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Heresy 209 Of Ice and of Fire


Black Crow

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3 hours ago, SirArthur said:

I was very sure about the shadow comparison until I really thought about the next step yesterday. In my opinion it would not be the search for a motive, but rather the search for more knowledge through easy answerable questions first. And that brought me to LC 13, the Night's King, and his pale woman. Many have speculated she is an Other. My question would be, what Lady 13 is or was, when she really was an Other (within the shadow context). 

I would say that she wasn't. The Others or rather the White Walkers we have encountered are white shadows who can take corporeal form using ice crystals bound together by magic. They may look ethereally beautiful but that really isn't consistent with settling down to rule as queen.

The World Book prosaically suggests that the corpse queen reference suggests she was one of the barrowlords, renowned for practising necromancy, but that while plausible would founder on their being situated south of the Wall. I'd be more inclined to see here as an equivalent of Mel, a witch with the power to create shadows - which is why Val needs watching

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13 hours ago, JNR said:

Well, you don't have to do any math to see, with certainty, that the Popsicles were encountered at an extreme northern point on the map.  GRRM knew what he was doing when he said the Watch rode nine days and specified north by northwest.

While we have come to mostly similar conclusions - the Others have only returned relatively recently, the Others weren't the initial reason that Mance became a King-beyond-the-Wall contender, the Watch has no idea what is going on - but with different perceptions underlying those conclusions. 

With that in mind, I'll give my thought process here, not as some kind of counterpoint/disagreement, but just to articulate the way I perceive the size of the far north, as well as the circumstances surrounding the Watch's (and the Free Folk's) ignorance and why I don't take it as a given that the Prologue attack needs to be at the extreme north, why I'd assumed a different authorial intent to the attack.

Based on the map in ADWD and the maps in The Lands of Ice and Fire - a project which GRRM has candidly admitted was supposed to be an easy cash grab, and instead he became absorbed in the process of trying to get the terrain right, to the detriment of TWOW's progress -, if the Wall is 300 miles long, Thenn and the upper borders of the Haunted Forest are in the neighborhood of 600 miles north of the Wall, with the stretches of wildling occupied land between the Frostfangs and the Shivering Sea being comparable in length to the Wall.

...err, the point being that my perception of the Prologue is not that we're seeing people push to the far north, only to find themselves among the earliest causalities of the Other invasion--I take the attack as an indication of how far the Others have expanded their sphere of influence, and that the Watch has no idea what is happening under its nose because of how poor relations are between the Watch and the Free Folk, and how understaffed the Watch is in relation to the size of the north. I read the intent here as establishing that, from the outset, the Watch cannot fulfill its duty, and things only get worse from there.

As an additional variable, how did the attacks of the Others begin? As a proper invasion, with frontal assaults, or as a period of unexplained disappearances - a hunter disappears here, a small raiding party goes missing there - with the Others slowly acquiring wights until they could employ more direct tactics? If its the latter, it alters the potential of the timeline that is in play--in addition to other factors, such as the Thenns, cave dwellers, and giants having a degree of isolation in culture, language, and geography. IMO, it wasn't just the Watch that was slow to catch on to what was happening.

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This might qualify as Heresy-adjacent, given the subject matter

One of the GoT spin-off shows is going to be set during the Age of Heroes/Long Night:

http://ew.com/tv/2018/06/08/game-thrones-prequel-jane-goldman/

 

Quote

The network has released an official description of the show’s storyline, and it’s another tale spread across multiple locations and clans: Taking place thousands of years before the events of Game of Thrones, the series chronicles the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour. And only one thing is for sure: From the horrifying secrets of Westeros’ history to the true origin of the white walkers, the mysteries of the East, to the Starks of legend… it’s not the story we think we know.”

According to Martin’s books, the Age of Heroes began 10,000 years before the events in GoT. Some of the major names which could be characters in the new show include Bran the Builder (who founded House Stark and oversaw construction of The Wall and Winterfell) and Lann the Clever (who founded House Lannister). The era led into the Long Night — a winter that lasted a generation — and the greatest war against the white walkers. Then again, that’s what we think we know, and the logline for the new show says this is “not the story we think we know.”

