Why can't a weirwood heart tree take root in the Eyrie?

[aryagonnakill#2]

When Bran sees the life of a weirwood-tree he sees a bloodsacrifice at the beginning. 
In AFFC Brienne notices weirwood saplings growing in the riverlands ... but should we be surprised after all the amount of blood spilled?
Maybe, just like the dragon-hatching, by the time the Arryns wanted to get a Godswood people had forgotten how to make them grow?

I know it´s a crackpot. But it fits on my head.

He doesn't see a blood sacrifice at the beginning of its life, the tree was still large when the man was sacrificed, but I was going to post this ida anyway.  Since they toss people out the moon door, perhaps the lack of blood is the reason, we can't say for sure. 

[Light a wight tonight]

The same reason that Harrenhal and the Red Keep have Godswoods. It probably became more of a cultural thing over time; the castles of the nobility were expected to have a godswoods because tradition. Even if some of those "godswoods" are just gardens with a fancy name and no weirwood tree.

I don't think it's solely the rock though; the altitude likely has something to with it was well. After all, even Casterly Rock has a weirdwood; it's just a twisted, runty thing.

Hauling enough dirt up to the Eyrie to support a grove of huge trees would be such an undertaking that I'd say "tradition" would take a back seat to practicality. Plus is there even room on the side of that mountain to plant a large grove?

Actually, in my opinion the whole Eyrie concept is dumb. I mean, having an administrative center so inaccessible that it takes days to get to?  

[RumHam]

Hauling enough dirt up to the Eyrie to support a grove of huge trees would be such an undertaking that I'd say "tradition" would take a back seat to practicality. Plus is there even room on the side of that mountain to plant a large grove?

The worldbook sorta explains this here:

In many cases, the Andals took the wives and daughters of the defeated kings to wife, as a means of solidifying their right to rule. For, despite everything, the First Men were far more numerous than the Andals and could not simply be forced aside. The fact that many southron castles still have godswoods with carved weirwoods at their hearts is said to be thanks to the early Andal kings, who shifted from conquest to consolidation, thus avoiding any conflict based on differing faiths.

It's possible one of the early Lord Arryns had a wife who worshiped the old gods and attempted to create the godswood to please her.

Another possible explanation could be the ravens. I'm not sure if by that point the ravens had stopped talking and switched over to written messages. But it might have been known that a weirwood tree attracts these talking birds, or just regular ravens who would nest there and return to the Eyrie if released at another castle. 

[LiveFirstDieLater]

First the Eryie isn't a winter seat (nobody stays there in winter) wether this is because it lacks a Weirwood is debatable, the passes seem to be blocked even if they do tell us how much food they could store for a siege...

 

But the simplest answer would be that the Weirwoods are interconnected (the weirnet) and the Eryie is built on top of stone so the roots can't connect the tree...

[Beorn Snow]

He doesn't see a blood sacrifice at the beginning of its life, the tree was still large when the man was sacrificed, but I was going to post this ida anyway.  Since they toss people out the moon door, perhaps the lack of blood is the reason, we can't say for sure. 

Got to water those trees 

[Seams]

I think there are two or three things that could explain why GRRM included this detail in the story of the Eyrie.

1) There will be something significant about Ned being isolated from a godswood for a formative period of his youth. We know he is devout when he is a POV character in AGoT, but was he always so observant? Did he have lapses in his youth when there was no heart tree to keep an eye on him? Or did he regularly travel to the nearest godswood? If so, where is it?

2) Back to Dany's lemon tree, and the fact that lemon trees don't grow in Braavos. I know there has been a lot of discussion about Dany's memory of a tree growing outside her window, and how that could or could not be possible, given the growing conditions in the area where she grew up. So there may be some symbolism around the absence of trees that will make more sense when we learn why Dany remembered a lemon tree where one wouldn't normally be found.

3) The lack of a weirwood tree at the Eyrie comes up in the Sansa POV with the snow castle. Sansa says she and the garden at the Eyrie are both empty and then she begins to build the snow castle and she creates the mini godswood using twigs and sticks. So the symbolism may have to do with Sansa recovering and being reborn after her virtual imprisonment at King's Landing. On another thread, I recently noted that Sansa and Little Finger can't figure out how to create glass for Winterfell's glass garden in the snow castle. I couldn't figure out why they didn't just use ice, but then realized that there might be a deliberate symbolism about leaving out the glass. Soon I came across a quote from a Theon POV looking around Winterfell just after the wedding ceremony of fArya/Jeyne and Ramsay: "The thatch and timber had been consumed by fire, in whole or in part, and under the shattered panes of the Glass Garden the fruits and vegetables that would have fed the castle during the winter were dead and black and frozen." (ADwD, Chap. 35) So the absence of a weirwood tree in the purpose-built garden at the Eyrie seems linked through Sansa's castle to the broken glass garden at Winterfell, and could bring us back to the motif of the absence of trees that ties into Dany's arc and/or the fruit motif around Sansa (lemoncakes, blood orange, pear, pomegranate, etc.).

