Heresy 202 and still going

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, SirArthur said:

I always assumed bronze supports fire and iron supports ice. But if iron dampens ice and fire and bronze supports ice and fire ... the Iron Throne is literally the reason there are no dragons. 

The crown of the kings of winter is made of bronze and iron.  Meera and Jojen swear by bronze and iron.  They must be sweariing allegience to the kings of winter.

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A Clash of Kings - Bran III

"I swear it by earth and water," said the boy in green.

"I swear it by bronze and iron," his sister said.

"We swear it by ice and fire," they finished together.

A Clash of Kings - Catelyn I

Her son's crown was fresh from the forge, and it seemed to Catelyn Stark that the weight of it pressed heavy on Robb's head.

The ancient crown of the Kings of Winter had been lost three centuries ago, yielded up to Aegon the Conqueror when Torrhen Stark knelt in submission. What Aegon had done with it no man could say. Lord Hoster's smith had done his work well, and Robb's crown looked much as the other was said to have looked in the tales told of the Stark kings of old; an open circlet of hammered bronze incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords. Of gold and silver and gemstones, it had none; bronze and iron were the metals of winter, dark and strong to fight against the cold.

What does it mean to swear by earth and water, ice and fire? 

Perhaps this is an oath to the land, the crown and the sword.

True steel forged in fire and tempered in ice?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_heat_treatment

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard XIII

"Only if we lose."

"You forget," Ned told him. "You forget Jon Arryn. You forget Jory Cassel. And you forget this." He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death. "They sent a man to cut my son's throat, Lord Baelish."

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A Game of Thrones - Eddard VII

"The Kingsguard—"

"A paper shield," the eunuch said. "Try not to look so shocked, Lord Stark. Jaime Lannister is himself a Sworn Brother of the White Swords, and we all know what his oath is worth. The days when men like Ryam Redwyne and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight wore the white cloak are gone to dust and song. Of these seven, only Ser Barristan Selmy is made of the true steel, and Selmy is old. Ser Boros and Ser Meryn are the queen's creatures to the bone, and I have deep suspicions of the others. No, my lord, when the swords come out in earnest, you will be the only true friend Robert Baratheon will have."

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A Clash of Kings - Jon I

"And his brothers?" Jon asked.

The armorer considered that a moment. "Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends. And Renly, that one, he's copper, bright and shiny, pretty to look at but not worth all that much at the end of the day."

And what metal is Robb? Jon did not ask.

 

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

I know you are already familiar with my inversion theory, so won't go too far into that, but basically what you've noticed is an undoing or reversing of history. Jon doesn't become the Nights King until after he was overthrown and resurrected. That way he can take his "ensorcelled" Nights Watch and attack and win Winterfell and assume the position of King of Winter.

The crown is a physical reminder that the Kings of Winter were defeated and warded, the iron swords surrounding bronze means that their magical power is/was suppressed or warded.

 

The Kings of Winter were different than both King in the North and Lord of Winterfell. IMO the Kings of Winter were possibly undead like the Nights King and only ruled during winter.

 

From the wiki - the Seven Kingdoms:

 

 Torrhen Stark, King in the North.
 Ronnel Arryn, King of Mountain and Vale.
 Harren Hoare, King of the Isles and the Rivers.
 Loren I Lannister, King of the Rock.
 Mern IX Gardener, King of the Reach.
 Argilac Durrandon, the Storm King.
 Meria Martell, Princess of Dorne.

There were a hundred [or thereabouts] at one time, so the seven are of no great antiquity as a set. I rather suspect that there was some manipulation by singers and septons to "make" seven kingdoms to correspond with the Seven. Nothing so crude as war or anything like that, just deciding which realms should be accounted kingdoms to fit the magic number seven

[Black Crow]

5 minutes ago, LynnS said:

The crown of the kings of winter is made of bronze and iron.  Meera and Jojen swear by bronze and iron.  They must be sweariing allegience to the kings of winter.

What does it mean to swear by earth and water, ice and fire? 

We've had various interpretations in our time,

In the context [and I suspect that its the oath which sealed the Pact] the one I favour is that earth and water represent the natural order to which the children and the old races belong; bronze and iron represent men; and Ice and Fire are the over-arching forces which rule everything

But hey, we don't know and anybody's opinion is as good as the next

[SirArthur]

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They laid them north to south, from ice to fire,

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"Like night and day, or ice and fire ."

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Ice and fire, he thought. Black and white. Dark and light

The long night. It's the winter and summer cycle. And ice is always first.

 

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"No," said Meera, "but he could breathe mud and run on leaves, and change earth to water and water to earth with no more than a whispered word. He could talk to trees and weave words and make castles appear and disappear."

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We live closer to the green in our bogs and crannogs, and we remember. Earth and water, soil and stone, oaks and elms and willows, they were here before us all and will still remain when we are gone."

 

Weirwood trees ?

 

[LynnS]

14 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

We've had various interpretations in our time,

In the context [and I suspect that its the oath which sealed the Pact] the one I favour is that earth and water represent the natural order to which the children and the old races belong; bronze and iron represent men; and Ice and Fire are the over-arching forces which rule everything

But hey, we don't know and anybody's opinion is as good as the next

Why can't it be both?  LOL.

[SirArthur]

So.... where is the fire and where is the water in the Starks of Old story ? 

[Melifeather]

On 9/20/2017 at 0:26 PM, Black Crow said:

Changing the subject only very slightly, I did suggest earlier that the dead Stark Lords might have been able to lead a second life as white walkers. The swords, we are told, were placed there to keep them in their graves. Does the cold iron sever or block the connection between bones and ice?

