What is the thing that comes in the night?

[LiveFirstDieLater]

1 hour ago, kissdbyfire said:

I also disagree w/ the idea that the CotF "coexist" w/ the WWs, since they clearly need warmth, sun, etc.

Edited 1 hour ago by kissdbyfire

So first, I don’t think Benjen is Coldhands... 

But what makes it so clear that the Children need sun and warmth and whatever you want to include with etc? Doesn’t it seem more seasonal? Like trees?

They live in caves eating pale fish who’ve never seen the sun and fungus and stuff... this seems like hybernating behavior to me. 

I’m a little confused though, how could they not coexist? 

do you think that others weren’t there with the giants and children in Westeros before the First Men? 

Even then the children seemed to live in Tree Cities and Hollow Hills, presumably to protect themselves from something... I think the Children and the Others are certainly different, but they were able to coexist. Like wolves and squirrels, not saying they are friends, but they live in the same wood...

I would propose that the children are able to speak with the Others, that’s why the Last hero was taught their language.

[kissdbyfire]

2 minutes ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

So first, I don’t think Benjen is Coldhands... 

But what makes it so clear that the Children need sun and warmth and whatever you want to include with etc? Doesn’t it seem more seasonal? Like trees?

They live in caves eating pale fish who’ve never seen the sun and fungus and stuff... this seems like hybernating behavior to me. 

I’m a little confused though, how could they not coexist? 

do you think that others weren’t there with the giants and children in Westeros before the First Men? 

Even then the children seemed to live in Tree Cities and Hollow Hills, presumably to protect themselves from something... I think the Children and the Others are certainly different, but they were able to coexist. Like wolves and squirrels, not saying they are friends, but they live in the same wood...

I would propose that the children are able to speak with the Others, that’s why the Last hero was taught their language.

The CotF are hunters-gatherers, we are told their wood dancers are the hunters who became warriors out of necessity. For that you need the cycle of the seasons, and yes, I mean all of them. 

The cave is not their natural habitat, so to speak. It's more like a sort of sanctuary. 

I used "coexisted" (between quotation marks) because of the post I was replying to. As far as we've seen, humans and CotF and giants are all able to coexist w/ the WWs. But none of these races is likely to be able to survive if winter settles in and lasts a very long time. 

[LiveFirstDieLater]

4 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

I used "coexisted" (between quotation marks) because of the post I was replying to. As far as we've seen, humans and CotF and giants are all able to coexist w/ the WWs. But none of these races is likely to be able to survive if winter settles in and lasts a very long time. 

Ok, makes more sense to me!

I actually think the Children are much better prepared to survive a 13 year winter than Mankind in Westeros... seemingly able to live in their hollow hill indefinitely, and that’s the point.

[Megorova]

27 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

What I meant was, what's the point of having CH be a wight in Benjen's dead body? How does that serve the story or advance the plot in any way? 

If the Children are evil, or not exactly evil but rather connected to the Others, and thus they plan to exploit Bran, so if CH is Benjen, or at least he's a being that still has Benjen's memories, and could have some of his emotions, then he may help Bran to escape from that cave. Or maybe later he will in some way help to Jon. Maybe he will reveal to Jon some secret about connection between the Children and the Others. And he knows that secret, because he is a creation of both of them - the Children and the Others.

37 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

And you're wrong about the CotF not being able to leave the cave, Leaf tells us she's wandered the realms of men for many a year...

That was before. When there was many healthy and juicy Children, connected to the Weirwood, giving "food" to trees. And thus there was balance between Children and Others. Less connected Children means less food for the Others. That's if the Weirwood is feeding the Others, after getting blood and spiritual energy from the Children, and processing it into something else, that is food for the Others.

36 minutes ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

Except Jojen says the chains have already come off by the time they are hiding in the crypt during Bran’s first Storm chapter...

He could be wrong. Or maybe he knows that it's a lie, he knows that Bran will be chained by the Weirwood, when he will go north. And the Children made Jojen to bring Bran to them. So Jojen said to Bran whatever, just to make him go north.

43 minutes ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

The Weirwood is distinct from the crow... and Bloodraven conspicuously didn’t understand what Bran meant when he asked him point blank if he was the three eyed crow, and never claimed (in fact might have said he doesn’t have) the ability to speak through the Weirwoods. Just he watched, heard, was part of, etc.

It could be that Bloodraven is not 3EC. Furthermore maybe 3EC doesn't even have any connection to Bloodraven, the Children, and weirwoods. Maybe 3EC is someone or something entirely else. 

48 minutes ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

Also, it’s worth noting that Bloodraven is not a Child to sing sad songs, but a Man to hate and swear a bloody vengeance. And let’s be honest, if the great council hadn’t chosen Egg, Bloodraven (a legitimized bastard who had ruled in all but name for years) was an obvious candidate to be king.

He didn't wanted to become King.

Have you read The Mystery Knight? In that story, the character Maynard Plumm, from the very beginning, was Bloodraven. He used shadow magic to change his appearance, same how Melisandre did to Mance, by making him look like Rattleshirt. Melisandre was using a ruby bracelet, and Shiera for Bloodraven used a moonstone brooch.

From Maynard's/Bloodraven's comments about Targaryens, and events that happened during that story, it's obvious that he was loyal to Targaryens.

1 hour ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Quick point here, but the other wights do attack Coldhands.

59 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Nice one. I meant to bring this up as well but forgot...

They attacked him, because then he was with the living people. He said:

" “We have to climb. It will be dark soon. You would do well to be inside before night comes. Your warmth will draw them.” "

~

"Bran shivered again. “The ranger …”

“He cannot come.”

“They’ll kill him.”

“No. They killed him long ago."

~

"The ward upon the cave mouth still held; the dead men could not enter. The snows had buried most of them again, but they were still there, hidden, frozen, waiting. Other dead things came to join them, things that had once been men and women, even children. Dead ravens sat on bare brown branches, wings crusted with ice."

Coldhands remained outside. But even though he was up there, other wights that were there, became dormant again, like prior Bran and Co came near that cave. Coldhands is dead, so other wights don't react to his presense. Even when wights attacked them then, they attacked Hodor, even though Coldhands passed them first. They didn't reacted to him, they attacked first living being that passed them - Hodor.

[sweetsunray]

5 hours ago, kissdbyfire said:

But what would be the point of that? It's like a perverted Victor/Victoria... a corpse pretending to be Benjen pretending to be a corpse. Or something. 

You should ask Craster about Benjen's body... Since it's unlikely he'll reply, try asking @sweetsunray instead!

 

Hehehe... it’s the secret larder of blood sausage.  Benjen is bacon (imho). If Coldhands is Benjen, then Hodor and Bran would recognise him. 

[Megorova]

13 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Hehehe... it’s the secret larder of blood sausage.  Benjen is bacon (imho). If Coldhands is Benjen, then Hodor and Bran would recognise him. 

I could have said, that Hodor can't recognize even himself, if he will see his own reflection, though the problem is, is that he always says "Hodor". Which doesn't mean, that he actually recognized himself.

[sweetsunray]

5 minutes ago, Megorova said:

I could have said, that Hodor can't recognize even himself, if he will see his own reflection, though the problem is, is that he always says "Hodor". Which doesn't mean, that he actually recognized himself.

Hodor can tell people he knows apart. Haven’t seen him mistake someone else for Bran yet nor mistakenly carry say Meera instead of Bran. If he does not mistake Meera or Jojen for Bran, then he won’t not recognise Benjen... regardless of the fact he’s simple and only says Hodor. 

[LiveFirstDieLater]

8 minutes ago, Megorova said:

He didn't wanted to become King.

Have you read The Mystery Knight? In that story, the character Maynard Plumm, from the very beginning, was Bloodraven. He used shadow magic to change his appearance, same how Melisandre did to Mance, by making him look like Rattleshirt. Melisandre was using a ruby bracelet, and Shiera for Bloodraven used a moonstone brooch.

From Maynard's/Bloodraven's comments about Targaryens, and events that happened during that story, it's obvious that he was loyal to Targaryens.

I have read the mystery knight and all the other Dunk and Egg stories...

At the time when he was ruling the kingdom in all but name as Hand of the King? Sure he was “loyal”!

Mostly he seems to have hated Bittersteel.

Quote

 

"I do not drink to kinslayers," said Ser Glendon. "Lord Bloodraven is a sorcerer and a bastard."

"Born bastard," Ser Uthor agreed mildly, "but his royal father made him legitimate as he lay dying." He drank deep, as did Ser Maynard and many others in the hall.

 

Here we see Bloodraven Drink Deep to his own legitimacy...

Quote

 

"How can the truth be treason?" asked Kyle the Cat. "In King Daeron's day, a man did not have to fear to speak his mind, but now?" He made a rude noise. "Bloodraven put King Aerys on the Iron Throne, but for how long? Aerys is weak, and when he dies, it will be bloody war between Lord Rivers and Prince Maekar for the crown, the Hand against the heir."

"You have forgotten Prince Rhaegel, my friend," Ser Maynard objected, in a mild tone. "He comes next in line to Aerys, not Maekar, and his children after him." 

"Rhaegel is feeble-minded. Why, I bear him no ill will, but the man is good as dead, and those twins of his as well, though whether they will die of Maekar's mace or Bloodraven's spells…" Seven save us, Dunk thought as Egg spoke up shrill and loud. "Prince Maekar is Prince Rhaegel's brother. He loves him well. He'd never do harm to him or his."

 

Rhaegel died in 215 AC, whilst choking on a lamprey pie. His son, Prince Aelor, the new Prince of Dragonstone, would not long outlive him.

And maybe most damning, he breaks all the Old Gods’ rules... Oathbreaker (like Odin!), Kinslayer, violated hospitality, and abandoned his watch after 13 years...

 

 

[ravenous reader]

8 minutes ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

Rhaegel died in 215 AC, whilst choking on a lamprey pie. His son, Prince Aelor, the new Prince of Dragonstone, would not long outlive him.

And maybe most damning, he breaks all the Old Gods’ rules... Oathbreaker (like Odin!), Kinslayer, violated hospitality, and abandoned his watch after 13 years..

And yet, Bloodraven is an utterly charming fellow.  Swearing by it, his fans are more rabid than the San-Sans! (and, don't forget, he is, without doubt, the amiable three-eyed crow...).

[The Fattest Leech]

 

Quote

They attacked him, because then he was with the living people. He said:

" “We have to climb. It will be dark soon. You would do well to be inside before night comes. Your warmth will draw them.” "

~

"Bran shivered again. “The ranger …”

“He cannot come.”

“They’ll kill him.”

“No. They killed him long ago."

~

"The ward upon the cave mouth still held; the dead men could not enter. The snows had buried most of them again, but they were still there, hidden, frozen, waiting. Other dead things came to join them, things that had once been men and women, even children. Dead ravens sat on bare brown branches, wings crusted with ice."

Coldhands remained outside. But even though he was up there, other wights that were there, became dormant again, like prior Bran and Co came near that cave. Coldhands is dead, so other wights don't react to his presense. Even when wights attacked them then, they attacked Hodor, even though Coldhands passed them first. They didn't reacted to him, they attacked first living being that passed them - Hodor.

Yes, the warmth draws them and it is the least of their woes (collectively).

• "Those wolves are close as well," Bran warned them. "The ones that have been following us. Summer can smell them whenever we're downwind."
  "Wolves are the least of our woes," said Coldhands. "We have to climb. It will be dark soon. You would do well to be inside before night comes. Your warmth will draw them." He glanced to the west, where the light of the setting sun could be seen dimly through the trees, like the glow of a distant fire.

The scene starts with the snow being unbroken and waist deep, and then it is Hodor that breaks the snow layers, causing an avalanche ( I guess a snow slide, more like?) which exposes the lower layers of snow, which it is then that the wights can rise up and grab Hodor's ankle first. If Coldhands was not a target then why did he "show up" on their warmth seeking radar (or however it is? ). Coldhands should be a blank spot and the wights should stumble past him to the warmth they seek. Heat seeking missiles Here they lay hiding in wait until someone uncovers them...

• Wordless for once, Hodor slapped the snow off his legs, and plowed upward through the snowdrifts with Bran upon his back. Coldhands stalked beside them, his blade in a black hand. Summer came after. In some places the snow was higher than he was, and the big direwolf had to stop and shake it off after plunging through the thin crust. As they climbed, Bran turned awkwardly in his basket to watch as Meera slid an arm beneath her brother to lift him to his feet. He's too heavy for her. She's half-starved, she's not as strong as she was. She clutched her frog spear in her other hand, jabbing the tines into the snow for a little more support. Meera had just begun to struggle up the hill, half-dragging and half-carrying her little brother, when Hodor passed between two trees, and Bran lost sight of them.

