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[TWoW Spoilers] Aeron I (Balticon)


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On 5/6/2019 at 6:17 PM, LadyBlackwater said:

Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed … If I'm not mistaken, this was a piece of the vision Dany had 

Some similarities, but not the same. 

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3 hours ago, LadyBlackwater said:

True, really only that there were nefarious dwarves in both. I just find it interesting that both happened within reach of pyatt Pree. 

Or perhaps it is the shade of the evening?

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On 5/2/2019 at 8:21 AM, LordImp said:

Does anyone think Euron might be the final villain? Like how Sarumann had to be dealt with after Sauron , Euron has to be dealt with after the Others. 

He will be the final human villain offering Dany a chance to rule a New Valyria with him. Euron will almost certainly knock down the wall with the horn of winter.

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  • 4 weeks later...

On a different note, doesn't the Valyrian steel armor that is described as black resemble the armor Jon dreams about at one point? If I remember correctly the dream took place at the wall and Jon was wearing pitch black armor and wielding a red shining sword, striking down wights down the wall.
 

If the dream is sort of a prophecy then it means that either, Jon receives the armor from Euron (or it gets stolen) or Euron dies before the Others become a big topic, degrading him to a low-level villain. 

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  • 2 months later...

Aeron Greyjoy is going to second life a leviathan. The possibility and history of second lifing a leviathan (whale) is what the Drowned God is based on. Aeron is becoming the Drowned God.

Aeron's description at the beginning of the chapter.

Quote

The mutes had robbed him of his of robe and shoes and breechclout. He wore hair and chains and scabs. Saltwater sloshed about his legs whenever the tide came in, rising as high as his genitals only to ebb again when the tide receded. His feet had grown huge and soft and puffy, shapeless things as big as hams.

Later Euron's description of the drowned god.

Quote

“Will you do the same, brother?” Euron asked. “I think not. I think if I drowned you, you’ll stay drowned. All gods are lies, but yours is laughable. A pale white thing in the likeness of a man, his limbs broken and swollen and his hair flipping in the water while fish nibble at his face. What fool would worship that?”

Note the similarities. The drowned god's physical description is that of a cross between a man and leviathan. The Drowned God's watery halls is a nod to the innards of a whale literally seeming like a great hall.

With everyone being so focussed on Euron the real crux of this chapter is being missed. It is the most meaningful of Aeron's story, it actually reveals his story whereas before he could almost have been dismissed as simply a convenient POV to relay events.

Aeron's story is a question of faith. This chapter is a trial of Aeron's faith. 

Quote

A weaker man might have wept, but Aeron Damphair prayed, waking, sleeping, even in his fever-dreams he prayed. My god is testing me. I must be strong, I must be true.

. . .

Aeron Damphair hardly heard her. Victarion is gone, half a world away or dead.Surely the Drowned God was testing him. This was a lesson for him. Put not your trust in men. Only my faith can save me now.

The very name of the chapter is a taunt, telling Aeron his faith is misplaced, misguided, wrong.

Quote

And a few days later, as her hull shuddered in the grip of some storm, the Crow’s Eye came below again, lantern in hand. This time his other hand held a dagger. “Still praying, priest? Your god has forsaken you.”

This leads us, the reader, to the simple question of if Euron or Aeron is right. Will nothing come of Aeron's faith?

What specifically is going to happen is in the text.

Quote

“That which is dead cannot die,” said Aeron fiercely. “For he who has tasted death once need never fear again. He was drowned, but he came forth stronger than before, with steel and fire.”

“Will you do the same, brother?” Euron asked. “I think not. I think if I drowned you, you’ll stay drowned. All gods are lies, but yours is laughable.

Aeron is going to drown. The question is will he stay drowned?

Quote

“Falia Flowers,” he called. “Have courage, girl! All this will be over soon, and we will feast together in the Drowned God’s watery halls.”

The girl raised up her head, but made no answer. She has no tongue to answer with,the Damphair knew. He licked his lips, and tasted salt.

And the ending of the chapter is the answer.

Aeron will drown and will begin a second life (with Falia) in a leviathan - the Drowned God's water halls. The Drowned God will set him free.

Quote

Perhaps that was the name of the demon that he worships. The Drowned God protects me, the priest told himself. He is stronger than the false gods these other worship, stronger than their black sorceries. The Drowned God will set me free.

