The Others are dead CoTF that came from destroyed Weirwoods

[unSonofStannis]

Shouldn't the Others have come back during the Andal invasion then, because the Andals were apparently quite fundamentalist at first and cut down loads of weirwood (before making a 180 and was completely fine with a weirwood in every castle).

Good point.

[Muggle]

I think there is a clear connection between The Others and The Children of The Forest. There magic is to similar.

I would not be surprised if The Others were not at one point in time actual Children of the Forest. Who used magic to adapt to the harsh conditions of the extreme north.

We see the children being brown with leaf like hair. Implying they adapted to the forest.

[mindchap]

To the subject of the OP I had a similar crackpot that maybe they were displaced greenseers, since they don't show up until after peace is made between the CotF and the FM, but pretty much any theory on this subject is a little crackish since we really have very little in text to go on, and almost nothing outside of text, still speculation leads to discussion. There are other comments, like "And they(trees) remember when the First Men came with fire in their fists" and the WW are extremely weak to "frozen fire". They also seem to come out of the woods more than anywhere else, Old Nan says they sleep beneath the ice but when we encounter them in the text they seem to be coming from the forests. :)

[MyLittleFinger]

I think there is a clear connection between The Others and The Children of The Forest. There magic is to similar.

I would not be surprised if The Others were not at one point in time actual Children of the Forest. Who used magic to adapt to the harsh conditions of the extreme north.

We see the children being brown with leaf like hair. Implying they adapted to the forest.

That is the exact plot of Memory, Thorn and Sorrow.

[Light a wight tonight]

The CotF are the size of human children and have golden, slit-pupilled eyes and four digits per hand. The White Walkers are full human size, have blue eyes not described as slit-pupilled, and no mention of fewer fingers is made. I'd say they were entirely different species.

[Muggle]

To touch on what mindchap said.

Once i have gotten a decent understanding of the time line. I always assumed The White Walkers were Children of the Forest who did not agree with the peace or pact with the humans and were exiled north. And living in The Land of Always Winter away from the forest the loved so much turned bitter. And grew to hate humans and there brothers. And this is the reasoning behind there invasion.

[Muggle]

The CotF are the size of human children and have golden, slit-pupilled eyes and four digits per hand. The White Walkers are full human size, have blue eyes not described as slit-pupilled, and no mention of fewer fingers is made. I'd say they were entirely different species.

Living in forest and caves. More so the latter would make sense for the children being so short.

Living in the lands of always winter being tall would have its advantages. Having no trees to block vision.

The Children can separate continents with there magic. Why would adapting to a different terrain and climate using magic be any more difficult. Then nuking huge land masses.

[MyLittleFinger]

To touch on what mindchap said.

Once i have gotten a decent understanding of the time line. I always assumed The White Walkers were Children of the Forest who did not agree with the peace or pact with the humans and were exiled north. And living in The Land of Always Winter away from the forest the loved so much turned bitter. And grew to hate humans and there brothers. And this is the reasoning behind there invasion.

GRRM would be in some copyright issues right here.

[NOT A TARG I SWEAR]

Redundant much?

Ya, redundant much?

[mindchap]

I don't understand why there aren't any new Weirwood trees being planted. I mean, we know from Bran that there are wierwood seeds (he eats them).

There is a young one, Brienne buries Nimble Dick beneath it:

In their midst was a pale stranger; a slenderyoung weirwood with a trunk as white as a cloistered maid. Dark red leaves sprouted from its reaching branches. Beyond was the emptiness of sky and sea where the wall had collapsed...

[danm_999]

Shouldn't the Others have come back during the Andal invasion then, because the Andals were apparently quite fundamentalist at first and cut down loads of weirwood (before making a 180 and was completely fine with a weirwood in every castle).

Well, there were two incidents of mass weirwood burnings in Westeros' history.

The timeline (such as we know it, it's not unimpeachable) is that the First Men arrive in Westeros 12,000 years ago, cut down/burn weirwoods, war with the Children, then make a peace approximately 10,000 years ago.

8,000 years ago, the Long Night happens. The First Men and the Children win, and men build the Wall and establish the Night's Watch.

Then the Andals arrive, 6,000 years ago, and wipe out most weirwoods south of the Neck over the next thousand or so years.

Roughly 5,000ish years later, the Others are back. Now this might be coincidence, and the timeline might be completely borked (Sam certainly thinks so in AFFC), but it doesn't eliminate the possibility mass weirwood burnings create Other invasions in a few thousand years time.

[unSonofStannis]

Ya, redundant much?

Now you all are getting redundant in calling me redundant :D

[Dorian Martell]

There is a young one, Brienne buries Nimble Dick beneath it:

And Sam finds a young tree with no face south of the wall en route to castle black

[antipattern]

I'm afraid I agree with Son of Stannis. If an idea has absolutely no support in the text then it's fan fiction, not a theory.