  The hill grew steeper. Drifts of snow cracked under Hodor's boots. Once a rock moved beneath his foot and he slid backwards, and almost went tumbling back down the hill. The ranger caught him by the arm and saved him. "Hodor," said Hodor. Every gust of wind filled the air with fine white powder that shone like glass in the last light of day. Ravens flapped around them. One flew ahead and vanished inside the cave. Only eighty yards now, Bran thought, that's not far at all.

  Summer stopped suddenly, at the bottom of a steep stretch of unbroken white snow. The direwolf turned his head, sniffed the air, then snarled. Fur bristling, he began to back away.

  "Hodor, stop," said Bran. "Hodor. Wait." Something was wrong. Summer smelled it, and so did he. Something bad. Something close. "Hodor, no, go back."
  Coldhands was still climbing, and Hodor wanted to keep up. "Hodor, hodor, hodor," he grumbled loudly, to drown out Bran's complaints. His breathing had grown labored. Pale mist filled the air. He took a step, then another. The snow was almost waist deep and the slope was very steep. Hodor was leaning forward, grasping at rocks and trees with his hands as he climbed. Another step. Another. The snow Hodor disturbed slid downhill, starting a small avalanche behind them.
  Sixty yards. Bran craned himself sideways to better see the cave. Then he saw something else. "A fire!" In the little cleft between the weirwood trees was a flickering glow, a ruddy light calling through the gathering gloom. "Look, someone—"

  Hodor screamed. He twisted, stumbled, fell.

  Bran felt the world slide sideways as the big stableboy spun violently around. A jarring impact drove the breath from him. His mouth was full of blood and Hodor was thrashing and rolling, crushing the crippled boy beneath him.

  Something has hold of his leg. For half a heartbeat Bran thought maybe a root had gotten tangled round his ankle … until the root moved. A hand, he saw, as the rest of the wight came bursting from beneath the snow.

And when Bran says, "they'll kill him," this could be interpreted that Coldhands and the wights are still fighting even though the warm bodies have fled away from him and the wights. Clearly Coldhands is different from the other wights, as they wights do not attack each other when they sense warmth, but they attacked Coldhands along with the kids. The last we see of Coldhands is when he is being attacked by the wights just before Bran is covered (protected) by snow as a "fire-wight" is trying to grab him (Bran 2, ADWD). Unless I am forgetting a very clear mention of CH later, we do not know where he is. His ravens flew off, maybe he did too after a while? He could be outside, but IF he is "dormant", then based on how the wights reacted to him before, the wights could attack him again if he starts to move like normal

However, none of this points to Coldhands being Benjen (we seem to have strayed a bit). We haven't had a good Coldhands discussion in a while. This is interesting.

Ok, ADDING this here because it is a pertinent quote for this discussion, but also for other reasons (including Jon).

• Up above them, flaming figures were dancing in the snow.

The wights, Bran realized. Someone set the wights on fire.

Summer was snarling and snapping as he danced around the closest, a great ruin of a man wreathed in swirling flame. He shouldn't get so close, what is he doing? Then he saw himself, sprawled facedown in the snow. Summer was trying to drive the thing away from him. What will happen if it kills me? the boy wondered. Will I be Hodor for good or all? Will I go back into Summer's skin? Or will I just be dead?

[Megorova]

2 hours ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

Oathbreaker (like Odin!), Kinslayer, violated hospitality, and abandoned his watch after 13 years...

I'm not one of his fans, but let's be fair -

Kinslaying - Blackfyres attacked first, Targaryens were only defending themselves, and Bloodraven served to them, loyaly. Daemon and his sons went against rightful King, and Bloodraven was that King's Hand and defender, thus he had to kill them. It's not a kinslaying, if they were the first who attacked, and he killed them, while protecting from them (Blackfyres), his other family members (Targaryens).

Violating hospitality - is it about Aenys' execution, or about Whitewalls?

If it's about Whitewalls, then he didn't killed, or even attacked anyone there, while he was their guest. He ate under their roof, as Maynard Plumm. Then he went away, out of their castle, and when he returned several hours later, he was already not the same person, that was breaking bread with those rebels. When he came there again, as Bloodraven, he didn't even returned inside the castle. So then, there was no any sort of trespassing on his part.

And if it's about Aenys Blackfyre, then we don't know what actually happened then. Maybe he promised him safe passage, but only under certain conditions, but Aenys broke those conditions, whatever they were. Thus Bloodraven's action could be justified. It's just that we don't know details of what happened. Though maybe the reason, why Bloodraven wasn't executed afterwards, is because Aegon understood why Bloodraven did what he did.

Oathbreaking and abandoning his watch - again, we don't know what actually happened.

Could be that during one of his ranging he was attacked by wights, and they broke his spine ( I'll speculate a bit about his reasons for not returning ). And then the Children saved his life, but they either couldn't or didn't wanted to get him back to Night's Watch. Maybe after they found out who he is, they decided to use him, fed to him weirwood paste, under guise of some medicine for his wounds, and after that he was tied to that cave, by weirwood roots growing out of his body. So he is a prisoner, furthermore he can't even walk, so he is not a deserter, he's a victim of kidnapping.

Another option - maybe after he came to The Wall, he had dreams and visions, that constantly haunted him, and made him go insane. He followed those visions, and came to the Children's cave. Thus he didn't deserted, at least not willingly. He was lured there, by magic forces. Thus - not his fault.

Etc.

 

So until we will know more information, about circumstances of Aenys' death, and about Bloodraven leaving Night's Watch, it's unjustified to call him a kinslayer, and oathbreaker, and a violator of hospitality right.

2 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

If Coldhands was not a target then why did he "show up" on their warmth seeking radar (or however it is? ).

Because he was getting between wights and living people, thus he got on their radar, even thought to them, he was as cold and as dead as themselves.

2 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Coldhands was still climbing, and Hodor wanted to keep up. "Hodor, hodor, hodor," he grumbled loudly, to drown out Bran's complaints. His breathing had grown labored. Pale mist filled the air.

He was going slower than Coldhands, and it was becoming harder to go up, because there was lots of snow, and the hillside was steep. So even if they began their ascend side by side, by that point when they were attacked, Coldhands was farther ahead than Hodor.

3 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

but they attacked Coldhands along with the kids.

That's because he was defending those kids, so while those kids were there, and he was attacking wights, to protect those kids from their attacks, those wights also became hostile towards him.

We won't know for sure, whether wights-Benjen/not-Benjen is on other wights' radar, until we will see more of him, and his interactions with other walking dead.

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

17 hours ago, Megorova said:

Private information exchange, between the author and his editor, became public.

Things like that do happen.

20 hours ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

It isn't that I don't get what you are trying to suggest. It is just that I think the idea is ridiculous and not at all likely. 

Maybe not likely, but still possible.

That Brother, he did came from somewhere, when he was alive he was part of Night's Watch, and his clothes are still obviously black, not faded from time, thus he is a freshly-made-wight. Furthermore he became a wight, while he was on that side of The Wall. And recently, prior Mormont's Great Ranging, not that many Brothers disappeared beyond The Wall.

The point of a private dialogue between an author and their editor is that both parties expected the dialogue to remain private at the time of the exchange. Yes it became public but neither of them could have expected or anticipated this. Therefore we can assume the question was asked honestly and answered honestly. An editor has a confidentiality agreement with the authors whom they edit for. 

You've made an assumption here which I'm afraid your reasoning can not support. Coldhands was killed long ago according to Leaf. A CoTF; whose lifespan is greatly extended in comparison to a human lifespan and whose cultural collective knowledge goes back to the Dawn Age. Tells Bran They killed him long ago. Now would a CoTF really consider two years a long time? Really? Or is it more likely that Coldhands who is a sentient wight; unlike the wights who are in the thrall of the Others. Just scavenges newer clothing as his deteriorates?   He could have picked the clothes he is currently wearing up off a dead NW brother last week for all we know! 

So you see it is irrelevant how many brothers have been lost recently, Coldhands could be ten thousand years old for all we know! He is more than capable of undressing a dead body maybe even Benjens! And putting the better quality clothing on.   He isn't a mindless wight, he is more like the fire wights who retain their human minds and so can function more or less as normal. 

[Megorova]

40 minutes ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

You've made an assumption here which I'm afraid your reasoning can not support. Coldhands was killed long ago according to Leaf. A CoTF; whose lifespan is greatly extended in comparison to a human lifespan and whose cultural collective knowledge goes back to the Dawn Age. Tells Bran They killed him long ago. Now would a CoTF really consider two years a long time?

We don't know when exactly was that "long ago", about which Leaf was saying. Maybe she meant it in a sense, that he's long dead. He's dead, and have been dead for some time, and thus it doesn't matter if they will leave him up there alone. Wights can't kill him or harm him, because he's already dead. And the Children do have long lifespan, which doesn't mean, that they are unable to perceive time same as humans. So when she was saying that he is long dead, she meant it not in a sense that by her perception lots of time passed, but that from his side, he's been dead for quite some time. It's like spoiled food in a freezer, when somebody says that it was laying there for ages, it doesn't actually mean in terms of centuries, actually it was there for a long time, but only by terms of expiration date of that food. So Coldhands is like spoiled food. Or something like that  

We'll have to wait, until he will show his face, or in some other manner reveal his identity, by saying or doing something. So until then, I'll think that he is/was Benjen Stark.

[LiveFirstDieLater]

13 hours ago, Megorova said:

I'm not one of his fans, but let's be fair -

I’ll be the bear instead...

Quote

Kinslaying - Blackfyres attacked first, Targaryens were only defending themselves, and Bloodraven served to them, loyaly. Daemon and his sons went against rightful King, and Bloodraven was that King's Hand and defender, thus he had to kill them. It's not a kinslaying, if they were the first who attacked, and he killed them, while protecting from them (Blackfyres), his other family members (Targaryens).

Bloodraven did his share of kinslaying, 

The Raven's Teeth ultimately gained the Weeping Ridge, and rained arrows down onto Daemon Blackfyre from three hundred yards away, killing Daemon and his twin sons.^[7] For this people would name Brynden a kinslayer.

Aenys Blackfyre wanted to peacefully participate in the Great Council, and Bloodraven offered him safe conduct to King's Landing from Tyrosh. Once Aenys arrived in the capital, however, he was arrested by the gold cloaks and then beheaded in the Red Keep.^[3]

The Great Council chose Maekar's son to succeed as King Aegon V Targaryen, whose first act was to arrest Bloodraven for the murder of Aenys.

Quote

Violating hospitality - is it about Aenys' execution, or about Whitewalls?

Aenys, he offered safe passage and then executed him... Egg convicted him... and I trust egg like I do few characters.

Quote

If it's about Whitewalls, then he didn't killed, or even attacked anyone there, while he was their guest. He ate under their roof, as Maynard Plumm. Then he went away, out of their castle, and when he returned several hours later, he was already not the same person, that was breaking bread with those rebels. When he came there again, as Bloodraven, he didn't even returned inside the castle. So then, there was no any sort of trespassing on his part.

I don’t think he killed any kin at Whitewalls, though he exemplifies the opposite of Ned’s “the man who casts the sentence should swing the sword” by casually ticking off names of who would be killed.

Quote

And if it's about Aenys Blackfyre, then we don't know what actually happened then. Maybe he promised him safe passage, but only under certain conditions, but Aenys broke those conditions, whatever they were. Thus Bloodraven's action could be justified. It's just that we don't know details of what happened. Though maybe the reason, why Bloodraven wasn't executed afterwards, is because Aegon understood why Bloodraven did what he did.

We don’t have all the details, but the broad strokes seem pretty clear, and Egg being the one to pass judgement makes it pretty clear to me.

Quote

Oathbreaking and abandoning his watch - again, we don't know what actually happened.

We know he swore a vow to the nights watch...

We know he served 13 years.

We know he’s still alive.

And we know he says he was “once” a man of the nights watch, implying he is no longer.

He abandoned his oath.

Quote

Could be that during one of his ranging he was attacked by wights, and they broke his spine ( I'll speculate a bit about his reasons for not returning ). And then the Children saved his life, but they either couldn't or didn't wanted to get him back to Night's Watch. Maybe after they found out who he is, they decided to use him, fed to him weirwood paste, under guise of some medicine for his wounds, and after that he was tied to that cave, by weirwood roots growing out of his body. So he is a prisoner, furthermore he can't even walk, so he is not a deserter, he's a victim of kidnapping.

Another option - maybe after he came to The Wall, he had dreams and visions, that constantly haunted him, and made him go insane. He followed those visions, and came to the Children's cave. Thus he didn't deserted, at least not willingly. He was lured there, by magic forces. Thus - not his fault.

Etc.

I’m not saying it’s totally impossible that there was some valid extenuating circumstances... but I have to work with what we do know.

