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

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, The Fattest Leech said:

The star bleeding can be confusing because this is another example of one sign fits with many possibilities. For instance, Melisandre is linked to her ruby (maybe under a glamour where she is controlled by someone else like she glamours Mance with another ruby), and her ruby is compared to a star. So when Mel bleeds black blood in her Dance chapter, does that equal the bleeding star?

But then Jon is associated with being like the stars with his connections to the ice dragon constellation. So when Jon is mutiny stabbed, which brings the cold and presumably the long night, is that the stars bleeding?

But wait, there's more! Ser Patrek of King's Mountain is smashed to bits by Wun Wun as Patrek tries to steal his way in to get Val. This is the main distraction that allows for the mutiny to happen among a group of people. So, is Ser Patrek a star bleeding?

The bleeding red comet in the sky is said to be nothing good. And to mean dragons. But then, Daenerys thinks it is meant for her and she follows it.

 

And... there are the Faith Militant - the stars and the swords:

The red star of the Poor Fellows had its origins in the days of the Andal invasion of Westeros, when zealous warriors carved the seven-pointed star into their chests.^[2]  - WoIaF.

 

[ravenous reader]

I don't have much to add, except to say I don't believe there's a science to solving the prophecies.  Also, I very much doubt 'reader satisfaction' in solving his puzzles is high on GRRM's list of priorities.  I rather think 'reader bamboozlement' in aid of GRRM's satisfaction is the order of the day!

As far as a 'girl in grey' who may be a 'sister,' perhaps that's an allusion to the 'silent sisters' who prepare bodies for the journey to the afterlife, similar to what Arya, the quintessential death goddess, is doing in the HOBAW:

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The old woman's corpse was cool by now, the bravo's body stiffening. The girl was used to that. Most days, she spent more time with the dead than with the living

(ADWD - The Blind Girl)

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A Clash of Kings - Tyrion XV

He dreamed of a cracked stone ceiling and the smells of blood and shit and burnt flesh. The air was full of acrid smoke. Men were groaning and whimpering all around him, and from time to time a scream would pierce the air, thick with pain. When he tried to move, he found that he had fouled his own bedding. The smoke in the air made his eyes water. Am I crying? He must not let his father see. He was a Lannister of Casterly Rock. A lion, I must be a lion, live a lion, die a lion. He hurt so much, though. Too weak to groan, he lay in his own filth and shut his eyes. Nearby someone was cursing the gods in a heavy, monotonous voice. He listened to the blasphemies and wondered if he was dying. After a time the room faded.

He found himself outside the city, walking through a world without color. Ravens soared through a grey sky on wide black wings, while carrion crows rose from their feasts in furious clouds wherever he set his steps. White maggots burrowed through black corruption. The wolves were grey, and so were the silent sisters; together they stripped the flesh from the fallen. There were corpses strewn all over the tourney fields. The sun was a hot white penny, shining down upon the grey river as it rushed around the charred bones of sunken ships. From the pyres of the dead rose black columns of smoke and white-hot ashes. My work, thought Tyrion Lannister. They died at my command.

At first there was no sound in the world, but after a time he began to hear the voices of the dead, soft and terrible. They wept and moaned, they begged for an end to pain, they cried for help and wanted their mothers. Tyrion had never known his mother. He wanted Shae, but she was not there. He walked alone amidst grey shadows, trying to remember . . .

Of Jon's sisters, Arya is the silent one:

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 He saw Sansa crying herself to sleep at night, and he saw Arya watching in silence and holding her secrets hard in her heart.

(AGOT - Bran III)

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Silent as a shadow, Arya moved between rows of long stone benches, her sword in hand. 

(AFFC - Arya I)

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 Sansa cried herself to sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and Eddard Stark dreamed of a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell.

(AGOT - Eddard IV)

The 'marriage' Arya will flee will be the yoke of the HOBAW:

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A Dance with Dragons - The Ugly Little Girl

"Do they frighten you, child?" asked the kindly man. "It is not too late for you to leave us. Is this truly what you want?"

Arya bit her lip. She did not know what she wanted. If I leave, where will I go? She had washed and stripped a hundred corpses, dead things did not frighten her. They carry them down here and slice their faces off, so what? She was the night wolf, no scraps of skin could frighten her. Leather hoods, that's all they are, they cannot hurt me. "Do it," she blurted out.

Where will she go, indeed?

 

[rustythesmith]

7 hours ago, Julia H. said:

To the OP:

I very much enjoyed the detective work while reading your essay, and the discussion on the thread is very interesting, too. 