An example of this from outside the ASOIAF universe is the distinction between the concepts of evolution, which is a theory, and creationism, which is Bible fan fiction.

[walkingWITHcersei]

Sorry, too crackpot for me, and on top of that you have no evidence.

I'm with SoStannis in this one. Way to thin skinned and absolutely no attempt to give any evidence at all? Crack pot theories are fine here but some attempt to back it up needs to be made. I can hypothesize Arthur Dayne is Balerion the cat if I wanted but I'd expect to get a lot worse than "I disagree"without trying to prove it somehow!

[antipattern]

I'm with SoStannis in this one. Way to thin skinned and absolutely no attempt to give any evidence at all? Crack pot theories are fine here but some attempt to back it up needs to be made. I can hypothesize Arthur Dayne is Balerion the cat if I wanted but I'd expect to get a lot worse than "I disagree"without trying to prove it somehow!

This is exactly the point I was trying to make. To extend my analogy above, claiming that Arthur Dayne is Balerion the Cat is much like claiming that the universe was created be a Flying Spaghetti Monster (see: http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/).

[Lady Blizzardborn]

I'm afraid I agree with Son of Stannis. If an idea has absolutely no support in the text then it's fan fiction, not a theory.

An example of this from outside the ASOIAF universe is the distinction between the concepts of evolution, which is a theory, and creationism, which is Bible fan fiction.

Son of Stannis didn't say it's not a theory, just that's it's a crackpot one. And there is a great deal of difference between this and fan fiction. If you don't think it deserves theory status, why not call it a hunch instead?

How is creationism fan fiction when it's in the Bible? Or are you referring to the idea that six days has to mean six twenty-four hour increments? Cause that's not in the book.

I'm agreeing with Light a Wight Tonight. The CotF are short and the Others are tall. Not likely they're related. You don't get short just from living in a place with low ceilings, and living in the open doesn't make anyone taller either. Of course...this is a fantasy world and these are magical races, so maybe the laws of development are different.

[WeirwoodTreeHugger]

Valerius, on 22 Apr 2014 - 10:13 PM, said:

I like the idea. I support a Save-The-Weirwood-Forest movement. What better way to promote wierwoodhugging than educating people on the consequence of deforestation - walking zombie sorcerers of evil?

Weirwood hugging you say? I like it!

Anyway, my personal crackpot is that the others were some sort of biological weapon the COTF made and lost control of.

[oursisthefury69]

Theres plenty of evidence that Greenseers, skinchangers, and CoTF live on in the Weirwoods after their deaths (See Varamyr prologue and Brans chapters) So as far as @Antipattern and @SonofStannis are concerned I'm not to worried about you classifying it as lacking evidence, and I don't feel terribly obligated to post the quotes just to prove it to a couple of people who didn't read carefully, I know what I read. Obviously I understand there's no hard "evidence" in the text for the Others origins, its left a mystery, that's the reason for the broad hypothesis to begin with; The fact that people are borderline offended that I'm theorizing about something you aren't meant to know about yet, as opposed to contributing to 18 year old easy to figure out threads like R+L=J is strange.

[antipattern]

Son of Stannis didn't say it's not a theory, just that's it's a crackpot one. And there is a great deal of difference between this and fan fiction. If you don't think it deserves theory status, why not call it a hunch instead?

How is creationism fan fiction when it's in the Bible? Or are you referring to the idea that six days has to mean six twenty-four hour increments? Cause that's not in the book.

I'm agreeing with Light a Wight Tonight. The CotF are short and the Others are tall. Not likely they're related. You don't get short just from living in a place with low ceilings, and living in the open doesn't make anyone taller either. Of course...this is a fantasy world and these are magical races, so maybe the laws of development are different.

You're right, he didn't say it's not a theory -- I did. In my opinion it's what he should have said, as "fan fiction" more accurately describes most of the theories referred to in this forum as "crackpot".

Theories have some sort of grounding in reality that can be tested or, in the case of the theories we're talking about, at least can be supported by referencing facts in the text. Fan fiction is something that is completely made up.

Perhaps my Bible analogy would have been more accurate if I'd said that the biblical story of creation itself is fan fiction for the history of the earth. I guess it's not a perfect comparison, but the basic idea is true: Theories (e.g. R+L = J, or evolution) can be supported by relevant facts, whereas fan fiction (e.g. the Others used to be CotF, or women were created from the ribs of the first man) have absolutely nothing to recommend them beyond the belief of their adherents.

The real similarity, though, is the style of argument that proponents of the "fan fiction"-esque theories use: namely that all theories should be regarded as equally valid because we cannot know for sure.