chrisdaw

On 6/3/2023 at 11:09 PM, Hippocras said:

Yes, he did have a conversation with Cersei near the beginning about being Hand, but his rejection was definitive just as much as Arya's rejection of being a Lady and marrying a King was definitive. People seem to believe it more easily of Arya than Jamie, but why? They were both telling the absolute truth about themselves.

You don't seem to understand that this is a story of character arcs.

23 hours ago, Hippocras said:

He is part villain, part hero. Basically the greyest character of all. The story starts with him trying to murder a child. Brienne would in no way conceal that fact, which she is perfectly aware of. I am not trying to say Brienne will turn him into a hero, but she will add his FULL story to the White Book.

Jamie's conversations with Tywin were basically all about legacy. He is upset by the name Kingslayer because he knows he saved an entire city of people with that act. There is no other character who struggles quite as much with honour, and what it actually means. His weirwood dream was basically a bunch of monstrous Lannister ghosts trying to force him down into the bowels of Casterly Rock and him resisting with Brienne's help. I am curious what you think that actually means if not a metaphor for how he is remembered?

Jaime will be Hand, more so than knighthood he's about what it means to be Hand, and the position of Hand is about serving the realm above everything, as GRRM coined the term, the King eats the Hand takes the shit.

A large part of it is about serving the realm above one's own House. Tywin was a great Hand but he served House Lannister more than what a Hand should and sought to reach higher for himself than what was good for the realm. Jaime is to become the ultimate servant and shed entirely his self interest and that of House Lannister, Tywin was in this regard for the purpose of comparison to what Jaime will be. One of the defining traits of the Lannisters is that they're self interested more so than any other House and I would suggest that's what the Bowels/Heart of Casterly Rock represents and what Jaime is to overcome, and I suppose Brienne is to help him in this. If Brienne can step outside the box that confines a woman, particularly to the angst of her father, then surely Jaime can step outside the defining traits of his House and his father too.

I think Jaime is going to end up saving the world, few will know it but Brienne will. I don't dislike the idea of the White Book recording Jaime's truth, but even if it happens I don't believe it'll cut through to the masses, he'll be reviled as a villain despite having given everything in service for the realm.

I believe Tyland Lannister is a parallel for Jaime along the lines of these themes, in the aftermath of the Dance Tyland took no revenge for himself or his team, he forgot all and governed in the interest of the realm and its future.

12 hours ago, Hippocras said:

It is not only about the parallel to her ancestor Dunk.

It is also about all of the signs pointing to Brienne having Jamie's legacy in her hands. Jamie's weirwood dream provoked him to go back and save her from the bear, and she will save him from being remembered simply as a villain, and the stories of Kingsguard are written in the White Book. She will therefore be the one to finish his story in the White Book. Only the LC of the Kingsguard can do that. This is why I am pretty sure the show did not get this detail wrong.

I disagree because I believe the point is that Jaime will be remembered to the masses as a villain, his honour and reputation is a sacrifice (one of his many) in service to the realm. Only those in close proximity will know the real person and there'll be no chance of changing the public image, they won't even try.

He's half fighting to undo Tywin's legacy and half just reaching to put Martells back on the throne now. And yeah it's going to end terribly, Arianne is going to go full let the world burn mode when Dany kills Aegon and she loses her husband and queenship.

Harrenhal is a parallel of Euron when he becomes the Stone Beast, its creation, nature and demise.

Quote

So far he had been true to his word, and Brienne had been true to hers. Podrick had not complained. Every time he raised a new blister on his sword hand, he felt the need to show it to her proudly. He took good care of their horses too. He is still no squire, she reminded herself, but I am no knight, no matter how many times he calls me "ser." She would have sent him on his way, but he had nowhere to go. Besides, though Podrick said he did not know where Sansa Stark had gone, it might be that he knew more than he realized. Some chance remark, half-remembered, might hold the key to Brienne's quest.

