A Song of Ice and Fire, the red the blue, the green and the Black and White of it all, how the magic works. This theory has three heads.

[Ser Creighton]

A Song of Ice and Fire, the red the blue, the green and the Black and White of it all, how the magic works. This theory has three heads.

This thread was by and large inspired by the works of Yolkboy and J. Stargaryen on the use of colors and gems and a couple of quotes by Martin. I wanted to examine the use of how coloring worked when applied on a broader scale to the books and several of the main theories on the board. I ended up having to mix in some of my own theories on 3(no not coding), not because I wanted to, but I just found myself having to address the number several times because Martin uses it a lot.

Quotes by Martin.

“Another curious thing of your books is that you give us a lot of hints through the Red God flames, the words of the Ghost of the High Heart or through the visions of the House of the Undying…”

“[Laughs] Well, are they spoilers? You have to look them very carefully to figure out what they mean. Not all of them mean what they seem to mean...”

“Surely the plot is very unpredictable despite all the prophecies you give to help us...”

“[Laughs] Prophecies are, you know, a double edge sword. You have to handle them very carefully; I mean, they can add depth and interest to a book, but you don’t want to be too literal or too easy... In the Wars of the Roses, that you mentioned, there was one Lord who had been prophesied he would die beneath the walls of a certain castle and he was superstitious at that sort of walls, so he never came anyway near that castle. He stayed thousands of leagues away from that particular castle because of the prophecy. However, he was killed in the first battle of St. Paul de Vence and when they found him dead he was outside of an inn whose sign was the picture of that castle! [Laughs] So you know? That’s the way prophecies come true in unexpected ways. The more you try to avoid them, the more you are making them true, and I make a little fun with that.”

“Why your saga is called A Song of Ice and Fire, because of the Wall and the dragons or is something more beyond that?”

“Oh! That’s the obvious thing but yes, there’s more. People say I was influenced by Robert Frost’s poem, and of course I was, I mean... Fire is love, fire is passion, fire is sexual ardor and all of these things. Ice is betrayal, ice is revenge, ice is… you know, that kind of cold inhumanity and all that stuff is being played out in the books.”

Ice and Fire.

I want to start with Rhaegar’s quote.

“The Dragon has three heads, there must be one more”

Now instead of applying it to a person I decided to apply it to the title. Ice and fire, fire and Ice. We are always looking at these two elements. But what if the title is not showing you two elements? What if it’s showing you three and that the quote is a multi-layered clue? What if Martin used that as a hidden clue about the title, not the obvious but a more subtle clue. Song, what if Song is the clue? What if that is the third head of the dragon? Song and green I applied from the use of the term singers which the children are also called.

What is the Song of Ice and Fire? Is it more than just Ice and Fire? What is the title symbolic of? Many by and large ignore Song as a third aspect or element. The use of colors may reveal just that. What if the Song is just as important as Ice and Fire? What if the song is the third head? What does it all mean?

Taking those questions in mind, I decided to apply Green, Blue and Red to the title, to see if I could find some supporting aspects and idea. Looking at Martins quotes I made sure not to focus my idea on the title only being one thing, or one idea, or person. The obvious is it is a story about ice and fire, and you can go in a lot of directions from there, it’s about two people, it’s about one person, it’s about two elements etc… But when you apply the colors it gives you a little more.

A Song of Ice and Fire.

Song Ice Fire

Green Blue Red

Each aspect is signified by a color Song = Green, Ice = Blue, Fire = Red. As J. Star and Yolk have shown these three colors are important to Martin, they are his 3 primary colors, and they are three primary colors. Now you may be thinking eye color, and in way yes, and gems, and all that other stuff. But they are also the color of the magic. The magic itself stems from 3 sources, the Children of the forest, the Wall and the Dragons. Now Each type of magic also seems to have a corresponding star.

Green = COTF, green magic (Nature), green star. (Don’t be too literal with the stars, it’s important that they are different types of objects, but you don’t need to be that literal with the science of them.) The star is seen in Dunk and Egg and later it is part of Dunks sigil. The scene of the green shooting star is a metaphor for the Children of the forest.

Blue = The Wall, blue magic (ice), blue star

The blue star that is the eye of the dragon.

Red = The Dragons, red magic (fire), red star

The red star that is the bleeding star, the red comet.

It’s important to note that Martin did not just pick three stars in the sky. A shooting star is at the end of its journey, and a comet comes and goes and comes again. While a star in the sky is just sitting there.

My assertion is that this is the 3 heads of the dragon, are like the trident. And like the trident 3 separate tributaries eventually join to form 1 river. What is important to note is that while separate they are all also one, all 3 are 3 and all 3 are 1. This theme will repeat through three characters. So now I will apply 3 characters that I can connect to the three aspects. These characters are nothing new to you, many have applied them to the three heads before. Now I do want to show you who they are. But the goal is to show you the why of it, why them, why those 3 colors, what is the importance? So first the who and most of you know this.

