LmL
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1 hour ago, Seams said:
Ok, everyone. No need for more discussion because this complex motif, like so many others, can be explained in terms of the ideas already laid out by this famous, erudite, unparalleled analyst of the original author (who is almost beside the point because the most important thing is the star and moon analyst). It has all been worked out and everything comes back to this idea. So stop trying to start other discussions. His friends all agree, so there is no point in ignoring him or asking him to go away or trying to encourage other people to pursue different lines of thought. Just give up and worship him.
But wait, there's more!
Wow, this seems a bit over the top. I am sorry you feel this way.
- I never said or implied my / our analysis was exclusive to any other, not sure why you would take that meaning
- the point of sharing analysis is to start a conversation, not kill it. Every single time I comment on your thread, it is because I imagine an idea I have might help you in your own analysis. That's the only reason I take the time to comment. You were discussing something we had been discussing too, so I shared our thoughts about pennytree, thinking you might enjoy them or find something useful to your own inquiry. That's what people do on the forum - not sure why my opinion, couched in qualifiers like "such and such CAN refer to" and "I believe that," comes across as an attempt to kill the convo when you don't interpret other people's comments that way.
- "my friends" that I listed were, to the best of my knowledge, also your friends, as I know they comment on your threads and share ideas with you. I guess not? I mentioned them in the interest of not taking credit for other people's ideas or acting like a know-it-all. Unfortunately that seams not to have come across as I intended
- the rest of your invective is just bizarre. I'm sorry you have such a grudge against me, for what, I do not know. I'll be sure to leave you alone though!
QuoteAnd this has to do with puns and wordplay about the Pennytree because . . . Oh! Silly me! Because it interests you. How could I forget and try to start a discussion that doesn't come back to you. Please forgive me.
Actually this was a simple mistake, it was a comment intended for a different thread. However I am glad the mistake forced you to show your apparent true feelings of hostility. Now I know better than to try to share ideas with you. I only ever did that because I respect your analysis and your insights frequently overlap with my own. Clearly you do not appreciate my input, so I will stop trying to contribute to your thread.
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edit: wrong thread
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Pennies can be stars in ASOIAF, and are made of copper, which is a terrific conductor of electricity.. or a good way to draw lightning. The 'lightning striking the tree' motif of the Ironborn legend, the burning tree which transmits the fire of the gods to mankind, refers to (I believe) the weirwoods, whose bloody hands leaves are also described as a "blaze of flame." So, the penny tree is a "star tree" by virtue of the pennies and also a "tree that wants to be struck by lightning." That lightning was actually a falling star, a moon meteor. That is why Dunk's sigil is a falling star and a tree - it's all about this idea of the lightning striking the tree. His horse is thunder, which alludes to the thunderbolt and also the deeper concept of a shamanic horse like Sleipnir, but I digress.
This is not just my thinking; some of this comes from @Pain killer Jane and @Blue Tiger and @ravenous reader and perhaps a couple of others; I don't recall exactly but we pieced it together collaboratively is the point.
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7 hours ago, GloubieBoulga said:
Yes, eyes and nose gave me a solution, and also the parallelism between Tywin and Craster ^^
But I wonder if we can put exactly on the same line stags, whales, auroch, bulls and pigs and boars. I suspect (but without being certain) that stags or aurochs are regionals variations of the "bear character" as a king (= bear could be a "king" the North, and the stag in the south, for example), when bulls, pigs and boars are the false/fallen/dethroned form for them. But sometimes, we see directly a bear character loosing his throne.
And those rams are truly fool bastards !
Ho ! I love the cheshire Cat stuff ! I didn't thought at all about it, but now that's sure, I will consider very attentively the crescent laughing moon. And indeed, we see this kind of moon during the wedding between Ramsay and fArya, and the weirwood is laughing (and perhaps also ready to eat, making the connection with the meat who was originally a sacrified animal for a feast)
I'm interrogative about the "horned moon" (I can't recall if this expression exists in my native language)
Finally, the wordplay between slaughter and laughter tells us also about feasts of deads/(after) battles
I noticed in Theon's Winterfell nightmare of the two direwolf children chasing him, all the trees had faces, and all the faces were laughing. It seems like a pretty strong theme. It might be an extension of the "sex and swordplay" double entendres about bloody swords and "giving a maiden the sword when her moon blood is on her" , the childbed being a woman's battlefield and the like.
