Patchface Project

[jons nissa]

And Melisandre, IMO, saw Patchface after the ship bringing him sank. Patchface ate Steffon and Cassana.

i'm sure i'm just not remembering something but is patchface known for cannabalism? is this just a vision of melisandre's?

[LordofWinter]

but then it wouldn't be green, blue and black... shouldn't instead of blue say cream or gold?

Unless he's not speaking of Viserion. The BLUE could be this ice dragon we're always hearing about.

So his ramblings/prophecy could be speaking of rhaegar, drogon and the supposed ice dragon vs the others

[rmholt]

Sorry if this is out of context, but what exactly happened to Valarya? Was it just a volcanic eruption?

It makes me nervous to think of it but if Yellowstone ever blows it could look like that (well, except it isnt on the coast, so no tsunami)

[rmholt]

Patchface was said to be very clever before his unfortunate incident - this thread makes me wonder if he hasnt INCREASED his mind power rather than otherwise.

[Teal'c]

..."Under the sea the crows are white as snow." = in death, the Night's Watchmen are/become wights...

These two I haven't figure out yet:

“Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs.”

“Under the sea, smoke rises in bubbles, and flames burn green and blue and black.”

I wondered if white crows mean Winter like the white ravens from the Citadel. And Winter is another metaphor for Death.

..."the serving men are crabs." Victarion remembers giving his wife's body to the crabs; this may be a funerary practice of the Ironborn, or alternatively she was disrepectfully disposed of in this manner due to his perception that she betrayed him when Euron raped her.

The smoke and flames under the sea sounds like underwater volcanic activity to me, and I do suspect a tie between vulcanism and dragons. Sea dragons?

[Richard Rivers]

[The March] Patchface jumped up. “I will lead it!” His bells rang merrily. “We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh.”

maybe this could be a prophecy for Rickon, who marched out to see to Skagos and will return again on ships, and be announced or hearld by the Manderlys.

Something about the mentioning of seahorses, just reminds me of ships, specifically the Dothraki vision of ships. So it could be a reference to Dany coming over with a new Dothraki horde, and the Greyjoys leading her fleet.

[Amitaibs3]

I think you guys are taking most of what hes saying way too seriously. We got a reference to the red wedding, I think that's more than enough. In all the other "prophecies" he talks about the sea. The red wedding one is different, he doesn't mention the sea at all.

So, I think if you are going to look for meaning - look for it in these two :

“In the dark the dead are dancing.”

"The shadows come to dance, my lord, dance my lord, dance my lord," he sang, hopping from one foot to the other and back again. "The shadows come to stay, my lord, stay my lord, stay my lord."

(It can be linked to the dancing shadows Dany saw at the HotU, can't believe no one mentioned it :o)

If you do try to understand the meaning of the others though, I think it is important to understand that "under the sea" means death.

Patchface jumped up. “I will lead it!” His bells rang merrily. “We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh.”

Dying and coming back to life - Blowing seashells to announce their coming is a lot like the 3 blasts to announce the arrival of others.

“Under the sea, men marry fishes.”

When they are dead, men and fish are alike.

“The crow, the crow,” Patchface cried when he saw Jon. “Under the sea the crows are white as snow, I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.”

Wights? I guess...

“Under the sea, smoke rises in bubbles, and flames burn green and blue and black,” Patchface sang somewhere. “I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.”

That one is a bit different, I believe. I think this one might be some reference to the Blackwater.

All that being said, I don't think those actually have a meaning. xD Not anything has to have a meaning, we got our prophecy from patchface about the red wedding and I think that is enough.

And about what Mel said -

“That creature is dangerous. Many a time I have glimpsed him in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood.”

I think this might show that patchface ate other people corpses in order to survive. His lips are red with blood and skulls are about him because he did what he had to to survive, maybe that's why he lost his mind.