Here are some random thoughts to add:

Actually, the black Alys is wearing when Jon first sees her is a back Night's Watch cloak. We simply don't know what colour she was wearing during her journey to Castle Black. This may be a clever way for the author to confuse the reader: If Alys wore grey, she would be too close to fulfilling the prophecy. If we knew her (own) clothes were blue or pink or black, it could be a very strong indication that she isn't the "girl in grey". Since Alys is wearing a NW cloak when we first see her, we don't know what clothes she was wearing originally and so we can conclude whatever we want to conclude. Personally, I think if Alys was meant to be the solution to the puzzle, there would be no reason to keep the colour of her (grey) clothes secret, there are so many things that point to her anyway. Not letting us see her original clothes leaves just enough room for the possibility that she isn't the girl in grey. 

Thanks. You're right that we don't know what Alys was wearing on the journey. I didn't want to cite each detail in full but certainly some of them are not as neat and tidy as others. I wrote this with the assumption that the reader has visited this prophecy before and would not want to rehash every point in detail. I tried to cite at least one detail for each candidate to show that I did my homework and that I'm not making baseless claims, but in order to truncate certain points I did have to settle on my own interpretation sometimes. Due to the symbolic nature of prophecies, I'm of the opinion that the greyness, if it happens to be her clothes, doesn't necessarily need to have been worn during the journey.

Some might criticize that method, since all that is seemingly necessary to fulfill that piece of the prophecy is for the candidate to have worn grey at any point in the story, but that isn't good enough. The greyness needs to have a significance in the interpretation of the prophecy and I'm uncompromising with that demand during investigation. Its greyness needs to have been significant to the girl, her circumstances, have a tricky double meaning, or something.

I tend to follow a similar approach. A missing piece is almost as good as a perfect match in that it allows me to definitively cross a candidate off the list and move on. If Alys shows up "in grey" in another book then it is worth revisiting her, but I won't spend a lot of time chasing speculative matches-to-be. It goes back to rule 2 where all clues must be available to the reader before the solution is revealed. GRRM needs to place the matches. I won't do it for him. I run on the assumption that GRRM knows that. I'm taking for granted that the prophecies will ultimately be well-written and rewarding because then I can utilize the rules that make them well-written to help me solve it.

In general I think people should be more protective of their expectation of satisfaction because it is a useful guide. "Does this answer feel great?" Jeyne's crumbling nose for example did not feel great to me as an answer. I think it's a great catch, but it only felt pretty good. Those sort-of satisfying solutions are a big part of what motivates me to keep searching long after the fandom has developed a consensus. Every answer should be a feel-good slam dunk because I know that the author is working hard to make every answer a feel-good slam dunk.

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After all, a prophecy referring to something that has already happened on page is less interesting than a prophecy referring to something that is still to come.

I don't think it is referring to something that has already happen. Every prophecy is foretelling a specific future event. The event this prophecy is foretelling is a girl's arrival to Jon Snow at the Wall or Castle Black. By my understanding, the rest of the prophecy doesn't need to be in the future. The horse, deer, greyness and all the rest. Only the final prediction needs to be in the future.

I do agree that a prophecy referring to something that has already happened is less interesting. I may not even consider it a prophecy because a prophecy is supposed to be a prediction. Predicting something that already happened is silly. It's part of the reason the Lyanna Stark interpretation is so unsatisfying to me. This prophecy was made in the present for us to play it in the present. Lyanna is a historical figure. We never met Lyanna and GRRM hasn't made me care about her as a person. I didn't get to see her journey past the lake and all its descriptive blueness, stillness, and depth that the prophecy specifies. I could allow that her lake is the God's Eye. I could allow that the God's Eye 15 or more years ago looked the same as it did in Arya's chapters. And I could allow that she traveled along its eastern shore so that it matches the prophecy, but I don't believe the solution will require me to make those allowances.

[rustythesmith]

1 hour ago, Lew Theobald said:

Personally, I would not expect a solution to the "crumbled and blew away" part.  I would interpret that in the context of "she had seen her only once".  In other words, while she was still trying to see more, she lost the vision, and found herself staring into a fireplace full of grey ashes, which crumbled and blew away.

Currently I'm with you on the "blew away" part. I think "blew away" can represent the vision ending, because flames can blow away. However, I only consider it sort-of satisfying. If I'm going to be consistent with my strategy, I have to ultimately reject this as a solution. I'm secretly holding out for a better solution to "blew away" in the next "Windy" installment of the series, but for now the dissipation of the vision is the best case I can make for Arya's "blew away."

I've heard an interpretation that Arya blew away when she sailed across the narrow sea. That one's not bad either. However, if Arya's magical face change is the "crumbling" event, then the order of events does not match the vision. The vision seems to imply that she crumbled first and blew away last. So it leaves something to be desired in my opinion.

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Mel does not seem to see it as part of the vision.  How else explain "your sister is not lost to you"; or her seeming acceptance that Alys might be the solution to the prophesy.

There are many ways to interpret "Your sister is not lost to you." What does she mean by lost? Does that mean death? Or is it like being lost in the forest? Perhaps it refers to an emotional attachment that transcends physical space. They do think about each other often and their direwolves can sense each other, so it could make sense. Likewise, I don't think crumbled and blew away necessarily refers to death.