The belly of the beast where it is always midnight.

Quote

It was always midnight in the belly of the beast.

What is dead may never die.

Quote

When they pulled him up the steps through the light, he felt its warmth upon his face, and tears rolled down his cheeks. The sea. I can smell the sea. The Drowned God has not abandoned me. The sea will make me whole again! That which is dead can never die, but rises again harder and stronger …

The Drowned God will answer his prayers.

Quote

I have been your true and leal servant, he prayed, twisting in his chains. Now snatch me from my brother’s hand, and take me down beneath the waves, to be seated at your side.

It is nothing the Drowned God has not already done for him before.

Quote

Not since the Drowned God had blessed him with a second life had Aeron Damphair ventured so far from the Iron Islands.

He is not forsaken, the chapter title is ironic. His faith and god will prove true and see him through. And when he does second life a leviathan, basically becoming the drowned god, he will be set to meet Euron again and make good on all his threats and promises and all the foreshadowing.

Quote

“Euron’s blasphemies will bring down the Drowned God’s wrath upon us all,” he warned.

But Victarion insisted stubbornly that the god had raised their brother up and that god must cast him down.

Quote

“He’s your god as well,” insisted the Damphair. “And when you die, he will judge you harshly, Crow’s Eye. You will spend eternity as a sea slug, crawling on your belly eating shit.

An epic showdown is brewing, Aeron the Drowned God leviathan vs Euron the new god Kraken.

Quote

"A wolf is not a kraken," Victarion objected. "What the kraken grasps it does not lose, be it longship or leviathan."

Quote

Behind the dais a kraken and grey leviathan were locked in battle beneath the painted waves.

Second lifing as a concept is being brought to the fore in steps. It began with simple skin changing, then in ADWD a peripheral character second lifes a mundane wolf. Aeron second lifing a leviathan will be the next step as the series heads towards the big reveal, that Targs/Valyrians second lifed dragons.

Edited by chrisdaw
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On 8/14/2019 at 12:32 AM, chrisdaw said:

Aeron Greyjoy is going to second life a leviathan. The possibility and history of second lifing a leviathan (whale) is what the Drowned God is based on. Aeron is becoming the Drowned God.

Aeron's description at the beginning of the chapter.

Later Euron's description of the drowned god.

Note the similarities. The drowned god's physical description is that of a cross between a man and leviathan. The Drowned God's watery halls is a nod to the innards of a whale literally seeming like a great hall.

With everyone being so focussed on Euron the real crux of this chapter is being missed. It is the most meaningful of Aeron's story, it actually reveals his story whereas before he could almost have been dismissed as simply a convenient POV to relay events.

Aeron's story is a question of faith. This chapter is a trial of Aeron's faith. 

The very name of the chapter is a taunt, telling Aeron his faith is misplaced, misguided, wrong.

This leads us, the reader, to the simple question of if Euron or Aeron is right. Will nothing come of Aeron's faith?

What specifically is going to happen is in the text.

Aeron is going to drown. The question is will he stay drowned?

And the ending of the chapter is the answer.

Aeron will drown and will begin a second life (with Falia) in a leviathan - the Drowned God's water halls. The Drowned God will set him free.

The belly of the beast where it is always midnight.

What is dead may never die.

The Drowned God will answer his prayers.

It is nothing the Drowned God has not already done for him before.

He is not forsaken, the chapter title is ironic. His faith and god will prove true and see him through. And when he does second life a leviathan, basically becoming the drowned god, he will be set to meet Euron again and make good on all his threats and promises and all the foreshadowing.

An epic showdown is brewing, Aeron the Drowned God leviathan vs Euron the new god Kraken.

Second lifing as a concept is being brought to the fore in steps. It began with simple skin changing, then in ADWD a peripheral character second lifes a mundane wolf. Aeron second lifing a leviathan will be the next step as the series heads towards the big reveal, that Targs/Valyrians second lifed dragons.

I like it!