11 hours ago, Tyrosh Lannister said:

How will she be knighted and be a KG? It goes against GRRMS writing (non-knights being true knights than the ones who received knighthoods)

Besides Westerosi society is too sexist in nature to allow a woman (that too a potentially pregnant woman ) to become a knight 

All it takes is a knight to knight someone, Jaime will knight her. Cersei will accuse Sansa of murdering Joffrey and Sansa will demand a trial of seven, most likely Jaime will knight Brienne then so that she can fight in Sansa's defence. Brienne will be in Tyrion's KG as Sansa and Jaime will be heavy in the running of that administration.

36 minutes ago, Jeff Claburn said:

The problem with Dany is that I then read that George Martin says that the fan theorist who gets it is the one who wrote about how Dany learned all the wrong lessons in Meeren because the peace was working and she gave up on it. That line of analysis does seem to lead toward what happened in the TV show.

But that is not the story I read.

Then you miscomprehended it and I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve here.

I think where GRRM is using them symbolically the iron and bronze meanings are what the text gives us directly.

Quote

Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends.

Quote

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.

I've no doubt Brienne will be knighted and expect she will be KG but I doubt she ends the series KG because she's going to sleep with Jaime and it'd make a lot of sense for her to get pregnant by him, and I doubt a KG could remain a KG while pregnant or having so obviously broken their vow.

They particularly worked out how to skin change/second life ocean life where everyone else would not be able to breathe when they tried. The key was drowning, flat out drowning and dying would allow for a second life and drowning and resuscitating as humans probably cheated the whole system and allowed for skinchanging. Obviously some would not survive the process, but what is dead may never die.

More than one soul can fit into being, and all the Ironborn who were drowned or drowned and resuscitated during their life and die at (or near enough to the) sea will find a second life in something in the ocean. The drowned God is the representation of a drowned human spliced with a leviathan, it represents a second lifed leviathan. The Drowned God's watery hall is symbolic of a leviathan's innards.

The precise knowledge has been lost but the customs and beliefs endure.

To reverse engineer the Ironborn the way the author thought it up the logic would go;

• People in my universe can skinchange, so should I let them skinchange fish? Hmmm no, because they can't breathe underwater.
• I want a character to become a whale and also a kraken so lets make a crazy work around and imbed it into my viking adjacent culture.

The Forsaken chapter leans into it all very heavily and sits just on the edge of reveal, with Euron calling the Drowned God a lie and stating that if he drowned Aeron that Aeron would just die. The point will be brought full circle, no the Drowned God isn't a lie, it represents something very real, Aeron is not forsaken and his faith shall be rewarded, when Aeron drowns he will not stay drowned but rise again harder and stronger, he the faithful will be called to the Drowned God's watery hall, he will second life a leviathan, and eventually the Drowned God will have his revenge on Euron.

No, you people don't the text nearly literally enough. The text tells you what Lightbringer is, 

Quote

"A hundred days and a hundred nights he labored on the third blade, and as it glowed white-hot in the sacred fires, he summoned his wife. 'Nissa Nissa,' he said to her, for that was her name, 'bare your breast, and know that I love you best of all that is in this world.' She did this thing, why I cannot say, and Azor Ahai thrust the smoking sword through her living heart. It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon, but her blood and her soul and her strength and her courage all went into the steel. Such is the tale of the forging of Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.

It's a sword that has been second lifed, of particular importance is the soul and blood. Now whose soul and blood is likely to set something on fire?

Quote

A great knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of wings.

Quote

She was the blood of the dragon, and the fire was in her.

Quote

It is my son inside her, the stallion who mounts the world, filling her with his fire.

Quote

She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam

And you get this kind of stuff.

Quote

Once Azor Ahai fought a monster. When he thrust the sword through the belly of the beast, its blood began to boil. Smoke and steam poured from its mouth, its eyes melted and dribbled down its cheeks, and its body burst into flame.

Quote

Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I.

And the moon symbolism, always Dany.

Quote

It is said that her cry of anguish and ecstasy left a crack across the face of the moon,

Quote

Is good name, Dan Ares wife, moon of my life

Targaryens sacrifice children to control "wake" dragons. Rhaegar thought he'd have to be sacrificed, then thought it would be Aegon, then came to believe he'd need to sacrifice three children of which Jon was the third. Dany accidentally woke dragons through the loss of Rhaego, she will lose her dragons (only one is really hers) and seek to purposely repeat the process to save the world. If I look back I am lost stuff.