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@GloubieBoulga, weirwoods are also slaughter trees for what it's worth. I'd have to agree those words are meant to play off one another. There's also the link between laughing and slaying implied by the Crescent moon. It can either be a sickle, such as Bran's last ADWD chapter, or it can be a smile like a Cheshire cat moon. Martin is working that angle quite a bit.
ETA: you might consider the scene from AFFC where Jaime and The silent knight Ilyn Payne dance beneath the horned moon, with Payne doing his choking laughter thing.
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1 hour ago, Isobel Harper said:
This thread has inspired me to look for anagrams everywhere. I've been playing around with "Mad Danelle Lothston" today, which almost forms "lost and damned to hell," but alas the phrase has an extra D in it. "...and damned to hell" comes from the D&E series: Oak and Iron guard me well, lest I be doomed and dammed to hell. I was pretty excited when I realized that "damned to hell" could be formed out Mad Danelle Lothston, a nod to the prayer above and a possible allusion to the curse of Harrenhal, but alas, truly nothing.
It got me thinking though. If the Stark children (from Ned and Cat) are of Lothston-Stark descent, and Lothston is a form of lodestone in surname form, does this make the Lothston-Starks kind of "lodestars?" Lothston>lodestone; Loth-Stark>lodestar (The lodestar is an old term for the northern star, the star which directs navigators north.)
Isobel, I'll reeling you back in from the brink; please accept my extended hand. You're awfully close to the edge there - the edge of madness. Don't slip Isobel! ISOBEELLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!! NNNOOOOOO!!!!!
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On 11/1/2016 at 1:36 PM, Pain killer Jane said:
I agree that line is extremely significant. If we take the three male Starks still alive they could be the three gargoyles in the Cressen scene. Jon the wyvern (not a dragon but still a kin of dragons), Bran would be Cressen, Rickon like Ravenous Reader pointed out could be the hellhound as hellhounds irl are just monstrous black dogs and Shaggy is a monstrous black wolf that is a pet. @ravenous reader and I have been corresponding about scarecrows and their symbolism. And Ravenous pointed out this scene and asked who the wyvern and the hellhound might represent if a scarecrow is also a gargoyle.
Have you guys put together the scarecrow connection between the burning scarecrows in Jon's dream and Beric, the scarecrow knight? Basically, when Jon has his burning red sword / AA dream, he dreams about those scarecrow brothers they made, and in the dream, they are the only ones with him. They tumble down, black cloaks ablaze - like fiery black meteors, it must be said - meaning that they have become burning scarecrows. Those scarecrows were named for brothers who were either dead or absent, so there is an implication of the burning scarecrows as dead or undead fiery scarecrows. That's EXACTLY what Beric is, a fiery undead "scarecrow knight" who also wears a black cloak and who wields a burning sword, just like Jon does in the dream.
What I think all that is about is that the original Night's Watch were undead greenseers, resurrected by fire magic - probably he Last Hero's 12 who "died." Jon is about to be an undead skinchanger, quite possibly reanimated with fire magic, so essentially Jon would be recreating what I think is the truth behind the original Last Hero.
Returning to Beric, he's not a skinchanger like Jon, but he has obvious Bloodraven symbolism with the weirwood throne and the one eye missing. That is done to imply him as a greenseer (or skinchanger, same diff) - a greenseer who has been reanimated with fire. Who holds a burning red sword.
The reason you have to use skinchangers to make a good zombie is because the animal (or tree in the case of a greenseer) can preserve the soul intact for a short time (before it merges with the animal spirit). The animal is a soul-jar, so the resurrected person would not be a faded remnant like Beric or Cat, but a skinchanger who sort of skinchangers his own resurrected corpse. Such a person would be a lot like Coldhands, or a warmer version if fire is used, and they are ideal to fight the Others because they do not need to eat or sleep or seek warmth. Coldhands can live up there for centuries, and probably has. I think the Last Hero and his company had to make this great sacrifice to journey into the frozen lands, to become a burning scarecrow.
See what y'all think of that. You're talking about my favorite subjects here.