Green = Bran, COTF, Greensight, green magic, the Singers, green star. Bran is the Song.

Blue = Jon, The Wall, blue magic, blue star. Jon is Ice.

Red = Dany, The Dragons, red magic, red star. Dany is Fire.

Now some are probably sitting there going no Jon is Ice and fire because of his parents. You would be right, but your also wrong, and I will show you why. Jon is more than that, he is all 3, but they all are, well they will be, but none of them will be balanced. And balance I think is very important to this story but I will get to that later. Now if we look at Bran and compare him to the other two you can kind of see what may be going on. Bran’s main source of magic is green and thus he is the pinnacle of that magic. He is a greenseer which is the high end of that magic, and we also know he is proactive with his gift, he is training with it, learning to use it at will. Now Jon and Dany are connected to their respective sources but are not really proactive with them at all. Dany woke the dragons and that is true. But she is not proactive with fire the way Mel is. Now why do I think all three will have all three magics? Well back to Bran, we know from his chapters that Greensight is the top of a 3 tiered list. Greensight, Warging, and Greendreams. We know from the books Jon is an untrained Warg, the second level of green magic, skinchanging. We know Dany has prophetic dreams. Now usually some people assume that it is fire related because she is a Targ. Well is the green magic fire related with Bloodraven the greenseer? Dany does not look into a fire, she just has prophetic dreams. And that is what I believe green magic is, the magic of the mind. So I am going apply some numbers to them just to make it easier to look at and understand. The scale is from 1-3 on how I think they will evolve and at what level they will be gifted, 1 being the highest 3 being the lowest.

Bran, (Green 1) (Red 2) (Blue 3)

Jon, (Blue 1) (Green 2) (Red 3)

Dany, (Red 1) (Blue 2) (Green 3)

I am not sure how the actual level of tiers will work out but this was just an example. Jon could go 1,2,2 or Dany could go 1, 3, 1. It’s just that there will be an imbalance. The pattern above is a rough guess.

Now the thing is with Dany and Jon is their first source is not really proactive at all. So how will that come about? Well we just saw Jon get stabbed and the words cold. So what I think you will get is Jon getting his first and second source at roughly the same time. He will take in the blue magic, he will also learn to become proactive at Warging “first a man then a wolf then a man again.” Possibly a Jon version of Coldhands. With Dany, I see something else going on. There has been talk of the bloody flux with Dany, and I think it may be right. Well how can she be saved? Enter Moqorro. Dany will take the fire within her. And if she has the fire on the inside, what can the Dragon binder do to her? I want to point out something about the fire. Each of those 3 characters has a specific character that can give them the Kiss of fire. Moqorro, Mel and Cat. That is how I think fire will be introduced to the three of them. No I cannot give an order of events for it or a timeline.

Why I feel it is very important for these three to get together, is because none of them are in balance and they need to be together to attain balance. You’re probably wondering why I think that, and I am going to show you the key to the 3 colors. The idea is that in Westeros magic is out of balance. Green magic is fading from the world, fire magic is in the wrong country and there are only 3 young dragons, and Ice magic is beginning to take over. That is not a good thing, that is not balance. It’s been pointed out before that Westeros is in an unbalanced cycle, something is always trying to dominate. We know from history that the children first dominated Westeros, then the first men came and started killing them. Green became out of balance and Ice began to rise. So the children and man fought the Others and Lightbringer is introduced. The balance is restored. That is until the dragons came, not Aegon but Valyria. Because now Ice is out of balance. Valyria as we know began to dominate the world, fire became too powerful, the balance was broken. But something destroys Valyria, probably the children setting off a chain reaction of volcanoes. But not all the children or Dragons are destroyed. A temporary balance is found because house Targaryen survived. But then all their dragons get killed off so Fire is gone and the children are fading from existence. So naturally the dark tide rises as there is no fire to balance it out. So what do the 3 magic’s, and color mean, how can they change the rising darkness?

Well primary colors seem simple enough but what attribute do red, blue and green share. What do they do when together? Well when red light, blue light and green light overlap, and are in balance they create white light. However they have another distinction, when red paint, blue paint and green paint are mixed, they make black. Light and dark, black and white, life and death, the cycle. It is the Yin Yang concept. Much like the door to the faceless men sanctuary life and death. It’s a balance between Mind (green), Body (blue), soul or energy (red). We have seen fire shown to be a life force or a substitute for it. It is all interconnected. Now do they need to be just light or dark? No they need balance. Now maybe that means they restore balance to magic, or maybe it means to restore balance, magic has to leave, that all of it has to go, the wall, the dragons, the children, Jon, Dany, and Bran, the Others.