Quote

Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter. Two kings to wake the dragon. The father first and then the son, so both die kings. The words had been murmured by one of the queen's men as Maester Aemon had cleaned his wounds. Jon had tried to dismiss them as his fever talking. Aemon had demurred. "There is power in a king's blood," the old maester had warned, "and better men than Stannis have done worse things than this." The king can be harsh and unforgiving, aye, but a babe still on the breast? Only a monster would give a living child to the flames.

Proving herself the monster. Jon will kill her for it, because, in Dany's own words.

Quote

 

"I was alone for a long time, Jorah. All alone but for my brother. I was such a small scared thing. Viserys should have protected me, but instead he hurt me and scared me worse. He shouldn't have done that. He wasn't just my brother, he was my king. Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?"

"Some kings make themselves. Robert did."

"He was no true king," Dany said scornfully. "He did no justice. Justice . . . that's what kings are for."

 

It will be justice, and that's what a flaming sword represents. Part of her soul will go into the sword and the sword takes flame and becomes Lightbringer. But only part, where the rest of her soul goes is more important.

Yeah I think GRRM pretty clearly put the possibility out there in AWOIAF, but really the possibility existed just going by the existence and established rules of skin changing and second lifing.

The text basically gives us skin changing something corrupts the human's blood with that thing (and the bones remember). Through skinchanging, (forced) interbreeding and experimentation particularly desirable results are likely to be able to be engineered.

I would suggest the results work best on children, and that Valyrians particularly were able to force souls out of children (including in the womb) and into other animals/beasts, including dragon eggs. And that's why you have no (visible) children in Asshai, as there are sorcerers there doing all kinds of skin changing/beast splicing experimentation and children are valuable commodities for use in these experiments.

I think the sphinx (from the sphinx is the riddle) might refer to the different blood lines required to make a dragon.

I don't think it all really matters much to the story plot, the point is just that a second lifed thing will reflect the bloodline of the thing that second lifed it, mentally and physically, because Euron is going to second life Drogon and Drogon is going to reflect Euron and turn into Cthuhlu. Actually on second thought, I expect Euron to similarly experiment to create his own set of beasts (probably trying to make a dragon so he can skinchange/second life it) through the forced mating and use of the children of his followers, and that's what the dwarves in the Forsaken represent.

Fire and Blood is a chore.

I agree she has a great role to play in the war for the dawn and the final battle. She is the Last Hero, the dog is Sandor and the sword that will snap Needle, and she is the grey girl of Melisandre's visions fleeing a marriage, they're the same thing. I'm confident she'll be pregnant while on the journey and have some form of greyscale and she'll have escaped Jon's captivity. I assume she will be serving Bran as the Last Hero's journey related to the COFT.

The Narrow Sea will empty and during the TWFTD the people of KL and perhaps more of humanity will flee to the dried seabed and make their last stand there (the gullet), I believe Arya will play a role in or maybe even instigate the migration, Nymeria's story is foreshadowing it and Nymeria exists to parallel Arya. This may be related to the Last Hero's Journey or not, I'm not sure.

The series will finish with Arya as queen of the Seven Kingdoms, but that doesn't necessarily relate to her doings during TWFTD.

It'll be a trial of seven to prove Sansa's innocence of Joff's murder. It likely grew in the telling and was intended to only be Jaime and Sandor agains Ungregor when GRRM wrote Bran's AGOT vision. Brienne likely didn't exist then but was created later because GRRM had too many ideas for Jaime's arc to fit into one character, Jaime could only be in one place doing one thing at a time, so Brienne gets added in, and so then so slide in more characters. There's plenty of foreshadowing which I detail in the Cleganebowl topic in my signature.

Sansa will be accused of Joffrey's murder and demand and receive a trial of Seven and Sandor will be one of her defenders and Strong one who stands for the accuser.

