Heresy 192 The Wheel of Time

[The Fattest Leech]

Just now, Feather Crystal said:

Twas part of my essay. While the Heresy thread is BC's baby, he does allow some of us to do essays from time to time. 

Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.

Just now, Feather Crystal said:

I will eventually find the time to study Patchface's Jabberwocky more thoroughly. Speaking of which, I hope you don't mind another shout out to @ravenous reader for the hilarious fuk, fuk, fuk inversion! That made my day.

That should make everyone's day!

[Pain killer Jane]

On 12/1/2016 at 10:59 AM, Black Crow said:

Humpty Dumpty, but in GRRM's tale we know him as Patchface,

 

1 hour ago, The Fattest Leech said:

The term Humpty Dumpty is actually a phrase used to describe a drunk person. Humpty Dumpty was not ever an egg until later versions where the riddle was turned into a child's nursery rhyme. It was a riddle first about a drunk man who falls down and the idea that you can never help a lackwit such as that.... and isn't this how most people treat Patchface?!?!?!!

 

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

 On another thread we've recently been thinking about the 'oh, oh, oh' which when reversed can read 'ho, ho, ho'...In Medieval mystery plays the latter is referred to as the 'devil's bluster,' the guttural laugh with which Satan's entry onto the stage is heralded.  In keeping with the theme of inversions, Satan is an anagram of Santa, who likewise gives a throaty chuckle.

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Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
......
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,

while it should be noted that this should be interpreted as being red from the cold. This would mean that he is ruddy or red color either from having a bloody face or ruddy red from being drunk. And it is very disturbing to find a dude coming down your chimney at night when we think of this situation without the lens of Santa Claus. 

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Jon saw only a fat man, red-faced under his beard, sweating through his silks. He walked like a man half in his cups. - Jon I, aGoT

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Robert wore thick brown gloves and a heavy fur cloak with a hood that covered his ears, and looked for all the world like a bear sitting a horse. - Eddard II, aGoT

I am going to use a modern version of Humpty Dumpty

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All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again

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"And where were the rest of you?" Ned demanded of Lord Renly. "Where was Ser Barristan and the Kingsguard?"

Renly's mouth twitched. "My brother commanded us to stand aside and let him take the boar alone."

Eddard Stark lifted the blanket.

They had done what they could to close him up, but it was nowhere near enough. The boar must have been a fearsome thing. It had ripped the king from groin to nipple with its tusks. The wine-soaked bandages that Grand Maester Pycelle had applied were already black with blood, and the smell off the wound was hideous. Ned's stomach turned. He let the blanket fall. - Eddard XIII, aGoT

 

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"Even the truest knight cannot protect a king against himself," Ned said. - Eddard XIII, aGoT

we know Humpty Dumpty as Robert and as Santa Claus as well and I would argue that Illaryio is a sinister version as well. 

[Melifeather]

1 hour ago, ravenous reader said:

(sadly the fandom has been duped by Yandel into dismissing the overwhelming symbolic evidence!)

That damn Yandel. 

 

@Pain killer Jane said:

we know Humpty Dumpty as Robert and as Santa Claus as well and I would argue that Illaryio is a sinister version as well. 

Yes, very astute observation.

[Pain killer Jane]

6 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

 

@Pain killer Jane said:

we know Humpty Dumpty as Robert and as Santa Claus as well and I would argue that Illaryio is a sinister version as well. 

Yes, very astute observation.

Thank you.

Btw there is a novel based on Humpty Dumpty, called All the King's Men written by Robert Penn Warren whose main character is William Stark. 

[ravenous reader]

36 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

I will eventually find the time to study Patchface's Jabberwocky more thoroughly. Speaking of which, I hope you don't mind another shout out to @ravenous reader for the hilarious fuk, fuk, fuk inversion! That made my day.

Glad you enjoyed it!  That particular inversion can't be coincidental can it?  'Kuf kuf kuf' is a strange way to denote coughing; spelling it 'kof kof kof' would've made more sense.  Yesterday I was doing a search for 'fuck', thinking I could quickly locate that quote where Tyrion quips on how convenient it would be to have both male and female genitals in order to f- himself, when I realised my folly -- GRRM uses that word an inordinate amount...almost as much as @LmL!

[GloubieBoulga]

1 hour ago, The Fattest Leech said:

I always thought that oranges,and blood oranges, in this story meant a family connection... but this also makes sense. It reminds me of the early AGOT scene between Sansa and Arya where Arya throws a blood orange at Sansa, who then has to dye her dress to cover the "blood" stain as Sansa later burns her sheets to cover that blood stain.

