Heresy 195 and the Mists of Time

[Brad Stark]

7 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

I'm not going to argue with the proposition that the Wall may actually have been raised by the other lot.. but where to you get the idea that the white shadows came from a more westerly direction?

The Others came from the Land of Always Winter,  West of the Frostfangs.  Why wall off Hardhome, for example,  if you were trying to protect men from The Others coming from The Land of Always Winter?

[Black Crow]

17 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

The Others came from the Land of Always Winter,  West of the Frostfangs.  Why wall off Hardhome, for example,  if you were trying to protect men from The Others coming from The Land of Always Winter?

According to my maps [including the Ice and Fire set] The Land of Always Winter is due north of the Haunted Forest, not off to the west or even north-west at all.

[Black Crow]

52 minutes ago, Brad Stark said:

Why wall off Hardhome, for example,  if you were trying to protect men from The Others coming from The Land of Always Winter?

Hardhome, as I recall, grew up after the Wall was built.

[Matthew.]

5 hours ago, Black Crow said:

...that GRRM hadn't fully thought all of this through when he started out and now he's retconning dates and events in order to bring about a convergence of Ice and Fire to link the dragons and the rise of Valyria with the ending of the Long Night

Whatever else might eventually come of GRRM raising doubts about the timelines, I feel like this is at least a part of it--he either hadn't thought it through, or subsequently decided to give himself a little wiggle room by casting some doubt on the timelines.

I do think he'd always intended for the history to be dubious though, as I believe that right from the beginning we had warning signs that not all of the legends agree with the brief rundown of Westerosi history that we're given by Luwin.

For example, Old Nan's tale that the LH had to spend years seeking out the CotF in "hidden" cities doesn't really align with Luwin's belief that the Pact kicked off 4,000 years of friendship between the FM and the CotF. Ostensibly, the LH's quest should have fallen right in the middle of those 4,000 years, yet Old Nan's tale implies that humanity and the CotF were not in regular contact by the time of the LN.

Now, that's not necessarily incompatible with the Pact already being in place, but it does suggest a far more strained relationship than the one that Luwin presents. If nothing else, Old Nan's tale suggests that the CotF only began to provide aide to their "friends" well after the Long Night had begun, and well after humanity had  already suffered catastrophic losses.

[Matthew.]

5 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

I am inclined to believe the Wall itself is a last ditch effort to halt the advances of the First Men.

This is fairly close to the way I'm interpreting the Wall these days.

My view is that the war between the CotF and the FM wasn't a 2,000 year series of disputes where the CotF lost their land in dribs and drabs--if that were the case, breaking the Arm of Dorne makes very little strategic sense. Indeed, it would be utterly useless against an enemy that has already established itself on your land for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years.

I'll leave aside more complicated concerns, such as whether or not there truly was a single migration of "First Men," or whether the CotF had human allies, and suggest that at some point or another a fairly large group of men committed themselves to the genocide of the CotF and the destruction of the weirwood--perhaps out of horror at the old gods, and sorcery.

I suspect that there had to come a point where things escalated fairly quickly, because I think the history of that conflict is "written" in the geography of Westeros. First, the CotF tried to stop men at the Arm of Dorne, and they failed. Then, they tried to stop them at the Neck, and failed again.

Finally, man was successfully stopped at the far north. It's hard to say where, precisely (perhaps a decisive battle was fought at the Fist of the First Men), but as you note, the Haunted Forest is divided cleanly from Westeros by the Wall. Now, we can quibble over whether it was raised by men to halt the CotF's sorcery, or raised by the Others (assuming they were created by the CotF) to halt the advances of men, or perhaps even raised after the Pact as a joint project, but I do agree with the basic premise that the Wall was originally raised as a consequence of the CotF-FM wars, dividing the lands of men from the lands of the CotF (the Haunted Forest).

Edit: Alternately, perhaps there was a period of peace after the Pact, but the FM gradually violated it to the point that the CotF were forced to take more desperate measures than just trying to keep the few lands left to them.

[Brad Stark]

Why is the guest right so sacred to the Old Gods?  A theory I had is after the pact was signed, we had something similar to a red wedding, where a Lord decided he wanted land belonging to the children,  slaughtered a large number of them below his roof.