I don't really think the OP really has a grasp on Sandor though. Sandor isn't going to die for Sansa, he's going to reject her, her arc is to go from what he values, a sincere honest and innocent believer, to what he despises, a hypocrite, the best liar in Kings Landing. Eventually her duplicity will become too much for him to stomach and he'll turn his white cloak from her to Arya.

Sandor's loyalty is the litmus test for which sister is worthy of rule, and which is worth dying for.

9 hours ago, Craving Peaches said:

I don't care either way actually, it was just a suggestion...

And if we were supposed to 100% believe that Euron went there then why does he run out the room shortly after being asked whether he's really been to Valyria? If the author's intent is that Euron has undoubtedly been to Valyria then why include that interaction between Rodrick and Euron?

You're right it was meant to be doubted, so that it could overwhelmingly crushed by the reveals in the forsaken.

Also the Reader's standing up and challenging Euron brings Euron to a realisation. Euron came with a plan, the Reader's interaction makes Euron rethink and change his plan, that's why he's pissed.

Euron seated himself and gave his cloak a twitch, so it covered his private parts. "I had forgotten what a small and noisy folk they are, my ironborn. I would bring them dragons, and they shout out for grapes."

GRRM wants Euron's course correction on page, wants us to know it, and something was required to bring it about. To speculate he wanted Euron to stay in Westeros and Vic to go to Dany and this was how he brought it about when the logical thing would be for Euron to just go himself. Another reason I would suggest is he wants to ram home the point Euron doesn't care about worldly loot to the point where he forgot regular men do, because he's built different, he is perusing something grand and supernatural.

14 hours ago, YeniAy_Ottoman said:

I doubt that the final version of the LSH matters. Jaime and Brienne made a vow and they are both striving to fulfill it. According to the template, they will succeed.

It matters, they're not crazy people, they'll attempt to fulfil the spirit of the vows in a true and logical manner, which will result in Jaime and Brienne playing ongoing defenders for the girls at various times.

I don't think anyone will be purposely taking Arya or Sansa to see the skeletal black hooded spectre of death that was once their mother.

1 hour ago, Springwatch said:

Still, for me that's a disappointing end for the Reader (and us, the readers). Should have played it safe. Not asked questions. Taken things at face value. Boring!

I think the majority of readers will consider Euron having been to Valyria as the more dangerous and interesting resolution.

23 hours ago, Lady Stonehearts Simp said:

Do you think that means Euron is destined to be around for awhile?

He's the mount to dread, the corpse at the prow of the ship, the stone beast, betrayal for blood, the drowned crow with seaweed from his wings and the one most of all, tall twisted with ten arms and one eye sailing on a sea of blood. Since ACOK I think GRRM has been setting him up as the most depraved threat to Westeros, no he's not going anywhere soon.

Stannis will be the big bad of the series by way of failing the leader's burden to balance a course between the heart and the mind, whereas Euron is the one rung below big bad but in the more straightforward sense that he's just direct evil, limited only by the bounds of magic in world.

It'll be a magical reason but there's nothing else to go on. Maybe it allowed her to come to Dany in visions. Maybe it allowed her to track her. Maybe it allows her to see through Dany's eyes.

1 hour ago, Springwatch said:

Would be a better pay off if Euron didn't go. And even the Forsaken falls short of proof - there's no law of physics that the armour could only be found in Valyria. GRRM loves writing ambiguities.

You have a vested interest in Euron not having gone it seems when the point is the opposite. The purpose of the Forsaken chapter which was to round out ADWD was to legitimise Euron as a world scale threat, Aeron deducting that the armour proves he's been to Valyria is supposed to be taken at face value and contributes to the chapter's purpose.

1 hour ago, Springwatch said:

it's a flourish any author would be proud of, and it deserves better than to be thrown to the dogs like a stale sandwich.

Yeah I'm saying I don't think he cares about confirming it outside of the text because to his mind the pay off was the end of the Forsaken chapter and he's already 'released' (read) that, so the answer is already out there in text. It's also been so long it might have slipped his mind the Forsaken chapter didn't make it into Dance.