Heresy 202 and still going

[LynnS]

36 minutes ago, Matthew. said:

I agree that we're probably not going to get an answer, but this is my best attempt at a line of speculation as to what might have prompted her sudden inspiration for the pyre:

On glass candles

At the end of Dany IX in AGOT, directly before the chapter where she is confidently (as reflected in her conversations with Jorah) building her pyre

Dany X, ADWD
Dany perceives Quaithe's communications (assuming Dany isn't outright hallucinating) as the whispering of stars, so the repetition here between AGOT and ADWD may be a subtle clue. Granted, this is putting extraordinary emphasis on GRRM's use of language, as well as assuming that Quaithe has a glass candle, that it was functional during Dany's fever dreams in AGOT, and that Quaithe herself would have the knowledge to wake dragons from stone.

It's not much, but I'm at a loss for where the pyre idea came from, as Dany seemed to have no expectation of burning to death...somehow, she knew what she was doing at the end of AGOT.

I'm not sure what to make of Quaithe.  Her red wooden mask reminds me that Mora uses a weirwood mask and I'm also reminded of the Isle of Faces and the device on the shield of the KoLT.  A red face.  Her mask isn't only full of stars but her eyes are filled with moonlight:

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A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys II

"No. Hear me, Daenerys Targaryen. The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun's son and the mummer's dragon. Trust none of them. Remember the Undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal."

"Reznak? Why should I fear him?" Dany rose from the pool. Water trickled down her legs, and gooseflesh covered her arms in the cool night air. "If you have some warning for me, speak plainly. What do you want of me, Quaithe?" 

Moonlight shone in the woman's eyes. "To show you the way."

Wooden masks and moonlight are things I associate with the old gods. Further, she calls herself Quaithe of the Shadow and I'm not sure that this is a reference to Asshai. I suspect that her instructions to Dany that she must pass beneath the shadow to touch the light are related to glass candles or obsidion and places obsidion can be found beneath the mountains.  I think she is being directed to pass beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains into the caverns below.  Same with Dragonstone:

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A Storm of Swords - Samwell V

"Y-yes, Your Grace. Jon Snow gave it to me."

"Dragonglass." The red woman's laugh was music. "Frozen fire, in the tongue of old Valyria. Small wonder it is anathema to these cold children of the Other."

"On Dragonstone, where I had my seat, there is much of this obsidian to be seen in the old tunnels beneath the mountain," the king told Sam. "Chunks of it, boulders, ledges. The great part of it was black, as I recall, but there was some green as well, some red, even purple. I have sent word to Ser Rolland my castellan to begin mining it. I will not hold Dragonstone for very much longer, I fear, but perhaps the Lord of Light shall grant us enough frozen fire to arm ourselves against these creatures, before the castle falls."

 I think these are the fires that Dany must light from the Undying riddle and why Aemon mentions a failure to light glass candles and eggs that will not hatch.   

I also wonder if the first fire was the funeral pyre.  She is given quite a light show before the eggs hatch and I wonder if they are responsible for the brightly colored firey visions given that they are magical beasts. I also wonder if it is the dragon hatchlings themselves who give her immunity to the fire.

She experiences this immunity a second time when Drogon rescues her form the fighting pits and she notes that it's the second time; that her hair is burned but not her body.  

[Black Crow]

Anent Dragonstone I think its worth remembering that we're dealing with a prophecy which foretells that the Prince will be born amidst smoke and salt. This certainly fits Dragonstone and GRRM has been as subtle as a train crash in pointing to it, but there is a difference between will and must

The Prince is predicted [or even promised] to be there, but its not a requirement. I dare say that any number of Targaryens were born there over the years but neither their blood nor their birthplace made them the Prince - after all Danaerys the Dragonlord may have been born there but she was far far away when she hatched her beasties.

