CrypticWeirwood

No. Bran's destiny is linked to the name of his wolf, Summer. “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York” For “sun of York” read of course “son of Stark”.

She wouldn't. That's the point. Hers is a powerful enough house that her children would take her name because she could only marry down.

Everybody writes that story, again and again and again. Martin wouldn't have wasted his time writing yet another storybook happy ending when there are already zillions of those out there. That doesn't break the wheel: it just wears it as a wedding band for a time so that Florian and Jonquil can live happily ever after.

The reason it was so important for Jon to have been the so-called rightful king yet not come to rule is because it shatters the hackneyed hidden-prince trope, just like killing off Eddard Stark, his protagonist of Game of Thrones shattered that hackneyed trope as well. It also proved Dany's whole life-mission goal to "take back" the Iron Throne because she was "the rightful heir" was always full of hot air. Then when she tried to keep living what she now knew to be a lie, she outed herself as always having been on a mission of wrathful revenge, never of righteousness, because she had no such right but didn't care. These were critical elements of the art form that Martin created. Lose that and you lose his messaging.

What do you mean it meant nothing!!?? It meant everything! The entire endgame requires it be true. Otherwise the entire story meant nothing. It was critical that Jon not Dany was the real heir. That's why she freaked out. That's why he had to be the one to kill her. SO IT WOULD HAVE MEANING! That's why he had to keep it secret and leave the kingdom. That's why his point about house words not being stamped on you at birth is so important. Otherwise Rhaegar's obsession with prophesy didn't wreck the kingdom and doom his family. And his Kingsguard friends. Or create Robert and Cersei. Everything is about this. Everything. Honestly, this is what it was all always about.

Enjoy your cool aid.

Bran doesn't follow "a different religion". He doesn't follow a religion at all. Just because he knows that men call all the children whose spirits live on in the trees "the old gods" doesn't make them gods and it doesn't make understanding them a religion. Bran is a greenseer himself, so he knows that this isn't a religion. He isn't a god and he knows it, and he wouldn't put up with people worshipping him. That's Dany, not Bran. He's already part of that network. It's just the underlying mechanics of how this universe works. No religion needed. But the Seven? Haha, that's a belly laugh. Just stuff to keep the masses in check. There's no there there. With the weirwoods, though, it's all real. Not religion.

Just wanted to say how stunningly excellent that all was! Thank you.

The show made it seem like Bloodraven just migrated to Bran when the Others took his mortal body. This is super-reminiscent of like how in Gene Wolfe’s Citadel of the Autarch, our protagonist took up all the old autarchs’ collective memories at the previous autarch’s death when Severian [spoiler suppressed]. (Martin really likes Wolfe, BTW.) That's why the autarch was sometimes addressed as Legion, for in him are multitudes, all the living collective memory of those who had held the station before him, with the previous autarch's memories foremost in his mind after he own memories but hardly alone. So too with Bran. That's why Bran is the only one there who has the actual experience to be king. For one thing, Bloodraven has a lot of direct experience ruling Westeros, but for another Bran has access to earlier memories and earlier history beyond just Bloodraven's own memories. Think about Rhaegar and Lyanna and the Tower of Joy. That's why Bran told Tyrion about where he got the wheelchair design from. That wasn't a random throwaway line, not this late in the game. It was to prime Tyron so that when he thought about who should rule, he would think of Bran and why Bran had that experience from days long past.

I always figured that they knew about butterfly fever (Cogman certainly would), and so deliberately set this up as a sort of poison Easter egg for Grey Worm to go to a grisly grave soon after the show's ending. If that's not the case, then please don't tell me because I like it better this way: as Giordano Bruno's said, Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato.

“The kool aid is strong in this one.” Please don't make us all laugh. George had them do it in the series, and they got the series because they got it right. It's a big deal. It real. It's what he said to do. It will be in the books. You have to read up as down and black as white and right as wrong to think anything other than this. It's willful disbelief of reality. This was a super-critical plot point. The entire endgame hangs on it. That's how you know it's what Martin set up: because that's how it played out on screen. Without it, everything would have fallen apart into meaninglessness. Martin said that the main characters all end up in the same place, just not a few secondary ones. Call them what you will but Jon and Dany are main characters. The show isn't going to to just randomly change the main characters' endgame and break all the layers of meaning that Martin has spent thousands of pages across decades carefully building up like that. If they would it would not have been Martin's story. So they didn't. It's too important; otherwise nothing else makes sense and the showMartin said is 97% accurate is random garbage. He wouldn't say what he said if it were. So it's not. That's how we know that up is up and black is black and down is down and white is white. And that's how we know R+L=J. The show's ending guarantees it.

When he told us that the showrunners answered his question about who Jon's mother was correctly. That completely removed all possible doubt, confirming it once and for all. Think of the billions and billions of hours saved.

One thing I expect to see in the books based on what happened in the show is that despite having been initially pitched as a generational saga, virtually no one is going to die of old age. Only a single character out of the show's nearly fifty main cast died of old age, so I'm not expecting many more to do so in the books. Seems odd for a generational saga.

