Any predictions of Arya's fate?

[Littlefinger's dagger]

It's actually interesting to re-read Arya's chapters in ADWD after reading her new TWOW one :)

The kindly man mentions, when he learns that Arya of House Stark killed the deserter of the NW, that the prize one of the valyrian slaves had to pay to have another man killed was to devote his own life to Him of Many Faces, as the slave owned nothing that could be given as a compensation for his prayer being answered. So he had to pay by becoming a faceless man himself and serving the God.

I understood this as meaning that as Arya has killed, she has to pledge her life to the God for the lives she has taken.

Is it just as possible that like her arrangement with Jaqen for each life she takes for her list (using their skills) she must take a life under their rules? A sort of balance might be maintained that way, and the FM aren't so flustered about the killing itself as they are about Arya presuming to judge.

On the other hand, I found some details to be quite strange:

- Arya kills the NW deserter as Cat of the Canals, outside any assignment. But still, instead of being punished for doing so, she is allowed to go forward in her training: she is blinded 6 months before it was originally planned (from "the little blind girl ADWD"). Which means that Arya doesn't seem to have received any punishment for killing (and judging) a man outside of any assignment, instead she was "rewarded" by an advanced practice.

- Blind Beth advances in her training by developing her warging abilities (an ability belonging to Arya Stark).

And it's not clear the FM know how that was accomplished, so no reason to relate that to Arya's persona vs no-one.

- The Ugly Girl advances in her training by performing the killing she has been assessed.

- Mercy seems to think she will advance in her training by killing Raff the Sweetling and therefore answering to Arya Stark's prayer.

Where is that implied? After killing Raff, she reflects that "A foolish, giddy girl she’d been, but good hearted. She would miss her, and she would miss Daena and the Snapper and the rest, even Izembaro and Bobono. This would make trouble for the Sealord and the envoy with the chicken on his chest, she did not doubt." So the identity of Mercy has been compromised, she can't continue to be Mercy in Izembaro's company. That does not necessarily mean advancement, they could kill her upon returning to the temple, they could do any number of things including re-starting her apprenticeship with a different identity and teacher.

This leads me to several reflexions in relation with Arya's fate:

Reflections. English spelling is a pain, the rules are inconsistent.

1. Does the KM and FM truly want her to become no one? Because it seems that whenever she acts as/like Arya Stark, her training advances all the same.

I think they know that erasing her memory of having been Arya Stark is unlikely to work, but their true goal is to teach her a sort of advanced method acting that will allow her to so fully inhabit assumed identities that it's VERY difficult to find her out. Maybe they were hoping that her agenda would fade in importance after taking on more characters, who would each have agendas as well and give Arya some perspective and artificially accelerated maturity.

2. Or does it simply mean that by killing these men, she, the FM in training, is answering the prayers of Arya Stark and thus Arya Stark will one day have to pay for having had her prayers answered? If so, then either Arya will be a FM for life or she will have to die to pay thr price with her own life imo

She's already worked a deal where she saved lives then got to take lives to restore balance. If it's declared she needs to flip that and save some lives to atone for the ones she took for her own reasons, the debt could be repaid a number of ways other than dying herself of a life in service to the FM.

[Mayura]

@Littlefinger's dagger: thanks for correcting my spelling mistake, as a non native english speaker I sometimes get lost indeed as in french we would use the word "réflexion"! :-)

What you wrote may be true but it's just speculation as well so... We'll see.

From the pattern we've seen in ADWD, it seems that whenever Arya's persona kills or adopts a new behavior (like warging), her training goes forward. So while reading the "Mercy" chapter, I understood the end as meaning she knows she is changing her persona and her training with Izembaro is getting to an end. It can of course means she plans to leave the FM and go to Westeros, but it is not the pattern Arya's arc has been following lately.

As to the warging, I am right now of the opinion that the Kindly Man and the Waif know everything there is to know about Arya Stark and they are aware of her warging abilities and of her wolf dreams. Same goes with the FM's policy, I don't think they are a order the apprentices can leave that easily. I think Arya could maybe leave if she took the KM's offer to go, but she refuses to take it. But I don't think the disciples can leave the FM whenever they like after having learned some of their secrets, if it was the case more people would actually know how the order works and how the training goes, which doesn't seem to be the case.

