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

[The Fattest Leech]

IGNORE, Quoteris BROKEN!
 

Mully cleared his throat. "M'lord? The wildling princess, letting her go, the men may say—"

"—that I am half a wildling myself, a turncloak who means to sell the realm to our raiders, cannibals, and giants." Jon did not need to stare into a fire to know what was being said of him. The worst part was, they were not wrong, not wholly.

[The Fattest Leech]

Mel is definitely not sure what her visions are telling her. She is interpreting them incorrectly. At one point Mel even tells Jon that she messes up reading the flames. I am trying to give book quotes, but the quoter hates me this evening. 

Anyway, count me in that Melisandre is seeing a vision of Lyanna fleeing after the tourney at Harrenhal/Knight of Laughing tree event. There are many links to Lyanna and horses, and the slow reveal of Jon's parentage is also hidden within the horse symbolism. Arya looking like Lyanna is another hint to this.

Mel does not know who the girl actually is, so Jon says "my sister", and Mel shrugs and says, "sure". They have a wordplay back and forth about hearts, and knowing one's heart, which is not good for Jon because Melisandre likes to "burn" hearts and she thinks her hero has to be reborn. 

Mel makes a comment about "this little sister that you do not have," which is technically correct because this is not Jon's sister but his mother, like Arya is not technically is blood sister (just his bonded sister). Also, in ADWD there is a lot of horse symboilism and wordplay in regards to Jon. I would quote it all, but the forum quoter is acting up on me  Remember, George does a layered reveal, as his editor says. 

Then later Mel has a convo with Mance in disguise as Rattleshirt. Mel asks Mance-Shirt id he knows the north because Mel doesn't know where the girl actually is, and Mance-Shirt fills in the other part of Mel's vision for her when Mance answers the location as "Long Lake." This convo happens between Mel and Mance before Jon gets there because Mel is worried she needs to get (trick) Jon in to trusting her by dangling his family in front of his face. And also why we know Mance was supposed to go to Long Lake to save "Arya", and not Winterfell. 

This is all between Jon IX, and Melisandre in ADWD.

There is more, but again, the quoter hates me this evening and it is taking about 5 seconds to load one letter in a sentence and it is infuriating.

Anyway, Lyanna the grey girl fleeing the marriage of Robert (which she does not want), rides along next to the God's Eye. Why her horse is dying could possibly be greensenseer/skinchanger related... but that is a topic for another thread.

Now, let me see if I can actually submit this gloriously awesome post- glitch free   

 

[rustythesmith]

2 hours ago, Lew Theobald said:

Yeah, it's always true that what I think is evidence or a clue might actually be a mistake by the author.

 But then, that's his fault, and not mine.  In the meantime, I always feel I have scored a point in the discussion when my adversary asks me to ignore the evidence.  Because GRRM's words are the only evidence we have.  If we can't trust that, why make theories at all?

If GRRM had actually told us he had messed up this particular timeline, then I would agree with you in saying this is off limits.  But he never said that.  I don't think it's at all "safe to say" that GRRM's words may be taken as an instruction to ignore this particular issue.

We won't debate the specifics, because you have declared it irrelevant.

We have already outlined the specifics and it comes down to a discrepancy of 1-2 months. I'm of the opinion that it is negligible due to author error, or rather the author's beliefs. He does not believe it is important to hone the details of the timeline down to smaller units, and he has advised us against trying to do the same. I can understand feeling cheated after finding the discrepancy only to learn that it doesn't matter, and maybe that will shape your opinion about the author. I respect that, I just don't agree.

[kissdbyfire]

54 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

None of this applies here.  We know Mel is not lying to Jon, because we have her POV.  And whether she fails in connecting the dots is irrelevant, because she only has the dots, and we, the reader, have been given independent access to those dots, separate from the conclusions Mel may later draw from them.

If the dots are not reliable, we have nothing.  No point in even thinking about it.