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  • 5 months later...
Aeron’s dreams in the Forsaken chapter are not prophetic dreams or true visions. It is just Aeron’s subconscious speaking up under extreme duress and torture in the hands of his abuser. His religion (his only source of strength and stability and sanity) is failing him, hence the title Forsaken. What makes the whole thing worse is the use of a potent drug (shade of the evening) which gives him very vivid, nightmarish acid trips. Every element in these dreams can be explained by everything Aeron knows and fears about Euron, even if it is wholly in his subconscious. Let me start with a brief chronology.
 
  1. After the Kingsmoot, Aeron is captured and chained deep in the bowels of Silence. 
  2. They set sail to take the Shields. On the Silence, Aeron has his First Dream. 
  3. Once the Shields are taken, Aeron is transferred to Lord Hewett's dungeon in Oakenshield. This is the first dungeon he is referring to in this chapter.
  4. Victarion leaves for Meereen. 
  5. Falia Flowers brings food to Aeron in the dungeon and tells him that Victarion is gone.
  6. Aeron is taken to the Silence again and they leave Oakenshield.
  7. On the Silence, Euron confesses killing his brothers to Aeron.
  8. Euron takes the Isle of Pigs and uses it as one of his bases to raid the Reach. Aeron is thrown to the dungeon at the Isle of Pigs. This is the second dungeon he is referring to in this chapter. This is where the warlocks and other priests are thrown to his cell.
  9. Aeron has his Second Dream in this dungeon.
  10. At the end of this chapter, they take him out and tie him to the prow of Silence.
First Dream
 
Quote

 

And when the Damphair slept, sagging in his chains, he heard the creak of a rusted hinge.
 
“Urri!” he cried. There is no hinge here, no door, no Urri. His brother Urrigon was long dead, yet there he stood. One arm was black and swollen, stinking with maggots, but he was still Urri, still a boy, no older than the day he died. 
 
“You know what waits below the sea, brother?” 
 
“The Drowned God,” Aeron said, “the watery halls.”
 
Urri shook his head. “Worms... worms await you, Aeron.” 
 
When he laughed his face sloughed off and the priest saw that it was not Urri but Euron, the smiling eye hidden. He showed the world his blood eye now, dark and terrible. Clad head to heel in scale as dark as onyx, he sat upon a mound of blackened skulls as dwarfs capered round his feet and a forest burned behind him.
 
“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.”
 
Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.”
 
“Never. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!”
 
“Why would I want that hard black rock? Brother, look again and see where I am seated.” 
 
Aeron Damphair looked. The mound of skulls was gone. Now it was metal underneath the Crow’s Eye: a great, tall, twisted seat of razor sharp iron, barbs and blades and broken swords, all dripping blood. Impaled upon the longer spikes were the bodies of the gods. The Maiden was there and the Father and the Mother, the Warrior and Crone and Smith...even the Stranger. They hung side by side with all manner of queer foreign gods: the Great Shepherd and the Black Goat, three-headed Trios and the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Lord of Light and the butterfly god of Naath. 
 
And there, swollen and green, half-devoured by crabs, the Drowned God festered with the rest, seawater still dripping from his hair. 
 
Then Euron Crow’s Eye laughed again, and the priest woke screaming in the bowels of Silence, as piss ran down his leg. It was only a dream, a vision born of foul black wine.

 

  • This dream happened not long after the Kingsmoot. Therefore, Aeron still had some defiance and sanity left in him. The despair had not fully kicked in and Aeron still had some hope for deliverance by the hands of Victarion and Drowned God. He was a long way from realizing the extent of his hopelessness. However, doubt was already eating away his faith given Euron’s victory at the Kingsmoot and brazenly blaspheming the gods without any consequence. As a result, this dream was bad but not as bad as his second dream was going to be.
  • The imagery in this dream is mostly about Euron offending every god and blaspheming in every faith, yet none of them smites him down, which is why Aeron’s fear of Euron keeps growing constantly. No doubt, Euron is doing this on purpose and with malicious intent. He enjoys tormenting his victims and he is trying to break Aeron’s faith.
  • In ACoK, Aeron thought that the bleeding star was a sign from the Drowned God telling the ironborn to set sail for plunder, conquest and victory. In fact, he prayed to kill all those foreign gods as in the dream in the name of the Drowned God and conquer the green lands by taking the Iron Throne. Now, that belief is crushed by Euron as even the Drowned God becomes his victim, at least in Aeron’s subconscious. The creepy horn blowing at the Kingsmoot and Euron’s talk about dragons, plunder, conquering the Iron Throne etc. all bleed into this nightmare.
Second Dream
 
Quote

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea. He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed...