[LynnS]

31 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

Anent Dragonstone I think its worth remembering that we're dealing with a prophecy which foretells that the Prince will be born amidst smoke and salt. This certainly fits Dragonstone and GRRM has been as subtle as a train crash in pointing to it, but there is a difference between will and must

The Prince is predicted [or even promised] to be there, but its not a requirement. I dare say that any number of Targaryens were born there over the years but neither their blood nor their birthplace made them the Prince - after all Danaerys the Dragonlord may have been born there but she was far far away when she hatched her beasties.

She is also reborn amidst salt tears and smoke in the tent during MMD's ritual.  I think the prophecy points to the bloodline or born of this line.  Rhaegar who is possibly the dreamer mentioned by Aemon whose seat is Dragonstone whether he or she is there or not.  Melisandre is expecting to find the promised prince at Dragonstone at any rate. Dany is likely to return there at some point and claim her seat.  

[Matthew.]

3 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I think the only reasonable inference from what we've been given so far [which isn't necessarily the whole truth] is that the dragons came to her in her dreams.

It is already established within AGOT that at least one sort of dream visitation - the 3EC - exists within the story, and AFFC raises the specter of the glass candles--so I don't agree that, with five books of context, the dragon dreams remain the only means by which Dany could have attained dream knowledge.

__

A confounding variable here is that Dany's pyre plan appears to have taken shape between Dany IX and Dany X, and we don't have first person access to character thoughts. This raises the possibility that it wasn't just the dreams that fueled Dany's plan, but certain logical inferences based on stuff she already knew (Targaryen lore, Valyrian lore), and her recent experiences--not just the dreams, but the events in MMD's tent, and MMD's words that only death can pay for life.

In other words, Dany may have put 2 and 2 together in a way that past Targaryens had not. Was the pyre wholly improvised, or was Dany recreating a funerary rite that she was already aware of, with the caveat that she's the first Targaryen in several generations to realize that the significance of the ritual is about more than just giving a dead king (or a dead Valyrian noble, or whatever) a proper send off? 
 

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Over the carcass of the horse, they built a platform of hewn logs; trunks of smaller trees and limbs from the greater, and the thickest straightest branches they could find. They laid the wood east to west, from sunrise to sunset. On the platform they piled Khal Drogo's treasures...

...

The third level of the platform was woven of branches no thicker than a finger, and covered with dry leaves and twigs. They laid them north to south, from ice to fire, and piled them high with soft cushions and sleeping silks. 

As a speculative example, perhaps it was known to Dany that such funerals existed - including the arrangement of the wood, the burning of a sacrifice ("only death can pay for life"), and the presence of the 'family' eggs - but the tradition had fallen out of practice in favor of a more simple cremation, and Dany was the one to realize that the pyres had some relation to the dragon bond.

As to how the Targaryens could have forgotten something so important in the first place, it may be that any severe disruption to knowledge being passed down orally - the premature death of a patriarch, civil war, Great Councils - and Citadel meddling caused some knowledge to be lost, or certain traditions to be abandoned, in much the same way that House Stark appears to have forgotten important elements of their own family lore.

[Frey family reunion]

3 hours ago, LynnS said:

She is also reborn amidst salt tears and smoke in the tent during MMD's ritual.  I think the prophecy points to the bloodline or born of this line.  Rhaegar who is possibly the dreamer mentioned by Aemon whose seat is Dragonstone whether he or she is there or not.  Melisandre is expecting to find the promised prince at Dragonstone at any rate. Dany is likely to return there at some point and claim her seat.  

I'm not sure that Dany will ever step foot on Dragonstone, at least not if her aim is to invade Westeros.  Her most likely route, especially if she is bringing along a Dothraki horde, is to travel along the Stepstones were they will always be in sight of land, and invade Dorne.  Dragonstone has no strategic purpose in conquering Westeros. 

[Matthew.]

4 hours ago, LynnS said:

Wooden masks and moonlight are things I associate with the old gods. Further, she calls herself Quaithe of the Shadow and I'm not sure that this is a reference to Asshai.