[Ser Adrock the Tall]

Green, Black, and Blue flames may refer to the eye color of the dragon riders? That's a reach, but Tyrion does have one green, and one black eye. Jon Snow has been associated with the blue rose of winter, and maybe danny's the third? So many possibilities. Rhaego and Drogo are Green and Black, but I don't know what the blue is.

[the average Other]

What does it mean when Patchface says, “Under the sea”? It has been suggested that this means “In the future”, “In the East”, “In the land of the Dead”, or is literally “In the ocean”. What do you think?

I think when Patchface says "under the sea" he means "far away". Look at this line:

“Away, away,” the fool sang. “Come with me beneath the sea, away, away, away.” He took the little princess by one hand and drew her from the room, skipping.

This doesn't look like a prophecy to me, just him telling Shireen they should go away now (do I remember correctly that this happens when Shireen and Patchface have just been told to leave the room?). "Come with me beneath the sea" is Patchface's way of saying "C'mon, lets go somewhere else" (away, away, away). Things that happen "under the sea", then, are things that happen somewhere else, far away, perhaps with the additional meaning of "beneath the surface", i.e. where you can't see.

So with that meaning the prophecies become:

“The crow, the crow,” Patchface cried when he saw Jon. “Under the sea the crows are white as snow, I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.”

= Far away there's a place where crows are white as snow. True enough, there are white crows in the Citadel (or were they ravens?) and beyond the Wall the Brothers of the Night's Watch (=crows) are being turned to wights.

“Under the sea, men marry fishes.” Patchface did a little dance step, jingling his bells. “They do, they do, they do.”

= Far away men marry fishes. Could be a reference to Asha's wedding, where her groom wed a seal that was standing in for her. (Well, maybe it wasn't standing, but, you know.)

“Under the sea, the birds have scales for feathers," he said, clang-a-langing. "I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.”

= Far away there are things that fly like birds, but they have scales instead of feathers. Tha dragons, obviously.

“Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs”

= Far away the mermen feast on starfish soup, etc. Could be a reference to the Frey pies or Davos, I don't have any particular theory about this one.

Patchface jumped up. “I will lead it!” His bells rang merrily. “We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh.”

= With my interpretation of the meaning of "under the sea", this one becomes: We will march to a place that is far away and then return. There we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming. When Patchface says that he will lead the expedition, I think he means that it's a fool's errand and/or whoever will lead it is a fool. The talk about seahorses and mermaids is pretty mysterious. One possibility is that, since the place far away in this case is beyond the Wall, the mermaids mean the creatures that inhabit that place = the Others. They will ride wightified horses and the Others will announce their coming with horns. Another possibility is that seahorses are ships and mermaids blowing seashells means the howl of the winds that bring their ships back to the Wall.

“Under the sea, smoke rises in bubbles, and flames burn green and blue and black,” Patchface sang somewhere. “I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.”

= Far away there's a place where smoke rises in bubbles, etc. I think this refers to Valyria and the flames are the glass candles, as others have suggested before in this thread. Patchface is saying that Valyrian magic is making a comeback.

Then there are the prophecies that are not happening "under the sea", or at least Patchface doesn't say so:

“In the dark the dead are dancing.”

"The shadows come to dance, my lord, dance my lord, dance my lord," he sang, hopping from one foot to the other and back again. "The shadows come to stay, my lord, stay my lord, stay my lord."

"Fool's blood, king's blood, blood on the maiden's thigh, but chains for the guests and chains for the bridegroom, aye aye aye."

The middle one fits with my theory well. It's not happening far away, because Mel the shadowbinder is right there. The Red Wedding prophecy does not seem to fit, because it clearly happened somewhere where Stannis &co weren't. I'm not sure how significant the lack of the "under the sea" line is, though - could be that Patchface just couldn't make it rhyme, so he left it out. :devil: Or could be that the way Patchface sees it is that the RW didn't happen "somewhere far away where you can't see" because Mel in her way could see it, and perhaps even had a hand in bringing it about.