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On 10/31/2016 at 6:11 PM, Seams said:
dog / god
sun / son / solar
I'm cautious of commenting on your threads at all at this point, having been chewed out by you so many times for mentioning nay kind of astronomy, but nevertheless, I have a thought or two here.
On 10/31/2016 at 6:11 PM, Seams said:Several metaphors in Jon POVs in ADwD compare fire and/or the religion of R'hllor to a dog. This led me to wonder whether there might be deliberate wordplay around dogs and gods.
The sword glowed red and yellow and orange, alive with light. Jon had seen the show before … but not like this, never before like this. Lightbringer was the sun made steel. When Stannis raised the blade above his head, men had to turn their heads or cover their eyes. Horses shied, and one threw his rider. The blaze in the fire pit seemed to shrink before this storm of light, like a small dog cowering before a larger one. The Wall itself turned red and pink and orange, as waves of color danced across the ice. Is this the power of king's blood?
(ADwD, Jon III)
"I had forgotten that you northmen worship trees.""What sort of god lets himself be pissed upon by dogs?" asked Farring's crony Clayton Suggs.(ADwD, Jon IV)
"Now, a dog can herd a flock of sheep," the King-Beyond-the-Wall had said, "but free folk, well, some are shadowcats and some are stones. One kind prowls where they please and will tear your dogs to pieces. The other will not move at all unless you kick them." Neither shadowcats nor stones were like to give up the gods they had worshiped all their lives to bow down before one they hardly knew.
(ADwD, Jon V)
Melisandre raised her hands, and the ditchfire leapt upward toward her fingers, like a great red dog springing for a treat.
(ADwD, Jon X)
Of course, there are zillions of references to dogs in the books, and many of them seem unrelated to fire or the red god. So there may be some unique aspect about demonstrations of piety by Stannis and Melisandre at the Wall. For some reason, the author sees their religion as being like a dog. If it's not a pun on god, what do you think GRRM is getting at here?
To be fair, in ADwD, Jon also uses the dog metaphor to describe the Wall, banks and the Karstarks who come looking for Alys. But there's a definite pattern with the comparison of fire and/or R'hllorism to a dog.
Hell-hound. That's your fiery dog. I have my own interpretation of hellhounds in mythical astronomy terms - they are very similar to dragons in many ways - but if you want to follow your own nose on this (ha ha) then I suggest looking to Theon's dream of Bran and Rickon as hellhound / dire wolf children, and also everything having to do with Sandor, as he is a burnt Hound. You will notice all the Stark wolves have fiery descriptions of their eyes, and that is no accident - I believe all the dire wolves are "hell hounds" after a fashion. Sander's "what dogs do to wolves" quote is misleading in this sense.
Thematically, fire consumes, hounds hunt. R'hllor is a ravenous dog god, he's coming to getcha.
On 10/31/2016 at 6:11 PM, Seams said:I am throwing in a link here to some analysis of solars on another thread. @ravenous reader had pointed out that there was a pun on sun and son just as I was starting to pay attention to solars. I thought I would find some kind of wordplay clue about Ser Loras relating to solars, but that didn't pan out at all. What I did find is a pattern of sons taking over their father's solars, and daughters as well as sons spending time in their father's solars. So the way that solars is used would very much support the idea of a pun on son and sun. (I realize there is a rich and complex set of metaphors around the sun and moon and stars, but those have been discussed on other threads already. I just though the pun angle needed to be noted in this thread.)
You've considered Quentyn martial, the sun's son, right? There is a very large theme about the second suns which all of this plays into. Basically, Lightbringer is the child of the sun and moon, and so it is the sun's son. Every single second son reference of any kind will lead back to Lightbringer and Azor Ahai. Quentyn seems like a lame-o, but he is trying to ride dragons and marry the "Amethyst Empress Reborn," just as Euron is, and he does have some dragon blood. It's what you would call a weak echo, but there it is. As for the Second Sons company, their banner is a broken sword, and all the broken sword ideas relate to Lightbringer, specifically to the idea of the Last Hero breaking his sword. There are a lot of broken swords - Ice, split in half; the Titan of Bravos holds a broken sword (who heralds the morning and evening, just Venus the Morningstar, whose name means light-bringer), Beric, a clear Azor Ahai echo, has his flaming sword broken, Joffrey vows to break Stannis's magic sword, and so on.