Jon is Azor Ahai, who plunged his blade first into water, then into the heart of a lion, then into the heart of his beloved. He is the shield that guards the realms of men, and he himself is Lightbringer the sword in the darkness. He is from the line of Aerys and Rhaella, the prince who was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire. Bran is the mystical Last Hero of Old Nan's fairytales, who lost his companions one by one and even his dog but finally found the Children, who helped him.

Sorry, it's too late. Isaac already spilled the beans, so that's that. Just because D&D made no press release doesn't mean they didn't convey the truth to the actor playing the role. To pretend this didn't happen requires that somebody lied, which is an ostrich-sticks-head-in-sand denial of reality. The old forever-stuck-in-a-cave-as-a-tree chestnut made absolutely no narrative sense whatsoever for the story's leading POV character. You always knew his destiny would be tied up on an oversight role. When you add to that all the lessons Martin has been teaching about how awful hotheaded rulers are, it makes even more sense that Bran will get that job since he's the best equipped for it. I'm glad all the sceptical flat-earth nonsense about Bran's destiny has finally been proven wrong once and for all.

Yup, that's the one. Finally the silly "He's a tree! Never leaving his cave!" sceptics will finally give it a rest, just like the R+L=J deniers ultimately were proven wrong when Martin confirmed that D&D got it right. Long live King Bran the Broken. Long may he reign, calmly and coolly curing the realm of its burning wounds.

I think we now Dany's three mounts, fires, and treasons.

There's an interview with Isaac that just came out where he talks about learning from the showrunners the two big surprises they brought him for his character straight from Martin: the Hodor revelation was the one, and him becoming king was the other. It's quite a positive interview. I'll see if I can find it again.

I guess now we finally know why Jon was resurrected.

Continually referring to Bran as "crippled and impotent" is exactly the kind of abusive bigotry that Martin has sought to overturn throughout his work by raising cripples, bastards, and broken things. Think back to that big scene in Dragonstone when the only participant sporting a functional set of block and table was our favorite dwarf? Tells you something. One gets tired of hearing people continuously put down with hate speech. It says far more about the speaker's regressive bigotry than it does about the Summer King himself.

Overtly? No, certainly it will not be such a thing. But covertly? Perhaps, and maybe that’s not a bad thing. Remember that what men call the old gods are simply the timeless greenseers. Who better to keep the world in balance?

Oh but maybe you should. Remember that Lord Acton’s famously relevant quote was sent to a bishop, and it concerned the absolute power of monarchs, notably including the elected one I referred to: I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. The tapestry we call A Song of Ice and Fire shows this to us time and time again. It’s a critical theme. Witness if you would Maegor the First, Aegon the Second, Aerys the Second — even Cersei the Neverth. As Dany gains power she becomes worse and worse. It is the wanting after power that destroys the person and those around them. All Jon’s offices were thrust upon him, not ones of his own volition. As with the three storied Hobbit Ringbearers, that’s why Jon has not fallen prey to the devastating internal corruption that Dany has. And as he sheds power, he becomes better and better. He would have been truly miserable on the Conqueror's pointy throne. How all this applies to Bran and Sansa and Tyrion, we will alas have to wait some goodly while to find out.

In this as in all things, all roads lead to Rome, for the College of Cardinals have always collectively elected a monarch who they know will never produce any heirs. That’s kind of the point.

The Papal States of the Middle Ages were an absolute monarchy without heirs to take the monarch’s place when he died. The College of Cardinals simply elected a new Pope. And, oddly enough, all of that is still true.

If a twelve year old needs to save the world, then so be it. "Once there was a curious lad who lived in the Neck. He was small like all crannogmen, but b rave and smart and strong as well. He grew up hunting and fishing and climbing trees, and learned all the magics of my people." Bran was almost certain he had never heard this story. "Did he have green dreams like Jojen?" "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." "I wish I could," Bran said plaintively. "When does he meet the tree knight?" Meera made a face at him. "Sooner if a certain prince would be quiet." "I was just asking." "The lad knew the magics of the crannogs," she continued, "but he wanted more. Our people seldom travel far from home you know. We're a small folk, and our ways seem queer to some, so the big people do not always treat us kingly. But this lad was bolder than most, and one day when he had grown to manhood he decided he would leave the crannogs and visit the Isle of Faces." "No one visits the Isle of Faces." objected Bran. "That's where the green men live." "It was the green men he meant to find. So he donned a shirt sewn with bronze scales, like mine, took up a leathern shield and a three-pronged spear, like mine, and paddled a little skin boat down the Green Fork." Bran closed his eyes to try and see the man in his little skin boat. In his head, the crannogman looked like Jojen, only older and stronger, and dressed like Meera. "He passed beneath the Twins by night so the Freys would not attack him, and when he reached the Trident he climbed from the river and put his boat on his head and began to walk. It took him many a day, but finally he reached the Gods Eye, threw his boat in the lake, and paddled out to the Isle of Faces." "Did he meet the green men?" "Yes," said Meera, "But that's another story, and not for me to tell. My prince asked for knights." "Green men are good too." "They are," she agreed, but said no more about them. Little Lord Bran, “rex quondam rexque futurus”, never did get to hear the tale of magics from the Lady of Greywater Watch that day, only the tale of knights that we’ve all come to know inside and out. I’m convinced that understanding the missing tale is as critical to the story’s end as understanding the one he did hear has proven to be.