she has convinced herself it is so.  The author has warned the reader repeatedly about unreliable narrators.  This is 'one of the rules' we should use when puzzling out these visions.

[rustythesmith]

2 hours ago, Damon_Tor said:

I think we need to be a bit cautious here.

Prophecy is hard to write perfectly, and especially because GRRM has an oft-expressed dislike for planning his stories too far ahead ("once I know how they end I lose all interest in writing them" -paraphrased) I feel like we need to be able to accept some wiggle room. His plans are going to change, so if he wrote a prophecy in 1992 intending for it to be about X doing Y at location Z but now it's twenty-five years later, his outlook on life has changed, his experiences in the world have changed, and we know for a fact his story has changed since he started writing it.

For example, I'm 95% certain he wrote A Game of Thrones intending that Rhaego was alive, and Mirri Maz Duur's prophecy (GRRM has referred to it as such directly) about "When the sun rises in the West and sets in the East" is about Rhaego being returned to her. However, we know he was planning a time-jump between novels which he later scrapped. How much did that scrapped time-jump really change? It's a very different thing introducing an 8-10-year-old to a story (a child old enough to be a character in his own right, as Bran and Arya were in AGoT) than introducing a 3-5 year-old (never more than a Rickon-like plot device). So while I'm quite sure I'm right about his intent when he wrote the first novel, I am not nearly as certain he'll actually go through with it how he originally intended. The prophecy may never be resolved at all because of this, and if it is, it may be drastically different.

Propechy is certainly hard to write well. I've asked a few fantasy writers what they think about prophecies and how they use it, and a surprising portion of them avoid prophecy entirely. It's hard enough to write a compelling story. To implement a hidden game that is full of satisfying revelations throughout the story's entire length can seem difficult and not worth it. It appeals to a minority of readers as well, because most people will not stop to play it.

GRRM is a gardener rather than an architect, but that doesn't mean prophecies are impossible for him. In fact I think they are easier for him in some ways. An architect encounters, from the outset, the problems I described above. It's too hard. If I do it, I want it to be satisfying. It isn't worth it. The gardener is perfectly happy to commit to seeds without knowing what they will grow into.

This prophecy was planted late in ADWD, so GRRM actually accomplished this prophecy by building it backwards. He combed through the previous books to find obscure details that he could turn into the original telling we hear for the first time in ADWD.

[Damon_Tor]

2 minutes ago, rustythesmith said:

This prophecy was planted late in ADWD

That's true, and valid for this particular prophecy, but for prophecies introduced earlier it's more difficult to say with certainty that he still intends to bring them to completion in the same way he intended.

[rustythesmith]

1 hour ago, LynnS said:

I think we must make a distinction between what Melisandre actually sees and the meaning she applies to it.  She is notoriously unreliable with her interpretations. She's driven by a need to have some hold over Jon and so she makes the vision fit for that purpose.  No doubt she has convinced herself it is so.  The author has warned the reader repeatedly about unreliable narrators.  This is 'one of the rules' we should use when puzzling out these visions.

It's true that Melisandre misinterprets her visions, but you seem to have two separate models for the prophecy - 1. The one we get from the text and dialogue, laced with faulty interpretation and bias. 2. The pure, uninterpreted version of the prophecy. 

Literately speaking, there is no difference between the two. The prophecy exists in only one carnation: how it appears on the page. The author has one method to communicate with the reader and that is with the words he chooses. That's why matching verbiage is so important in the game.

The first time a prophecy appears in the text, we can give it the stamp of approval. That is the pristine version of it, which is what I try to protect when I attempt to solve it. When the characters' circumstances, motivations, and preconceptions lead us to add, subtract, or change parts of the prophecy, we are being led astray just like Stannis was led astray when he reasoned that Renly was dead and therefore Melisandre's prophecy about Renly could not possibly come true.

But it did come true in a symbolic way.