Quote

So until we will know more information, about circumstances of Aenys' death, and about Bloodraven leaving Night's Watch, it's unjustified to call him a kinslayer, and oathbreaker, and a violator of hospitality right.

I think it’s actually pretty just.

And I’ll add the other crimes I missed:

Incest- seastar

Slavery - I can’t prove this one yet, but I find the “ravens teeth” to be highly suspect...

[Megorova]

1 hour ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

Incest- seastar

For Targaryens incest isn't a crime. Furthermore even in our world, brother X sister was acceptable before. 

Sibling marriages were widespread amongst all classes in Egypt, during the Graeco-Roman period. Egyptian pharaon Tutankhamun married his half-sister Ankhesenamun. His father Akhenaten and his mother, were also half-siblings. Cleopatra V was married with her brother Ptolemy XII. Their own children Cleopatra VII and her younger brother Ptolemy XIII, also got married. Biblical Cain married his sister Awan. There were brother-sister marriages mentioned in Northern mythology - parents of gods Freyja and Freyr were brother and sister. Etc.

Old Gods and the Seven don't allow marriages between siblings, but Valyrians were atheists, so they didn't cared what some alien gods allowed or forbade.

1 hour ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

We know he swore a vow to the nights watch...

We know he served 13 years.

We know he’s still alive.

But we don't know how he got from there (member of Night's Watch, who dutifully served at The Wall for 13 years), to here (greenseer of the Children, binded by weirwood to that cave).

1 hour ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

Slavery - I can’t prove this one yet, but I find the “ravens teeth” to be highly suspect...

This one is just Bloodraven was a very charismatic person, so of course he had devoted followers, that swore to serve to him for life. They were loyal to him, and chose to stay with him, even when he was sent to The Wall.

1 hour ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

And we know he says he was “once” a man of the nights watch, implying he is no longer.

He was also no longer Brynden Rivers. That and not being a watcher anymore, could actually mean, that he is no longer who he was, because after he was connecter to the Weirwood, it consumed nearly entirely his soul, mind and personality. So it's not that he broke his vow, he is just not himself anymore.

Also the vow of Watchers is to protect realm of men from the Others, so Bloodraven is still protecting the living from the dead. Though now he does it with knowledge, not with a sword. (That's if I'm wrong about the Children and the Others being parts of the same ecosystem, in which they are co-dependant from each other, and thus upcoming Long Night could be Children's and partially Bloodraven's fault.)

[Walda]

 

Wow, this thread has really taken off. When I started this post there were no replies at all - so nothing here about Jojen paste or Coldhands.

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This was the castle where ...the ’prentice boys had faced the thing that came in the night

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Benjen Stark ...only shrugged and said“We left the Nightfort two hundred years ago,”

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“There are ghosts here,” Bran said.,. “Old ghosts, from before the Old King, even before Aegon the Dragon,

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Footsteps. Someone was coming this way. Something was coming this way.
...maybe it was the thing that came in the night. The ’prentice boys all saw it, Old Nan said, but afterward when they told their Lord Commander every description had been different. And three died within the year, and the fourth went mad, and a hundred years later when the thing had come again, the ’prentice boys were seen shambling along behind it, all in chains.

(Storm of Swords Ch.56 Bran IV)

Yes, it does and might even continue to have plot significance.

There is a theme starting in Game of Thrones Chapter 1 in Bran's thread about being brave and being afraid. Bran has a habit of repressing his irrational fears and acting out by climbing. When he is no longer able to climb, his channel for his repressed irrational fear is warging. By the time he gets to the Nightfort, Bran is scaring himself silly with the story of the Thing that Came in the Night, then using that as a pretext not just to violate Hodor but to violate Hodor for the purpose of using Hodor's sword to murder a babe in arms, so who is the thing in the night? Bran? Hodor? Sam? the baby?

Afterwards Bran remembers the part of the tale that goes

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Beyond the gates the monsters live, and the giants and the ghouls,... but they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong. So go to sleep, my little Brandon, my baby boy. You needn’t fear. There are no monsters here.

and we see that old Nan's stories shouldn't be swallowed whole - the wall might stop giants and ghouls, but it won't stop monsters like Theon or Ramsey, or Bran.

Beyond the development of Bran's character, from its name alone we could gather that the Thing that Came in the Night was significant to the Night's Watch - what else are they watching the Night for?

The fact that the Night's Watch guards the Realms of Men, hints at Things That Are Not Men are trying to enter those realms In The Dark.

There is a parallel between the Jon chapter that immediately precedes this chapter, and the story of the Thing. It concludes with Jon watching, Here, Mance's Wildling Army is cast as the Thing, and Jon's crew as the 'prentice boys:-

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Jon sat between two merlons with only a scarecrow for company and watched the Stallion gallop up the sky. Or was it the Horned Lord? He wondered where Ghost was now. He wondered about Ygritte as well, and told himself that way lay madness.
They came in the night, of course. Like thieves, Jon thought. Like murderers.
Satin pissed himself when the horns blew, but Jon pretended not to notice. “Go shake Dick by the shoulder,” he told the Oldtown boy, “else he’s liable to sleep through the fight.”

(ASoS, Ch.55 Jon VII)

There are other things that rise to prominence by extension of the story of The Thing That Came in the Night - the obvious sexual pun in the title, for instance.

Could there have been a sexual relationship (or a girl disguised as a boy) elided from the original story of the thing that came in the night? That might explain the ensuing madness.

A keyword search for 'in the night' shows several variations on the sexual version of The Thing That Came in the Night several times, and not all for comic effect:-

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If we beheaded every boy who rode to Mole’s Town in the night, only ghosts would guard the Wall.

(AGoT, Ch.70 Jon IX)

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There’s ghosts, I know there is.” Hot Pie was kneading bread, his arms floured up to his elbows. “Pia saw something in the buttery last night.”
Arya made a rude noise. Pia was always seeing things, usually they were men.

(ACoK, Ch.47 Arya IX)

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That’s how they mourn. They answer death with life. Sam had read that somewhere, a long time ago. He wondered if Gilly knew, if Kojja Mo had told her what to do.
He breathed the fragrance of her hair and stared at the lantern swinging overhead. Even the Crone herself could not lead me safely out of this.

(ADwD, Ch.35 Samwell IV)

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They slept apart and did their best to avoid each other during the waking hours. But whenever Aerys gave a man to the flames, Queen Rhaella would have a visitor in the night.

(AFfC, Ch.16 Jaime II)

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Qotho had cruel eyes and quick hands that liked to hurt. He left bruises on Doreah’s soft white skin whenever he touched her, and sometimes made Irri sob in the night. Even his horses seemed to fear him.

(AGoT, Ch.36 Daenerys IV)

The stallion/horned lord that Jon watched gallop across the sky before the battle of Castle Black, reminds us that Drogo has become a Thing That Comes in the Night

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When a horselord dies, his horse is slain with him, so he might ride proud into the night lands. The bodies are burned beneath the open sky, and the khal rises on his fiery steed to take his place among the stars. The more fiercely the man burned in life, the brighter his star will shine in the darkness.

(AGoT, Ch.72 Daenerys X)

Traditionally Qotho, Cohollo, and Haggo should join him, but by the way they acted on their last day it seems they had other plans, that didn't involve them dying or escorting Dany to Vaes Dothrak.

So it is not his bloodriders, but Drogo's son Rhaego that becomes a Thing That Came in the Night

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The sun had set. Fires burned throughout the khalasar, great orange blazes that crackled with fury and spit embers at the sky. She tried to rise, and agony seized her and squeezed her like a giant’s fist. The breath went out of her; it was all she could do to gasp. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur’s voice was like a funeral dirge. Inside the tent, the shadows whirled.

(AGoT, Ch.64 Daenerys VIII)

born

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“Monstrous. Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and the stink of corruption. He had been dead for years.”

(AGoT, Ch.68 Daenerys IX)

In the context of the Wall and the lands beyond, the Others are the ones we are trained up to see as the Things That Come in the Night stories. We never see them in daylight, they murder men, enslave wights, have returning millenia later. There are several ways in which they don't fit Old Nan's tale, though. They are plural, and not exceptionally large. They don't chain the wights, and (except at Crasters) don't seem to care if their slaves are skilled or unskilled, young or old, man or beast. The accounts of their appearance are fairly consistent, people are not driven mad at the sight of them, don't die months later because they saw them. The wights decay over time. The ones we have seen are, if not completely fresh, recognisably the corpses of the recently deceased, not ones that have returned from a past century. They don't show a particular affinity for the Nightfort or the indoors. They frequent other, possibly older places, like Whitetree, the hill of the Children of the Forest, the Weirwood Grove at Castle Black, Crasters Keep.

But they are the preternatural forces the reader knows exist beyond the wall, the one that informs the reader before Bran regales us with Nan's tales. They tend to be heralded audibly with a wind/tree/wolf triptych

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“Listen to the darkness.”
Will could feel it. Four years in the Night’s Watch, and he had never been so afraid. What was it?
“Wind. Trees rustling. A wolf. Which sound is it that unmans you so, Gared?”

(AGoT, Prologue)

In the Nightfort chapter, Bran too is listening for a source for his fears. He hears the wind and the tree, but the wolf is pointedly absent.

The Others are not the only characters that come in the night with the wind/tree/wolf triptych - there is Robb Stark,  the Wolf that came in the Night:

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“The Stark boy stole a march on us,” Bronn said. “He crept down the kingsroad in the night, and now his host is less than a mile north of here, forming up in battle array.”

(AGoT, Ch.62 Tyrion VIII)

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“Raid him here,” he said, pointing. “A few hundred men, no more. Tully banners. When he comes after you, we will be waiting”—his finger moved an inch to the left—“here.”
Here was a hush in the night, moonlight and shadows, a thick carpet of dead leaves underfoot, densely wooded ridges sloping gently down to the streambed, the underbrush thinning as the ground fell away

(AGoT, Ch.63 Catelyn X)

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Arya heard snatches of their talk.
“… giants I tell you, he’s got giants twenty foot tall come down from beyond the Wall, follow him like dogs …”
“… not natural, coming on them so fast, in the night and all. He’s more wolf than man, all them Starks are …”

(ACoK, Ch.38 Arya VIII)

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“How did the king ever take the Tooth?” Ser Perwyn Frey asked his bastard brother. “That’s a hard strong keep, and it commands the hill road.”
“He never took it. He slipped around it in the night. It’s said the direwolf showed him the way, that Grey Wind of his. The beast sniffed out a goat track that wound down a defile and up along beneath a ridge, a crooked and stony way, yet wide enough for men riding single file. The Lannisters in their watchtowers got not so much a glimpse of them.

”(ACoK, Ch.39 Catelyn V)

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He closed with the song he had written about Robb’s victory at Oxcross. “And the stars in the night were the eyes of his wolves, and the wind itself was their song.”

(ACoK,Ch.45 Catelyn VI)

The increasingly immortalised but still pre-constellated King in the North learns that things can Go in the Night as easily as come.

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“Near three hundred riders and twice as many mounts, melted away in the night.” Robb rubbed his temples, where the crown had left its mark in the soft skin above his ears. “All the mounted strength of Karhold, lost.”

(ASoS, Ch.20 Catelyn III)

The murder of the squires is not the only time the Karstarks play the Thing That Came in the Night. Alys comes in the night, not especially monstrous but closely followed by Cregan

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Cregan Karstark had taken to howling in the night of late, and throwing frozen feces at whoever came to feed him.

(ADwD, Ch.69 Jon XIII)

So he seems set to play a Thing that Comes in the Night in Winds of Winter. Him and the wights. Melisandre had seen the Thing that Comes in the Night for Jon was daggers. Jon's death seems more like the story of Mad Axe, or the civil war between Black Brothers that Sam read of, which are Nightfort Stories too.

Sam plays the Thing That Comes in the Night several times apart from his meeting with Bran at the Nightfort and the pink mast episode. His role as the Thing is foreshadowed at the start of his friendship with Jon, when Jon asks him to go outside with him:

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he stood up all the same, wrapped a fur-lined cloak over his shoulders, and followed Jon from the common hall, still wary, as if he suspected some cruel trick was waiting for him in the night.

(AGoT, Ch.26 Jon IV)

As proves to be the case, time and again. There is only one Samwell chapter in Storm of Swords where Sam doesn't come in the night for someone or have something come in the night for him.

In the prologue it is Chett, and white walkers.

In the first Samwell chapter, it is wights and an Other - in this chapter, he seems to be the 'prentice boys, attempting to tell his Lord Commander what the Thing that Came in the Night looked like.

