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Ned's ToJ Dream: More Than We Thought?


J. Stargaryen

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Nice work OP. It never occurred to me to look at Cersei's experience with the Starks in minds...a face dissolving into grey mist and yellow eyes might be a foretelling of the enmity with the North or the North bringing destruction to her.

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Well actually, the OP prompted it





It's interesting because there are parallels between Jaime and Bran and a lot of people think Bran is a good candidate for Last Hero part 2.



They both idealize knights and the Kingsguard at first.


They both have injuries that cause them to lose their previous identity as a swordsman and a climber.


Those injuries allow them to become better people a greenseer and a redeemed (possible) hero.


I also think future weirnet Bran might have given Jaime the dream that caused him to go back for Brienne. An action that could end up getting Oathkeeper/Ice where it needs to go.



Sort of getting off topic here, but your post prompted it.





and Jaime has a pretty interesting dream sleeping on the weirwood stump.


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Nice work OP. It never occurred to me to look at Cersei's experience with the Starks in minds...a face dissolving into grey mist and yellow eyes might be a foretelling of the enmity with the North or the North bringing destruction to her.

it also reminds me of the grey mists Tyrion sails through, which hides stone men. someone we know in the north might be a carrier for greyscale. . .

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I think it's a great catch to note the language parallel structure going on. As for what it means, I feel like you're probably on the cusp with the prophecy thing, but it might just be a little too obscure to really "fit" now. I think it might rely on just a tad too much layer-peeling (to find the parallel at all and then to figure out the link and project that onto the ToJ scene takes a lot of steps), but I think there's a "there" there, yeah. The first bit you quoted, with the "old dream" and the "three," pretty much has to be intentional. I'm just still iffy on what it means, really.

I agree that there could be a little more to it, if that's what you're saying. Perhaps Lyanna told Ned about the prophecy during their last conversation, for example.

As for what it means, I think it's just GRRM's way of telling us that the events of the ToJ are interwoven with prophecy; i.e., Jon is tPtwP.

It's funny to see this on here because I had a discussion regarding the parallels in Cersei's dream in a book club back in 2006. What was cool about your post is the confirmation given by Barriston in ADWD. Now I feel like duh, should have picked up on that.

About the parallels between Cersei and Ned's dreams? That's awesome. It's good to know I'm not the only one who spotted this "coincidence." ;)

Nice work OP. It never occurred to me to look at Cersei's experience with the Starks in minds...a face dissolving into grey mist and yellow eyes might be a foretelling of the enmity with the North or the North bringing destruction to her.

What's interesting is that the Others and Wights have blue eyes, and the CotF have yellow or golden eyes. So, maybe something there?

Well actually, the OP prompted it

and Jaime has a pretty interesting dream sleeping on the weirwood stump.

There could be more going on here than we realize, but for now I'm content to say that it's a hint that tPtwP and LH are connected, or maybe the same thing. Well, it would have to be something like the Last Hero reborn, but yeah.

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There could be more going on here than we realize, but for now I'm content to say that it's a hint that tPtwP and LH are connected, or maybe the same thing. Well, it would have to be something like the Last Hero reborn, but yeah.

Just going to throw this out there: Bran and Jaime seem connected via the Last Hero parallels

tPtwP and LH may be connected

Ice has been split into two swords. Could just be symbolic, but at one point Jaime had it in his possession.

The yellow eyes and the COTF is a good catch

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Sorry, I have little or no opinion on this but a couple of pages ago, a "BranBrokeLegs" registered their very reasonable opinion that the similarities were coincidental, they were not rude, nor were they "whining" as another poster said. Theye made a reasonable point in a reasonable manner. For shame !!


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Awesome post man! I've often thought about Ned and the PtwP prophecy. Did he know about it? Did Lyanna tell him? Did he believe it? Did his ToJ dream contain traces of prophecy? The one line I would've included in your post would be:



"He did not think it omened well that he should dream that dream again after so many years."



Ned's take on it not omen-ing well aside, interesting that it would occur to him at that moment, at his moment of truth, days before his death. It whispers of prophecy.



As for this drip:





Meh, I think its much more likely that the similarity arises from the fact that they were written by the same author. There are a few times when GRRM characterizes things similarly. Its kind of inevitable when you have someone writing several thousand pages of prose over 20 plus years.



I wouldn't read more into it than that.





I will never understand why people on this forum bother reading and posting in thread just to drop trou' and dump it. You old fucking shrivs, who blocked its legalization, you're banished from the land!!!


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Meh, I think its much more likely that the similarity arises from the fact that they were written by the same author. There are a few times when GRRM characterizes things similarly. Its kind of inevitable when you have someone writing several thousand pages of prose over 20 plus years.

I wouldn't read more into it than that.

Sorry, I have little or no opinion on this but a couple of pages ago, a "BranBrokeLegs" registered their very reasonable opinion that the similarities were coincidental, they were not rude, nor were they "whining" as another poster said. Theye made a reasonable point in a reasonable manner. For shame !!