Where did I say she was lying? The point is, she interprets things wrong. On top of not being a genius. And anyone trying to connect the dots only has the dots to start w/, so I'm not sure what you mean. 

31 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

Only problem with this is:  GRRM never wrote that it took only 1 month for an injured man to heal from his wounds, then travel 450 miles to Kings Landing, then for another man to take another army 450 miles south to Storm's End, deal with whatever he had to deal with in accepting the surrender of armies, then travel however many more hundred miles to reach the Tower of Joy.

If he had said that, then sure.  Shrug.  GRRM messed up.  Put away the ruler and stopwatch and enjoy the story.

No, Martin didn't mess up at all. He's just telling us that he doesn't do the maths down to its minute details, and that we shouldn't be trying to figure things out this way. 

 

31 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

This is an error, not necessarily by GRRM, but in a fan theory.  There is no reason to assume the fan theory is correct, and blame GRRM.  It might be the fan theorist who is wrong.  And until we know better, the problem may be considered as evidence against the theory.

I am aware that there are a few options for the GiG and we need more info to be sure.

31 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

We don't have to assume that a theory which makes no particularly good sense must be true, just because GRRM occasionally writes things that make no sense.  If the theory makes no sense, we may take it as a point against the theory.  Not a conclusive point, perhaps, but still a point.

This makes no sense. Just b/c you don't like a theory doesn't necessarily mean it makes no sense.

[The Fattest Leech]

21 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

If you ignore the actual evidence provided, then you can make the prophesy mean anything you want.  And 1000 different readers will, by this glorious method, reach 1000 different interpretations.

Ok. I guess I am not sure what you are arguing because Mel knows she is wrong, and other people fill in for her because she is given "true" flames, but she is making mistakes in interpreting those visions. (cut/paste in quoter still not really working)

• "Are your fires never wrong?"

       "Never … though we priests are mortal and sometimes err, mistaking this must come for this may come."

 

• "Your fires have been known to lie."

       "I have made mistakes, I have admitted as much, but—"

        "A grey girl on a dying horse. Daggers in the dark. A promised prince, born in smoke and salt. It seems to me that you make nothing but mistakes, my lady. Where is Stannis? What of Rattleshirt and his spearwives? Where is my sister?"

[The Fattest Leech]

14 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

You are still trying to prove that because the evidence is, or may be, somewhat fallible or unreliable, you are therefore justified when you ignore the evidence and replace it with your own ideas.

This is not how things work.  You are more likely to be correct when you actually follow the evidence; and so this is always the better policy.  Therefore, you are never justified when you arbitrarily ignore or replace the available evidence.

I think you need a Snicker's. 

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Mel's fallibility merely means that this excellent policy will not work perfectly 100% of the time when we rely on Mel.  It does not prove we will do better if we assume we know better than Mel does.

Well, we the reader do, in fact, have a ton more information than Melisandre does. We see the bigger picture and what is going on aruond the globe, where Melisandre does not. We readers have POV's who give us snippets of history. We readers have the benefit of piecing together the clues and themes that the author has provided. And, who on earth ever said Mel had an "excellent" policy? That is ridiculous, and we readers know it is ridiculous because she has read her visions wrong with Renly's Ghost, the three leeches, Stannis as Azor Ahai, her own childhood, using spells/magic to get Ghost to "like" her, etc. Being a charlatan is a common theme in much of George's work, inside and outside of ASOIAF. Mel fits his own charlatan character type to a T.

[rustythesmith]

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You are ascribing to GRRM things he never said.  He does not say he pays no attention to time and distance when he writes.  

You're ascribing things to me that I never said. I never said he pays no attention to time and distance. GRRM's quote was cited above but here it is again.

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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.

 

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No discrepancy has been found. Therefore, I have not been cheated by the author.  I have no occasion to consider whether this affects my opinion of him. GRRM has no occasion for being annoyed at being caught in an arguable mistake, since no mistake has been demonstrated.  