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Wights all around us, he wrote, when he heard the shouts from the north face. Coming up from north and south at once. Spears and swords don’t stop them, only fire. “Loose, loose, loose,” a voice screamed in the night, and another shouted, “Bloody huge,” and a third voice said, “A giant!” and a fourth insisted, “A bear, a bear!” A horse shrieked and the hounds began to bay, and there was so much shouting that Sam couldn’t make out the voices anymore. He wrote faster, note after note. Dead wildlings, and a giant, or maybe a bear, on us, all around.

(ASoS, Ch.18 Samwell I)

In ASoS Ch.32 Samwell II, the Thing That Comes in the Night is the mutiny of the Black Brothers, the death of Craster and Lord Mormont.

In ASoS Ch.46 Samwell III, Small Paul's wight, the Others, and finally Coldhands come for Sam in the night at Whitetree.

In his last chapter in ASoS (Ch.78 Samwell V), Sam is the Thing In the Night that persuades Cotter Pyke and Ser Denys to vote for Jon. Come to think of it,  Jon was the thing in the night that put Sam into the position where he could be Maester Aemon's steward and thereby influence Pyke and Mallister, monstrous to Chett who

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 began to shut the door.
Jon jammed it open with his boot. “I need to speak to him now. The morning will be too late.”
Chett scowled. “The maester is not accustomed to being woken in the night. Do you know how old he is?”

(AGoT, Ch.41 Jon V)

Jon also has a sexual Thing that Came in the Night moment, when he first meets (and 'steals') Ygritte

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They could see the fire in the night, glimmering against the side of the mountain like a fallen star.

(ACoK, Ch.51 Jon VI)

In this instance, the Frostfangs themselves seem to have been transformed into the Thing, and there is mention of the wind and tree without the wolf, or with Jon as the wolf.

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The Frostfangs were as cruel as any place the gods had made, and as inimical to men. The wind cut like a knife up here, and shrilled in the night like a mother mourning her slain children. What few trees they saw were stunted, grotesque things growing sideways out of cracks and fissures. Tumbled shelves of rock often overhung the trail, fringed with hanging icicles that looked like long white teeth from a distance.

(ACoK, Ch.51 Jon VI)

While Robb and Jon are the Stark siblings with the most 'in the night' hits, most of the Starks have one.

For Bran, his wolf dreams and the three eyed crow are Things that Come in the Night

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Meera stepped between the wolf and her brother, spear in hand. “Keep him back, Bran.”
“Jojen is making him angry.”
Meera shook out her net.
“It’s your anger, Bran,” her brother said. “Your fear.”
“It isn’t. I’m not a wolf.” Yet he’d howled with them in the night, and tasted blood in his wolf dreams.

(ACoK, Ch.28 Bran IV)

Nymeria and her wolfpack are a Thing that Comes in the NIght, to Arya and to Septon Meribald.

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In all my years the biggest pack I ever saw had fewer than a dozen wolves in it, but the great pack that prowls along the Trident now numbers in the hundreds.”
“Have you come on them yourself?” Ser Hyle asked.
“I have been spared that, Seven save me, but I have heard them in the night, and more than once. So many voices … a sound to curdle a man’s blood.

(AFfC, Ch.25 Brienne V)

Catelyn, bearing Tyrion in metaphorical chains, is the Thing that Comes in the Night for Lysa, and she comes with Robb-like wolf/wind/tree imagery

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"She ran to the Vale, stealing away from the Red Keep like a thief in the night, and all to snatch her son out of the lion’s mouth … and now you have brought the lion to her door.”

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 The trees pressed close, leaning over the path to make a rustling green roof that shut out even the moon, so it seemed as though they were moving up a long black tunnel.

(AGoT, Ch.34 Catelyn VI)

Sandor plays the Thing that Comes in the Night for Sansa

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He squatted silently before her, a hulking black shape shrouded in the night, hidden from her eyes. Sansa could hear his ragged breathing. She was sad for him, she realized. Somehow, the fear had gone away.

(AGoT Ch.29 Sansa II)

Arya's things that come in the night have more fire images than most of the Starks. For instance, Amory Lorch

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One carried a banner on a tall lance. She thought it was red, but it was hard to tell in the night, with the fires roaring all around. Everything seemed red or black or orange

(ACoK, Ch.14 Arya IV)

While the fire imagery distinguishes Arya's things in the night from those of the other Starks, it is hard to say if that was deliberate or just part of the increase in fire images generally. The Starks, the North, the Old Ways are 'Ice' and the Dragons, the South, and the New ways are 'Fire'. As the series progresses, the Stark points of view diminish from about 70% in Game of Thrones, to about 20% of the last two books. In Storm of Swords, they are a little over half the book, and even in them there are increasing references to fire as they meet devotees of the Red God and new people generally. It's probably worth a closer look in Arya's case as she is the Stark associated with the 'prentice boy Gendry. Biter seems to have been a thing that came in the Night for him.

Sometimes the light takes the form of a lantern or torch, or the comet, but most often it is fire. The first thing my search of 'in the night' brought up after Bran met Sam in the Nightfort, was Melisandre's night fire.

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“I swear to you, Your Grace, I saw him die and heard his mother’s wail.”
“In the nightfire.” Stannis and Melisandre came through the door together. “The flames are full of tricks. What is, what will be, what may be. You cannot tell me for a certainty …”

(ASoS, Ch.63 Davos VI)

From the first, Stannis is described in sepulchral terms, with particular emphasis on the blue-black shadows of his skull-like face:"his jaw hard as stone under the blue-black shadow of his tight-cropped beard" "the bony hollows of his cheeks.His eyes were open wounds beneath his heavy brows, a blue as dark as the sea by night." "black and hard and strong, but brittle, the way iron gets."

Well, if Iron is heated and beaten, it could become steel, but for Stannis all the imagery suggests he will only become more brittle and burnt, a shadow consumed by the flame. So his choice of the Nightfort is interesting, him with his deaths-head look, his cold wife, his 'dead' daughter, his sorceress.

Given Stannis's character as a commander, he has almost certainly picked the Nightfort for more pragmatic reasons - it looks like an excellent strategic position on the map, for him to strike out from, or hunker down into. Perhaps it is the size of it that attracts him - the Shadow Tower and Castle Black are already full of Black Brothers, and none of the other forts large enough for him to keep his army all together, and rule without begging the leave of the Black Brothers.

The last King to call it home was the Nights King, but he was not the first king there, as King Sherrit shows. Bran the builder, who built the Wall and Winterfell, was the first King in the North- the preposition tacitly implies there was a King living somewhere else who regarded himself as the supreme ruler of either the North or of Brandon.  Jon Stark of White Harbour, the Karstarks, and the ancient Kings beyond the Wall  all claim Stark blood. So perhaps Winterfell, Whiteharbour, the Karhold, even possibly the Thenns, were once all scions of a centrally located ancient family of Kings of Winter, and they fragmented a larger northern realm around the place where the Nightfort is located, or expanded one.

Lord Commander Jon Snow's warning that the Nightfort was no palace, but "a fortress grim and cold." strikes me as quite fatuous. Dragonstone was palace and fortress both, and Storms End also, and Stannis prefers his palaces well fortified. There is no reason it could not have been a grim cold palace for the Kings of Winter, before the wall was built. We know it was the palace of the Night's King after - can't imagine it was comfy and warm then. At least we know Melisandre will insist on a night fire.

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She sees things in her fires.”
Arya, he thought, hoping it was so. “Ashes and cinders.”
“Kings and dragons.”
Dragons again. For a moment Jon could almost see them too, coiling in the night, their dark wings outlined against a sea of flame.

(ADwD, Ch.39 Jon VIII)

The switch from 'Ice' Things in the Night to 'Fire' Things in the Night, is more obvious in non-Stark characters, like Tyrion. Before ASoS Ch.56 Bran IV when he things about things in the night it is about wights, and the wall,

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Tyrion remembered a cold night under the stars when he’d stood beside the boy Jon Snow and a great white wolf atop the Wall at the end of the world, gazing out at the trackless dark beyond. He had felt—what?—something, to be sure, a dread that had cut like that frigid northern wind. A wolf had howled off in the night, and the sound had sent a shiver through him.
Don’t be a fool, he told himself. A wolf, a wind, a dark forest, it meant nothing. And yet …

(ACoK, Ch.25 Tyrion VI)

After Stannis sends his fleet to King's Landing, Tyrion's Things in the Night are a curious amalgam of fire and water, like King Garin

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“The men of Volantis and Valyria hung Garin in a golden cage and made mock as he called upon his Mother to destroy them. But in the night the waters rose and drowned them, and from that day to this they have not rested. They are down there still beneath the water, they who were once the lords of fire. Their cold breath rises from the murk to make these fogs, and their flesh has turned as stony as their hearts.”

(ADwD, Ch.18 Tyrion V)

and the hurricane that blew the Salesori Qhoran apart

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Some instinct made Tyrion grab hold of the nearest rail, just in time. In the space of three heartbeats the little breeze became a howling gale. Moqorro shouted something, and green flames leapt from the dragon’s maw atop his staff to vanish in the night. Then the rains came, black and blinding, and forecastle and sterncastle both vanished behind a wall of water. Something huge flapped overhead, and Tyrion glanced up in time to see the sail taking wing, with two men still dangling from the lines. Then he heard a crack. Oh, bloody hell, he had time to think, that had to be the mast.

(ADwD, Ch.40 Tyrion IX)

Victarion Greyjoy also has fire and water imagery

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“I have seen you in the nightfires, Victarion Greyjoy. You come striding through the flames stern and fierce, your great axe dripping blood, blind to the tentacles that grasp you at wrist and neck and ankle, the black strings that make you dance.”

(ADwD, Ch.56 The Iron Suitor)

Stannis should too, the Storm King with the Fire God. The thing that comes in the night with Light, and Death. But he doesn't really come up much in an 'in the night' keyword search, nor does Ramsey, nor Euron - who absolutely is a thing that comes in the night. It is a weakness of key-word searches - a character that sends off points of view, or that points of view flee from, won't be on stage a lot, and are less likely to show up in a keyword search.

The keyword search gives Sallador Saan a chance to be the Thing that Comes in the Night for "smugglers"

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I am made Lord of Blackwater Bay, and no vessel may be crossing my lordly waters without my lordly leave, no. And when these outlaws are trying to steal past me in the night to avoid my lawful duties and customs, why, they are no better than smugglers, so I am well within my rights to seize them.” The old pirate laughed.

(ASoS, Ch.10 Davos II)

Ramsey has an indirect allusion. Theon is his creature, collared and chained, who can neither speak as the victim nor bear to identify as the perpetrator of the flaying of the Ironborn at Moat Cailin.

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When he woke a dog was licking vomit from his beard, and dark clouds were scuttling across the face of a sickle moon. Somewhere in the night, men were screaming.

(ADwD, Ch.20 Reek II)

The only thing that forshadows Euron in a keyword search of 'in the night' needs quite a bit of unpacking to do so:-

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Lord Goodbrother of Great Wyk had come in the night before with his main strength, near forty longships. His men were everywhere, conspicuous in their striped goat’s hair sashes.

(ACoK, Ch.24 Theon II)

It is only at the end of the chapter that the reader learns Esgred is Asha, and the real object of Goodbrother respect. It is not until two whole books later that Gorrold Goodbrother's maester announces Euron is seated on the Seastone Chair to Aeron, who declares the Kingsmoot. Then, with Asha, we learn from Tris Botley the significance of  Urragon Goodbrother, that if Asha can get herself a good brother, she can contest the legitimacy of Euron's Kingsmoot. This excites her, but it is hard for me to understand why, unless she takes the skin that Ramsey sent her as paradoxical proof that Theon lives. She is not thinking of a brother of Eurons. All her uncles were at the Kingsmoot, and therefore bound by it to accept Euron as their legitimate king. She has fled, but she was there too.

They are not the only commanders that prefer to come in the night.

There are the Stormcrows

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“The Yunkai’i sent some hired swords to close the Khyzai Pass. The Long Lances, they name themselves. We descended on them in the night and sent a few to hell.

(ADwD, Ch.23 Daenerys IV)

the Sons of the Harpy

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My people have lost all hope and turned against the gods themselves, giving over their nights to drunkenness and fornication.”
“And murder. The Sons of the Harpy slew thirty in the night.”

(ADwD, Ch.70 The Queen's Hand)

And Cleon the butcher king, when he was alive. His envoys also come at night, with help from the Qartheen - forshadowing that Astapor will soon be ruled by slavers again.

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“They arrived in the night on the Indigo Star, a trading galley out of Qarth.”
A slaver, you mean. Dany frowned. “Who are they?”
“The Star’s master and one who claims to speak for Astapor.”
“I will see the envoy first.”
He proved to be a pale ferret-faced man with ropes of pearls and spun gold hanging heavy about his neck. “Your Worship!” he cried. “My name is Ghael. I bring greetings to the Mother of Dragons from King Cleon of Astapor, Cleon the Great.”