It all depends on our opinion at the moment unfortunately. I personally don't see Arya ever walking away from the FM without any consequence.

And what makes me think Arya will pay with her own life is because of her "prayer". She prays for the death of several persons in the House of Black and White as well as everywhere else. Her prayers are heard. And she herself gives "the gift of mercy" to people who are in her prayer. Which makes me think that either Arya will pledge her life to the order or pay with her own life when her list will be done.(ETA: in fact, the concept of "praying" for someone to die was only illustrated by Arya's prayers before we heard of the house of B&W and about how they just so happen to grant the same prayers. I believe the link is there for a reason)

[Littlefinger's dagger]

Mayura,

I see where you're coming from: it does seem like no matter what Arya does she advances. here's at least one way this could be explained:

Like the woods witch Arya meets in the Riverlands, they sense a deep connection to the Stranger in her. If a ten year old prodigy in music wandered in to a conservatory and played an instrument new to them at nearly concert level, the teachers would be bending over backwards to accommodate the young prodigy. Just so, the FM have on their hands someone who is able in months to absorb and put into practice lessons that most students need years to complete. Her advances far outweigh her backsliding according to their values, they're not rewarding bad behavior as much as recognizing that it's outweighed by other factors. She will either be their greatest success and future leader or greatest disappointment, but I think they regard her with a sort of reverence and would no more kill her than a painter would set fire to the Mona Lisa. If her insubordination forces them to, they might simply send her back (where if she were not essentially touched by the hand of their god, they could easily simply kill her for knowing too much). Remember they have already offered to send her back home, or away to a free city she chooses. It could be that until she takes final vows, she isn't fully bound to them, though people who do back out know better than to blab secrets or they will be permanently silenced. Her already discussed similarities to Varys and his talent at disguise do make me wonder if he isn't also a washout in their training process, probably by choice and at an earlier stage than she's progressed to.

Then of course there's the five- year gap the author initially intended. As he can't have her progress normally, to have her trained at least as far as necessary for her upcoming exploits, she has to show the unusual aptitude she does, she's trying to cram ten years of training into less than two. Call it plot armor if you like, the groundwork for her prodigy status and this explanation was laid even before she arrived in Braavos. We may never get a PoV chapter from one of her teachers to confirm their thought process, so we're left to speculate.

i don't share the assumption that the FM know everything, about warging and other things. Arya keeps secrets even from them, and while they may suspect that there is a secret they may attribute it to her connection to their god and feel it's better left alone so long as it doesn't present problems.

[Mayura]

I understand. It still seems to me that the FM have a large network, like Varys's little birds x1000. So I would find it unlikely none of them would be aware of the existence of warging abilities while their order has existed for thousands of years and has been confronted to all kind of magics. Plus the rumors about Robb and Greywind sharing that sort of bond are already widespread in Westeros and seeing each Stark children with a direwolf pup in such troubled time has, without any doubt, raised suspiscions (?) imo.

As to Arya's secrets, I think they know them all already. The FM are an ancient order whose members receive a specific training to be able to spot lies, cheat the enemies, be extremely discreet, possess more knowledge about the surrounding wold every day. Assuming Arya Stark, a child of 11, could outsmart them would basically mean, in my opinion, that they are just a group of morons, which they are not.

At the moment, it is possible indeed to believe they potentially let their trainees leave whenever they wish, as we have not been told otherwise. But I would find it very reckless from a millenary order of trained assassins to let any of their even half-trained recruits leave in peace to go back to their own life. It is very true Arya has a true potential and it has first been spotted by Jaqen who gave her the coin and the words. But mostly, she has nothing to loose, as Varys before her. What is clear about Arya is that she doesn't fear death, she wants to survives because she is resisting the crap that happened to her and to her family, but she never thinks of the consequences, she seems unafraid of what the KM and other FM can do to her. But I don't think the trainees are given the possibility to leave without consequences once they've started the training.

[Littlefinger's dagger]

Varys may in fact BE their main intel conduit in Westeros, most of their business is in the free cities, they may have subcontracted a long time ago. I don't see a reason to suppose they have a better spy network than he does simply by virtue of their being older, or that their goals are so at odds they might not pool resources. Varys knows the value of information, I don't believe at all the Iron Throne was his only source of income.