The Black and White of it all.

“The yin yang is used to describe how seemingly opposite or contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world; and, how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. Many natural dualities (such as light and dark, high and low, hot and cold, fire and water, life and death, and so on) are thought of as physical manifestations of the yin-yang concept.”

“Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary (instead of opposing) forces interacting to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the parts. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, (for instance shadow cannot exist without light). Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the criterion of the observation.”

“Yin and yang transform each other: like an undertow in the ocean, every advance is complemented by a retreat, and every rise transforms into a fall. Thus, a seed will sprout from the earth and grow upwards towards the sky—an intrinsically yang movement. Then, when it reaches its full potential height, it will fall. Also, the growth of the top seeks light, while roots grow in darkness.”

“Classically, when used in place names, yang refers to the "sunny side." The word, tàiyáng, refers to the sun, and literally means "great yang." In the northern hemisphere, sunlight comes predominantly from the south, and so the south face of a mountain (or the north face of a river valley) will get more direct sunlight. Therefore, yang means a place is on the south slope of a mountain (or on the north bank of a river valley).”

“Yin is the black side with the white dot on it, and yang is the white side with the black dot on it. The relationship between yin and yang is often described in terms of sunlight playing over a mountain and a valley. Yin (literally the 'shady place' or 'north slope') is the dark area occluded by the mountain's bulk, while yang (literally the 'sunny place' or 'south slope') is the brightly lit portion. As the sun moves across the sky, yin and yang gradually trade places with each other, revealing what was obscured and obscuring what was revealed.”

“Yin is characterized as slow, soft, yielding, diffuse, cold, wet, and passive; and is associated with water, earth, the moon, femininity and nighttime.”

“Yang, by contrast, is fast, hard, solid, focused, hot, dry, and aggressive; and is associated with fire, sky, the sun, masculinity and daytime.”

“Yin and yang applies to the human body. In traditional Chinese medicine good health is directly related to the balance between yin and yang qualities within oneself. If yin and yang become unbalanced, one of the qualities is considered deficient or has vacuity.”

Now if you notice you can apply several of these concepts to the story. Let’s say the Wall is the mountain, well the shady side, the dark side, is on the north side of the wall. Which also happens, to be where the Others are coming from. Think about the tree and also Bloodraven and Mel. Bloodraven living under the tree speaking about the roots, “embrace the Darkness.” Mel telling people to embrace the light. But it can’t always be dark or always be light. You need both. And that’s what you get with these 3, you get the Light to the Others dark. But the Dark has become out of balance, it is becoming overwhelming. The light needs to return.

I am going to continue to apply different aspects of the story known that seem connected to these 3 characters.

The Prince that was promised, Azor Ahai, and The last hero.

Maybe this is three aspects of one person, or maybe three separate people. I do not know. But what I do know is Dany, Jon and Bran all seem to have a primary connection to one of these prophecies and if you look closely they have a less obvious connection to the others. When Bran woke Bloodraven in the stone cave, it was not the obvious waking of Dragons from stone like Dany. But Dany is the connection to the primary fire source, Bran isn’t and it does not make it less significant for the connection. Jon seems to have an obvious stab Mel in the ruby moment coming. But Dany already had a sacrifice to fire in Mirri. It’s not the same but there are connections to be made. But Jon’s primary prophecy seems to be Azor Ahai, where Dany is more of the prince. But Bran is often called a Prince, or Jon and the word promised. You can see how Martin makes obvious and subtle connections with all of them. They are connected to all three like they are connected to each other. The Prince is connected to Dragons, Azor to the Sword Lightbringer, and the Last hero to the Children of the forest. But elements for these stories all interconnect as well.

Another way to apply the all are three concept. Mel’s ruby and the red comet.

Kings Pro, "The ruby at Melisandre's throat caught the light as she turned her head and for an instant it seemed to glow bright as the comet."

Here you have the ruby in direct reference to the comet.

Swords 63, "Melisandre's ruby glowed like a red star at her throat."

Now a reference to a red star.

Dance 10, “She swept a hand towards Stannis and the great Ruby at her throat pulsed with light.”

Light not fire.

Dance 17, “Do you like my ruby, Snow?

X marks the spot Jon, X marks the spot. Just sayin.

Dance 28, “At her throat, her ruby gleamed, a third eye glowing brighter than the others.”

The source of Mels power more than likely. Now the actual connection to a third eye.

You can pick the obvious or you can pick the subtle and claim the obvious was a red herring. But what I think is really going on is you need to pick all because they are all relevant. While maybe AA, TPTWP, and TLH were one person. That does not seem to be the case here, as the colors show what creates light.