This.

And I mean, GRRM did not have all the story yet when he started Game of Thrones. Even he admits that when he said that he started writing Game of Thrones because he found the idea of boys finding wolves in the snow interesting - or something in this sense.

Now, I will not say that he did not knew what kind of story he would have. Probably, when he started writing, he knew about the War of the Five Kings and about whatever will happen with the Others. He also probably had a reason to write the books (for me, the stories are about people getting past their problems and grow as persons, and maaaybe even fight together against a common enemy. But that is not the point). However, in fifteen years, people change. His reasons for writing could have changed, and along with it, the story.

For me, A Feast for Crows is very different from A Storm of Swords, for example. The first three books are more closed and tied between them. We have foreshadowings in some books happening in later books. They had some major cliffhangers and plots coming to a conclusion. And they also were written more closely in time. Feast for Crows reads more like a continuation, like the a part 2 of a movie. He had a much blanker canvas to print; he had some notions and some of the things that would be on the picture there and there, but he had more liberty to paint. The War was over, many visions about the future - the ones that we know for sure, and not just some old legends stuff that people believe like the Azor Ahai (I personally really want that the Azor Ahai prophecy is just a legend and not a real thing, but that is not the point) - happened.

All that said, I really doubt that he planned a game of words in a book 15 years later that he did not even planned to exist in first place. Do you remember how he was just writing the fourth book and got ahead of himself and divided the book in two, right? Many things changed from the original plot, we can't expect that he would know every word that he would going to use in a 15 years spam. In fact, I even believe that he writes many POVs for some events and just chooses the one that he likes more. For example: the first POV for Sam in A Feast for Crows could be easily replaced by Jon POV on aDwD, but for an edition choice, it would be strange to have just one POV of Jon in Feast.

So, I do believe it is just a coincidence. And alas, he just has his way to write, coincidences are inevitable.

And knights DO like horses, dogs and swords.

By the same argument, I can point to Brienne, since she was travelling with a dog, a horse and friends... In the same book.

EDIT - You can also see that aFfC e aDwD are different because they create much more conflicts than solving conflicts left on the previous books.

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Meh, I think its much more likely that the similarity arises from the fact that they were written by the same author. There are a few times when GRRM characterizes things similarly. Its kind of inevitable when you have someone writing several thousand pages of prose over 20 plus years.

I wouldn't read more into it than that.

Even writers who write thousands upon thousands of lines don't repeat the exact word combinations, sentence structure, and sentence content without meaning to do so. Speficially not when breaking from the normal story to give us dreamvisions which are designed to be giant "look at me" blocks in the narrative. A writer might lapse into auto-drive when describing necessary but motonous details, but when it comes to events that happen rarely and are stark breaks from the normal narrative (re: Dreams), you better believe there is some serious authorative intent. I have too much respect for Martin as a writer to believe he accidently used near identicle language to what is likely the most interesting and thought provoking scene in his entire saga, to describe just your average prophecy dream-flashback.

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Nice work OP. It never occurred to me to look at Cersei's experience with the Starks in minds...a face dissolving into grey mist and yellow eyes might be a foretelling of the enmity with the North or the North bringing destruction to her.

Yes, the yellow eyes and gray which describes several of the direwolves. Arya's face may dissolve, whether through new found skills, or figuratively, by warging Nymeria. It would be great if it were a foretelling of Arya exacting her revenge, even if indirectly (so as to fit the valonqar prophecy).

I also agree there's something to the way the parallels are placed in these two POVs. I am very eager to see where this leads us in terms of the Revelation of Jon.

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Even writers who write thousands upon thousands of lines don't repeat the exact word combinations, sentence structure, and sentence content without meaning to do so. Speficially not when breaking from the normal story to give us dreamvisions which are designed to be giant "look at me" blocks in the narrative. A writer might lapse into auto-drive when describing necessary but motonous details, but when it comes to events that happen rarely and are stark breaks from the normal narrative (re: Dreams), you better believe there is some serious authorative intent. I have too much respect for Martin as a writer to believe he accidently used near identicle language to what is likely the most interesting and thought provoking scene in his entire saga, to describe just your average prophecy dream-flashback.

In fact, they do. There is a website that shows to you if your writing style is similar to a writing style of another author. You provide a text of some paragraphs. The program has to have some objective way to measure, so it looks for similar words and structures that authors were prone to use, and compare with yours.

Now, since both scenes are dreams, I would say that there is even more chance to be coincidental, since GRRM has his own style with dreams and would be prone to have similar wording. Probably even he had never noticed the coincidences before.

Finally, for example, GRRM has a book called Songs of Stars and Shadows. He has another book titled A Song for Lya. He even uses the same characters in some of his books, like Barristan the Bold, a character with the same name and personality of ser Barristan Selmy. I cannot claim that those books have anything to do with the aSoIaF because they have similiarities. Even in-universe, both Maggy and Quentyn nicknames are "Frog", and I doubt there is a mystery to be unfolded there.