[Black Crow]

7 hours ago, Matthew. said:

Whatever else might eventually come of GRRM raising doubts about the timelines, I feel like this is at least a part of it--he either hadn't thought it through, or subsequently decided to give himself a little wiggle room by casting some doubt on the timelines.

I do think he'd always intended for the history to be dubious though, as I believe that right from the beginning we had warning signs that not all of the legends agree with the brief rundown of Westerosi history that we're given by Luwin.

For example, Old Nan's tale that the LH had to spend years seeking out the CotF in "hidden" cities doesn't really align with Luwin's belief that the Pact kicked off 4,000 years of friendship between the FM and the CotF. Ostensibly, the LH's quest should have fallen right in the middle of those 4,000 years, yet Old Nan's tale implies that humanity and the CotF were not in regular contact by the time of the LN.

Now, that's not necessarily incompatible with the Pact already being in place, but it does suggest a far more strained relationship than the one that Luwin presents. If nothing else, Old Nan's tale suggests that the CotF only began to provide aide to their "friends" well after the Long Night had begun, and well after humanity had  already suffered catastrophic losses.

Oh there's no doubt that a certain vagueness is good in this business, but otherwise yes, I'm very much of a mind that the Long Night wasn't a random interlude in long years of friendship between men and tree-huggers but rather was what brought men to agree the Pact.

[Black Crow]

7 hours ago, Matthew. said:

This is fairly close to the way I'm interpreting the Wall these days.

My view is that the war between the CotF and the FM wasn't a 2,000 year series of disputes where the CotF lost their land in dribs and drabs--if that were the case, breaking the Arm of Dorne makes very little strategic sense. Indeed, it would be utterly useless against an enemy that has already established itself on your land for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years.

I'll leave aside more complicated concerns, such as whether or not there truly was a single migration of "First Men," or whether the CotF had human allies, and suggest that at some point or another a fairly large group of men committed themselves to the genocide of the CotF and the destruction of the weirwood--perhaps out of horror at the old gods, and sorcery.

I suspect that there had to come a point where things escalated fairly quickly, because I think the history of that conflict is "written" in the geography of Westeros. First, the CotF tried to stop men at the Arm of Dorne, and they failed. Then, they tried to stop them at the Neck, and failed again.

Finally, man was successfully stopped at the far north. It's hard to say where, precisely (perhaps a decisive battle was fought at the Fist of the First Men), but as you note, the Haunted Forest is divided cleanly from Westeros by the Wall. Now, we can quibble over whether it was raised by men to halt the CotF's sorcery, or raised by the Others (assuming they were created by the CotF) to halt the advances of men, or perhaps even raised after the Pact as a joint project, but I do agree with the basic premise that the Wall was originally raised as a consequence of the CotF-FM wars, dividing the lands of men from the lands of the CotF (the Haunted Forest).

Edit: Alternately, perhaps there was a period of peace after the Pact, but the FM gradually violated it to the point that the CotF were forced to take more desperate measures than just trying to keep the few lands left to them.

Similarly, I do have a theory that the Long Night was necessary in order for the tree-huggers to build the Wall, or if you prefer was a by-product of the building of it rather than an event in itself, and question the happiness of the peace and friendship that followed. We've talked before about a possible link between the 100 pieces of dragonglass and the 100 kingdoms of the First Men which would turn the gift into a ceremonial one annually renewing the peace, rather than a gun-running operation. And then there's the Andal pogroms, which can only have been carried through with the active and sometimes enthusiastic support of the First Men. Yes, we know that some of the Kings stuck by the tree-huggers but they were comprehensively cleared out even in the unconquered north.

[Black Crow]

3 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

Why is the guest right so sacred to the Old Gods?  A theory I had is after the pact was signed, we had something similar to a red wedding, where a Lord decided he wanted land belonging to the children,  slaughtered a large number of them below his roof.

I don't think we need to look too deeply into this one; I've always taken this to be down to GRRM drawing on the Scots emphasis on this, and he's certainly cited the Black Dinner as the direct inspiration for the Red Wedding.

[LynnS]

I think the antiquity of the Wall is of an age with the House of Undying in Qarth and perhaps even with the House of Black and White in Braavos due to the seeming interconnections of these places,  at least with the HoU.  How ancient is Qarth? According to Pyat Pree, it's age is beyond the memory of man and the World Book says that the Qaathi people were dying out long before the Doom..