We are discussing a fan theory.  The fact that the theory is a poor fit with the evidence is a point against the theory.  When the theory is proven correct, then we can consider whether it is a point against GRRM.

 

GRRM has made plenty of mistakes but I don't care to get into them. You're right that the theory has to fit the text, not vice versa. However sometimes when exploring a theory we have to assume that it's true for the moment so that we can think about things in the hypothetical. Supposing that R+L=J is true and events happened as theorized, it might be hard to justify the timeline.

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Already, in order to come up with 1-2 days, instead of 0-1 day, you have changed what GRRM said from 8 or 9 months older to 7 or 8 months.   I guess he was mistaken about that too.

Months not days. And I was going by what you said GRRM said.

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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).

I take that wording to be very loose, so I added a month.

[rustythesmith]

4 hours ago, Damon_Tor said:

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.

Some prophecies appear and resolve within the same book, so they aren't always the elaborate webs that they seem to be.

Often it's enough to plan a single word. Without planning the rest of the story, the author can make a note of a particular word or phrase like "crumbled" or "pale white throat." Several books later, he can pay off the prophecy by reusing the same phrase or a description very close to it. When he planted the seed he may not have known how events would unfold, but he did know that he needed to fit that key phrase into it somehow.

During TWOW and ADOS I'm still going to be on the lookout for a couple of these words and phrases to better answer the girl in grey prophecy. In particular I'm looking for "grey as ash," "blew away," and "thin coat," or other forms and interpretations of them.

[LynnS]

9 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

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?

 

 

If this is a vision of the past; it seems most likely to be Lyanna, especially since Jon is the going concern for Mel's.  If it is the God's Eye then we are looking at early winter or early spring since the lake has a thin covering of ice.  It would have to be quite cold for ice to form on a lake this large, this far to the south.  Someone fleeing or avoiding persuit may take up a disguise.  The girl in grey may be dressed as a Septa. This would put her in the vicinity of the Quiet Isle.

Grey as Ashes:
 

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A Feast for Crows - Brienne VII

By any name the inn was large, rising three stories above the muddy roads, its walls and turrets and chimneys made of fine white stone that glimmered pale and ghostly against the grey sky. Its south wing had been built upon heavy wooden pilings above a cracked and sunken expanse of weeds and dead brown grass. A thatch-roofed stable and a bell tower were attached to the north side. The whole sprawl was surrounded by a low wall of broken white stones overgrown by moss.

At least no one has burned it down. At Saltpans, they had found only death and desolation. By the time Brienne and her companions were ferried over from the Quiet Isle, the survivors had fled and the dead had been given to the ground, but the corpse of the town itself remained, ashen and unburied. The air still smelled of smoke, and the cries of the seagulls floating overhead sounded almost human, like the lamentations of lost children. Even the castle had seemed forlorn and abandoned. Grey as the ashes of the town around it, the castle consisted of a square keep girded by a curtain wall, built so as to overlook the harbor. It was closed tight as Brienne and the others led their horses off the ferry, nothing moving on its battlements but banners. It took a quarter hour of Dog barking and Septon Meribald knocking on the front gate with his quarterstaff before a woman appeared above them to demand their business.

 

 

[LynnS]

4 hours ago, rustythesmith said:

During TWOW and ADOS I'm still going to be on the lookout for a couple of these words and phrases to better answer the girl in grey prophecy. In particular I'm looking for "grey as ash," "blew away," and "thin coat," or other forms and interpretations of them.

My goodness! Will you still be around in ten to twenty years?

You can search for words and phrases here:

https://asearchoficeandfire.com/

This doesn't seem to work well with Firefox but Internet Explorer is OK.

"Grey as ash" in various combinations shows up in the context of war throughout the text.