[GrumpkinsAndStarks]

Being that The Vale was the arrival location for the Andals who brought the 7 with them from across the Narrow Sea (iirc), I would at first be inclined to think this had something to do with it. But isn't it true that the first men were immigrants to Westeros as well? Presumably they had their own religion or else, why all the hacking of the Weirwood trees?

I am  leaning more toward a point "Ygrain" made. About the Weirwoods being a root network, all intertwined below ground. Maybe even the mighty Weirwood root could not penetrate the Mountain Pass. It is, after all, impregnable.

Certainly ominous for any with the Blood of the First Men running through their veins!

[Damsel in Distress]

The dead return back to the earth.  It's like biblical, the body decays and it returns back to the soil and the earth, ready to be recycled.  But so do the memories as it becomes part of the great consciousness.  I have this picture of bloodraven slowly decaying while his body is reabsorbed back to nature, through the roots.  His memory also get absorbed and become part of nature. 

It's because of altitude.  It's why the old pre-pact kings of the First Men would entomb their kings above the tree line, so the Children would not be able to steal their spirits through the weirwood trees.  The First Men used to be able to talk with the bones of their dead, and I think the Dustins still can, but most have lost that art once their started joining the Old Gods in the weirwood network.

This has some interesting implications - are there any tombs in the Eyrie where there might be spirits that Bloodraven has no access to?  Or any bones in the sky cells from prisoners who died but didn't fall out?  I don't know how to get any descendants of the First Kings to the Eyrie to access them, though who's to know where Barbrey Dustin ends up over the next couple of books.

I think so too.  That's why the First Men who had the means entombed themselves, so their bodies and their souls can never become a part of the collective memory.  It's like guarding your privacy and shredding your diary.  You don't want the Greenseers and other weirdos browsing your intimate secrets and your memories even though you are dead.  It's not their business.  You want to keep your memories to yourself.  The Stark rulers avoided this by making sure the bodies are sealed deep inside the stone crypts.  The Targaryens burned their dead, so it is unlikely any Greenseer would have access to the how-to's of dragon riding.  The Valyrians kept their secret.  The Dustins kept their dead above ground, on top of a hill, because roots do not grow up.  I bet they kept the top of that hill free of any trees. 

[TheSovereignGrave]

But the simplest answer would be that the Weirwoods are interconnected (the weirnet) and the Eryie is built on top of stone so the roots can't connect the tree...

Casterly Rock is, well, a rock too. Yet the Godswood there has a weirdwood. Granted, it's like the Tyrion Lannister of weirwoods but it still grows there nonetheless.

[Aniel]

The dead return back to the earth.  It's like biblical, the body decays and it returns back to the soil and the earth, ready to be recycled.  But so do the memories as it becomes part of the great consciousness.  I have this picture of bloodraven slowly decaying while his body is reabsorbed back to nature, through the roots.  His memory also get absorbed and become part of nature. 

I think so too.  That's why the First Men who had the means entombed themselves, so their bodies and their souls can never become a part of the collective memory.  It's like guarding your privacy and shredding your diary.  You don't want the Greenseers and other weirdos browsing your intimate secrets and your memories even though you are dead.  It's not their business.  You want to keep your memories to yourself.  The Stark rulers avoided this by making sure the bodies are sealed deep inside the stone crypts.  The Targaryens burned their dead, so it is unlikely any Greenseer would have access to the how-to's of dragon riding.  The Valyrians kept their secret.  The Dustins kept their dead above ground, on top of a hill, because roots do not grow up.  I bet they kept the top of that hill free of any trees. 

Where does it say the Dustins bury their dead on top of hills? You do not place tombs on barrows, you place them inside of them. The dead are interred inside the mound. That's not to say there aren't any protective spells or anything around them, but the fact that the tombs are barrows probably isn't the anti-weirnet/greenseer part of that.

As for the Eyrie not having a heart tree I'd imagine is because of the reason stated in the books, there isn't enough soil, as well as the altitude. The soil thing would be consistent with Casterly Rock's heart tree being stunted, and the altitude the final nail in the coffin.

[sweetsunray]

Physical limitations:

• soil: too thin, on rock
• height: the highest waygate to the Eyrie is called 'snow'. Cat passes it on her ascent in aGoT, while it's summer. She thinks it would be the easiest thing to start an avalanche from that point. In other words, they are pretty close to the snow line. Normally nothing grows from the permanent snowline onwards on mountains. Too cold, too rocky, too little air.
• weirnet roots: a weirwood tree does not seem to stand alone, but is connected with a large root system, and the surface of the mountain does not seem conducive for it. But a hearttree is not necessarily a weirwood tree. In KL it's an oak. Still, trees need a lot of thick soil layers, unless they're tropical trees (but the Eyrie isn't the tropics either).