  • This time, Aeron was in a far worse state than the previous one. He had learned that Victarion was gone. He had no hope left for deliverance. Clearly his god had forsaken him or his god was a lie all along.
  • The burning longships of the ironborn result from Aeron’s realization that Euron does not even care for the ironborn or the Old Way. Just recently, he had told Aeron about the Shields and why they are poisoned gifts. Aeron realized that Euron did not care about the lives of the ironborn as long as he got what he needed. That is why Euron sheds the last bit of humanity Aeron could attribute to him in this dream and appears as a monster.
  • The shadow in woman’s form is the dragon queen. Previously, Falia Flowers told Aeron about Euron’s plan to wed the dragon queen (the most beautiful woman in the world), who would rule all Westeros at his side. That information bleeds into this dream. The dwarves are just subjects beneath Euron and they only exist for the amusement of Euron and his mate.

In short, don't get carried away.

B)

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  • 1 month later...

I love Aeron's last lines in this chapter:

Quote

“Falia Flowers,” he called. “Have courage, girl! All this will be over soon, and we will feast together in the Drowned God’s watery halls.”

This is huge character development for Aeron. There are two things to remember about Aeron here:

1. He is is a devout Drowned priest who believes that mainlanders are heathens.

2. He is a misogynist. Aeron knows Asha is the best choice to rule the Iron Islands, but won't support her because of her gender. He makes Lord Goodbrother's daughters leave the room when he comes to confer with him. He thinks women are destined to die in childbirth, and when he thinks about the stepmother that he hates (who also died in childbirth), he fixates on her soft breasts and large doe eyes--both symbolic of her femininity.

So here's Damphair, the son of an Ironborn lord, tied to the prow of a ship, trying to comfort a knocked-up, bastard-born teenage salt wife from the Reach. He tells Falia, who was all but certainly raised in the Faith of the Seven, that they will both be allowed into the Drowned God's kingdom after death, where they will find peace. 

So much is revealed in that one exchange, and I love it.

Edited by The Bard of Banefort
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On 3/27/2020 at 10:18 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

I love Aeron's last lines in this chapter:

This is huge character development for Aeron. There are two things to remember about Aeron here:

1. He is is a devout Drowned priest who believes that mainlanders are heathens.

2. He is a misogynist. Aeron knows Asha is the best choice to rule the Iron Islands, but won't support her because of her gender. He makes Lord Goodbrother's daughters leave the room when he comes to confer with him. He thinks women are destined to die in childbirth, and when he thinks about the stepmother that he hates (who also died in childbirth), he fixates on her soft breasts and large doe eyes--both symbolic of her femininity.

So here's Damphair, the son of and Ironborn lord, tied to the prow of a ship, trying to comfort a knocked-up, bastard-born teenage salt wife from the Reach. He tells Falia, who was all but certainly raised in the Faith of the Seven, that they will both be allowed into the Drowned God's kingdom after death, where they will find peace. 

So much is revealed in that one exchange, and I love it.

I believe he is telling himself this...  I get that he is saying it to her, but I believe it is for his own benefit.

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1 hour ago, aryagonnakill#2 said:

I believe he is telling himself this...  I get that he is saying it to her, but I believe it is for his own benefit.

Yes, but he's never extended that grace to someone like Falia before. The Aeron we met in AFFC would have told himself that he was going to feast in the Drowned God's watery halls (which he often does when he thinks of his dead brothers), but chances are he would have just ignored Falia. 

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2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Yes, but he's never extended that grace to someone like Falia before. The Aeron we met in AFFC would have told himself that he was going to feast in the Drowned God's watery halls (which he often does when he thinks of his dead brothers), but chances are he would have just ignored Falia. 

Maybe the extreme conditions and mental mind warps gave him a different perspective 

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  • 1 year later...
34 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Since Falia is showing by the end of the chapter, how much time would have passed since Euron took her father’s castle?

it just said she had a bump on her belly? not huge? so, at least 3-4 months.

Edited by EggBlue
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  • 5 months later...

Euron's description of the Drowned God.