 

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

@rustythesmith

How on earth did you come up with these prophecy "rules"? I think you have made a big mistake assuming that prophecies will all be satisfyingly fulfilled and definitely come true. Personally, I think prophecies are mostly visions sent to manipulate characters, and so they really don't have to be true at all even if they seem to frequently come true. For instance, how would you interpret Jojen's vision about Bran not enjoying his great dinner while the Frey boys enjoy their bad dinner? Bran does some interesting mental gymnastics to fulfill that vision. And it definitely isn't going to happen in the future. It was surely meant for that scene, to convince Bran prophecies come true.

I think the girl in grey was simply Alys. The fun riddle that GRRM has inserted is, why did Mance go to WF instead of Long Lake? He totally lied to Mel and Jon and used the grey girl as an excuse to go on his adventure.

[LynnS]

3 minutes ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

I think the girl in grey was simply Alys. The fun riddle that GRRM has inserted is, why did Mance go to WF instead of Long Lake? He totally lied to Mel and Jon and used the grey girl as an excuse to go on his adventure.

LOL!  So much for Mel's ability to see the truth in men's hearts or the usefulness of her truth powders.

[The Fattest Leech]

10 hours ago, LynnS said:

If this is a vision of the past; it seems most likely to be Lyanna, especially since Jon is the going concern for Mel's.  If it is the God's Eye then we are looking at early winter or early spring since the lake has a thin covering of ice.  It would have to be quite cold for ice to form on a lake this large, this far to the south. 

The Harrenhal tourney/KotLT did happen in the year of false spring. Melisandre only sees a thin sheet/edge of ice forming. Definitely not safe enough to ice skate on  

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Someone fleeing or avoiding persuit may take up a disguise.  The girl in grey may be dressed as a Septa. This would put her in the vicinity of the Quiet Isle.

Grey as Ashes:
 

 

Also, the grey girl could just be symbolic nature of the vision shown to Melisandre. Grey wolf, grey Stark, grey Lyanna type thing. I do agree that someone could be in disguise, but I tend to lean more to the Stark symbolism, especially because at this same time, on the opposite side of the world in hot Essos, Danaerys is being told all sorts of things about Rhaegar and his life and "love". The author seems to be ramping up the significance of Lyanna and Rhaegar in ADWD, and fire and ice in the books. 

[The Fattest Leech]

@40 Thousand Skeletons (my quoter still hates me )

Anyway, you said, "The fun riddle that GRRM has inserted is, why did Mance go to WF instead of Long Lake? He totally lied to Mel and Jon and used the grey girl as an excuse to go on his adventure."

I definitely agree that Mance was using this as an opportunistic time to leave the wall and get in to Winterfell for whatever reasons he had. I tend to think that no matter where the girl in grey is, Mance was going to Winterfell no matter what... and maybe grabbing the girl along the way of he had time and she was in his path. 

[rustythesmith]

39 minutes ago, 40 Thousand Skeletons said:

How on earth did you come up with these prophecy "rules"? I think you have made a big mistake assuming that prophecies will all be satisfyingly fulfilled and definitely come true. Personally, I think prophecies are mostly visions sent to manipulate characters, and so they really don't have to be true at all even if they seem to frequently come true. For instance, how would you interpret Jojen's vision about Bran not enjoying his great dinner while the Frey boys enjoy their bad dinner? Bran does some interesting mental gymnastics to fulfill that vision. And it definitely isn't going to happen in the future. It was surely meant for that scene, to convince Bran prophecies come true.

I think the girl in grey was simply Alys. The fun riddle that GRRM has inserted is, why did Mance go to WF instead of Long Lake? He totally lied to Mel and Jon and used the grey girl as an excuse to go on his adventure.

I didn't come up with them, as I said at the beginning. They're well established rules of fantasy writing that have developed with the genre. Here's a bit from The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land by Diana Wynne Jones.

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PROPHECY is used by the Management to make sure that no Tourist is unduly surprised by events, and by GODDESSES AND GODS to make sure that people do as the deity wants. All Prophecies come true. This is a Rule (but see POOLS).