I'd agree they almost certainly know skinchanging exists and is real, and may have heard rumors about Robb, but conclusively being sure Arya has that gift and suspecting it are not the same thing. There's of course a lot we haven't been shown, but without having been shown otherwise in the text, I'll have to file it under "they suspect" rather than, "they know for sure." it seems likely to me none of the living FM would have had the opportunity to meet a skinchanger, it's not a common gift, so how aside from catching her at it are they supposed to be sure?

They may or may not know about Needle and her refusal to give it up, they probably know about her list, but how pray tell are they supposed to know about her wolf dreams and their significance? If they ask and Arya lies, they'd know they were being lied to but from that I don't see how they'd deduce truth.

[A Man Has Said]

"You'll be sewing all through winter. When the spring thaw comes, they will find your body with a needle still locked tight between your frozen fingers."

i've never thought this foreshadowed her death, it's a lighthearted exchange between brother and sister. however i'm in the minority on that.

I agree with Cas Stark on this one. :agree:

Not every line in the books so far is foreshadowing.

In fact I would say that it's a misuse of the term, which has to do with literary analysis after the fact.

You can only call something foreshadowing if the event that it foreshadows HAS ALREADY HAPPENED in the books.

You can't use it in the predictive sense to anticipate what may or may not be written later on.

I would estimate the ratio of CLAIMS that something in the existing books foreshadows something in the forthcoming volumes to REAL incidents of foreshadowing (that is, pointing to an incident that has actually taken place in the novels and then showing a preceding passage that alludes to it) on these forums must be in the order of a hundred to one or more.

Find me a passage in AGoT that anticipates Ned Stark's beheading, that would be foreshadowing.

Or one in ACoK that predicts Stannis killing Renly, or losing the battle of Blackwater.

Or one in ASoS that predicts the Red Wedding*, or the Purple Wedding.

THAT would be foreshadowing, and I haven't observed that much of it, in spite of the books being full of soothsayers and ancient prophecies.

* - (there is a lot of atmospheric 'feeling of impending doom' in the chapter in which the Red Wedding actually takes place, but that's not foreshadowing. It's more like foreboding. It's nothing more than narrative describing how the Frey's 'hospitality' creeps out Robb and his party.)

Let me put it another way.

Check out the first novel and you'll find dozens, maybe hundreds of passages that can be shown as NEGATIVE 'foreshadowing' - the things they seemingly predict never take place and are never going to.

Passages that 'foreshadow' Bran being the lord of his own stronghold, or a great knight.

Passages that predict Sansa will marry a lord and bear him many children.

Just before King Robert gets boared to death it's very strongly 'foreshadowed' that Ned will tell him about the twincest, forcing him to dissolve his marriage and disown Cersei's children. (For instance at one point he tells Ned that he'd resign the throne and move to Essos as a sellsword, but that would leave the throne to Joffrey. Learning that Joff is illegitimate would have given him an 'out' in that regard.)

It doesn't mean that it happened.

I wouldn't get too carried away with trying to predict what is to come based on some casual line that you've stumbled upon, no matter how evocative it seems to be.

[Littlefinger's dagger]

I wouldn't get too carried away with trying to predict what is to come based on some casual line that you've stumbled upon, no matter how evocative it seems to be.

No! No! Common sense rearing its inconvenient head!

These forums are chock full of speculation, some of it with a good foundation in the text (the author likes to drop hints and puzzles, but he does also like a good smelly red herring too) and some of it purely based on the poster's biases and wishful thinking.

Would that everyone could read this stuff and not get all tinfoil hat about it. Not everything is a conspiracy, not everyone is secretly a Targaryen (or secretly not a Targaryen), and the ancient prophecies about Azor Ahai et al might be turn out to be pure gibberish or laughably misinterpreted (I mean look at Melisandre's batting average. Damn.).

All that said, the thread topic is Arya's fate. Whether you believe in fate or not in real life, the fictional character clearly has an arc and the author has some plan for her that is not yet played out, so for all intents and purposes she does have a fate. We may never agree what it's likely to be until it's there on the page, and even then some people will be ticked at the author's choices.