• A Game of Thrones - Sansa III

  Alyn carried the Stark banner. When she saw him rein in beside Lord Beric to exchange words, it made Sansa feel ever so proud. Alyn was handsomer than Jory had been; he was going to be a knight one day.
  The Tower of the Hand seemed so empty after they left that Sansa was even pleased to see Arya when she went down to break her fast. "Where is everyone?" her sister wanted to know as she ripped the skin from a blood orange. "Did Father send them to hunt down Jaime Lannister?"...

  "It's not the same," Sansa said. "The Hound is Joffrey's sworn shield. Your butcher's boy attacked the prince."

  "Liar," Arya said. Her hand clenched the blood orange so hard that red juice oozed between her fingers.

  "Go ahead, call me all the names you want," Sansa said airily. "You won't dare when I'm married to Joffrey. You'll have to bow to me and call me Your Grace." She shrieked as Arya flung the orange across the table. It caught her in the middle of the forehead with a wet squish and plopped down into her lap...

  "My thanks, Septa Mordane. I would talk to my daughters alone, if you would be so kind." The septa bowed and left.

  "Arya started it," Sansa said quickly, anxious to have the first word. "She called me a liar and threw an orange at me and spoiled my dress, the ivory silk, the one Queen Cersei gave me when I was betrothed to Prince Joffrey. She hates that I'm going to marry the prince. She tries to spoil everything, Father, she can't stand for anything to be beautiful or nice or splendid."

 

You were faster than me !

This abstract is very interesting because Sansa, when she is in her bedroom after, accomplish unconsciontly a false blood-magic ritual :

 

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Sansa stalked away with her head up. She was to be a queen, and queens did not cry. At least not where people could see. When she reached her bedchamber, she barred the door and took off her dress. The blood orange had left a blotchy red stain on the silk. "I hate her!" she screamed. She balled up the dress and flung it into the cold hearth, on top of the ashes of last night's fire. When she saw that the stain had bled through onto her underskirt, she began to sob despite herself. She ripped off the rest of her clothes wildly, threw herself into bed, and cried herself back to sleep.

So, we have false blood, false fire (hearth cold), false smoke (the old ashes), she make herself nake, go to (nuptial ?) bed, and salt with false (=not sincere) tears. 

And she say "I hate her !" Fortunately, all is false. 

But in ACOK, when she has her periods, she act exactly the same way, with real fire (she try also to burn the bed), real tears, real feminine blood, and she think she absolutely don't want marry Joffrey (ACOK, Sansa IV)

But I didn't saw it before, because I don't think I had read this passage in english : is there a possible puns with "cold hearth"/"heart of winter" ? After all, the link between winter/cold and Stark family seems as strong as the link between fire and Targaryen. 

 

 

For the rest, you all, thanks. 

Yes, the heart of my theory is that each character has his proper song, and the totallity make the song of Ice and fire. When I re-read the first time, I was focused on the Azor Ahai and Lightbringer prophecy : so I was looking everywhere Azor Ahai reincarnate, and I found many character who lived a kind of "blood magic ritual". But their stories never told exactly about Azor Ahai or Lightbringer. Reading with a bit more attention, I found all legendary characters, and also gods.  

@Feather Crystal, I think I've found a image who evoques perfectly forme what I have understood about your wheel theory : a clock with pendulum. Needles are rolling all around the clock, and in the same time, pendulum is rocking from a side to another. Tic tac tic tac, winter is coming  

 

 

[ravenous reader]

ETA:  Actually, I see I've made an error.  The way it's written in the text is actually 'kof kof kof,' not 'kuf kuf kuf'...

In Dutch-derived languages, it can still mean the same though!

[LynnS]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

As I say I think that the significance of the songs and stories we're told is that they parallel rather than foreshadow characters and events by way of providing different perspectives.

Arguably Jon is the Nights King; he is a son of Winterfell, who becomes Lord Commander of the Nights Watch, he has his white lady in the form of Val who is instrumental in his bringing the Wildlings through the Wall and thereby overturning everything that the Watch currently stands for. And he is overthrown.

I've spoken before about how we should be wary of accepting the Nights King as evil - Jon's parallel suggests otherwise.

Then there is the explicit link between Bran and Symeon Star Eyes - both crippled yet possessed in different ways of powers.

Its all about perspectives

I agree.  The symbolism of the white fawn sigil spattered with blood hanging beside the sleeping lion in Robert's Hall is also suggestive. The sleeping lion or the lion of Judah or the lion of Night (Night's King),  A new born babe in other words.  Roberts sigil is a black stag on a field of gold white the Grandison sigil is a black lion on a field of gold.  Longclaw is starting to make some sense.

[Pain killer Jane]

5 minutes ago, GloubieBoulga said:

Yes, the heart of my theory is that each character has his proper song, and the totallity make the song of Ice and fire

This is called Songline a concept in Australian Aboriginal culture.