Something else of note of the three prophecies is that each hero is set about a task.

AA, weapons

THPTWP, mounts in the form of Dragons

TLH, seeks magic

Jon found the Obsidian, and sent Sam on a task to find out about Dragonsteel. Dany waking the Dragons, Bran seeking out the children looking for a way to stop the Others. Bran having loved the idea of magic, Dany and the Dothraki horse lords, and Jon the warrior. Apply the concept again, Dany learned to ride with the Dothraki she has no fear of heights, Bran no fear of heights, but not a great rider, and Jon an excellent rider, but as we learned when he was climbing on the great ranging, not a fan of heights.

Dawn, obsidian and swords.

Dawn the pale blade. Dawn looks like Milk glass which is white. Then you have frozen fire or Obsidian which is black. And in the middle Valyrian steel possibly dragon steel which is smokey. Was Dawn Lightbringer? Maybe it was. But is it Lightbringer now? What I think Dawn is, is part of Lightbringer or was. What happened to the fire and light and all that? Well what happened to the Dragons? As Dany had to reawaken Dragon eggs, someone may need to reawaken Dawn, perhaps a sacrifice. If we look at the Red star or comet, it was also called the red sword. For Dany that may be her red sword for Jon it may be Dawn. For Bran it could be something else. A sword like Darksister, used to kill someone, the blade red with blood, also possibly dragons steel. I think the comet is a good example. You need to look at the whole rather than separate parts. What’s important is that Martin gives us 3 different weapons to fight the Others. 3 for 3. A red sword possibly created using blood and fire. Dragon steel possibly, and Obsidian used by the children, green magic applying fire. I think all three are fire related, but on different levels much like green magic. Dawn at the top, dragon steel below that and Obsidian below dragon steel. Or something in that order.

If you look at the story of Lightbringer you will notice the use of 3 swords. The Swords all escalate in strength. Now we know Obsidian can kill an Other (Puddles), but appeared relatively useless against Wights. Now if I had to guess Dragon steel will work on Wights but not the Others who will be able to shatter the blades. My guess is Dawn will work on both once awakened. This possibly being a fire aspect for Jon, though while powerful, Dragons are the source of fire Magic. However when together, we know the dragons and the wall increase the power of magic around them. You can see the unity with Mel and the wall, it’s not making her weak, but it is making her stronger. The magic seeks unity. Jon being the Warrior his fire aspect as a sword and the strongest sword.

The Watch and Lightbringer.

Awhile back Apple Martini wrote a theory about the watch being Lightbringer. Now I don’t agree with the particulars of that theory but in a sense I think apple was right. The concept is valid but the subject was only part of it. Now if I apply the Vows to Bran, Dany and Jon, let’s see what happens, if these 3 were saying it. And make it somewhat gender neutral.

Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no spouse, hold no lands, have no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post

Now everything is going along fine till this next part where we get three “I am” statements in a row.

I am the sword in the darkness. (Jon)

The warrior and one most likely to wield a sword.

I am the watcher on the walls. (Bran)

Is anyone more of a watcher than Bran? Remember in his chapter with Jaime he is in fact watching while climbing walls. And of course his greensight and remarks about how the children Watch.

I am the fire that burns against the cold, (Dany)

Pretty self explanatory with Dany.

the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all nights to come.

Though all of them have the ability to watch and be a sword and burn, each one has a strength.

This is what I think Lightbringer is, it’s 3 after their evolutions and brought together. Dany the greater fire aspect but still a watcher with her greendreams and she has seen the Others in them. Jon, warging and green dreams, a better watcher. Bran the ultimate watcher. A sword in the Darkness Jon with let’s say Dawn as he is the warrior and Dany with something like Darksister (dragon steel maybe) she is the Valyrian after all, Bran with Obsidian. Or flip Bran and Dany. It’s a concept so the exact particulars are hard to lock down, like who carries what.

Chances are I think magic has to go, Dany, Jon and Bran brining the light to offset the Darkness, but that is only a temporary fix.

Now I didn’t throw in much in the way of text support from the books as I expect most of you know things like the names of the Branches of the trident, the three stars I use, Dawn, Lightbringer, the three prophecies etc... However if you need any text support for any of it I will put it in the reply section. It’s just a really long theory and the text support would put me at 20,000 words. It’s already 7 pages long.

I am not claiming this as fact; it is just something I believe and a different way to look at a lot of aspects of the story. I am not saying everything green is green magic, or blue or red. Blue shoes worn by a commoner are probably not magic Ice shoes, though with Martin you never know. By and large it is a work based on symbolism, metaphors, and allusions.

If you actually made it through all that congratulations and thanks for reading.