[TurkeyRod]

as prophesied she will die with her needle frozen between her fingers

[hhh]

I don't think people see the 'needle frozen between her fingers' as an AA kind of prophecy, it just seems an increasingly apt image for Arya's ending. She's nearly completely emotionally deadened and the only part of her former self that she nourishes is her desire for bloodthirsty vengeance. She's also been instructed and indoctrinated in THOBAW to assassinate set targets in a sanctifying ritual - 'giving them the gift of death.' She even generously gives said gift I to Dareon , imposing an FM-style moral justification for his death. A barely trained child killer who will stop at nothing to cross people of her list - she will almost definitely be caught out and killed at some point. I can also see her physically or symbolically giving her life to the order ,as Mayura suggested.

[Mayura]

I personally have never seen the "hins" that Bran will have his own stronghold and so on. If anything, AGOT already illustrates Bran's destiny to be one of the keys to bringing back summer and we know from early on he will meet the 3 eyed crow. The same goes for Sansa, AGOT very quickly gives us the message that « life is not a song or a poem ». So I never considered these « anti-foreshadowing » that were mentionned (Bran being a knight etc) as I've never considered them to be foreshadowing (I don't know if my thoughts make sense here:)).

The discussion between Jon and Arya is different, however. The talk of needlework is not yet associated with the sword « Needle » in our minds at the time (as Arya only starts her training later in KL) but merely with the fact Arya is crap at embroidery. The realisation of the possible foreshadowing comes back much later imo, it starts when she is training with « Needle » and it seems to be confirmed more and more by the fact that 1) that Needle is one of Arya's only treasures and one of the only things she holds to from her old life 2) Winter is indeed coming and Arya is going down a dark path. She is now involved with a guild of assassins and she is their trainee and again, imo, it seems unlikely they will let her walk away (imo an order so ancient and so secret cannot aford to let half-trained or trained individuals leave to potentially tell the tale).

[panther]

I was going to start a new topic, but this one seems to be a fitting place for this post. When I read the new Arya chapter, I can't help but think that Arya is indeed a puppet being played (by the faceless men? some connection to Varys/Illyrio?). I have not completely thought throught the reasoning, but:

• She is tough, but still young and probably somewhat naive about the larger games going on above her.
  
• She was 'recruited' to the faceless men fairly easily by a faceless man who knew who she was and has been allowed to advance very quickly.
  
• She hasn't necessarily been discouraged when she's killed for her own purposes as 'Arya'. In fact, she's simply received further steps in her training.
  

Now, it seems too convenient to me that after she has shown herself willing to kill as 'Arya', she is sent to join an acting troupe that is putting on a play about the injustice done to her family, and not only that, but the play was written by someone with a name that also has a strong emotional connection for her, and then a member of her kill list shows up at the play. These are not the actions of a group (faceless men) that wants her to completely forget her past and who she was. This is simply fueling her anger, which has become increasingly deadly. It gives me the impression that there is a puppet master somewhere preparing her to kill those that the puppet master eventually wants to have killed anyway, and he/she is ensuring that Arya has good motivation to do so on her own. So, is the mummer role in the chapter symbolic of the role she plays as a mummer in reality, doing the bidding of a master director?

Another poster already pointed out a possible reference with Varys, concerning bald heads being better for disguises/wigs. More food for thought. Bring Arya back to westeros when the time is right to let her kill those on her kill list who may again be gaining too much power. (Varys was at least partially responsible for the games leading to those injustices done to her family and leading to her hatred, and now he can find ways to use that hatred for his own purposes again.)

If she is being played, without her knowledge, as part of a long game, what happens to her when she has served her purpose? Maybe she will be found in the Spring with Needle between her fingers? Or, more hopefully, perhaps she discovers the larger plot and is able to save herself?

[Mourneblade]

as prophesied she will die with her needle frozen between her fingers

So Jon is prophet now?

[TurkeyRod]

no that old lady told her when arya was still with Beric in CoK. Some old woods witch lady or something tells arya her future

[Mourneblade]

no that old lady told her when arya was still with Beric in CoK. Some old woods witch lady or something tells arya her future

She did not make that prediction.