Anyway don't shoot me but hopefully some of those ideas might help you in your own quest.
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21 minutes ago, Isobel Harper said:
The only anagram I can find for lemon cakes is semen cloak.
This will come as bad news to Lem
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@Seams I am always trying to simultaneously identify symbolism and also figure out what it means for the story. For example, the green sea / greenseer wordplay is fairly compelling, but until we can figure out what the POINT is - what the sea has to do with greenseers, what Deep Ones have to do with greenseers, etc, it's only interesting wordplay. I tend to think martin doesn't just do wordplay with purpose - I'm sure there is a deeper truth behind the sea / seer thing having to do with an important part of the story, but I can't figure out exactly what.
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Just now, Seams said:
Puns are fine here, obviously. I will go look at the see / sea discussion on the other thread. I read through the other posts and they are now taking off in a new direction. I am sure it would be worth starting a new thread to pursue those ideas.
I am hesitant to post ideas about anagrams, especially when they start to get into longer phrases. I know that you can start to make what you want to see instead of what the author intends. But I have a strong orientation toward words and can't help myself sometimes.
Well, I definitely think it's healthy to explore an idea even if it seams far fetched.
I do think Martin is immensely clever and that he clearly takes advantage of the English language in many clever ways, so I am not set against the idea of anagrams... just seems like a whole 'nother level of cryptic. What is your best example of an anagram which has an obvious logical correlation?
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2 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:
I love your 'wise red leaves'/'silver seaweed' anagram, by the way -- one of your best!
I myself have a hard time with this, and you know I am not a sceptic. I follow the similar sounding words and different spellings for the same sound (see/ sea), but anagrams... yeah I don't know, seems pretty far out. I don't really see a connection between silver seaweed and red weirwood leaves, what was that supposed to be again?
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9 minutes ago, Seams said:
You are two of my favorite theorists but these comments don't have much or anything to do with puns or wordplay. I am trying to keep a focus on this thread, so could you take the dialogue back to Patchface/Nennymoans or, since you now seem to be talking about Velaryons and Whents, maybe start a new thread for yourselves? Thanks.
Sure thing man, I thought we were riffing on the green sea / greenseer thing. It's kind of been bleeding over on several threads, and I think most of us are familiar with your puns and wordplay thread here so some crossover is natural. But sure, I guess you want the thread to stick to identifying the puns and not following out any one idea?
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28 minutes ago, Isobel Harper said:
I've been reading through the Nennymoans thread, but haven't had a chance to reply.
So you think Velaryon is a clue, but not necessarily significant in itself with regard to greenseeing or figures of the Underworld?
I'm not sure what you're asking exactly. Do I think House Velryon itself is important? No, not really, I would interpret all of their symbolism and actions as clues about other things. But those others things absolutely do include free seeing ideas, that's exactly what I am suggested. All of the underworld ideas have to do with resurrection and coming from death, and that's what is going on when greenseers transform themselves through ice or fire magic I believe.
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26 minutes ago, Isobel Harper said:
Kudos to all of you on the Patchface/nennymoans thread for figuring out Bran in the weirwood net as being "under the sea." I've recently become aware that the Velaryons might be a sort of Lord of the Underworld like the Starks (many thanks to sweetsunray for her Chthonic thread, her analysis of the Starks, and the many sweet ideas it's given me) and I feel that the duality of the Underworld - land or sea - ties into this. Stark/land/Others and Velaryons/water/...Squishers?
The Velaryons are dragon people who took a driftwood throne from fish people (the Merling King according to legend), and now their sigil is a dragon-like seahorse. To me those are all clues about the Ironborn having an ancestry from the original dragonlords from Asshai / the Great Empire of the Dawn conquering the Iron Islands and taking a wooden chair (Nagga's fangs which made the Grey King's throne being petrified weirwood) from the fish people that lived there. The result is a merger of dragon people and fish people, which is one layer of meaning of the myth of the sea dragon, IMO. Furthermore, I believe I have established a plausible theory about the Grey King being some sort of greenseer, sitting on a weirwood throne, so we have the idea of a greenseer being associated with fish people / being drowned. We've been talking about that I the Nennymoan thread as well.