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also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) which mark the route followed by localised 'creator-beings' during the Dreamtime......

A knowledgeable person is able to navigate across the land by repeating the words of the song, which describe the location of landmarks, waterholes, and other natural phenomena. In some cases, the paths of the creator-beings are said to be evident from their marks, or petrosomatoglyphs, on the land, such as large depressions in the land which are said to be their footprints.

By singing the songs in the appropriate sequence, indigenous people could navigate vast distances, often travelling through the deserts of Australia's interior.

Since a songline can span the lands of several different language groups, different parts of the song are said to be in those different languages. Languages are not a barrier because the melodic contour of the song describes the nature of the land over which the song passes. The rhythm is what is crucial to understanding the song. Listening to the song of the land is the same as walking on this songline and observing the land.

 The Dreamtime we know as the Age of Heroes. 

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The Dreaming represents many Aboriginal concepts of "time out of time," or "everywhen," when the land was inhabited by ancestral figures, often of heroic proportions or with supernatural abilities.

 

[Pain killer Jane]

4 minutes ago, LynnS said:

The sleeping lion or the lion of Judah or the lion of Night (Night's King), 

The Chronicles of Narnia. The Jesus Lion, Aslan and Santa Claus giving weapons to children at the end of the long winter. 

[LynnS]

Just now, Pain killer Jane said:

The Chronicles of Narnia. The Jesus Lion, Aslan and Santa Claus giving weapons to children at the end of the long winter. 

Wow!

[PrettyPig]

2 hours ago, Cowboy Dan said:

 I was just using that as an example for how I think causality works and why Dany may not be the only cause for the cycle of time getting out of joint. My first thought was Summerhall as the dependent origination and in your timeline that is where everything goes off the rails, where the cycle starts to fall apart. Aegon V likely performed the same ritual as Dany, seeking to wake dragons from stone and had the same intense vision she had, causing the Tragedy at Summerhall.

I agree, not sure if it's possible to identify an event/point in time that broke the wheel and caused everything to go wonky - or a single event, anyway.    My guess is that there's more than one - and it *might* be tied to times when blood magic is used, when powers old and dark are summoned for some purpose, and possibly even the reigns of certain destructive kings (I'll get to that in a sec).

You bring up Summerhall as an origin point, and while I agree that Summerhall changed or triggered *something* in the cycle, I would argue that you can roll it back even further than that.   I'll use the example of the years of Aegon IV's reign leading to the first Blackfyre Rebellion.      Most folks, when trying to find an Aegon the Unworthy counterpart or "echo" in the current story look to Robert Baratheon - legit on the surface, both being corrupt and greedy kings given mostly to their lusts, all the bastards, etc.   However, the true parallel - and in some instances, inverse - is with Aerys II, the Mad King.    These two kings' lives are, on most points, practically identical, albeit in some ways mirrored or inverted.  (I have detailed those individual points HERE if anyone is interested.)     In both instances we have a terrible king whose actions and decisions  - particularly in relation to their children - inadvertently led to two of the greatest wars and some of the greatest tragedies in Westeros' history and legend.  

Now, I have not completed a similar analysis regarding any of the characters involved in the Dance or the Rhoynish conflict, so cannot say if there are more examples further back in history.    However, I do believe that there are enough similarities between Aegon IV and Aerys II to say that these parallel life stories/backgrounds/reigns/consequential events are more than mere coincidence - it's a repeated pattern, a rotation of the wheel that has brought this set of circumstances, this point on the wheel,  to the apex once again.   

We see it with other events, too - Ned Stark's journey to King's Landing to assume the Handship during what we now know as the prelude to the WotFK is a clear mirror to Cregan Stark and the Hour of the Wolf at the end of the Dance.    The inverse parallels between Mirri Maz Duur's ritual in Dany's tent and the snippets of Ned's dream-memory about the tower of joy  - again, when seen in point-by-point comparison - are hard to argue.   As @LynnSnoted above, Arya may be mirroring Lyanna via her journey through the Riverlands, and we just don't have enough detail to realize it.

Anyway, my point is that the wheel of time is...a wheel.   Where is the beginning?  Where is the end?  Can we isolate specific points as the "cause" of its current path or motion?    Also, a wheel rolls forward...but also backward.    Just as on any given day the tires on your car might go back and forth, back and forth multiple times depending on where you're going and what you're doing, the wheel of Westeros may be doing the same thing....so these patterns, these similar events and circumstances, not only roll all the way around but reverse midstream and roll back on top of each other.   Perhaps the trick is not to focus on specific instances, but determine the stops and starts of the wheel.