I always took it that Quaithe is from the Shadowlands beyond Asshai, as opposed to Asshai itself. 
 

4 hours ago, LynnS said:

I think she is being directed to pass beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains into the caverns below. 

I agree that the shadow Quaithe is speaking of will end up being the Mother of Mountains, though I have a nagging suspicion that, when GRRM originally wrote that passage in ACOK, he had intended for Dany to eventually visit Asshai, before the timeline and pace of his story had become a total mess.

[LynnS]

33 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

I'm not sure that Dany will ever step foot on Dragonstone, at least not if her aim is to invade Westeros.  Her most likely route, especially if she is bringing along a Dothraki horde, is to travel along the Stepstones were they will always be in sight of land, and invade Dorne.  Dragonstone has no strategic purpose in conquering Westeros. 

Possibly, except that she has a strong drive to return "home".
 

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A Storm of Swords - Daenerys III

Ser Jorah had no answer. He only smiled, and touched her hair, so lightly. It was enough.

That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident. But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the Usurper's rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that she was dreaming, but another part exulted. This is how it was meant to be. The other was a nightmare, and I have only now awakened.

 

 

[Frey family reunion]

11 minutes ago, LynnS said:

Possibly, except that she has a strong drive to return "home".
 

 

Right, home, like I said, Dorne. 

[SirArthur]

12 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

Right, home, like I said, Dorne. 

She will find some dornish wisdom in Starfall.

But seriously. Wisdom is a widely used word in the books. Cat prays for it. Ned looks for it and the Crone gives it in the form of guidance.

 

[JNR]

7 hours ago, Matthew. said:

just because Robb was willing to make Jon his heir, that that necessarily gives us insight into how Jon was treated during better times, when Robb wasn't carrying the mantle of leadership, and didn't believe that Bran and Rickon were dead.

Not necessarily, no; it's all speculation.  

When Robb told him as a kid that he couldn't inherit the title or castle, that was just the truth -- but it's hard to know what was in Robb's heart at the time.  Jon doesn't really know either.

And it's possible Jon did, in fact, imagine catapulting Rickon into the Wall... or stomping on Sansa's head... or flaying Arya alive, over some argument or other.  I just don't personally think it was the case.  

The only sense in which it's  even relevant to me at all is that (as Black Crow pointed out) this conversation with Tyrion is the only thing RLJ evangelicals can possibly point to as a dragondream for Jon.  So Jon's denial that he had such daydreams seems relevant to the discussion of Jon's parents; it argues against even the faint hint of a known dragondream in his case.

7 hours ago, Matthew. said:

Jon's siblings, probably taking their cues from Catelyn, seemed to take it as a given that Jon is less than the trueborn Starks--something that must have been reflected from time to time in their words and behavior, as in the incident on the training yard.

Well, it's another thing we can't know.  Less... what?  

He's less an heir in the specific sense that he's not in line to succeed, sure enough... but even there, Robb seems to have mixed feelings:

Quote

 

She had not forgotten; she had not wanted to look at it, yet there it was. "A Snow is not a Stark."

"Jon's more a Stark than some lordlings from the Vale who have never so much as set eyes on Winterfell."

 

I would guess (but obviously cannot prove) that Robb has had this opinion for years and years.   That Jon is the son of Ned (he thinks) and grew up at Winterfell as a son of Ned's (definitely true) overrules Jon's bastardy, as far as Robb is concerned.  

If it were a question of whether Jon were less a man, or less a warrior, or less anything else, than a Stark, I'm not sure canon has an answer for us -- either for Robb's outlook or any of the other Stark kids'.

[JNR]

7 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I think the only reasonable inference from what we've been given so far [which isn't necessarily the whole truth] is that the dragons came to her in her dreams.

Yeah, I think so too.  Specifically, re the pyre:

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Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her. She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.

So here we have a giant fire and Dany letting it "swallow her" and not being burned, but rather being strengthened and made new.  