I don't know if "rules" is the right word for them. They are guidelines for authors. Authors want to surprise their readers and sometimes a great way to do that is by breaking well established conventions, so by no means are the "rules" unbreakable. But unless the author can make prophecies satisfying in a way that no one has ever thought of before, these few rules are a great way to make sure your readers don't feel cheated by an unsolvable puzzle when the prophecy comes true. Or disappointed when it doesn't.

 

 

[kissdbyfire]

7 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

This is fair enough.  However, if George does pay attention to time and distance (and if you do not deny this), then a fan can reasonably consider time and distance when assessing the plausibility of Theory A or Theory B.

Sure.  George make a "suggestion" (his word) that we put away the ruler and stop watch and just enjoy the story (either because he does not want us to catch his mistakes, or because he does not want us to guess his secrets, or both).  But it's just a suggestion.  The reader is not bound by it.  

If George considers time and distance, then the fan theorist can reasonably take this into account, whether George wants him to or not.  And that's the bottom line.

As with any of the many ASoIaF theories, I think there is room for different interpretations here too, w/ what Martin meant, or to put it better, w/ our different takes on what he meant.

When he says "put down the ruler and stopwatch and enjoy the story", I take that to mean that it's the wrong path when trying to decipher anything in the books. My take is, he is saying, "there are no breadcrumbs to be followed there, so don't waste your time". And not that he's worried readers will catch some mistakes or b/c he doesn't want us to "guess his sectrets", as you put it. In fact, it's just the opposite, he wants us to decipher the mysteries, but that doesn't mean he's gonna make our lives easy. So, in this light, when he says, "don't waste your time w/ that", he is giving us a big clue.

 

[rustythesmith]

10 hours ago, LynnS said:

My goodness! Will you still be around in ten to twenty years?

You can search for words and phrases here:

https://asearchoficeandfire.com/

This doesn't seem to work well with Firefox but Internet Explorer is OK.

I plan to be! I can't imagine losing interest in the series until it's finished, life permitting of course.

Words can't describe how invaluable that site has been to every theory I have ever researched. Sometimes it feels like cheating because I know the series and puzzles weren't meant to withstand that technology. Still, they hold up really well apparently.

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"Grey as ash" in various combinations shows up in the context of war throughout the text.

Yes! "Ash" is used to describe the riverlands in Arya's chapters too. "Grey ash" appears in the same breath with the Stark banner, though not to describe the banner itself. The phrase and imagery pops up in several places, and the red herrings are part of what makes the game so fun to me.

[The Fattest Leech]

3 minutes ago, rustythesmith said:

I plan to be! I can't imagine losing interest in the series until it's finished, life permitting of course.

Words can't describe how invaluable that site has been to every theory I have ever researched. Sometimes it feels like cheating because I know the series and puzzles weren't meant to withstand that technology. Still, they hold up really well apparently.

Too true. Too true. 

 

[40 Thousand Skeletons]

@rustythesmith

Ok, but how confident are you that GRRM himself is following this convention? Again I ask, how do you reconcile your logic with the vision of Bran not enjoying his dinner? I don't think that particular prophecy fulfills your established criteria.

[kissdbyfire]

6 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

 Okay, I revise my parenthetical to read "(either because he does not want us to catch his mistakes, or because he does not want us to guess his secrets, or because he does not want us to waste our time, or any combination of the above, or any other reason(s))".

My point still stands.  If GRRM considers time and distance (as he clearly does), then it will in many cases be perfectly rational for a reader to take this into account when considering various theories, whether "Daario=Euron" or "R+L=J", or anything else.  This will in many cases be true regardless of what "suggestion" GRRM may have made (in a completely different context).

If GRRM tells me I'm on the wrong track, in a specific context, then I will take that into account, .... in that specific context.  A universal rule that time and distance are never relevant goes way too far, ... unless your position is that GRRM himself never considers time and distance.

 

 

I agree. He does consider time and distance, and those are widely used when trying to prove or disprove any given theory. I suppose what will vary is how much each reader can "let go" or not.