ETA: Addam Velaryon makes my points nicely. He rides a dragon named Seasmoke, a grey dragon associated with the sea - an allusion to the Grey King, who as I have suggested is both a greenseer and a dragon blooded person who has something to do with drowning or water magic. He goes to the Gods Eye, consulted with Green Men, enhancing his connection to greenseers. So, the grey color of the dragon, the Seamoke name, the Velaryon sigil (dragon that becomes a seahorse) and the Velaryon story about taking the throne of the Merling King all connect Addam to aquatic ideas, people and magic. He's a dragon rider, obviously, giving us the idea of a dragon blooded person. And he's connected to greenseers via his trip to the Gods Eye and the potential double meanings of sea and see.
Also Addam used to be Addam of Hull, connecting him with boats. I believe that the bones of the sea dragon are not only weirwood, but actually the flipped over ribbing of a boat made with weirwood. So that's one more sea dragon idea. I guarantee if we look at Addam's scenes in TPATQ we will find metaphors about these ideas in the actual text. I've looked a bit, and TPATQ is definitely full of metaphors, but I wasn't looking for these things. Of course Addam's dad is the Sea Snake Corlys Velaryon, another sea dragon idea. I'm definitely going to have to include the Velaryons in a subsequent episode.
FWIW smoke can also be used as a medium to see the future. Seasmoke as a concept makes me think of a meteor falling into the sea, which is my primary explanation of the sea dragon which drowns islands myth.
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Very cool, I like that one @Seams. Petyr who loves mint and minting coins uses plot elements which have coin symbolism. Pretty clever stuff by George.
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21 minutes ago, Seams said:
This is excellent. Thank you for calling it to my attention. The Ice / eyes / Ei / Eisen pun is central to the major theme of the books, so anything that helps us to understand the sword Ice is super-important.
And this reminds me of some other wordplay that I should add to this thread: I started to follow sweetsunray's recent post about the axe at Craster's, and her theory that Benjen and/or some of his rangers were made into sausage. I don't find myself entirely persuaded by the evidence she lays out as it relates to guest right and Benjen, but she did a great job of pulling out important excerpts and calling attention to Craster and his attachment to that axe. That, in turn, caused me to connect Craster's axe at the dinner table to an axe that Theon's sister, Asha, wields at a dinner table on Pyke - she describes the axe as her husband and a small knife, called a dirk, as her suckling babe. Which brings us back to Craster because he is killed by a Night's Watch brother named Dirk. So, for what it's worth, add to the pun list:
Dirk / dirk
Whatever you do, don't google search "Dirk Lance."
LoL, just kidding, I've never google'd that and I have no idea what you might find.
As for ice and black ice, you've noticed Jon's dream where he is armored in black ice, correct? What do you make of that I wonder? I tend to see black ice as the perfect symbol of a comet, which is full of dirty rock and is covered in a very dark black goo called "space gunk" which is something like the char on your barbecue. In other words, comets contain oily black stone and black ice. And the most prominent sword in the story... is black Ice. Anyway I own't get carried away, but I find the black ice thing fascinating.
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Perhaps this will help you , perhaps not, but there is al ink between frostbite and valyrian steel, specifically Ned's black sword called Ice. In the scene at Craster, sit comes hot and heavy: Cratser refers to Gared and asks if the bite did that too (took his head off), equating black Ice with frostbite. And then Craster needs an axe with bite, because his has lost its bite, and gets a black steel (think of V steel being almost black) axe from Mormont. Then we have the scene with Ygriite almost being executed by Jon - when Longclaw touches her, she says "that's cold," just as Sam says when he picks up the dragonglass after stabbing the Other. Dragonglass is like black ice, in a manner of speaking, just as Ned's sword is. When Jon touches her with Longclaw, he immediately thinks about Ice and Ned.
I am coming at this from the angle of fire and ice - I am seeing George personify ice as burning and fire as being frozen, perhaps as a way of crossing people up and making things more interesting, but I saw your speculation about frostbite and thought I would offer it up.
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25 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:
Ah, but those three black swans have long been part of my ugly duckling analysis in the bear-maiden thread for Arya
Especially because it says "she wants to be one" or "eat one".
Yeah, I figure you might be aware of them, but I thought I'd call your attention to it just in case. I love seeing them in the god's eye... terrific.
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@Seams, are you following the detailed swan maiden analysis on @sweetsunray's thread? They are swanning it up over there.
