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Heresy 189


Black Crow

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How about this?  Bran, Lord of Winterfell breaks the pact and forever is known as Bran the Breaker.  The children send his brother the very first Other, a beautiful girl who seduces him.  He begins calling himself the Night's King and sacrificing to create more Others, eventually creating the Long Night.  Eventually men decide they can't fight, and send the last hero to find the children.  The children tell men how to fight The Others and raise the wall to keep them confined to the north side.

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If the legend about the Wall being built after the Long Night is true, then the Night's King was not a WW or their creator, just someone who worshipped them. 

As of why the CoTF/Others created the WW, the legends have been cleansed of any details. This is specially suspicious given the number of human greenseers since then.

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17 minutes ago, Tucu said:

If the legend about the Wall being built after the Long Night is true, then the Night's King was not a WW or their creator, just someone who worshipped them. 

As of why the CoTF/Others created the WW, the legends have been cleansed of any details. This is specially suspicious given the number of human greenseers since then.

Do we have evidence the wall existed before the Night's King?

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7 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

I just find it really hard to believe the children created the Others while the Pact was in place.  I am trying to suggest an alternative that fits.

I agree with that. So we need to find how the First Men (or men in general)  broke the Pact. Was it a slow erosion of the treaty over millenia (the trees might be slow to act)? Was it the arrival of a new wave of men? Maybe it was the hunger during the Long Night and the CoTF just taste like chicken?

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1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

The greatest danger of all, however, comes from the north, from the icy wastes beyond the Wall, where half-forgotten demons out of legend, the inhuman others, raise cold legions of the undead and the neverborn and prepare to ride down on the winds of winter to extinguish everything that we would call "life." 

 

Don't sound like no Andals to me.

You mistake me. I am saying the inhuman Others are First Men that the Children turned into white walkers as a weapon to be used against the Andals.

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17 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

I just find it really hard to believe the children created the Others while the Pact was in place.  I am trying to suggest an alternative that fits.

LIke I said to BC, I think I've been misunderstood. I am saying that the inhuman Others are the First Men which the Children turned into white walkers as weapons to defeat the Andals, therefore the Pact was between the allied First Men/Children and the Andals. This would explain how the Starks were Kings of Winter, but are later overthrown in the story of the Nights King...defeated and warded by iron swords, which was what broke the Pact causing the Children to conjure the comet that hit the moon.

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The world book puts the arrival of the Andals significantly later than the Long Night.  The Andals were pushed by expanding Valyria after the fall of Old Ghis.  The Long Night ended before the rise of Valyria, when Old Ghis was first forming its empire.

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35 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

LIke I said to BC, I think I've been misunderstood. I am saying that the inhuman Others are the First Men which the Children turned into white walkers as weapons to defeat the Andals, therefore the Pact was between the allied First Men/Children and the Andals. This would explain how the Starks were Kings of Winter, but are later overthrown in the story of the Nights King...defeated and warded by iron swords, which was what broke the Pact causing the Children to conjure the comet that hit the moon.

I wonder who Osha was refering to when she said: "That's where the children went, and the giants, and the other old races". Leaf talks about great lions (extinct and it doesn't look that they made it beyond the wal) and unicorns (surviving in Skaagos, not beyond the Wall); of Leaf's list only the direwolves and mammoths live beyond the wall. But in any case none of these appear to be sentient enough to be labelled "old races".

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27 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

The world book puts the arrival of the Andals significantly later than the Long Night.  The Andals were pushed by expanding Valyria after the fall of Old Ghis.  The Long Night ended before the rise of Valyria, when Old Ghis was first forming its empire.

The World Book, which is an in-universe history book, was written by maesters. They say the victors write history the way they want it or see it. It could be that they purposely skewed the arrival of their peoples to remove themselves from the timing of the Pact. The real question is "why"?

4 minutes ago, Tucu said:

I wonder who Osha was refering to when she said: "That's where the children went, and the giants, and the other old races". Leaf talks about great lions (extinct and it doesn't look that they made it beyond the wal) and unicorns (surviving in Skaagos, not beyond the Wall); of Leaf's list only the direwolves and mammoths live beyond the wall. But in any case none of these appear to be sentient enough to be labelled "old races".

Grouping the Children, giants, and other old races like that makes it look like the Starks may not be who we think they are. They may have First Men blood in their veins, but they may not be from the original lineage that lived in the north. Maybe they're descendants of a brother or cousin? Maybe they're not related at all? Most families in the south also have some First Men blood in their veins, but they intermarried with Andals. It could be that the Starks are transplants from the south just like the Manderlys and Mormonts and are not of the same lineage as the old Kings of Winter. The Starks may be the family that defeated and warded the previous inhabitants of Winterfell.

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Everything we have in text is explicit that walkers appeared for the first time during the Long Night. There isn't the slightest hint it was otherwise. 

What could be significant is the difficulty Sam has in finding out anything about them in the archives. There's some stuff in there but surprisingly little - and its significant that GRRM presents this conversation twice, once as a Sam POV and also as a Jon POV. There are no significant differences between them so the actual passage has to be important.

There is nothing at all in there about the battle of the Dawn and how it was won. Instead it gives the impression of occasional encounters over a period, perhaps a long period of time. And this in turn might suggest that the ending of the Long Night and the defeat [?] of the walkers came about before the Watch was established.

This in turn would feed into the scenario that after the last of the 13 heroes cried Pax the Wall was established as a boundary between the realms with the portal guarded by a small band of gatekeepers, until the overthrow of the Nights King; a battle for the Dawn expelling the "inhuman Others" [the tree-huggers and the other Old Races] beyond the Wall, and then sending Andal prisoners to form the Watch we know and make sure they didn't come back.