The "it's not the story we think we know" stuff is eye-roll worthy, but D&D aren't involved, so maybe it'll be good :dunno:

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10 hours ago, Matthew. said:

This might qualify as Heresy-adjacent, given the subject matter

One of the GoT spin-off shows is going to be set during the Age of Heroes/Long Night:

http://ew.com/tv/2018/06/08/game-thrones-prequel-jane-goldman/

 

The "it's not the story we think we know" stuff is eye-roll worthy, but D&D aren't involved, so maybe it'll be good :dunno:

Well who knows. Given that whatever our differences we miserable heretics don't generally subscribe to "the story we think we know" it could be a blast.

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12 hours ago, Matthew. said:

This might qualify as Heresy-adjacent, given the subject matter

One of the GoT spin-off shows is going to be set during the Age of Heroes/Long Night:

http://ew.com/tv/2018/06/08/game-thrones-prequel-jane-goldman/

 

The "it's not the story we think we know" stuff is eye-roll worthy, but D&D aren't involved, so maybe it'll be good :dunno:

It could be good, but the description makes it sounds like the Westeros version of "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys"

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I want to believe, but I do not know what I want to believe in. It would make a lot more sense for the show director and producer to rely on the end of the book show. And drop known names everywhere. My worst fear is a bunch of Andals, Lannisters and Tyrells running around in features they only have millennia later. 

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21 hours ago, Matthew. said:

the maps in The Lands of Ice and Fire - a project which GRRM has candidly admitted was supposed to be an easy cash grab

That sounds interesting.  Link?

21 hours ago, Matthew. said:

the point being that my perception of the Prologue is not that we're seeing people push to the far north, only to find themselves among the earliest causalities of the Other invasion--I take the attack as an indication of how far the Others have expanded their sphere of influence

That's exactly the idea I'm putting out there too... though I'm getting more specific that the Popsicles are moving south, from the far north, whereas I'm not clear that's what you mean.  And there is a sound logical reason why they're doing this now, and never did it before (since the Long Night).

17 hours ago, Matthew. said:

And only one thing is for sure: From the horrifying secrets of Westeros’ history to the true origin of the white walkers, the mysteries of the East, to the Starks of legend… it’s not the story we think we know.

Well, if that's a pitch for a new project, then it apparently suggests that an earlier project known to us all got it completely wrong on the subject of the "true origin of the white walkers."

What an interesting and completely novel idea that is.  Who could ever have seen that coming?

:laugh:

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1 hour ago, Black Crow said:

at least we won't have to puzzle over R+L=J or be assured that its the central mystery around which everything revolves

Amen.  

Though I hope, and expect, that GRRM will be putting this failed concept out of its misery with TWOW before such a show ever airs.

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2 hours ago, JNR said:

That sounds interesting.  Link?


It also firmly puts to rest the notion that any of that Empire of the Dawn/Color Emperors business is a part of some deeply embedded world lore that was present from the outset, though for anyone who has listened to GRRM talk about his worldbuilding (and that he takes pretty much the opposite approach to Tolkien on that front), it'll just be confirming what was already suspected.
 

2 hours ago, JNR said:

That's exactly the idea I'm putting out there too... though I'm getting more specific that the Popsicles are moving south, from the far north, whereas I'm not clear that's what you mean.

I was taking into account some of the prior posts on the topic--for example, how long the wildlings were fighting the Others before the prologue, as well as where the prologue attack might have taken place, and the significance (if any) as to how far north the attack occurred.

I'm elaborating that, from my point of view, I think it's entirely plausible to read the text and come away with the impression that unexplained disappearances, and even outright war between the giants/Thenns/ice river clans and the Others were going on for years before aGoT without the Watch being aware--furthermore, I think there's an authorial intent behind having the attack occur closer to, say, the Fist, than Thenn.

So, you might have one read that goes:

Royce and co. push hard chasing raiders, they reach the extreme northwestern margins of the Haunted Forest, and are among the earliest causalities of Long Night 2.0

...while another might go:

For an indeterminate period, the Others are adding to both their own numbers (assuming the crafting of new walkers, or new walker bodies), and picking up wights in dribs and drabs, gradually sending their new 'recruits' to the Heart of Winter to await the true assault.