(ASoS, Ch.71 Daenerys VI)

King Cleon becomes a hollow knight, although then he makes his appearance shortly after dawn. Renly also became a hollow knight, and came in the night, although there was an actual living person in his armour when he made his appearance at the Battle of Blackwater, so perhaps doesn't count.

Superstitious Ser Justin Massey would blame Renly and every other things that comes in the night on Lady Melisandre's absence

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“The last time we went into battle without Lady Melisandre was the Blackwater, when Lord Renly’s shade came down upon us and drove half our host into the bay.”

(ADwD, Ch.42 The King's Prize)

even when Asha reminds him Lady Melisandre wasn't there when he came in the night to Deepwood Motte.

If I were to go out on a limb and hazard a guess what was forshadowed in the key word search of the Thing that Came in the Night, it would be that the shade of Robb and maybe of Eddard, possibly of all the dead Kings in the North will rise and fight, possibly on the side of the living,  maybe teaming up with Nymeria's wolf pack, but probably not before the day when the sun doesn't rise, and the long night begins.

That, or even vaguer guesses to do with the Clanker Lords, and scenes contrived to leave us wondering if the real monsters are the White Walkers, or the Black Brothers. 

*

The tale as Old Nan/Bran tells it, raises a lot of unanswered questions.

Did the descriptions of the Thing vary so much because fear distorted the 'prentices perception, the way Bran's perception of Sam had been? How exactly did the 'prentice boys die, and when? The one that was mad, what form did the madness take, and how much longer than a year did he remain alive? Who observed them and the Thing in the next century, and did they die or go mad? Had the Thing ever been seen since? Or before the 'prentices?

At the close of her tale, Nan groups the Thing and the apprentices in the category of ghosts, ghouls and monsters. It seems clear that the four that were known to have died a century earlier must be ghosts, and the Thing is a monster, or at least, monstrous in size. The reference to ghouls interests me. A ghoul is specifically a monster that eats the flesh of the dead, and usually inhabits places where the dead are disposed of.  Sometimes they try to entice the living into wildernesses where they will die of exposure and therefore become food for them, but mostly ghouls don't even do that. Really, quite harmless to the living. The problem seems to be for the dead that they eat - their souls can't go anywhere, or are consumed, so they stay dead. If the Thing is a ghoul, it is not too hungry. 100 years is a long time to hang your meat, but the sighting of the 'prentices behind the Thing suggests it didn't plan to eat them. None of the boys seem to have died at or even around the time they met the Thing, so how and why did the tellers of the tale make the connection between seeing the Thing and their deaths? At the time of their deaths, and 100 years later, the armoury of Nightfort where they worked was a going concern, not a burial ground.

The bit about the giants, ghosts and ghouls not being able to pass the gates as long as the wall stands and the men of the Night's watch are true is manifestly contradicted in the very tale, and nearly every other tale Nan has to tell of the Nightfort. Both sightings must have taken place after the Night's Watch took up residence, as the boys reported the Thing to their Lord Commander. Yet, clearly, the Thing could get to the armoury through the pitch black tunnels that connected the halls and the vaults (judging from the rattling chains thing, the second time they came, they were indoors, in an echoey place when they were spotted).

Clearly, the Thing is giant, if not a giant. The 'prentice boys are ghosts, Nan feels free to assert without foundation that they are ghouls, and yet there they all are on the side of the wall that the mortals are supposed to sleep soundly on.  In another part of the book, Nan phrases the ending slightly differently:

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Beyond the Wall the monsters live, the giants and the ghouls, the stalking shadows and the dead that walk, she would say, tucking him in beneath his scratchy woolen blanket, but they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong and the men of the Night’s Watch are true.

(ADwD, Ch.04 Bran I)

Stalking is an activity that predators undertake, and in Old Nan's tales, the walking dead are fed living flesh by their White Walker masters, so these seem to constitute a mortal threat rather than a mere prejudice.

Giants are clearly mortal, even human, as her own half-giant descendant would suggest (if he had a larger vocabulary). Old Nan seems to be just really racist when it comes to giants and wildlings, both of whom are demonstrably able to exist on the south side of the wall.

There isn't anything that suggests the sight of a giant would cause a person to die within the year, or go mad, or be unable to describe it consistently. Not in the lived experience of any character, and not in any of Old Nan's other stories about giants.

What the story reveals that could be plot relevant in the future, is that the tunnels of the Nightfort are large enough to accommodate a giant.

Perhaps the story Arya remembers

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about a man imprisoned in a dark castle by evil giants. He was very brave and smart and he tricked the giants and escaped … but no sooner was he outside the castle than the Others took him, and drank his hot red blood.

(ACoK, Ch.09 Arya III)

was set in the Night Fort. (And shows just how smart you need to be to trick giants.)

Interestingly, while Bran was upset about sleeping by the well,  he was quite unconcerned about hell hounds. The well in the Nightfort seems to be a pretty good fit for the Steps to Hell that Old Nan had told Arya about

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she saw that she stood at the top of a great black well, a shaft twenty feet across plunging deep into the earth. Huge stones had been set into the curving walls as steps, circling down and down, dark as the steps to hell that Old Nan used to tell them of. And something was coming up out of the darkness, out of the bowels of the earth

(AGoT, Ch.32 Arya III)

In Arya's case, it was Varys and Illyrio, and fearlessness is her fault, not Brans. But if there was a place in the Night-fort for Symeon Star-Eyes to watch hell-hounds fight, it would be by the well of the kitchen. Presumably he did that before he lost his sight, and the hell-hounds were not giant white spiders, just bad-tempered dogs.

Or perhaps giant white spiders are mere mortals too. Or the men of the Watch are not true. Looking at all Old Nan's Night fort stories, the place sees to be pullulating with the sort of supernatural vermin the gate was supposed to keep at bay - the Corpse Queen and the Night King, for example, had no difficulty holding the Night's Fort with sorcery for thirteen years. The Gods themselves contrived to keep the Rat Cook running about the place.

The Lord Commander who sealed the cryogenic fate of the 79 sentinels must have known he was trapping a ghostly host in the wall (which did not reject them, as it did Jarl). Perhaps even Coldhands could have got through the black gate, but his knees were not up to the steps, or he didn't want to leave the elk, or get it up the steps and down again. That the approach to the black gate might also have been known as the steps to hell, is interesting. It suggests there was something hellish, like a war, going on on the other side of the gate. 

I'm guessing the Thing is an older story than that of Danny Flint, or the Sentinels, because the latter name Flints and Ryswells, Lannisters and Arryns as established noble families, while the Thing and the Lord Commander and the 'prentice boys are unnamed - indicating their names meant nothing or were of no account to the Flints, Ryswells, Lannisters and Arryns. Mad Axe might be of the same vintage - there seems to be some doubt about which noble family owned him. It is possible the Rat Cook and King Sherrit were the same person (or in league with each other) - as it was an Andal King that ate the pie of one and was cursed by the other.

The chains on the 'prentices implies it is a story about slavery. An apprenticeship is a form of bonded labour, and has been used historically to disguise chattel slavery or slow down abolition when slavery became illegal (eg. chimney sweeps and workhouse apprenticeships in the late Georgian era (1775-1830); and the 'apprenticeship' system introduced into the West Indian colonies as a transition arrangement when slavery was technically abolished in 1833, giving the former owners their slaves as indentured apprentices for the next fifteen years, and the 'freed' slaves no more choice in the matter than they had had before the abolition). So maybe this was a cautionary tale of the Andal era, telling of the terrible times before they brought enlightenment, the terrible treatment of the poor 'prentices in the age of Heroes that built the wall, ensnared by monsters they had hoped to protect themselves from?

Or perhaps it is an allegory put forward by worshippers of the Old Gods, about the terrible behaviour and beliefs of the Andals. The chains could be an allegory for Andal religious conversions - worshippers of the Smith wear chains with hammers on them around their necks, and the seven aspects of their gods could account for the boys' mystifying accounts to their Lord Commander of the Thing, and the 'madness' of the surviving convert.

Maybe the 'prentices had been building the Nightfort itself. When Jon Snow told Stannis that the forts were mortared with the blood and bones of his Brothers, perhaps they were, literally. Harrenhal had been made with blood-magic mortar, and we know the First Men of the North were not adverse to human sacrifice. Perhaps they did not scruple to bleed their 'prentices into the mortar.

Old Nan's tales have a distinct prejudice against the Nightfort, perhaps almost as marked as her prejudice against Harrenhal and giants. It is one clue among many that make me think that she was a descendant of the builders that Good Queen Alysanne brought to the Queenscrown area to build the Kingsroad, and Deeplake, improve Queensgate, and undermine the Nightfort. Her tales about crows, even her proverb 'dark wings, dark words' suggest an attitude of contempt and hostility for crows - they are the lying birds that turn up too late to feast on the carrion.
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Spoiler

 

A Compendium of as many of Old Nan's tales as I could find, in spoilers to save space

Spoiler

1	Cruel wildlings, mothers to others
2	Wildlings slavers
3	Others
4	Kingsguard
5	The Boy Who Climed Too High
6	Lying crows
7	The Boy who hated stories
8	Bran the Builder
9	The Last Hero, The Long Night
10	The last hero
11	Dark wings dark words
12	The Steps to Hell
13	A Wizard
14	Winter town
15	Dark wings dark words
16	True hero slays (giant) monster
17	spiders and big rats in crypts
18	the others
19	the others move south in long night
20	the Karstarks
21	the skin room in the Dreadfort
22	stowaway stories
23	Symeon Star-Eyes
24	7KitN and 4Lords of Winterfell
25	CotF
26	CotF and Florian the fool
27	Wildlings
28	Stark wolfblood
29	Comet means Dragons
30	Prince who Thought he was a Dragon
31	King Harren and Aegon the Conqurer
32	Escaped Giants, et by others
33	Evil King Harron & Aegon
34	Mors Crowfood
35	Giant
36	Wildlings
37	KbtW RRdbd Hornedld G&G Joramun
38	Harren mortar human blood
39	The Giants
40	Morning ghosts returning to graves
41	Beastlings and shapechangers
42	Dagmar Cleftjaw
43	Grumkins
44	Skinchangers and wargs
45	Dragons, seamonsters, the Titan of Braavos
46	Giants in castles with huge swords, boots
47	Sleep with sword for honours sake
48	Flints - the climbing blood
49	Hodor walder
50	Old nan Never told a tale about the Tourney of Harrenhal
51	Isle Faces, green antler men
52	Gorne and Gendel
53	Wizard brings man back to life
54	Wildling raids in the Gift
55	Queenscrown causeway
56	The Ghost Castles
57	Queenscrown Good Queen Alysanne
58	Ghost Castles
59	Night Fort - 9 tales
60	Monsters giants ghouls held at bay
61	The Nights king
62	The rat cook
63	The 79 sentinels,Mad Axe  Rat Cook Thing that came in the night
64	Mad Axe
65	The Thing That Came in the Night
66	Isle of Faces, Green men
67	The Gates keep Monsters Giants Ghouls at bay
68	Grumkin artifacts
69	Titan of Braavos flesh eating giant
70	Titan of Braavos
71	Old men going hunting in winter
72	Giants ghouls stalking shades walking dead
73	Monsters cannot pass
74	The Music of the CotF
75	Grendels children
76	CotF
77	CotF taught Ravens to speak
78	There was a time when Old nan would run and tell tales (to parents, of their children)
79	The Ice Dragon
80	Giants
81	Hardhome
82	Ice Dragon

(in Sansa's point of view there is stuff she remembers from 'songs' that might really be Old Nan's stories as well.)