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All that said, I really doubt that he planned a game of words in a book 15 years later that he did not even planned to exist in first place. Do you remember how he was just writing the fourth book and got ahead of himself and divided the book in two, right? Many things changed from the original plot, we can't expect that he would know every word that he would going to use in a 15 years spam. In fact, I even believe that he writes many POVs for some events and just chooses the one that he likes more. For example: the first POV for Sam in A Feast for Crows could be easily replaced by Jon POV on aDwD, but for an edition choice, it would be strange to have just one POV of Jon in Feast.

So, I do believe it is just a coincidence. And alas, he just has his way to write, coincidences are inevitable.

And knights DO like horses, dogs and swords.

By the same argument, I can point to Brienne, since she was travelling with a dog, a horse and friends... In the same book.

This is a bit irrational. The fact that he didn't have the story planned out has nothing to do with re-using the same words, in the same order, to describe similar circumstances. In fact, not knowing where the story is going to lead is great cause for an author to revisit his older work, and see where he/she can draw connections. A great way to draw connections is to host similar events (like, I don't know...a dream) and use similar if not identical language and parallel structure. These aren't normal moments, people. These are dreams. They exist for the purpose of allowing the author to convey to you something outside the chronological events of the narrative with perhaps implied commentary into the physiology of the character experiencing the dream. Dreams are a big deal.

Unless you mean to tell me, every-time Martin writes a dream sequence his auto-dream-writing function of the brain takes over and he starts spitting out ambiguously descriptive scenes revolving around death with emphasis on the number three probably just because his favorite baseball player was Babe Ruth . . .

Or that he is really fond of horses and dogs and swords so he just had to fit it in to the equally important and bell-ringing event of Old Nan's tale, and is absolutely not related in anyway to the guy who is still a live in the books, whose heroism has been trending up since book three, who just so happens to be the one responsible for pushing the kid who is hearing the story of the Last Hero out a window, who by the way lost the hand that did that crime and has been climbing a path of repentance ever since.

Yep Martin had no intention for any of these things, he just sits at his desk, forgets everything he has ever written, decides he'd rather not have a deeper woven significance flowing throughout what will become his legacy, and just free writes whichever of the schizo POV's pop into his head that day. Makes sense to me.

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Oh, you think the parallels in the OP are a coincidence, do you? Thanks for letting me know that I shouldn't trust your judgement when it comes to analysis of the series. :)



It never fails that someone, or some people, will always claim coincidence, or that the OP is "reaching," etc. Okay, you've blessed us all with your valuable contribution. Unless you have something else to add, please move on. Thanks.


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In fact, they do. There is a website that shows to you if your writing style is similar to a writing style of another author. You provide a text of some paragraphs. The program has to have some objective way to measure, so it looks for similar words and structures that authors were prone to use, and compare with yours.

Now, since both scenes are dreams, I would say that there is even more chance to be coincidental, since GRRM has his own style with dreams and would be prone to have similar wording. Probably even he had never noticed the coincidences before.

Finally, for example, GRRM has a book called Songs of Stars and Shadows. He has another book titled A Song for Lya. He even uses the same characters in some of his books, like Barristan the Bold, a character with the same name and personality of ser Barristan Selmy. I cannot claim that those books have anything to do with the aSoIaF because they have similiarities. Even in-universe, both Maggy and Quentyn nicknames are "Frog", and I doubt there is a mystery to be unfolded there.

Style =/= content.

For Martin to use parrallel structure, indentical word choice, and similiar themes in these passages and not be wary of it, would be extremely heavy handed and I just can't believe it. We know how big of a LOTR fan Martin is/was. Dreams and dream premonitions are a huge deal in Tolkein. I refuse to believe Martin as not culled each and every dream/prophecy/premonition in his own work in an attempt to try and weave something bigger. He would have not repeated these things unknowingly. That would be sloppy art, specifically: sloppy art during moments where it needs to be its finest.

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Style =/= content.

For Martin to use parrallel structure, indentical word choice, and similiar themes in these passages and not be wary of it, would be extremely heavy handed and I just can't believe it. We know how big of a LOTR fan Martin is/was. Dreams and dream premonitions are a huge deal in Tolkein. I refuse to believe Martin as not culled each and every dream/prophecy/premonition in his own work in an attempt to try and weave something bigger. He would have not repeated these things unknowingly. That would be sloppy art, specifically: sloppy art during moments where it needs to be its finest.

I think the word repetition in both Cersei's and Ned's dreams are clues as to who the actual PTWP is, and both prophecies has one feature in common; a woods witch. Wherea Cersei got a prophecy that end up badly for her, the PTWP prophecy was intertwined with Ned's life in that Jon's life was protected by a promise.

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