Eventually, they descend on the giants in numbers. The giants, Thenns, ice river clans, and Hornfoots resist (again, for an indeterminate length of time); they progress into the Haunted Forest, and Mance is going to take a stab at standing against the Others; some Free Folk choose to fight with Mance, while others (like Osha and the wildlings that run into Bran) choose to flee.

Royce and co. run into the Others midway through the Haunted Forest, a type of attack that - unbeknownst to the Watch - has become common for the wildlings--reflecting the Watch's ignorance, their failure to establish a healthy relationship with the Free Folk, and how catastrophically unprepared the Night Watch is to fulfill its true role.

____

Again, I'm not attempting to advocate for a "correct" interpretation, I'm actually laying out that certain things that might feel intuitively true are actually open questions, and the fact that we can't definitively lay down an irrefutable timeline for Mance's desertion, assent, his unifying of the wildlings, and how that relates chronologically to the return of the Others (and, in turn, how long the Others have been "back" vs. how long they've been openly attacking people and raising the dead) reflects the potential for revelation on all of those fronts.

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I would outright reject version 1 and also version 2 has it's problems. Both have the Craster problem. Craster has been sacrificing newborn boys to the white gods according to Gilly. And of late they come more often according to Nella, who had 6 boys. 

Unless of course we have two different "tribes" of Others, the elapsed time is more than one or two years and may even go into Westeros summer, which may be a regular winter north of the Wall. (else there would be up to 9 year old boys at Craster's). Craster even marries all his daughters in summer, which may also hint to regular winters north of Wall.

What I imagine with all of this are regular winter visits from "Craster's boys" for at least a decade, more likely for one or two generations. I wouldn't call this suddenly and I wouldn't call the Watch very observative, as Craster definitly counts to the "friends" the Watch has north of the Wall. 

So in my imagination the younger generation of rangers is not very observative and the old generation around Bloodraven and Aemon hid something or at least did not tell everything there is.

To sum it up, the Watch, in my imagination, is more concerned with protecting the Wall and southern politics than with scouting north of the Wall. Which is btw. not the main duty of the rangers. The ranger's duty is to defend and protect the Wall. This is all very inconsistent from the very beginning: an understuffed military order harasses raiders far into the north through unfriendly territory during cold weather with their last friend days away at Craster's. I imagine GRRM considers beyond the wall a very sparsely populated area which makes Mance's army the more impressive. 

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1 hour ago, SirArthur said:

I would outright reject version 1 and also version 2 has it's problems. Both have the Craster problem. Craster has been sacrificing newborn boys to the white gods according to Gilly. And of late they come more often according to Nella, who had 6 boys. 

I did not intend for that to be an exhaustive list of every iteration of "what has been happening north of the Wall in the lead up to aGoT," just as two illustrations of how many "blanks" the reader must fill in, how many different things one might conclude from reading the same story.

Though, for clarity, I'm taking Craster (or any other theory of how the Others might be made, or bolster their numbers) into account when I say the Others might have been preparing for their invasion for an indeterminate period before they attacked the giants/Thenns/etc.

 

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Edit: oops, double post

Edit 2: Welp, since it's already here, and taking up space...

I'm wondering what the narrative structure of that HBO prequel series is going to be--a string of episodic vignettes, set over hundreds, or thousands of years, or as a cohesive narrative told from several view points? On the one hand, "here's the story of Lann the Clever; tune in next week for the story of Azor Ahai!" seems odd, even as a single season of television. On the other hand, telling some version of ancient history where all of those stories come together for the Long Night would basically just be a repeat of ASOIAF. 

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I took it as a single story set in the age of Heroes.  There are other spin offs,  but you can't have a TV series without recurring characters.  GRRM already made us distrustful of the history we think we know,  which makes it easy for show writers to invent pretty much anything they want.   I am not optimistic,  without GRRM's writing or the current Game of Thrones actors,  there really isn't much to be a fan of. 