I have to confess I don't remember where in the books Patchface utters the third of these, so I can't say for sure if it fits or not. If they're already at the Wall, then the reference is most likely to the wights. Another super-creepy possibility that comes to mind is that Patchface is talking about himself and Shireen, both dead in their own way.

“That creature is dangerous. Many a time I have glimpsed him in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood.”

What if Patchface is some kind of a vampire, and he had a hand in sinking Steffon Baratheon's ship, because he had already eaten everyone on board and had to hide the evidence? :bawl:

[SerLoin]

And about what Mel said -

I think this might show that patchface ate other people corpses in order to survive. His lips are red with blood and skulls are about him because he did what he had to to survive, maybe that's why he lost his mind.

That was how I understood her message. If you think about modern cannibalism and people that are forced to eat other humans to survive. Most of them go insane even after being returned to a healthy state. I reference "The lost boys of Sudan".

[Janicia]

Interesting thread!

So in summary, Patchface could be:

-A supernatural creature (the jester transformed or replaced)

-A human who lost his mind and has occasional random prophetic visions like the Red Wedding mixed in with his normal babble

-The Drowned God's prophet, meaning that a supernatural being / force is controlling or guiding Patchface toward some purpose

Patchface as the Drowned God's prophet raises a lot of questions. Why would the Drowned God choose Patchface rather than one of the Ironborn? Are there any other "real" prophets of the Drowned God? We haven't seen any, but maybe Euron has one on his ship?

And what does the Drowned God hope to achieve with Patchface? Nobody takes Patchface seriously except for Melisandre, who follows a different god and wants him dead. Why would the Drowned God care about the Red Wedding or Frey Pie? Many of Patchface's prophecies seem to relate to the undead; it is reasonable that the Drowned God would care about the undead, but is he for or against? Does the Drowned God care about Stannis and Melisandre, or Shireen, or just about the Others and the Wall?

If the Drowned God has a plan regarding the undead, does that fit in with any of the Ironborn's activities?

[tinyskeeveuk]

" So in summary, Patchface could be:

-A supernatural creature (the jester transformed or replaced)

-A human who lost his mind and has occasional random prophetic visions like the Red Wedding mixed in with his normal babble

-The Drowned God's prophet, meaning that a supernatural being / force is controlling or guiding Patchface toward some purpose "

Can I add another one (forum newbie here....) ?

Patchface could be a Faceless man.

What if PF isn't the true Pf? What if he has been replaced by a faceless man during the sinking, who donned the original Patchfaces face (convoluted much?). That could explain why he was lost at sea for two days with no explanation? It could also explain why Melisandre sees him as such a threat. Perhaps somebody has prayed/ paid for a death at the wall (Jons? Stannis? Melisandre herself?)

Also, a sidenote, is there a metaphorical/ symbolic reason for Maester Cresson donning Patchfaces antler hat? It seems an odd thing that Stannis allowed such a bullying tactic of a life long advisor. Harsh and unyielding he might be, but Stannis is loyal to those who serve him. And he is not a bully. It seemed wrong that he allowed it.....

[Shaggy]

“Under the sea the mermen feast on starfish soup, and all the serving men are crabs.”

Well, starfish may refer to Starks or Northmen in general, crabs could be Lannisters, since one can be "red as crab" but also "red as Lannister. Mermen are offcourse Others. So, this one could be translated into:

Lannisters will serve Starks (Northmen) to the Others.

[red fork]

All this about Patchface being some fool that was bought in essos... they must think we were born yesterday.

He's Steffon Baratheon's water-brained bastard, uncle to Stannis and heir to Dragonstone. All this "fool" business is just a cover story to bolster the faltering honour of house Baratheon.

[TheWizard]

[The March] Patchface jumped up. “I will lead it!” His bells rang merrily. “We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh.”

I think this refers to Aurane Waters bringing the stolen ships to Stannis at White Harbor. Auranes house sigil is the seahorse(forgot the name but its on driftmark) and Manderlys is a mermaid.