(We can also extrapolate that if Trumplike morons such as Aerion had such dreams, they may have... cough... misinterpreted them.  Badly.   Wildfire, it turns out, was not the way to go about making this dream come true.)

But, of course, there is no reference above to hatching eggs.  Dany appears on some conscious or unconscious level to have been piecing together various elements to arrive at her particular egg-hatching formula, and to have done a better job than any of her ancestors who had the same or similar dreams.

[Brad Stark]

Dany hatching her eggs is different from how Targaryans after Aegon the Conqueror hatched theirs.  It is possible some sacrifice was needed, but probably nothing as elaborate as Dany's.  I remember something about placing an egg in the crib with a baby Targ.

[Black Crow]

6 hours ago, JNR said:

 

The only sense in which it's  even relevant to me at all is that (as Black Crow pointed out) this conversation with Tyrion is the only thing RLJ evangelicals can possibly point to as a dragondream for Jon.  So Jon's denial that he had such daydreams seems relevant to the discussion of Jon's parents; it argues against even the faint hint of a known dragondream in his case.

 

Ah well its one of those "textual analysis" things where proceeding from a fixed assumption a search is launched for any possible "evidence" to support that preconception.

Even with all of the dodgy stuff stripped away there is a fundamental problem with Jon [or any other name] Targaryen in his present condition, ie; he has a number of serious puncture wounds.

1. They may not be fatal [GRRM has after all teased at this] but they are certainly sufficiently disabling to remove him from the story for a long time at a critical stage.

2. He is dead but can be made better by magick

While I wouldn't rule out option 1, option 2 is more likely, but that then brings in a range of problems likely to be fatal to Targaryen ambitions:

1. Mel can kiss him better; that gives us Beric/Stoneheart depending on how quickly she get to him. Neither are steps to the Iron Throne, especially given GRRM's constant insistence that magic comes with a price

2. Ah but Jon is a warg and Ghost is next door. More likely than the preceding one, but do we see King Coldhands, First of his name?

3. John is a Stark warg, Jon may soon tread lightly on the snow

As it happens, I don't have a problem with the theory that Jon may be the son of Rhaegar but on balance, he has had no dragon dreams. While Danaerys dreamed of dragons and fire, Jon's dreams are of Winterfell and the crypts and his story arc lies not in Fire but in Ice

[LynnS]

@falcotron

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I think Dragonstone could be similar, even though we don't get many political details for the internal politics in mid-level domains in general. It was the base for breeding and keeping most of the royal dragons, and, as the gateway to the Blackwater, a natural point from which to control trade and piracy and any possible foreign naval incursions, so it might make sense for it to have more power and autonomy than the other big but sub-Paramount lordships

How so?  When was the last dragon bred on Dragonstone?

[LynnS]

7 hours ago, Black Crow said:

While I wouldn't rule out option 1, option 2 is more likely, but that then brings in a range of problems likely to be fatal to Targaryen ambitions:

This is it.  What were the Targaryen ambitions or specifically what were Rhaegar's ambitions as they relate to the PwP, Summerhall, etc. 

Aemon speaks of dreams but doesn't name the dreamer and of dragon eggs hatching.  Rhaegar thinks he's the PwP but changes his mind because a comet wasn't seen on the day of his birth.  Aemon says 'we' got the translation wrong. 

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A Storm of Swords - Daenerys VI

The sounds of my city.

That morning she summoned her captains and commanders to the garden, rather than descending to the audience chamber. "Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver's Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on."

I think naming his son Aegon speaks to Rhaegar's purpose for him; rather than some notion that kidnapping Lyanna and producing a love child is necessary for that purpose.  If hatching dragon eggs is involved; he didn't think he was the one to do it.  I doubt very much he would attempt a repeat of Summerhall.  I doubt Rhaegar would go in for the killing of children after Aerys' predations and exploits at Duskendale.  These are the reason he wanted to remove his father and his son is meant to take up that mantle of restoring the realm.  