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1 The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and slayers and thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children... AGoTCh.01 Bran I

2Bran said. “They carry off women and sell them to the Others.”
His lord father smiled. “Old Nan has been telling you stories again AGoT Ch.01 Bran I

3 Ned saw the dread on her face. “Mance Rayder is nothing for us to fear.”
“There are darker things beyond the Wall.” She glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and red eyes, watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts.
His smile was gentle. “You listen to too many of Old Nan’s stories. The Others are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. AGoT Ch.02 Catelyn I

4 the Kingsguard. Old Nan said they were the finest swords in all the realm. There were only seven of them, and they wore white armor and had no wives or children, but lived only to serve the king. Bran knew all the stories. Their names were like music to him. Serwyn of the Mirror Shield. Ser Ryam Redwyne. Prince Aemon the Dragonknight. The twins Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk, who had died on one another’s swords hundreds of years ago, when brother fought sister in the war the singers called the Dance of the Dragons. The White Bull, Gerold Hightower. Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. Barristan the Bold.AGoT Ch.08 Bran II

5 Old Nan told him a story about a bad little boy who climbed too high and was struck down by lightning, and how afterward the crows came to peck out his eyes.AGoT Ch.08 Bran II

6 “Crows are all liars,” Old Nan agreed, from the chair where she sat doing her needlework. “I know a story about a crow.”AGoT Ch.24 Bran IV

7 “I know a story about a boy who hated stories,” Old Nan said with her stupid little smile AGoT Ch.24 Bran IV

8 “I could tell you the story about Brandon the Builder,” Old Nan said. “That was always your favorite.”
Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the Builder had raised Winterfell, and some said the Wall. Bran knew the story, but it had never been his favorite. AGoT Ch.24 Bran IV

9 Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods.”
“You mean the Others,” Bran said querulously.
“The Others,” Old Nan agreed. “Thousands and thousands of years ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard and endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles even as the swineherds in their hovels. Women smothered their children rather than see them starve, and cried, and felt their tears freeze on their cheeks.” Her voice and her needles fell silent, and she glanced up at Bran with pale, filmy eyes and asked, “So, child. This is the sort of story you like?”
“Well,” Bran said reluctantly, “yes, only …”
Old Nan nodded. “In that darkness, the Others came for the first time,” she said as her needles went click click click. “They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children.”
Her voice had dropped very low, almost to a whisper, and Bran found himself leaning forward to listen.
“Now these were the days before the Andals came, and long before the women fled across the narrow sea from the cities of the Rhoyne, and the hundred kingdoms of those times were the kingdoms of the First Men, who had taken these lands from the children of the forest. Yet here and there in the fastness of the woods the children still lived in their wooden cities and hollow hills, and the faces in the trees kept watch. So as cold and death filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in him, and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders big as hounds—” AGoT Ch.24 Bran IV

10 All Bran could think of was Old Nan’s story of the Others and the last hero, hounded through the white woods by dead men and spiders big as hounds. He was afraid for a moment, until he remembered how that story ended. “The children will help him,” he blurted, “the children of the forest!”Theon Greyjoy sniggered, and Maester Luwin said, “Bran, the children of the forest have been dead and gone for thousands of years. All that is left of them are the faces in the trees.”
“Down here, might be that’s true, Maester,” Yoren said, “but up past the Wall, who’s to say? Up there, a man can’t always tell what’s alive and what’s dead.” AGoT Ch.24 Bran IV

11 “Dark wings, dark words,” Ned murmured. It was a proverb Old Nan had taught him as a boy. AGoT Ch.25 Eddard V

12 A flickering light brushed the wall ever so faintly, and she saw that she stood at the top of a great black well, a shaft twenty feet across plunging deep into the earth. Huge stones had been set into the curving walls as steps, circling down and down, dark as the steps to hell that Old Nan used to tell them of. And something was coming up out of the darkness, out of the bowels of the earth …AGoT Ch.32 Arya III

13 “A wizard,” said Ned, unsmiling. “Did he have a long white beard and tall pointed hat speckled with stars?”
“No! It wasn’t like Old Nan’s stories. AGoT Ch.32 Arya III

14 When the snow fell and the ice winds howled down out of the north, Old Nan said, farmers left their frozen fields and distant holdfasts, loaded up their wagons, and then the winter town came alive. AGoT Ch.37 Bran V

15 Dark wings, dark words, Old Nan always said AGoT Ch.37 Bran V

16 When the Knight of Flowers had spoken up, she’d been sure she was about to see one of Old Nan’s stories come to life. Ser Gregor was the monster and Ser Loras the true hero who would slay him.AGoT Ch.44 Sansa III   

17 Sansa kept looking at the stubby little candle, anxious that it might go out. Old Nan had told her there were spiders down here, and rats as big as dogs. Robb smiled when she said that. “There are worse things than spiders and rats,” he whispered. “This is where the dead walk.” AGoT Ch.50 Arya IV

18 Blossoms of hard cracked blood decorated the mortal wounds that covered him like a rash, breast and groin and throat. Yet his eyes were still open. They stared up at the sky, blue as sapphires.
Ser Jaremy stood. “The Wildlings have axes too.”
Mormont rounded on him. “So you believe this is Mance Rayder’s work? This close to the Wall?”
“Who else, my lord?”
Jon could have told him. He knew, they all knew, yet no man of them would say the words. The Others are only a story, a tale to make children shiver. If they ever lived at all, they are gone eight thousand years. Even the thought made him feel foolish; he was a man grown now, a black brother of the Night’s Watch, not the boy who’d once sat at Old Nan’s feet with Bran and Robb and Arya.

19 Unbidden, he thought back on the tales that Old Nan used to tell them, when he was a boy at Winterfell. He could almost hear her voice again, and the click-click-click of her needles. In that darkness, the Others came riding, she used to say, dropping her voice lower and lower. Cold and dead they were, and they hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every living creature with hot blood in its veins. Holdfasts and cities and kingdoms of men all fell before them, as they moved south on pale dead horses, leading hosts of the slain. They fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children …AGoT Ch.52 Jon VII

20 The Karstarks...beneath night-black banners emblazoned with the white sunburst of their House. Old Nan said they had Stark blood in them, going back hundreds of years, but they did not look like Starks to Bran. They were big men, and fierce, faces covered with thick beards, hair worn loose past the shoulders. Their cloaks were made of skins, the pelts of bear and seal and wolf. AGoT Ch.53 Bran VI

21 all I can think of is that room they have in the Dreadfort, where the Boltons hang the skins of their enemies.”
“That’s just one of Old Nan’s stories,” Bran said. A note of doubt crept into his voice. “Isn’t it?”AGoT Ch.53 Bran VI

22 Old Nan used to tell stories of boys who stowed away on trading galleys and sailed off into all kinds of adventures. Maybe Arya could do that too. AGoT, Ch.65 Arya V

23 “There was a knight once who couldn’t see,” Bran said stubbornly, as Ser Rodrik went on below. “Old Nan told me about him. He had a long staff with blades at both ends and he could spin it in his hands and chop two men at once.”
“Symeon Star-Eyes,” Luwin said as he marked numbers in a book. “When he lost his eyes, he put star sapphires in the empty sockets, or so the singers claim. Bran, that is only a story, like the tales of Florian the Fool. A fable from the Age of Heroes.” AGoT Ch.66 Bran VII

24 He looked at the passing faces and the tales came back to him. The maester had told him the stories, and Old Nan had made them come alive. “That one is Jon Stark. When the sea raiders landed in the east, he drove them out and built the castle at White Harbor. His son was Rickard Stark, not my father’s father but another Rickard, he took the Neck away from the Marsh King and married his daughter. Theon Stark’s the real thin one with the long hair and the skinny beard. They called him the ‘Hungry Wolf,’ because he was always at war. That’s a Brandon, the tall one with the dreamy face, he was Brandon the Shipwright, because he loved the sea. His tomb is empty. He tried to sail west across the Sunset Sea and was never seen again. His son was Brandon the Burner, because he put the torch to all his father’s ships in grief. There’s Rodrik Stark, who won Bear Island in a wrestling match and gave it to the Mormonts. And that’s Torrhen Stark, the King Who Knelt. He was the last King in the North and the first Lord of Winterfell, after he yielded to Aegon the Conqueror. Oh, there, he’s Cregan Stark. He fought with Prince Aemon once, and the Dragonknight said he’d never faced a finer swordsman.” They were almost at the end now, and Bran felt a sadness creeping over him. “And there’s my grandfather, Lord Rickard, who was beheaded by Mad King Aerys. His daughter Lyanna and his son Brandon are in the tombs beside him. Not me, another Brandon, my father’s brother. They’re not supposed to have statues, that’s only for the lords and the kings, but my father loved them so much he had them done.” AGoT, Ch.66 Bran VII

25 “Old Nan says the children knew the songs of the trees, that they could fly like birds and swim like fish and talk to the animals,” Bran said. “She says that they made music so beautiful that it made you cry like a little baby just to hear it.”AGoT, Ch.66 Bran VII

26 Part of him wanted nothing so much as...to listen to Old Nan tell her tales of the children of the forest and Florian the Fool.AGoT, Ch.70 Jon IX

27 A few wore the red cloaks and mail of Lannister men-at-arms, but more were freeriders and sellswords, armored in oddments and bristling with sharp steel … and there were others, monstrous savages out of one of Old Nan’s tales, the scary ones Bran used to love. They were clad in shabby skins and boiled leather, with long hair and fierce beards. Some wore bloodstained bandages over their brows or wrapped around their hands, and others were missing eyes, ears, and fingers.
In their midst, riding on a tall red horse in a strange high saddle that cradled him back and front, was the queen’s dwarf brother Tyrion Lannister, the one they called the Imp.ACoK Ch.02 Sansa I

28 He could almost understand them … not quite, not truly, but almost … as if they were singing in a language he had once known and somehow forgotten. The Walders might be scared of them, but the Starks had wolf blood. Old Nan told him so. “Though it is stronger in some than in others,” she warned.ACoK, Ch.04 Bran I

29 “It is the sword that slays the season,” he replied, and soon after the white raven came from Oldtown bringing word of autumn, so doubtless he was right.
Though Old Nan did not think so, and she’d lived longer than any of them. “Dragons,” she said, lifting her head and sniffing. She was near blind and could not see the comet, yet she claimed she could smell it. “It be dragons, boy,” she insisted. Bran got no princes from Nan, no more than he ever had.ACoK, Ch.04 Bran I

Who are they mourning now? Had some enemy slain the King in the North, who used to be his brother Robb? Had his bastard brother Jon Snow fallen from the Wall? Had his mother died, or one of his sisters? Or was this something else, as maester and septon and Old Nan seemed to think?ACoK, Ch.04 Bran I

30 “Aerion the Monstrous?” Jon knew that name. “The Prince Who Thought He Was a Dragon” was one of Old Nan’s more gruesome tales. His little brother Bran had loved it.
“The very one, though he named himself Aerion Brightflame. One night, in his cups, he drank a jar of wildfire, after telling his friends it would transform him into a dragon, but the gods were kind and it transformed him into a corpse. ACoK, Ch.06 Jon I 

31 when at last Harrenhal stood complete, on the very day King Harren took up residence, Aegon the Conqueror had come ashore at King’s Landing.
Catelyn could remember hearing Old Nan tell the story to her own children, back at Winterfell. “And King Harren learned that thick walls and high towers are small use against dragons,” the tale always ended. “For dragons fly.”ACoK, Ch.07 Catelyn I

32 She remembered a story Old Nan had told once, about a man imprisoned in a dark castle by evil giants. He was very brave and smart and he tricked the giants and escaped … but no sooner was he outside the castle than the Others took him, and drank his hot red blood. Now she knew how he must have felt. ACoK, Ch.09 Arya III

33 Arya was remembering the stories Old Nan used to tell of Harrenhal. Evil King Harren had walled himself up inside, so Aegon unleashed his dragons and turned the castle into a pyre. Nan said that fiery spirits still haunted the blackened towers. Sometimes men went to sleep safe in their beds and were found dead in the morning, all burnt up. Arya didn’t really believe that, and anyhow it had all happened a long time ago. ACoK, Ch.14 Arya IV

34 A crow had once taken Mors for dead and pecked out his eye, so he wore a chunk of dragonglass in its stead. As Old Nan told the tale, he’d grabbed the crow in his fist and bitten its head off, so they named him Crowfood. She would never tell Bran why his gaunt brother Hother was called Whoresbane. ACoK Ch.16 Bran II

35 the tallest man Arya had ever seen, a monster from one of Old Nan’s stories. She never saw where the giant had come from. Three black dogs raced across his faded yellow surcoat, and his face looked as hard as if it had been cut from stone.ACoK, Ch.19 Arya V

36 So this is a wildling. Jon remembered Old Nan’s tales of the savage folk who drank blood from human skulls. Craster seemed to be drinking a thin yellow beer from a chipped stone cup. Perhaps he had not heard the stories. ACoK Ch.23 Jon III

37 “Wildlings have invaded the realm before.” Jon had heard the tales from Old Nan and Maester Luwin both, back at Winterfell. “Raymun Redbeard led them south in the time of my grandfather’s grandfather, and before him there was a king named Bael the Bard.”
“Aye, and long before them came the Horned Lord and the brother kings Gendel and Gorne, and in ancient days Joramun, who blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth. Each man of them broke his strength on the Wall, or was broken by the power of Winterfell on the far side …ACoK Ch.23 Jon III

38 It would be better once they got to Harrenhal, the captives told each other, but Arya was not so certain. She remembered Old Nan’s stories of the castle built on fear. Harren the Black had mixed human blood in the mortar, Nan used to say, dropping her voice so the children would need to lean close to hear, but Aegon’s dragons had roasted Harren and all his sons within their great walls of stone.ACoK Ch.26 Arya VI