Quote

All gods are lies, but yours is laughable. A pale white thing in the likeness of a man, his limbs broken and swollen and his hair flipping in the water while fish nibble at his face. What fool would worship that?”

Parts of the description followed by descriptions of Aeron in the same chapter.

Quote

his limbs broken and swollen

Quote

His feet had grown huge and soft and puffy, shapeless things as big as hams.

and

Quote

fish nibble at his face.

Quote

Rats moved in the darkness, swimming through the water. They would bite him as he slept until he woke and drove them off with shouts and thrashings. Aeron’s beard and scalp crawled with lice and fleas and worms. He could feel them moving through his hair, and the bites itched him intolerably. His chains were so short that he could not reach to scratch.

The line

Quote

his hair flipping in the water

doesn't have a like in the chapter but it doesn't need one, it's for his name the Damphair.

 

Aeron recalls the Drowned God speaking to him in the chapter, but we don't really get the resolution of the conversation.

Quote

 

He heard the pounding of the waves, the hammer of his god calling him to battle. And there and then, the Drowned God had come to him once more, his voice welling up from the depths of the sea.

“Aeron, my good and faithful servant, you must tell the Ironborn that the Crow’s Eye is no true king, that the Seastone Chair by rights belongs to … to … to …”

Not Victarion.

And it sort of just trails off into Aeron's thoughts, as if he can't acknowledge the Drowned God's will. I had thought it must be Theon, I think now it's supposed to be a nod towards Aeron himself.

The answer may be hidden in the structure of the passage.

Quote

 

“Aeron, my good and faithful servant, you must tell the Ironborn that the Crow’s Eye is no true king, that the Seastone Chair by rights belongs to … to … to …”

Not Victarion... (paragraph)

Not Asha... (paragraph)

Aeron Damphair... (paragraph)

 

Who should sit the Seastone Chair? Not Victarion, not Asha, Aeron Damphair should. And the Seastone chair in this context won't be about the human who leads the men of the Iron Isles, it's about who takes the mantle of the Drowned God.

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  • 3 months later...

Wasn’t GRRM asked if we would ever see gods in the books and he answered that we wouldn’t, so isn’t the whole concept of the Drowned God rising due to this huge blood sacrifice a moot point? I’ll give you that we could see a kraken but not a god. Also, I tend to agree with the comments here that say that the dreams that Aeron sees could just be under duress and because he was drugged. I’m not sure we should jump to the conclusion that Euron is some old student of Bloodraven who is bringing the apocalypse. Magic is pretty muted in this world. To think that we are going to see some huge display of magic that could be world ending doesn’t go with what we’ve seen before. 

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6 hours ago, Garlan the Gallant said:

Wasn’t GRRM asked if we would ever see gods in the books and he answered that we wouldn’t, so isn’t the whole concept of the Drowned God rising due to this huge blood sacrifice a moot point? I’ll give you that we could see a kraken but not a god. Also, I tend to agree with the comments here that say that the dreams that Aeron sees could just be under duress and because he was drugged. I’m not sure we should jump to the conclusion that Euron is some old student of Bloodraven who is bringing the apocalypse. Magic is pretty muted in this world. To think that we are going to see some huge display of magic that could be world ending doesn’t go with what we’ve seen before. 

There is quite literally a magical world ending antagonist established in the prologue of the series, the seasons are magically altered, beasts are being taken for a second life and that magic is getting stronger isn't really arguable.

GRRM said the below, one can determine for themselves if this rules out characters second lifing animals/beasts to create hybrid beasts that some in world will perceive as gods. For mine that the concept of the Drowned God is explained by an ancient magical ability of the Ironborn to second life aquatic animals does more to disproves the existence of the god than prove it, though the Ironborn may think otherwise. The Others are certainly real and Craster takes them for his gods.

Quote

Well, the readers are certainly free to wonder about the validity of these religions, the truth of these religions, and the teachings of these religions. I'm a little leery of the word "true" — whether any of these religions are more true than others. I mean, look at the analogue of our real world. We have many religions too. Are some of them more true than others? I don't think any gods are likely to be showing up in Westeros, any more than they already do. We're not going to have one appearing, deus ex machina, to affect the outcomes of things, no matter how hard anyone prays. So the relation between the religions and the various magics that some people have here is something that the reader can try to puzzle out.

 

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