If anyone knows anything about Jon's purpose or the Stark kids in general; that's likely to be Bloodraven. Perhaps he was a dreamer as well.

[LynnS]

21 hours ago, Matthew. said:

A confounding variable here is that Dany's pyre plan appears to have taken shape between Dany IX and Dany X, and we don't have first person access to character thoughts. This raises the possibility that it wasn't just the dreams that fueled Dany's plan, but certain logical inferences based on stuff she already knew (Targaryen lore, Valyrian lore), and her recent experiences--not just the dreams, but the events in MMD's tent, and MMD's words that only death can pay for life.

Observations as well.  She first observes that the eggs are warm after they have been exposed to the sun and they feel warm.  There is a magical quality to the specks of light dancing around the eggs that transfixes her.  Then she begins to brood the eggs on charcoal braziers heating and cooling them.  She sleeps with them and senses when they are ready to hatch.  Then she puts them into the hottest fire she can make. 

It's not enough just to put them into cribs with infants and we don't know how the Targaryens brooded the eggs in the past.  Possibly in the secret underground caverns of Dragonstone where dragons lay their eggs? 

The other things that Dany does with Drogo's funeral pyre is lay his body north-east with his head in the direction of Vaes Dothrak.  She places the black egg (the largest) beside his head; the green egg beside his heart coiled by Drogo's braid and the white egg between his legs next to the regenerative organs.

I've wondered about Drogon returning to the grass sea and if dragons return home or have some kind of homing drive depending on the soul that takes up residence.  I'm not even sure if Drogo's soul translated to the black egg although they eggs were present during MMD's ritual and the unborn are affected by the ritual as we see with Dany's unborn son.

She pays the dragon-price; offering her blood (Rheagal) for fire in exchange for fire for blood.  The fire is in her for a time giving her immunity.  The salt tears steam off her cheeks.

[Black Crow]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

 

If anyone knows anything about Jon's purpose or the Stark kids in general...

As to that there are a couple of important things here ignored or brushed aside:

In the first place if we return to the original synopsis [and I'm not talking about the controversial stuff] GRRM was very explicit in stating that this is very largely about the children of Winterfell. House Stark in other words, not House Targaryen - which is why he's writing a separate book about House Targaryen.

Secondly this is the Song of Ice and Fire. It is a story of dualities in which Danaerys the Dragonlord is unambiguously representing Fire. We get quite a lot about Fire in the story: Danaerys and her dragons of course; the rest of House Targaryen; Melisandre; the other Red priests and their resurrections; and so on. Ice on the other hand is much more fragmentary. We have the white walkers, obviously, and we have the wights, but they are "mysterious" in a way which Fire isn't [ok Fire has its mysteries but they hang closer together]; being miserable heretics some of us have figured connections between the blue-eyed lot and the kindly elves in the forest; and worse, are suggesting a link with House Stark.

In terms of dualities it all makes perfect sense opposing Starks and Ice to Targaryens and Fire.

The popular theory is that if Jon is the son of Rhaeghar and Lyanna then he embodies both Ice and Fire - sorted, and we all live happily ever after, except that the duality is tilted towards Fire if Jon [its only a flesh wound] becomes the Targaryen king: the story needs Jon Ice and Danaerys Fire

[Matthew.]

16 hours ago, JNR said:

Well, it's another thing we can't know.  Less... what?  

Less of a Stark, which has significance beyond just the line of succession, as highlighted by the crypt dreams.

The crypts are a place for Starks - not just the lords of the House - and one of the themes of the dreams is that Jon doesn't (from his point of view) belong. 