39 Walls, doors, halls, steps, everything was built to an inhuman scale that made Arya remember the stories Old Nan used to tell of the giants who lived beyond the Wall. ACoK Ch.30 Arya VII

40 Storm’s End emerged like a dream of stone while wisps of pale mist raced across the field, flying from the sun on wings of wind. Morning ghosts, she had heard Old Nan call them once, spirits returning to their graves. ACoK Ch.33 Catelyn IV

41 Old Nan told scary stories of beastlings and shapechangers sometimes. In the stories they were always evil. “I’m not like that,” Bran said. “I’m not. It’s only dreams.” ACoK Ch.35 Bran V

42 Torrhen’s Square was under attack by some monstrous war chief named Dagmer Cleftjaw. Old Nan said he couldn’t be killed, that once a foe had cut his head in two with an axe, but Dagmer was so fierce he’d just pushed the two halves back together and held them until they healed up. ACoK, Ch.46 Bran VI

43 In Old Nan’s stories about men who were given magic wishes by a grumkin, you had to be especially careful with the third wish, because it was the last. ACoK, Ch.47 Arya IX

44 Skinchangers and wargs belonged in Old Nan’s stories, not in the world he had lived in all his life. ACoK, Ch.53 Jon VII

45 and see all the things in Old Nan’s stories, dragons and sea monsters and the Titan of Braavos ACoK, Ch.64 Arya X

46 In Old Nan’s stories, giants were outsized men who lived in colossal castles, fought with huge swords, and walked about in boots a boy could hide in. These were something else, more bearlike than human, and as wooly as the mammoths they rode. Seated, it was hard to say how big they truly were. Ten feet tall maybe, or twelve, Jon thought. Maybe fourteen, but no taller. Their sloping chests might have passed for those of men, but their arms hung down too far, and their lower torsos looked half again as wide as their upper. Their legs were shorter than their arms, but very thick, and they wore no boots at all; their feet were broad splayed things, hard and horny and black. Neckless, their huge heavy heads thrust forward from between their shoulder blades, and their faces were squashed and brutal. Rats’ eyes no larger than beads were almost lost within folds of horny flesh, but they snuffled constantly, smelling as much as they saw.
They’re not wearing skins, Jon realized. That’s hair. Shaggy pelts covered their bodies, thick below the waist, sparser above. The stink that came off them was choking, but perhaps that was the mammoths. And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter, and woke giants from the earth. He looked for great swords ten feet long, but saw only clubs. Most were just the limbs of dead trees, some still trailing shattered branches. A few had stone balls lashed to the ends to make colossal mauls. The song never says if the horn can put them back to sleep.ASoS Ch.15 Jon II

47 he had taken to using Ghost to keep her away. Old Nan used to tell stories about knights and their ladies who would sleep in a single bed with a blade between them for honor’s sake, but he thought this must be the first time where a direwolf took the place of the sword.ASoS Ch.15 Jon II

48 His father’s mother’s mother had been a Flint of the mountains. Old Nan once said that it was her blood in him that made Bran such a fool for climbing before his fall.ASoS Ch.24 Bran II

49 “Hodor’s not his true name,” Bran explained. “It’s just some word he says. His real name is Walder, Old Nan told me. She was his grandmother’s grandmother or something.”ASoS Ch.24 Bran II

50“You never heard this tale from your father?” asked Jojen.
“It was Old Nan who told the stories. Meera, go on, you can’t stop there.”ASoS Ch.24 Bran II

51 “Maybe he came from the Isle of Faces,” said Bran. “Was he green?” In Old Nan’s stories, the guardians had dark green skin and leaves instead of hair. Sometimes they had antlers too, but Bran didn’t see how the mystery knight could have worn a helm if he had antlers. “I bet the old gods sent him.”ASoS Ch.24 Bran II

52 “Gorne,” said Jon. “Gorne was King-beyond-the-Wall.”
“Aye,” said Ygritte. “Together with his brother Gendel, three thousand years ago. They led a host o’ free folk through the caves, and the Watch was none the wiser. But when they come out, the wolves o’ Winterfell fell upon them.”
“There was a battle,” Jon recalled. “Gorne slew the King in the North, but his son picked up his banner and took the crown from his head, and cut down Gorne in turn.”
“And the sound o’ swords woke the crows in their castles, and they rode out all in black to take the free folk in the rear.”
“Yes. Gendel had the king to the south, the Umbers to the east, and the Watch to the north of him. He died as well.”
“You know nothing, Jon Snow. Gendel did not die. He cut his way free, through the crows, and led his people back north with the wolves howling at their heels. Only Gendel did not know the caves as Gorne had, and took a wrong turn.” She swept the torch back and forth, so the shadows jumped and moved. “Deeper he went, and deeper, and when he tried t’ turn back the ways that seemed familiar ended in stone rather than sky. Soon his torches began t’ fail, one by one, till finally there was naught but dark. Gendel’s folk were never seen again, but on a still night you can hear their children’s children’s children sobbing under the hills, still looking for the way back up. Listen? Do you hear them?”
All Jon could hear was the falling water and the faint crackle of flames. “This way under the Wall was lost as well?”
“Some have searched for it. Them that go too deep find Gendel’s children, and Gendel’s children are always hungry.” Smiling, she set the torch carefully in a notch of rock, and came toward him. “There’s naught to eat in the dark but flesh,” she whispered, biting at his neck.
Jon nuzzled her hair and filled his nose with the smell of her. “You sound like Old Nan, telling Bran a monster story.” ASoS Ch.26 Jon III

53 Arya stared at the Myrish priest, all shaggy hair and pink rags and bits of old armor. Grey stubble covered his cheeks and the sagging skin beneath his chin. He did not look much like the wizards in Old Nan’s stories, but even so …
“Could you bring back a man without a head?” Arya asked. “Just the once, not six times. Could you?” ASoS, Ch.39 Arya VII

54 "Where are the people, Bran? Why would they leave such a place?”
“They were afraid of the wildlings,” said Bran. “Wildlings come over the Wall or through the mountains, to raid and steal and carry off women. If they catch you, they make your skull into a cup to drink blood, Old Nan used to say. The Night’s Watch isn’t so strong as it was in Brandon’s day or Queen Alysanne’s, so more get through. The places nearest the Wall got raided so much the smallfolk moved south, into the mountains or onto the Umber lands east of the kingsroad. The Greatjon’s people get raided too, but not so much as the people who used to live in the Gift.”ASoS Ch.40 Bran III

55 “There’s no roof on the inn and only the two walls,” he pointed out. “We should go out to the holdfast.”
“Hodor,” said Hodor. Maybe he agreed.
“We have no boat, Bran.” Meera poked through the leaves idly with her frog spear.
“There’s a causeway. A stone causeway, hidden under the water. We could walk out.” They could, anyway; he would have to ride on Hodor’s back, but at least he’d stay dry that way.
The Reeds exchanged a look. “How do you know that?” asked Jojen. “Have you been here before, my prince?”
“No. Old Nan told me. The holdfast has a golden crown, see?” He pointed across the lake. You could see patches of flaking gold paint up around the crenellations. “Queen Alysanne slept there, so they painted the merlons gold in her honor.”
“A causeway?” Jojen studied the lake. “You are certain?”
“Certain,” said Bran. ASoS Ch.40 Bran III

56 “There are abandoned castles along the Wall, I’ve heard,” Jojen answered. “Fortresses built by the Night’s Watch but now left empty. One of them may give us our way through.”
The ghost castles, Old Nan had called them.ASoS Ch.40 Bran III

57“A queen lived there?” asked Ygritte.
“A queen stayed there for a night.” Old Nan had told him the story, but Maester Luwin had confirmed most of it. “Alysanne, the wife of King Jaehaerys the Conciliator. He’s called the Old King because he reigned so long, but he was young when he first came to the Iron Throne. In those days, it was his wont to travel all over the realm. When he came to Winterfell, he brought his queen, six dragons, and half his court. The king had matters to discuss with his Warden of the North, and Alysanne grew bored, so she mounted her dragon Silverwing and flew north to see the Wall. This village was one of the places where she stopped. Afterward the smallfolk painted the top of their holdfast to look like the golden crown she’d worn when she spent the night among them.”
“I have never seen a dragon.”
“No one has. The last dragons died a hundred years ago or more. But this was before that.”
“Queen Alysanne, you say?”
“Good Queen Alysanne, they called her later. One of the castles on the Wall was named for her as well. Queensgate. Before her visit they called it Snowgate.”
“If she was so good, she should have torn that Wall down.”
No, he thought. The Wall protects the realm. From the Others … and from you and your kind as well, sweetling.ASoS Ch.41 Jon V

58 Arya gazed up at the Twins, their high tower windows glowing softly wherever a light was burning. Through the haze of rain, the castles looked spooky and mysterious, like something from one of Old Nan’s tales, but they weren’t Winterfell.ASoS Ch.50 Arya X

59 The Nightfort had figured in some of Old Nan’s scariest stories. It was here that Night’s King had reigned, before his name was wiped from the memory of man. This was where the Rat Cook had served the Andal king his prince-and-bacon pie, where the seventy-nine sentinels stood their watch, where brave young Danny Flint had been raped and murdered. This was the castle where King Sherrit had called down his curse on the Andals of old, where the ’prentice boys had faced the thing that came in the night, where blind Symeon Star-Eyes had seen the hellhounds fighting. Mad Axe had once walked these yards and climbed these towers, butchering his brothers in the dark.ASoS Ch.56 Bran IV

 60 The Wall could look like stone, all grey and pitted, but then the clouds would break and the sun would hit it differently, and all at once it would transform, and stand there white and blue and glittering. It was the end of the world, Old Nan always said. On the other side were monsters and giants and ghouls, but they could not pass so long as the Wall stood strong.ASoS Ch.56 Bran IV

61 The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another of Old Nan’s stories, the tale of Night’s King. He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night’s Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. “And that was the fault in him,” she would add, “for all men must know fear.” A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.
He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night’s King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night’s King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.
“Some say he was a Bolton,” Old Nan would always end. “Some say a Magnar out of Skagos, some say Umber, Flint, or Norrey. Some would have you think he was a Woodfoot, from them who ruled Bear Island before the ironmen came. He never was. He was a Stark, the brother of the man who brought him down.” She always pinched Bran on the nose then, he would never forget it. “He was a Stark of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his name was Brandon. Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very room.”
No, Bran thought, but he walked in this castle, where we’ll sleep tonight. He did not like that notion very much at all. Night’s King was only a man by light of day, Old Nan would always say, but the night was his to rule. And it’s getting dark.ASoS Ch.56 Bran IV

62 The Rat Cook had cooked the son of the Andal king in a big pie with onions, carrots, mushrooms, lots of pepper and salt, a rasher of bacon, and a dark red Dornish wine. Then he served him to his father, who praised the taste and had a second slice. Afterward the gods transformed the cook into a monstrous white rat who could only eat his own young. He had roamed the Nightfort ever since, devouring his children, but still his hunger was not sated. “It was not for murder that the gods cursed him,” Old Nan said, “nor for serving the Andal king his son in a pie. A man has a right to vengeance. But he slew a guest beneath his roof, and that the gods cannot forgive.”ASoS Ch.56 Bran IV

63 Outside the wind was sending armies of dead leaves marching across the courtyards to scratch faintly at the doors and windows. The sounds made him think of Old Nan’s stories. He could almost hear the ghostly sentinels calling to each other atop the Wall and winding their ghostly warhorns. Pale moonlight slanted down through the hole in the dome, painting the branches of the weirwood as they strained up toward the roof. It looked as if the tree was trying to catch the moon and drag it down into the well. Old gods, Bran prayed, if you hear me, don’t send a dream tonight. Or if you do, make it a good dream. The gods made no answer.
Bran made himself close his eyes. Maybe he even slept some, or maybe he was just drowsing, floating the way you do when you are half awake and half asleep, trying not to think about Mad Axe or the Rat Cook or the thing that came in the night.ASoS Ch.56 Bran IV

 64 Footsteps. Someone was coming this way. Something was coming this way.
It wasn’t the sentinels, he knew. The sentinels never left the Wall. But there might be other ghosts in the Nightfort, ones even more terrible. He remembered what Old Nan had said of Mad Axe, how he took his boots off and prowled the castle halls barefoot in the dark, with never a sound to tell you where he was except for the drops of blood that fell from his axe and his elbows and the end of his wet red beard. Or maybe it wasn’t Mad Axe at all, maybe it was the thing that came in the night. The ’prentice boys all saw it, Old Nan said, but afterward when they told their Lord Commander every description had been different. And three died within the year, and the fourth went mad, and a hundred years later when the thing had come again, the ’prentice boys were seen shambling along behind it, all in chains.ASoS Ch.56 Bran IV