Sweetsun, check out this scene seams found. Three Blck swans swimming in the gods eye - that's yet another confirmation that the black swans are equivalent to the three black dragon moon meteors, the reborn moon maiden, etc. That is in fact what Arya's archetype is.
Seams, there are a couple of other scenes where "north of the Wall" is symbolized that you might want to examine. Dany's last chapter of ADWD, when she sleeps by the old well and awakened covered in ants the next morning. The broken wall she sleeps next to is directly compared to the Wall of Westeros.
Then we have Quorin and Jon hiding in that cave right before they are forced to fight when caught by the Wildlings. That entire cave scene after they pass through the waterfall is a "north of the Wall" metaphor. It's possible you'll find compatible themes there to what you've just discussed.
The idea of hedge knights and edge nights (Nights watch) being symbolically connected is interesting. The Kingsguard knights are analogies for the Others, I have found, while the lowly Nights Watch compares to hedge knights? Makes sense.
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George is infamous for abusing alliteration as a technique, so I think you're likely to go quite made searching for cryptic word clues based on alliteration. But who knows. I'd believe nearly anything in the way of cryptic Martin ideas at this point.
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11 minutes ago, Evolett said:
The flower/thorn motif is one of disguise and alluring deception, of hiding dangerous thorns beneath a bouquet of innocent, beautiful sweet scented flowers. The flowers do not advertise the thorns nor are they supposed to. They hide the secret weapon underneath, which strikes when the time is right. The motif is similar to Oberyn and Doran Martell - the grass that hides the snake, the difference being that flower and thorns are united in one person, in a few select women. Tyenne and Nym are very good examples. Beautiful, seductive and alluring but very deadly. You get hit and go down without even realizing it. Obara does not fit this bill because she's too obviously aggressive. She's a real thorn. As is Ser Alliser Thorne, a warrior, aggressive, always angry and ready to draw a weapon, much like Obara. Lady Olenna's inofficial title as the Queen of Thorns which no one says to her face also outs her as a real thorn - it is no secret, everyone knows how thorny she can be. She's also a crone, her former beauty faded - she is no longer alluring in any way. Loras, decked out in flowery raiment and known officially as the Knight of Flowers is the male version of this seductive hidden deadliness. He's even described as beautiful. It's thus no surprise he engages in the deception of riding a white mare in heat to unhorse the Mountain during the tourney. The flower attracts its victim, lures it into a false sense of security and then moves in for the kill.
Regarding Rhaegar (Aerys is my candidate), the purpose of the blue winter roses was the same: to lure and to disguise the warrior aspect from him, not for him to recognize it. In my opinion, the blue winter rose, like the wolf-blood, symbolizes a genetic trait as well as Lyanna and Jon. In Lyanna's case, her wolf-blood is the thorn and the 'stabbing' thus takes place during the conception of her son. The target is that paternal trait that would otherwise make a 'monster' of her son. As a trait, it's of course introduced by Bael the Bard, the deceiver who steals the Stark maiden and leaves his (he earned it) rose in her place. It passes down the line until it finally reaches its destination, specifically in a woman. The theme of sniffing is also related to this I think. If my analysis is correct, then Sansa has the flowers but not the thorns (Lady killed).
I really like Isobel's catch on the Iron Throne as a rose with swords as thorns and your thoughts here are symbolic of my view above.
My Targ inheritance project is progressing slowly. Very complex and so much to go through but it looks like all my designated mother's of the three heads of the dragon have a 'flowery' inheritance - different flowers though.
So a couple more bits of possible wordplay:
Storm(of petals)born /Thorn
Horn/Thorn
Forlorn/thorn (re my previous post)
Enjoyed your comment where @Evolett, and I will again point out this passage, with selected quotes:
QuoteTywin Lannister’s battle armor put his son Jaime’s gilded suit to shame. His greatcloak was sewn from countless layers of cloth-of-gold, so heavy that it barely stirred even when he charged, so large that its drape covered most of his stallion’s hindquarters when he took the saddle. No ordinary clasp would suffice for such a weight, so the greatcloak was held in place by a matched pair of miniature lionesses crouching on his shoulders, as if poised to spring. Their mate, a male with a magnificent mane, reclined atop Lord Tywin’s greathelm, one paw raking the air as he roared.