That line comes from Jon Joking with Arya in AGoT

[Littlefinger's dagger]

If she is being played, without her knowledge, as part of a long game, what happens to her when she has served her purpose? Maybe she will be found in the Spring with Needle between her fingers? Or, more hopefully, perhaps she discovers the larger plot and is able to save herself?

I completely agree she is being played. There is a vast and ineffable force at work not just on Arya but on all the PoV characters. I call him "The Author." He has power and technology far beyond their understanding (or at least a copy of WordStar 4.0) and while he has already killed several of them he is undoubtedly prepared to kill more. We can only guess at what his final endgame and purpose is, making mountains of molehills and intuiting connections that may not even exist in his mind is a strange and saddening exercise in futility.

Step away from the tinfoil hat.

[Littlefinger's dagger]

no that old lady told her when arya was still with Beric in CoK. Some old woods witch lady or something tells arya her future

She said nothing of the sort.

"I see you. I see you, wolf child. Blood child. I thought it was the lord who smelled of death ... You are cruel to come to my hill, cruel. I gorged on grief at Summerhall, I need none of yours. Begone from here, dark heart. Begone!"

So Arya smells of Death and her grief is palpable. Not a prophecy that she will die, or anything about how she dies. By then The Stranger has claimed her, or that archetype is where her allegiance lies, however you care to put it, but as I've heard said "going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than sleeping in a garage makes you a Buick." That she is destined to serve Death for a time does not mean other things won't also happen to her. We can guess she'll eventually die, but without an indication of the manner of her impending death or the timing, that's pretty well a given. Living in death's shadow in a wash of grief and anger describes Arya, but it also describes the thousands of Holocaust survivors who went on to have long if sad lives after the camps were liberated. Some of them were devoted to hunting down and punishing Nazis on the run, yet they lived on and on.

I've been daring people to show me a good reason why Arya's death is necessary or inevitable before the story's conclusion. Nobody has the goods. They just mumble incoherently about how she can't be allowed to survive, as though their moralizing and horror at her actions was the same thing as a plot point.

[Cas Stark]

A lot of what people see as foreshadowing isn't, but I'm not sure how the fact that the ghost of high heart is more put off by Arya, afraid and freaked out by Arya, and smells more death on Arya than the actual dead, reanimated zombie who is also there....doesn't count as foreshadowing that her story is all about death.

[Giorgio Corrado]

I wonder if this means something will happen to Arya while she is living in the temple of God of Many Faces where Arya may have to go threw a special anitiation to become a FM? Or could this mean Arya could find a mysterious chamber that was long forgotten and open up a form of Pandora's box that will change Arya forever?

[A Man Has Said]

A lot of what people see as foreshadowing isn't, but I'm not sure how the fact that the ghost of high heart is more put off by Arya, afraid and freaked out by Arya, and smells more death on Arya than the actual dead, reanimated zombie who is also there....doesn't count as foreshadowing that her story is all about death.

Yeah, that one definitely stands out. Plus, I put prophecies into different categories.

A lot of them including the GoHH's seem to be magically connected to the weirwoods, and I take those more seriously.

I happen to think that the weirwoods will become a much bigger element in the final books.

That's pretty well established by the final Bran chapters in ADwD.

At the opposite end of the prophesy hierarchy are the Azor Ahai and PtwP myths, which to me seem to be just old stories that have been retold so many times that they've become distorted and have lost all value. Their adherents (best represented by Melisandre) seem to be thrown off the track by them more than guided to the truth.

[Littlefinger's dagger]

A lot of what people see as foreshadowing isn't, but I'm not sure how the fact that the ghost of high heart is more put off by Arya, afraid and freaked out by Arya, and smells more death on Arya than the actual dead, reanimated zombie who is also there....doesn't count as foreshadowing that her story is all about death.

That death is a recurrent theme in Arya's story, that in effect if she worships anything these days it is Death, is not the same thing as an indication of Arya's impending death. That happened clear back in Storm of Swords. People's lives can be deeply marked by loss and grief and yet they themselves live long lives.

If I had to guess, I'd guess Arya will either die heroically at the very end, or be left standing and in bad need of finding a new purpose for her life. If for no other reason there's GRRM's promise to his wife.