I think it's fair to speculate that some of that self-perception has been fueled by his siblings--regardless of what Robb's intent was with his words, we know how Jon took them, how he has carried those words like poison. Even if Robb was speaking accurately, there's a thoughtlessness to his words, a lack of empathy for Jon 

Sure, it's true that Jon is far down in the line of succession, but it's also true that he's not Ryam Redwyne, or whoever he was playacting as on a given day, yet Robb never felt compelled to issue corrections on those instances. Robb steals from Jon even the mere fantasy of playing Lord of Winterfell; "you can't be the Lord of Winterfell... you can't ever be the Lord of Winterfell."

That's cutting a little deeper than just speaking the truth.
 

16 hours ago, JNR said:

If it were a question of whether Jon were less a man, or less a warrior, or less anything else, than a Stark, I'm not sure canon has an answer for us -- either for Robb's outlook or any of the other Stark kids'.

In a prior thread, we spoke of the subtle, clever things buried throughout the text, and something that I would categorize as subtle is the subconscious biases revealed in character thoughts.

For example, Sam's swordbelt repeatedly falls to his legs and feet during AFFC, but it is largely up to the reader to observe this sign of Sam having lost a pretty decent amount of weight--Sam doesn't note these events in terms of what they mean for his weight, he notes them to deride himself for clumsiness, to suggest he'll probably trip over his own swordbelt. Sam has a deeply ingrained negativity toward himself.

As a different example, after Jon's time travelling with Tyrion, Jon always thereafter thinks of him as "Tyrion"--not "the Imp." A subtle mental respect that is largely missing in other POVs - even Jaime's! - where Tyrion is frequently thought of as "the Imp." Jon makes that internal adjustment because he knows what it means to be an outsider.

_____

To get to the point, while we don't know Robb's thoughts, we do have the thoughts of Bran, Sansa, and Arya. 

In Bran and Sansa's minds, thoughts of Jon often come coupled with "bastard brother" or "bastard half brother." In comparison, in Arya's thoughts, he is just...Jon. When she thinks of missing her family, she thinks that Jon is the brother she misses most of all--not bastard brother, not half-brother, brother. No qualifiers. 

This is subtle, but it's a distinction that would certainly matter to Jon, who keenly feels the way he is held apart from his 'trueborn' siblings. 

[Matthew.]

2 hours ago, LynnS said:

It's not enough just to put them into cribs with infants and we don't know how the Targaryens brooded the eggs in the past.  Possibly in the secret underground caverns of Dragonstone where dragons lay their eggs? 

I'm curious about this as well. Not only have we been deprived of Valyria's dragonlore, we're seemingly deprived of whatever lore it was that even the early Targaryens held--partially because GRRM isn't sharing everything that the characters know (hinted at, for example, in Tyrion's conversation with Ben Plumm late in ADWD), and partially because things such as Septon Barth's writings have been suppressed.

Another thing I'm curious about - and perhaps this is covered in the text, and I'm just forgetting - is how gradually the dragons weakened. Was the first generation born after Balerion already a little smaller, a little less vital, a little less long-lived? Were the dragons, even then, already in decline? 
 

53 minutes ago, Black Crow said:

The popular theory is that if Jon is the son of Rhaeghar and Lyanna then he embodies both Ice and Fire - sorted, and we all live happily ever after, except that the duality is tilted towards Fire if Jon [its only a flesh wound] becomes the Targaryen king: the story needs Jon Ice and Danaerys Fire

Maybe, except Bran also seems like a suitable character to embody the "Ice" to Dany's "Fire," depending on what the end result of his training is, and what the relationship is between the old gods and the Others.

[JNR]

11 hours ago, Black Crow said:

Ah well its one of those "textual analysis" things where proceeding from a fixed assumption a search is launched for any possible "evidence" to support that preconception.

That's exactly right.  Or as Arthur Conan Doyle put it more than a hundred years ago:

Quote

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

Which brings us to:

11 hours ago, Black Crow said:

I don't have a problem with the theory that Jon may be the son of Rhaegar

I have many -- I think objectively speaking there are many, and it's easy to compile a list -- but as far as I can see, this premise can't be ruled out, either.