His rondels were golden sunbursts, all his fastenings were gilded, and the red steel was burnished to such a high sheen that it shone like fire in the light of the rising sun.
. . .Pale crimson fingers fanned out to the east as the first rays of the sun broke over the horizon. The western sky was a deep purple,speckled with stars. Tyrion wondered whether this was the last sunrise he would ever see …
A warhorn sounded in the far distance, a deep mournful note that chilled the soul.
. . .The clansmen climbed onto their scrawny mountain horses, shouting curses and rude jokes. Several appeared to be drunk. The rising sun was burning off the drifting tendrils of fog as Tyrion led them off. What grass the horses had left was heavy with dew, as if some passing god had scattered a bag of diamonds over the earth. The mountain men fell in behind him, each clan arrayed behind its own leaders.
In the dawn light, the army of Lord Tywin Lannister unfolded like an iron rose, thorns gleaming.
I own't go into detailed analysis here, but the point is that the weapon of the sun is a black iron rose with gleaming thorns. I am claiming that this represents one aspect of Lightbringer. The moon was the flower, and Lightbringer / the black moon meteors the gleaming thorns. There are some Azor Ahai reborn manifestations who seem to protect and / or avenge moon maidens, namely, Tyrion (the gargoyle version of Azor Ahai reborn) and Sandor (the hellhound version of AA reborn), both of whom protect and avenge Sansa and other moon maidens (penny for Tyrion, Arya for Sandor). I'm speaking in terms of AA reborn archetypes of course when I talk about the hellhound and gargoyle versions of AA reborn. But the point is, they are the thorns to the moon maiden's sweet flower. It's 100% in line with your thematic analysis about thorns and flowers, Evolett.
I've really honed in on this moon avenging / protecting aspect of things in my last essay and the one I am going to put out next called "Tyrion Targaryen." @Seams, amazing catch on Widow's Wail being a flower. That's absolutely awesome, it fits in perfectly with Widow's Wail being a symbol of Lightbringer the black moon meteor. It's tied to Nissa's Wail which cracked the moon, and as I said the moon is a flower - a sun-drinking heliotrope (the dragons that poured forth from the moon drank the fire of the sun). When Jaime gives Oathkeeper to Brienne, he says "you';; protecting Ned Starks' daughters with Ned Stark's steel" - again, the protection aspect. Widow's Wail being a flower is just one more tie to it as a moon sword. Just as Lightbringer was stained with Nissa Nissa's blood, Ned's own sword was stained with his blood. And you'll remember that Arya looks at the red comet, symbol of Lightbringer, and compares it Ned's sword, red with Ned's blood... so again it all ties together very nicely. I'll be sure to credit you when I mention that on the podcast.
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There's also a scene in AGOT at the Battle of the Green Fork where Tywin's army unfolds like an iron rose, thorns gleaming. Lightbringer is the weapon of the solar king, but it's made of moon: and thus, the iron rose (which would be a black iron rose) with all of its thorns is the weapon (army) of the solar king, which is Lightbringer.
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I discussed the purple valerian flower a bunch in my bloodstone emperor essays. The valerian is a member of the heliotropium genus, and and heliotrope is another name for bloodstone. George has an entire line of moon symbolism having to do with flowers - think of Lyanna's rose - but of course the moon meteors are described as dragons and swords, and they come from the moon. If the moon is the flower, Lightbribger is the iron thorn. I believe that is what the connection is between women and swords. This idea also manifests with all the comparisons between the battle of steel blades and the battle of the birthing bed. The impact of the comet into the moon can be depicted as a stabbing or as an impregnation - that's what that whole "bloody sword" thing with Lady Barbrey and Brandon Stark was about in ADWD.
Getting back to the valerian flower being purple and a type of heliotropium, this also signifies that the Valyrians descend from the Bloodstone Emperor and the Great Empire of the Dawn, an hypothesis I have already proposed using a completely different line of evidence.
[Spoilers] EP704 Discussion
in E04: The Spoils of War
Posted
Yeah I'm all over it. Going to make an emergency video if I can. You saw the same thing I did my brother. And yeah, that Yoren quote jumped to mind for sure. We also saw that symbol when Dany burned Drogon - there was an overhead shot that shows it, I highlighted it in my video.