        

[Brad Stark]

4 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Oh there's no doubt that a certain vagueness is good in this business, but otherwise yes, I'm very much of a mind that the Long Night wasn't a random interlude in long years of friendship between men and tree-huggers but rather was what brought men to agree the Pact.

I thought this initially,  but the timelines don't work as well as some other possibilities.  We believe the pact was 10,000 years ago,  and the Long Night was 8000 years ago, but probably more recent.   The pact was signed at the isle of faces, too far south if it ended a war with the front at the Wall.  And wouldn't every weirwood South of The Wall been claer cut if there was such a war?

The other war involving the Children was the Andale invasion.  This doesn't fit the standard timelines, where Ghis recorded The Long Night before they were conquered by Valyria, and Valyria's later expansion displaced the Andals.

So I suspect a random interlude caused The Long Night. 

[Melifeather]

Just sharing an interesting fact: If our earth didn't have a moon, our days would only be 6-8 hours long and there would be between 1,100-1,400 days in a year.

 

[Black Crow]

5 hours ago, Brad Stark said:

I thought this initially,  but the timelines don't work as well as some other possibilities.  We believe the pact was 10,000 years ago,  and the Long Night was 8000 years ago, but probably more recent.   The pact was signed at the isle of faces, too far south if it ended a war with the front at the Wall.  And wouldn't every weirwood South of The Wall been claer cut if there was such a war?

The other war involving the Children was the Andale invasion.  This doesn't fit the standard timelines, where Ghis recorded The Long Night before they were conquered by Valyria, and Valyria's later expansion displaced the Andals.

So I suspect a random interlude caused The Long Night. 

Signing the Pact at the Isle of Faces isn't incompatible with a peace treaty following the Long Night because although the Wall existed before the Andals came, the tree-huggers didn't fort up behind it until they did. The whole point of the Pact from their point of view was that it guaranteed them their reservations and sacred places south of the Wall.

[Matthew.]

9 hours ago, Black Crow said:

...the Long Night wasn't a random interlude in long years of friendship between men and tree-huggers but rather was what brought men to agree the Pact.

While I agree that this is a likely possibility, under an assumption that the CotF created the WWs, there are a couple of things that nag at me. For one, it's an interpretation that does not require us to just question the timeline, but the order of events. This doesn't just apply to Luwin's history lesson, but even Old Nan's tale suggests an era where things are already somewhat settled.

According to Old Nan, the LN occurs when we're already into the era of the hundred kingdoms, and the story is framed as the LH hoping that the CotF's magic can help man win back what he has lost, not that the LH is going to surrender. The significance of that later fact is that the oral history does not remember this as a clash between the FM and the CotF.

Granted, we're assuming all sorts of things have been forgotten or altered, yet it is noteworthy--the threat of the LN is, in theory, what would prompt men to surrender, and ensure their adherence to the Pact, so that's an awfully important thing to leave out of the oral history. That, to me, suggests that men either never truly knew who had created the Others, or that the Others were their own faction by the time of the LN.
___

At the risk of offending all of the Gods of Canon, I'll also observe that the show's version of history, as presented by the 3EC, is that the CotF's last desperate act in the FM-CotF wars was the CotF combining all of their sorcery for a spell that would "turn men's numbers against them," and that the Pact was finally agreed to after the wise of both races had become weary of war. Centuries later, the LN occurred, a consequence of what the CotF had unleashed in the earlier war.

IMO, this isn't as incompatible with the books as it may seem--it may be that what was created first was a sorcerer who could raise the dead (perhaps this was even a willing human ally) and very rapidly turn the tide of the war, and it's only later that this same figure (or his heirs) begins collecting tributes and converting them into white walkers.

While the WWs may have first appeared during the LN, the timing of necromancy is a bit more murky. For example, what was the nature of the Barrow Kings?

[Black Crow]

I recognise what you say, but in general terms as we crawl towards the end of the story I think that in literary terms we ought to be seeing more and more connections being revealed both in terms of events and players. The exact form of those connections can still only be a matter of speculation at this stage, but I think that we can be reasonably confident that the Long Night will be a connected event rather than a random one.