65 It must be huge. Mad Axe had been a big man in Old Nan’s story, and the thing that came in the night had been monstrous.ASoS Ch.56 Bran IV

66 “Was he green?” Bran wanted to know. “Did he have antlers?”
The fat man was confused. “The elk?”
“Coldhands,” said Bran impatiently. “The green men ride on elks, Old Nan used to say. Sometimes they have antlers too.”
“He wasn’t a green man. He wore blacks, like a brother of the Watch ASoS Ch.56 Bran IV

67 Beyond the gates the monsters live, and the giants and the ghouls, he remembered Old Nan saying, but they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong. So go to sleep, my little Brandon, my baby boy. You needn’t fear. There are no monsters here.ASoS Ch.56 Bran IV

68 In Old Nan’s stories the grumkins crafted magic things that could make a wish come true. Did I wish him dead? she wondered ASoS Ch.61 Sansa V

69 The Titan of Braavos. Old Nan had told them stories of the Titan back in Winterfell. He was a giant as tall as a mountain, and whenever Braavos stood in danger he would wake with fire in his eyes, his rocky limbs grinding and groaning as he waded out into the sea to smash the enemies. “The Braavosi feed him on the juicy pink flesh of little highborn girls,” Nan would end, and Sansa would give a stupid squeak. But Maester Luwin said the Titan was only a statue, and Old Nan’s stories were only stories. AFfC Ch.06 Arya I

70“The Braavosi feed him on the juicy pink flesh of little highborn girls,” she heard Old Nan say again, but she was not a little girl, and she would not be frightened of a stupid statue.
Even so, she kept one hand on Needle as they slipped between his legs. More arrow slits dotted the insides of those great stone thighs, and when Arya craned her neck around to watch the crow’s nest slip through with a good ten yards to spare, she spied murder holes beneath the Titan’s armored skirts, and pale faces staring down at them from behind the iron bars.
And then they were past.AFfC Ch.06 Arya I

71 She remembered a tale she had heard from Old Nan, about how sometimes during a long winter men who’d lived beyond their years would announce that they were going hunting. And their daughters would weep and their sons would turn their faces to the fire, she could hear Old Nan saying, but no one would stop them, or ask what game they meant to hunt, with the snows so deep and the cold wind howling.AFfC Ch.22 Arya II

72 Bran found himself remembering the tales Old Nan had told him when he was a babe. Beyond the Wall the monsters live, the giants and the ghouls, the stalking shadows and the dead that walk, she would say, tucking him in beneath his scratchy woolen blanket, but they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong and the men of the Night’s Watch are true. So go to sleep, my little Brandon, my baby boy, and dream sweet dreams. There are no monsters here.ADwD Ch.04 Bran I

73 “He’s dead.” Bran could taste the bile in his throat. “Meera, he’s some dead thing. The monsters cannot pass so long as the Wall stands and the men of the Night’s Watch stay true, that’s what Old Nan used to say. He came to meet us at the Wall, but he could not pass. He sent Sam instead, with that wildling girl.”ADwD Ch.04 Bran I

74 That was not Arya’s voice, nor any child’s. It was a woman’s voice, high and sweet, with a strange music in it like none that he had ever heard and a sadness that he thought might break his heart. Bran squinted, to see her better. It was a girl, but smaller than Arya, her skin dappled like a doe’s beneath a cloak of leaves. Her eyes were queer—large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat’s eyes. No one has eyes like that. Her hair was a tangle of brown and red and gold, autumn colors, with vines and twigs and withered flowers woven through it.
“Who are you?” Meera Reed was asking.
Bran knew. “She’s a child. A child of the forest.” He shivered, as much from wonderment as cold. They had fallen into one of Old Nan’s tales.ADwD Ch.13 Bran II

75 There were more side passages after that, more chambers, and Bran heard dripping water somewhere to his right. When he looked off that way, he saw eyes looking back at them, slitted eyes that glowed bright, reflecting back the torchlight. More children, he told himself, the girl is not the only one, but Old Nan’s tale of Gendel’s children came back to him as well.ADwD Ch.13 Bran II

76 Sometimes the sound of song would drift up from someplace far below. The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves ADwD Ch.33 Bran III

77 “Do all the birds have singers in them?”
“All,” Lord Brynden said. “It was the singers who taught the First Men to send messages by raven … but in those days, the birds would speak the words. The trees remember, but men forget, and so now they write the messages on parchment and tie them round the feet of birds who have never shared their skin.”
Old Nan had told him the same story once, Bran remembered, but when he asked Robb if it was true, his brother laughed and asked him if he believed in grumkins too. ADwD Ch.33 Bran III

78 If the girl was Arya, the boy was Bran himself, and he had never worn his hair so long. And Arya never beat me playing swords, the way that girl is beating him. She slashed the boy across his thigh, so hard that his leg went out from under him and he fell into the pool and began to splash and shout. “You be quiet, stupid,” the girl said, tossing her own branch aside. “It’s just water. Do you want Old Nan to hear and run tell Father?”ADwD Ch.33 Bran III

79The wind was gusting, cold as the breath of the ice dragon in the tales Old Nan had told when Jon was a boy. ADwD Ch.35 Jon VII

80 Wun Wun was very little like the giants in Old Nan’s tales, those huge savage creatures who mixed blood into their morning porridge and devoured whole bulls, hair and hide and horns. This giant ate no meat at all, though he was a holy terror when served a basket of roots, crunching onions and turnips and even raw hard neeps between his big square teeth. “He’s a willing worker, though getting him to understand what you want is not always easy. He speaks the Old Tongue after a fashion, but nothing of the Common. Tireless, though, and his strength is prodigious. He could do the work of a dozen men.”ADwD Ch.39 Jon VIII

81 Hardhome. An old ruined place, accursed.” Old Nan had told her tales of Hardhome, back at Winterfell ADwD Ch.45 The Blind Girl

82 the wind was blowing from the east along the Wall, cold as the breath of the ice dragon in the tales Old Nan used to tell. ADwD Ch.49 Jon X

83 “The storm will end today,” one of the surviving stableboys was insisting loudly. “Why, it isn’t even winter.” Theon would have laughed if he had dared. He remembered tales Old Nan had told them of storms that raged for forty days and forty nights, for a year, for ten years … storms that buried castles and cities and whole kingdoms under a hundred feet of snow.ADwD Ch.51 Theon I

 

TL;DR Discusses the Thing in the context of a keyword search of 'in the night' and of Old Nan's tales.

[Lost Melnibonean]

2 hours ago, LiveFirstDieLater said:

I’ll be the bear instead...

Bloodraven did his share of kinslaying, 

The Raven's Teeth ultimately gained the Weeping Ridge, and rained arrows down onto Daemon Blackfyre from three hundred yards away, killing Daemon and his twin sons.^[7] For this people would name Brynden a kinslayer.

Aenys Blackfyre wanted to peacefully participate in the Great Council, and Bloodraven offered him safe conduct to King's Landing from Tyrosh. Once Aenys arrived in the capital, however, he was arrested by the gold cloaks and then beheaded in the Red Keep.^[3]

The Great Council chose Maekar's son to succeed as King Aegon V Targaryen, whose first act was to arrest Bloodraven for the murder of Aenys.

Aenys, he offered safe passage and then executed him... Egg convicted him... and I trust egg like I do few characters.

I don’t think he killed any kin at Whitewalls, though he exemplifies the opposite of Ned’s “the man who casts the sentence should swing the sword” by casually ticking off names of who would be killed.

We don’t have all the details, but the broad strokes seem pretty clear, and Egg being the one to pass judgement makes it pretty clear to me.

We know he swore a vow to the nights watch...

We know he served 13 years.

We know he’s still alive.

And we know he says he was “once” a man of the nights watch, implying he is no longer.

He abandoned his oath.

I’m not saying it’s totally impossible that there was some valid extenuating circumstances... but I have to work with what we do know.

I think it’s actually pretty just.

And I’ll add the other crimes I missed:

Incest- seastar

Slavery - I can’t prove this one yet, but I find the “ravens teeth” to be highly suspect...

Clever. Yeap, no doubt about it, that Bloodraven is as shady as they come. But I am not sure he is a true villain. I think he's more of a very, very anti-hero. 

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

3 hours ago, Megorova said:

We don't know when exactly was that "long ago", about which Leaf was saying. Maybe she meant it in a sense, that he's long dead. He's dead, and have been dead for some time, and thus it doesn't matter if they will leave him up there alone. Wights can't kill him or harm him, because he's already dead. And the Children do have long lifespan, which doesn't mean, that they are unable to perceive time same as humans. So when she was saying that he is long dead, she meant it not in a sense that by her perception lots of time passed, but that from his side, he's been dead for quite some time. It's like spoiled food in a freezer, when somebody says that it was laying there for ages, it doesn't actually mean in terms of centuries, actually it was there for a long time, but only by terms of expiration date of that food. So Coldhands is like spoiled food. Or something like that  

We'll have to wait, until he will show his face, or in some other manner reveal his identity, by saying or doing something. So until then, I'll think that he is/was Benjen Stark.

CoTF don't have any concept of food expiry dates. and Coldhands isn't a packet of ham. 

This argument has been attempted before and in 7 years since I read the books and got into the fandom it has not persuaded me once. People talk from their own perspective unless actively attempting to put themselves into another persons shoes. 

Couple it with that emphatic NO from GRRM, given in a situation in which he expected complete confidentiality. 

Just no. No way is Benjen Coldhands. 

[LiveFirstDieLater]

55 minutes ago, Megorova said:

For Targaryens incest isn't a crime. Furthermore even in our world, brother X sister was acceptable before. 

It’s still a crime to the old gods...

55 minutes ago, Megorova said:

Sibling marriages were widespread amongst all classes in Egypt, during the Graeco-Roman period. Egyptian pharaon Tutankhamun married his half-sister Ankhesenamun. His father Akhenaten and his mother, were also half-siblings. Cleopatra V was married with her brother Ptolemy XII. Their own children Cleopatra VII and her younger brother Ptolemy XIII, also got married. Biblical Cain married his sister Awan. There were brother-sister marriages mentioned in Northern mythology - parents of gods Freyja and Freyr were brother and sister. Etc.

Old Gods and the Seven don't allow marriages between siblings, but Valyrians were atheists, so they didn't cared what some alien gods allowed or forbade.

I’m not casting moral judgement, at the moment, I’m just pointing out that we are given a list of crimes against the old gods, and incest is one of them.

55 minutes ago, Megorova said:

But we don't know how he got from there (member of Night's Watch, who dutifully served at The Wall for 13 years), to here (greenseer of the Children, binded by weirwood to that cave).

Like I said, it’s not impossible he has a good excuse, maybe he was resurrected and having died was free of his vows, but we have not been provided any excuse yet.

55 minutes ago, Megorova said:

This one is just Bloodraven was a very charismatic person, so of course he had devoted followers, that swore to serve to him for life. They were loyal to him, and chose to stay with him, even when he was sent to The Wall.

I can’t tell if this is sarcastic? Is there any other example of a large number of followers taking the black with a guy who is being sent to the wall for a crime? It’s weird...

55 minutes ago, Megorova said:

He was also no longer Brynden Rivers. That and not being a watcher anymore, could actually mean, that he is no longer who he was, because after he was connecter to the Weirwood, it consumed nearly entirely his soul, mind and personality. So it's not that he broke his vow, he is just not himself anymore.

I guess it’s possible, but I’m not sure what you are basing this on...

55 minutes ago, Megorova said:

Also the vow of Watchers is to protect realm of men from the Others, so Bloodraven is still protecting the living from the dead. Though now he does it with knowledge, not with a sword. (That's if I'm wrong about the Children and the Others being parts of the same ecosystem, in which they are co-dependant from each other, and thus upcoming Long Night could be Children's and partially Bloodraven's fault.)

I have no idea what you are talking about with this Watchers stuff... or why you think Bloodraven is shielding the realms of men. He’s no longer a member of the Nights Watch.

Nights Watchmen swear to serve for this night and all nights to come.

[Lost Melnibonean]

40 minutes ago, The Weirwoods Eyes said:

CoTF don't have any concept of food expiry dates. and Coldhands isn't a packet of ham. 

This argument has been attempted before and in 7 years since I read the books and got into the fandom it has not persuaded me once. People talk from their own perspective unless actively attempting to put themselves into another persons shoes. 

Couple it with that emphatic NO from GRRM, given in a situation in which he expected complete confidentiality. 

Just no. No way is Benjen Coldhands. 

You're right of course, but where the f#@& is Benjen? And why the f#@& does the author keep asking us? It's drives me nuts!