[EmmaoftheCanals]

Patchface could be a Faceless man.

What if PF isn't the true Pf? What if he has been replaced by a faceless man during the sinking, who donned the original Patchfaces face (convoluted much?). That could explain why he was lost at sea for two days with no explanation? It could also explain why Melisandre sees him as such a threat. Perhaps somebody has prayed/ paid for a death at the wall (Jons? Stannis? Melisandre herself?).

That would require a lot of forward planning. If Jon (or anyone else at the wall) is the target of the Faceless Man-assassination. I don't think they could know that Stannis would go to the wall at the time they acquired Patchface (as Fool of course). This takes place before the books do, I think. The only logical targets would be Stannis/Shireen/Selyse, but if they were, why are they still alive?

I think even Melissandre might have come into the Stannis Baratheon household after Patchface did. Though I'm not sure at all...

[EmmaoftheCanals]

I think this refers to Aurane Waters bringing the stolen ships to Stannis at White Harbor. Auranes house sigil is the seahorse(forgot the name but its on driftmark) and Manderlys is a mermaid.

I don't remember the sigil of Aurane Waters, but if it's true it would be an odd coincidence...

[Diehard_TH]

Rapsie, on 27 January 2012 - 11:21 PM, said:

In terms of what Patchface is, we have seen that the Others are real but because of folktales and not having seen them for thousands of years etc, we do not really know much about the Others, and similarly Patchface maybe something else from a tale. In AFFC Nimble Dick tells Brienne about Squishers.

Quote

They look like men till you get close, but their heads is too big, and they got scales where a proper man's got hair. Fish-belly white they are, with webs between their fingers. They're always damp and fishy-smelling, but behind these blubbery lips they got rows of green teeth sharp as needles. Some say the First Men killed them all, but don't you believe it. They come by night and steal bad little children, padding along on them webbed feet with a little squish-squish sound. The girls they keep to breed with, but the boys they eat, tearing at them with those sharp green teeth.

Now blatantly this does not entirely describe Patchface, but there are similarities to how he is described and Mel's vision. So I wonder if Patchface is something that this tale of squishers was based on.

[My bold above, see below for why] I had thought they sounded like Deep Ones too,

here is the description of them from HP Lovecraft's 'The Shadow over Innsmouth':

Quote

"I think their predominant color was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of exp

ression which their staring faces lacked ... They were the blasphemous fish-frogs of the nameless design - living and horrible."

From the wikipedia entry on them the following might have bearing on aSoIaF:

• Deep Ones are immortal
  
• opposed by mysterious beings known as the Old Gods
  
• there is a bargain between Deep Ones and humans
  
• the human's lot is to allow mating between the two, creating hybrids
  
• Deep One hybrid offspring are born with the appearance of a normal human being, the individual will eventually transform into a Deep One, gaining immortality
  
• they serve Cthulhu - ie the Drowned God
  

Is Patchface one of these hybrids? It would explain this: [The Fishes] “Under the sea, men marry fishes.”

Also his [The birds] quote clearly descibes fish.

I've also always had the impression that he, in some way, caused the shipwreck, where he drowned, intentionally.

I think his 'under the sea' saying has multiple and varied meanings, sometimes it could mean literally under the sea.

I have also had a crackpot thought that it could sometimes means 'under The Wall' whether literally underneath The Wall or below it as in south of the wall. I did think that mayhaps The Wall is made of seawater but I think this is now unlikely.

[mattyc531]

After reading this thread, i just can't shake the feeling that the blue green and black are a reference to the three dragon riders. blue being jon snow purely because of the blue rose in the wall reference at the hotu, other than that i'm pretty much stuck apart from danaerys having the black field on her sigil and her riding drogon the black dragon, which i know is a bit of a stretch

[A Crow Come Over]

Patchface is the avatar of the Drowned God, it is known.