[Brad Stark]

If the Others and Long Night was retaliation for breaking the Pact, and if LH really just surrendered,  wouldn't Old Nan's version make more sense as an Oral History?  Yes, we are leaving some important things out, but a brave hero who seeks out mysterious friends is a much better story than a foe you started a fight with letting you live by showing mercy after you surrendered.

[Black Crow]

1 hour ago, Brad Stark said:

If the Others and Long Night was retaliation for breaking the Pact, and if LH really just surrendered,  wouldn't Old Nan's version make more sense as an Oral History?  Yes, we are leaving some important things out, but a brave hero who seeks out mysterious friends is a much better story than a foe you started a fight with letting you live by showing mercy after you surrendered.

Interestingly, Old Nan has nothing to say about the Pact and Maester Luwin has nothing to say about the Last Hero.

I'm still sticking with the heresy that the Pact may have followed the Long Night rather than preceding it. 

[Matthew.]

1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

I recognise what you say, but in general terms as we crawl towards the end of the story I think that in literary terms we ought to be seeing more and more connections being revealed both in terms of events and players. The exact form of those connections can still only be a matter of speculation at this stage, but I think that we can be reasonably confident that the Long Night will be a connected event rather than a random one.

Nowhere did I say that the LN is a random event, merely that I don't think that the LN prompting the Pact is the only option.

I bring up the show example because one thing that's worth considering is that there came a point in FM-CotF relations where some men acquired the sorcery of the CotF, and it seems a logical enough inference that those men would have a distinct advantage over their mundane peers--and an incentive to ensure that the weirwood is protected, if the weirwood is an important factor in sustaining the sorcery of the old gods.

You've spoken in the past of both the idea of winter "needing a king," as well as the Others coming back to claim what was once theirs, and I believe that both of these are ideas that are not incompatible with a chronology of Pact > 'Peace' > Long Night. Implicitly, by granting a man the status of Summer King or Winter King, you are also creating the potential that they might abuse that status.

To get back to the show's chronology, one line of speculation I'd raise is that the CotF granted a man (or men) some of their sorcery in order to turn the tides, and it may be that those men later abused that sorcery and caused the catastrophe of the Long Night, forcing the CotF to ally with men and help clean up the mess they've partially created. These could be alternative points of view of both the tale of the Night's King, as well as the idea of the "Barrow Kings" who claimed dominion over men everywhere, only to be later usurped by House Stark.

 

[Black Crow]

1 minute ago, Matthew. said:

Nowhere did I say that the LN is a random event, merely that I don't think that the LN prompting the Pact is the only option.
 

You didn't - I was referring to Brad Stark.

As to the rest... although I might change some of the emphasis I wouldn't fundamentally disagree. Whatever the involvement or culpability of the tree-huggers in what's going on, I don't see this as a straightforward fight between men and tree-huggers, but rather that the antagonists are men or the descendants of men who for whatever reasons [and not necessarily creditable ones] sided with the tree-huggers.

[Matthew.]

17 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

You didn't - I was referring to Brad Stark.

Ah, I see. My mistake.

 

17 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

As to the rest... although I might change some of the emphasis I wouldn't fundamentally disagree. Whatever the involvement or culpability of the tree-huggers in what's going on, I don't see this as a straightforward fight between men and tree-huggers, but rather that the antagonists are men or the descendants of men who for whatever reasons [and not necessarily creditable ones] sided with the tree-huggers.

Yes, and it may be that the Warg King is another variation of this idea--we don't know whether he's human, or whether he even lived at all, yet it may be another example of a 'sorcerous human' who was an ally to the CotF fighting against his fellow men.

Far more speculatively, there's also a part of me that's being mindful of the fact that the show has a tendency to take small elements of book ideas, then greatly simplifies, alters, and combines those elements to produce frankenplots.

I'm almost embarrassed to say this, as I can appreciate that this is totally ludicrous speculation on my part, but I have a suspicion that the show's weird chronology that places the NK's creation before the Pact, and centuries before the LN, is because the show isn't going to bother with the Green Men, and has taken their role - unnatural warriors created to defend the weirwood, as I interpret them - and foisted that role onto their "Night King."