 

[LmL]

22 minutes ago, GloubieBoulga said:

This abstract is very interesting because Sansa, when she is in her bedroom after, accomplish unconsciontly a false blood-magic ritual :

 

Quote

Sansa stalked away with her head up. She was to be a queen, and queens did not cry. At least not where people could see. When she reached her bedchamber, she barred the door and took off her dress. The blood orange had left a blotchy red stain on the silk. "I hate her!" she screamed. She balled up the dress and flung it into the cold hearth, on top of the ashes of last night's fire. When she saw that the stain had bled through onto her underskirt, she began to sob despite herself. She ripped off the rest of her clothes wildly, threw herself into bed, and cried herself back to sleep.

So, we have false blood, false fire (hearth cold), false smoke (the old ashes), she make herself nake, go to (nuptial ?) bed, and salt with false (=not sincere) tears. 

And she say "I hate her !" Fortunately, all is false. 

But in ACOK, when she has her periods, she act exactly the same way, with real fire (she try also to burn the bed), real tears, real feminine blood, and she think she absolutely don't want marry Joffrey (ACOK, Sansa IV)

But I didn't saw it before, because I don't think I had read this passage in english : is there a possible puns with "cold hearth"/"heart of winter" ? After all, the link between winter/cold and Stark family seems as strong as the link between fire and Targaryen. 

She does the real thing later in this same room when she burns her dress and her bedding after it is spoiled with her moon blood, and that whole scene is a metaphor depicting the Azor Ahai sequence. I dissected that in my essay / podcast "Waves of Night and Moon Blood," though you shouldn't really try to read that without reading the two essays that lead up to it. 

[Pain killer Jane]

6 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Wow!

“You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!'
IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.
'She's a child!' shouted Crumley.
IT'S EDUCATIONAL.
'What if she cuts herself?'
THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.” 
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

This is DEATH pretending to be Santa trying to save Christmas by keeping belief in Santa alive and failing miserably as a department store Santa. And the caps are because DEATH speaks in all caps in the written form of the book.  

[LmL]

12 minutes ago, Pain killer Jane said:

The Chronicles of Narnia. The Jesus Lion, Aslan and Santa Claus giving weapons to children at the end of the long winter. 

I noticed this sigil the other day, that of House Grandison:

http://awoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/House_Grandison

A black sleeping lion on a yellow field, and their words are "Rouse Me Not."  The major Grandison in the story is an old dude nicknamed "Graybeard." As in the Grey King, whose beard was as grey as winter sea? Lion of Night? Grandison was lord defeated by Robert who then became his friend. Robert hung his banner, which was almost torn in half, in his hall. Thoughts?

 

[a black swan]

9 minutes ago, PrettyPig said:

As @LynnS above, Arya may be mirroring Lyanna via her journey through the Riverlands, and we just don't have enough detail to realize it.

Has anyone tried to really map this out? It would be really cool to see the parallels. 

[Pain killer Jane]

6 minutes ago, PrettyPig said:

In both instances we have a terrible king whose actions and decisions  - particularly in relation to their children - inadvertently led to two of the greatest wars and some of the greatest tragedies in Westeros' history and legend.  

Doesn't Robert say he didn't do right by Joffrey? 

I would say that another good parallel is Viserys I. And there is a pattern of genial fat guys being causes of wars or being more sinister than their nature suggests. Viserys I, Robert, Aegon IV, Varys and Illariyo, Wyman Manderly.  

[PrettyPig]

1 minute ago, DutchArya said:

Has anyone tried to really map this out? It would be really cool to see the parallels.

I've done a decent bit of work on it, but not here.  (Finding these parallels is sort of my thing.)    However, I'm sure that the part I've uncovered only scratches the surface...Arya's travels are extensive!

[LmL]

4 minutes ago, Cowboy Dan said:

Despite performing the false ritual, she appears two chapters later with the same skirt transformed as she is presented to the king:

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When the king's herald moved forward, Sansa realized the moment was almost at hand. She smoothed down the cloth of her skirt nervously. She was dressed in mourning, as a sign of respect for the dead king, but she had taken special care to make herself beautiful. Her gown was the ivory silk that the queen had given her, the one Arya had ruined, but she'd had them dye it black and you couldn't see the stain at all. She had fretted over her jewelry for hours and finally decided upon the elegant simplicity of a plain silver chain. -Sansa V, AGOT

 

Hmm, that is more like the blood orange is the comet, the bleeding star, which turns moon maidens' dresses from white to black by the power of their blood.

 

5 minutes ago, Cowboy Dan said:

Also of note is she is struck in the forehead between the eyes, where the third eye located.

Indeed! Nice catch there!

[Black Crow]

31 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Wow!

Were you around for the Dark Narnia discussions way back in Heresy?

Where do you think "The Land of Always Winter" came from?