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14 hours ago, Matthew. said:


It also firmly puts to rest the notion that any of that Empire of the Dawn/Color Emperors business is a part of some deeply embedded world lore that was present from the outset, though for anyone who has listened to GRRM talk about his worldbuilding (and that he takes pretty much the opposite approach to Tolkien on that front), it'll just be confirming what was already suspected.

 

Fascinating stuff and very much reinforces the view that this is a story of Westeros and that the answers to what's going on will be found in Westeros rather than the mysterious east - or perhaps any of the other stuff in the World Book, or that digression into House Targaryen 

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11 hours ago, SirArthur said:

I would outright reject version 1 and also version 2 has it's problems. Both have the Craster problem. Craster has been sacrificing newborn boys to the white gods according to Gilly. And of late they come more often according to Nella, who had 6 boys. 

Unless of course we have two different "tribes" of Others, the elapsed time is more than one or two years and may even go into Westeros summer, which may be a regular winter north of the Wall. (else there would be up to 9 year old boys at Craster's). Craster even marries all his daughters in summer, which may also hint to regular winters north of Wall.

What I imagine with all of this are regular winter visits from "Craster's boys" for at least a decade, more likely for one or two generations. I wouldn't call this suddenly and I wouldn't call the Watch very observative, as Craster definitly counts to the "friends" the Watch has north of the Wall. 

So in my imagination the younger generation of rangers is not very observative and the old generation around Bloodraven and Aemon hid something or at least did not tell everything there is.

To sum it up, the Watch, in my imagination, is more concerned with protecting the Wall and southern politics than with scouting north of the Wall. Which is btw. not the main duty of the rangers. The ranger's duty is to defend and protect the Wall. This is all very inconsistent from the very beginning: an understuffed military order harasses raiders far into the north through unfriendly territory during cold weather with their last friend days away at Craster's. I imagine GRRM considers beyond the wall a very sparsely populated area which makes Mance's army the more impressive. 

That returns to the point about what did Benjen know and if he knew why didn't he tell his big brother.

Pretty well all we know of what was going on at Craster's rests on the testimony of his wives, with cryptic hints that other Wildlings and the Watch at the very least knew something dodgy was going on. However all of them, whether truthful or mistaken, are talking of an ongoing event without a known starting point. Craster has been giving up his sons to the "cold gods, the ones who come in the night" for so long as anyone can remember; there isn't the slightest suggestion its news, or even that it started 10 years ago or whenever, and indeed Ygritte's reference toa curse suggests that whatever the arrangement or its purpose its being going on since before Craster himself was born - I've suggested before that the attempt to get him across the Wall was down to his mother trying to do a Gilly rather than a demand for maintenance payments

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18 hours ago, Matthew. said:

I'm not attempting to advocate for a "correct" interpretation, I'm actually laying out that certain things that might feel intuitively true are actually open questions, and the fact that we can't definitively lay down an irrefutable timeline for Mance's desertion

In both the scenarios you dropped, the return of the Popsicles is quite recent relative to the full history of the Watch.

The old Heretical case was often that the Popsicles had been hanging around in the forest -- all of it -- for decades, centuries, or even millennia... and in recent decades, had been picking up Craster's baby sons. 

And the Watch was observant enough that (per Jeor Mormont), all the rangers knew Craster was dumping his sons into the woods, and none of the rangers knew the Popsicles were picking the babies up.  

This struck me as preposterous, and still does, and is essentially ruled out by any theory in which the Popsicles have only just begun (as of AGOT) to move into the territory where the Watch ventures, which is at least as far as nine days' ride north by northwest from the Wall.  Such as both of the concepts you posited.

15 hours ago, SirArthur said:

Craster has been sacrificing newborn boys to the white gods according to Gilly.

This has been discussed many times.  Jon (like many readers) is fooled by Gilly's knowledge of the Popsicles' eye color into thinking she has seen them.  

But Jon also knows their eye color, and Jon has never seen a Popsicle in his life.   Somehow Jon fails to realize this, and he also fails to realize that Craster is a religious nutjob with a very dubious comprehension of the Popsicles that's shared by no one outside his keep.   For instance, the concept that by sacrificing sheep he can keep himself safe from the Popsicles is manifestly absurd, but Craster believes it anyway and so do his wives.  These are not informed authorities.

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