Impact:

• No eyes, no help, no 'gods'
• Symbolical: Sansa's dreams and hopes can't take root from the Eyrie and the Arryn valley. Her actions there to accomplish her dreams of home will bear no fruit, cannot be realized there.
• Symbolical: it's not her home

[Magnar of Skagos]

Symbolism perhaps; the Vale is the most Andal region of Westeros. Maybe because it is just so rocky, as well.

[LiveFirstDieLater]

Casterly Rock is, well, a rock too. Yet the Godswood there has a weirdwood. Granted, it's like the Tyrion Lannister of weirwoods but it still grows there nonetheless.

Casterly Rock is built on top of a network of caves and tunnels, so no problem for roots, as opposed to the top of a big mountain in the middle of a mountain range.

 

Also, the network of tunnels thing may be related to the Weirwoods in its own way as there seem to be a lot of stories (and now examples) of there being hideouts in hollow hills, tunnels under walls, etc. Who knows maybe they are all connected!

 

 

[moonshield]

Maybe Mel isnt as far off when she thinks the "wooden face, corpse white" is the Great Other ;o What indeed, if the Great Other isnt just great regarding his powers as a god (or whatever reason there is to call him the Great Other), but also Great in terms of his physical dimension. Similar to the Great Barrier Reef or that one funghi, the Great Other is a gigantic organism (I'm aware that the Reef isnt one organism) consisting of a world-encompassing network of roots and trees. I've heard worse theories (or maybe this theory is already somewhere out there?)

[Saving Stannis]

With the Eyrie as the launching point for the Andal invasion and influence, it would seem a symbolic parallel given their efforts to chop down all the weirwoods elsewhere

[Saving Stannis]

Maybe Mel isnt as far off when she thinks the "wooden face, corpse white" is the Great Other ;o What indeed, if the Great Other isnt just great regarding his powers as a god (or whatever reason there is to call him the Great Other), but also Great in terms of his physical dimension. Similar to the Great Barrier Reef or that one funghi, the Great Other is a gigantic organism (I'm aware that the Reef isnt one organism) consisting of a world-encompassing network of roots and trees. I've heard worse theories (or maybe this theory is already somewhere out there?)

This seems like it might be a bit too abstract as an end-of-series uber-revelation, and yet, there's something about it I really like. I'd be interested in hearing more evidence to that end. 

[Saving Stannis]

She wondered if it had been his face that she had seen, staring out at her from the flames.No. Surely not. His visage would be more frightening than that, cold and black and too terrible for any man to gaze upon and live. The wooden man she had glimpsed, though, and the boy with the wolf’s face ... they were his servants, surely ... his champions, as Stannis was hers.

Certainly sounds like Melisandre painting Bran (boy with the wolf face) and Brynden (wooden man) as the champions for the Great Other.  

[aryagonnakill#2]

Maybe Mel isnt as far off when she thinks the "wooden face, corpse white" is the Great Other ;o What indeed, if the Great Other isnt just great regarding his powers as a god (or whatever reason there is to call him the Great Other), but also Great in terms of his physical dimension. Similar to the Great Barrier Reef or that one funghi, the Great Other is a gigantic organism (I'm aware that the Reef isnt one organism) consisting of a world-encompassing network of roots and trees. I've heard worse theories (or maybe this theory is already somewhere out there?)

I was once in a trivia game where they asked what the largest organism is and about half of us knew it was a Sequoya, I even knew the name of the largest tree was General Sherman, and they said the answer was the GBR, needless to say people were pretty upset, including me.

Certainly sounds like Melisandre painting Bran (boy with the wolf face) and Brynden (wooden man) as the champions for the Great Other.  

And since Mel has come to that conclusion we can be pretty sure it's wrong.

[mediterraneo]

Symbolism? Northerners are not supposed to go South. Physically? Weirwood requires a deep soil, really deep.

Well, there are weirwoods south of the neck, wherever the First Men before ad the Andals later didn't cut them.
The Eye of the Gods is south of the neck too.
So, wrong theory.

When Bran sees the life of a weirwood-tree he sees a bloodsacrifice at the beginning. 
In AFFC Brienne notices weirwood saplings growing in the riverlands ... but should we be surprised after all the amount of blood spilled?
Maybe, just like the dragon-hatching, by the time the Arryns wanted to get a Godswood people had forgotten how to make them grow?

I know it´s a crackpot. But it fits on my head.

I'm on with the blood sacrifice thing.
 

[Taenqyrhae]

I was once in a trivia game where they asked what the largest organism is and about half of us knew it was a Sequoya, I even knew the name of the largest tree was General Sherman, and they said the answer was the GBR, needless to say people were pretty upset, including me.

And since Mel has come to that conclusion we can be pretty sure it's wrong.

I would be very unhappy with that answer too since the GBR is made up of billions of genetically different creatures.

The correct answer would have been the 106 acre Quaking Aspen.  It's appears to be a forest, but it is really just one tree.