That would explain why they know so little about the walkers

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59 minutes ago, Tucu said:

I agree with that. So we need to find how the First Men (or men in general)  broke the Pact. Was it a slow erosion of the treaty over millenia (the trees might be slow to act)? Was it the arrival of a new wave of men? Maybe it was the hunger during the Long Night and the CoTF just taste like chicken?

I think the picture Measter Luwin paints of the Pact is all too roseate. If the Iron Throne was to make such a Pact it would have the authority to enforce it. The hundred kingdoms of men; heroes constantly at war, are not in any position to keep a Pact. It will have been broken constantly in so many little ways and often unthinkingly, until one day the tree-huggers had enough and decided to settle it once and for all.

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Who was it a Long Night for? It can be for both sides. For the Children and the old races they were in fear of their lives and so they infused their First Men allies with ice magic turning them into white walkers. As for the other side, I'm beginning to think it was the Andals terrified of inhuman Others...of course they would want to suppress this as they wouldn't want the historical record to state that theirs was a war against magic.

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12 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Who was it a Long Night for? It can be for both sides. For the Children and the old races they were in fear of their lives and so they infused their First Men allies with ice magic turning them into white walkers. As for the other side, I'm beginning to think it was the Andals terrified of inhuman Others...of course they would want to suppress this as they wouldn't want the historical record to state that theirs was a war against magic.

Aux contraire, the histories are very explicit about the Andal crusaders burning the weirwoods, killing the tree-huggers and forcing those who survived to flee north. They didn't suppress anything but rather gloried in it.

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40 minutes ago, Tucu said:

I wonder who Osha was refering to when she said: "That's where the children went, and the giants, and the other old races". Leaf talks about great lions (extinct and it doesn't look that they made it beyond the wal) and unicorns (surviving in Skaagos, not beyond the Wall); of Leaf's list only the direwolves and mammoths live beyond the wall. But in any case none of these appear to be sentient enough to be labelled "old races".

Does include the direwolves and I have deep suspicions about the crows - but the latter can wait for the bicentennial essay

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Fitting with the concept of timeline problems - has anyone given thought to the Wall being around, even before it was cold in the north?

 

From the World Book:

"It may be that its earliest foundations were of stone—the maesters differ in this—but now all that can be seen for a distance of a hundred leagues is ice."

 

From Dance with Dragons, Melisandre's conversation with Jon:

"“It is always cold on the Wall.” [Jon]
“You think so?” [Melisandre]
“I know so, my lady.”[Jon]
“Then you know nothing, Jon Snow,” she whispered

 

Now the first could be dismissed as just more lore and legend, but the 2nd has to have been included for a reason.

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2 hours ago, Black Crow said:

That business of discussing whether he should speak or not and deciding that he was an elemental force, and GRRM's own denial, argues otherwise and that all they took was the cool name

No.

GRRM denied nothing--he did the same thing he does with any question that he knows is loaded with fan theory potential, and gave a nebulous answer that does not directly address the question in a yes/no fashion.

The actual implications here are varied. For example, it may be that the fable of the Night's King is largely inaccurate, but gives us important kernels of truth: a man, possibly named Brandon Stark, was once the "King" of the Nightfort and lost his humanity to the inhuman Others.

All of that is not difficult to align with the idea of the CotF creating the Others to protect their sacred groves, particularly if the Wall once served as a line between the realms of men and the realms of the CotF; the "Night King" they'd created to protect their sacred groves fulfilled his duty from the Nightfort, gradually growing the magical wall of ice until he was overthrown, and the Pact broken (for good) south of the Wall. This, to me, is one of many speculative roads we might travel down.
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Similarly, even the discussions over whether or not he would speak are only revealing in the sense that it tells us that the NK is so thoroughly inhuman that it isn't really necessary that he be "characterized" in the present story. That does not tell us that he doesn't exist in the books; indeed, his story as presented is that of a mortal man who was made into a force of nature by the CotF, which means that there may still be some lingering legends of the man that he used to be.

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21 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Aux contraire, the histories are very explicit about the Andal crusaders burning the weirwoods, killing the tree-huggers and forcing those who survived to flee north. They didn't suppress anything but rather gloried in it.

I'm not objecting to that. It is well known the Andals burned the weirwoods and killed the tree-huggers. The only thing different is the omission of the war on magic.

I think my explanation ties in all the other stories into one picture including Bael the Bard and the son killing the father which may also be the same story as the Nights King. The defeated are always vilified. There's an animated history on one of the DVDs that has Ygritte telling the story of the Wall and she says something about the son not being like the father. Basically they wouldn't follow the son after the father died. I think we're dealing with a split within the Stark family where the son turns against the father. The son being allied with the Andals while the father was allied with the Children. After the father is killed his followers are forced north of the Wall and the descendants are the wildlings.

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15 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

Fitting with the concept of timeline problems - has anyone given thought to the Wall being around, even before it was cold in the north?

 

From the World Book:

"It may be that its earliest foundations were of stone—the maesters differ in this—but now all that can be seen for a distance of a hundred leagues is ice."

 

From Dance with Dragons, Melisandre's conversation with Jon:

"“It is always cold on the Wall.” [Jon]
“You think so?” [Melisandre]
“I know so, my lady.”[Jon]
“Then you know nothing, Jon Snow,” she whispered

 

Now the first could be dismissed as just more lore and legend, but the 2nd has to have been included for a reason.

As to the first, yes, we have speculated before that it may "always" have been there. No real evidence but its part of the wider discussion of the wall being built by magic rather than by men.

As to the second:

Nah, Melisandre first demonstrates to Jon that she is full of heat by making sure he sees the ice melt as she passes and the "you know nothing" is intended to unsettle him by quoting Ygritte even though she shouldn't be able to.

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