I would say block, because sever seems permanent and I'm guessing if the sword is removed the spirit can rise.

[Brad Stark]

If the Starks were first men, why a crown of bronze and iron?  Did the first men even have iron?  Could the crown have originally been a bronze circlet and the iron added later?

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

If the Starks were first men, why a crown of bronze and iron?  Did the first men even have iron?  Could the crown have originally been a bronze circlet and the iron added later?

Its a mistake to think of technology as frozen. The First Men brought bronze to Westeros and banjoed the tree-huggers with it, but the Andals didn't take over because they had steel and the First Men had not. The text is a bit unclear as to whether the Andals simply developed iron working or whether their edge came from steel making, but in either event it will have been traded long before the Andal invasion, just as Valyrian steel was around long before Aegon tooled up 

[Black Crow]

7 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

I would say block, because sever seems permanent and I'm guessing if the sword is removed the spirit can rise.

I would imagine so, given the worry about what happens if the swords are gone, although in practice I would imagine that by the time the dword is a rusty strain the bones will be dust and truly dead

[SirArthur]

2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Its a mistake to think of technology as frozen. The First Men brought bronze to Westeros and banjoed the tree-huggers with it, but the Andals didn't take over because they had steel and the First Men had not. The text is a bit unclear as to whether the Andals simply developed iron working or whether their edge came from steel making, but in either event it will have been traded long before the Andal invasion, just as Valyrian steel was around long before Aegon tooled up 

So in a parallel the bronze replaced something else... 

[JNR]

12 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

If the Starks were first men, why a crown of bronze and iron?  Did the first men even have iron?  Could the crown have originally been a bronze circlet and the iron added later?

We don't know.  The technological progression from bronze to iron to steel (iron with carbon added in the forging process) was slow in our world and slow in GRRM's too.

Possible evidence of pre-Andal iron in Westeros does include the Stark crown and the term "Iron Isles," but we don't know when the crown was made that way, and we also don't know when the islands were named that.  The First Men lived in Westeros for thousands of years before the coming of the Andals.

The author of the World book doesn't seem to have considered this deliberate ambiguity inserted into the text by GRRM:

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Sweeping through the Vale with fire and sword, the Andals began their conquest of Westeros. Their iron weapons and armor surpassed the bronze with which the First Men still fought, and many First Men perished in this war.

This does match Jeor Mormont's position that the Andals killed off the CotF with iron.  However, Luwin, in AGOT, credits the Andals with steel:

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The Andals were the first, a race of tall, fair-haired warriors who came with steel and fire and the seven-pointed star of the new gods painted on their chests. 

Weapons do appear to be the only significant advantage the Andals would have had, since they were wildly inferior to the First Men in terms of numbers, knowledge of the terrain, castles, supply lines, etc.   If the First Men had had a unified government instead of being fragmented into dozens of petty kingdoms, perhaps things would have turned out differently.

[Black Crow]

I think the key phrase there is "sweeping through the Vale with fire and sword". 

While the precise dating is very suspect there's no reason to doubt the narrative that the Andals conquered the Vale long before they started taking over the rest of Westeros, and as often as not by intermarrying as by red war

[Black Crow]

7 hours ago, SirArthur said:

So in a parallel the bronze replaced something else... 

Not following you?

[SirArthur]

Just now, Black Crow said:

Not following you?

The First man also conquered to local area. My first idea were swords of weirwood but in the meantime I think swords of stone could also have been replaced with bronze. We have circles with standing stones and if the iron replaces the bronze or extends it... there is no reason why the Crown of Winter could not have been made out of a weirwood or stone core.

[Brad Stark]

10 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Its a mistake to think of technology as frozen. The First Men brought bronze to Westeros and banjoed the tree-huggers with it, but the Andals didn't take over because they had steel and the First Men had not. The text is a bit unclear as to whether the Andals simply developed iron working or whether their edge came from steel making, but in either event it will have been traded long before the Andal invasion, just as Valyrian steel was around long before Aegon tooled up 

Still seems like an unusual combination.  If bronze was common and cheap and iron was rare and expensive,  why not make a crown of iron by itself?

[LynnS]

2 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

Still seems like an unusual combination.  If bronze was common and cheap and iron was rare and expensive,  why not make a crown of iron by itself?

It's a circlet of bronze topped with nine iron swords.  What do the swords represent?  The banner of the kingsguard is seven swords surrounding  a crown. 

[Black Crow]

4 hours ago, SirArthur said:

The First man also conquered to local area. My first idea were swords of weirwood but in the meantime I think swords of stone could also have been replaced with bronze. We have circles with standing stones and if the iron replaces the bronze or extends it... there is no reason why the Crown of Winter could not have been made out of a weirwood or stone core.

Stone swords don't work. What the tree-huggers might have done is made Aztec style wooden swords with sharp flakes on obsidian [dragonglass] set into them to form a "blade".

The First Men however came to Westeros with bronze weapons from the very beginning and so slaughtered them

[Black Crow]

36 minutes ago, LynnS said:

It's a circlet of bronze topped with nine iron swords.  What do the swords represent?  The banner of the kingsguard is seven swords surrounding  a crown. 

The term King in the North sounds like a first among equals; presumably what we know as the Kingdom in the North was originally a number of separate kingdoms [latterly 9] which the Starks gained dominion over.

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

Still seems like an unusual combination.  If bronze was common and cheap and iron was rare and expensive,  why not make a crown of iron by itself?

Better to use the iron for swords - and put a ring of small ones on the crown to signify that what we have we hold by the sword