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Heresy 209 Of Ice and of Fire


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On 6/11/2018 at 11:08 AM, Matthew. said:

there's a character practicing a seemingly singular, decades long religion that coincidentally pays obeisance to the Others at the exact same time that the Others have returned, a religion that posits that obeisance keeps his compound safe, and coincidentally, all circumstantial evidence reinforces his belief

Well, it's not that much of a coincidence unless you assume Craster has no parallel going back thousands of years.

But we know that in all forms of society there are religious nutjobs, and many have parallel notions that suit their outlook of the world.  For instance: "I should get to sleep with whatever women I want, and I personally should determine truth and religious belief for my submissive audience."   (This actually reminds me of the current American president.)

So it seems possible to me that for thousands of years, there were, here and there through that endless history, wildlings who sacrificed to the Popsicles -- wildlings of the Craster type -- and yet in all that time, the Popsicles never returned.  If so, there was no coincidence.

However, when you say "all circumstantial evidence reinforces his belief," I can't say I agree.  

I think the circumstantial evidence is that the Popsicles were never anywhere near his keep until quite recently... that he was sacrificing his baby sons long before that... that that's how the "heavy curse" Ygritte mentions pertaining to him became so widely known among the free folk (it spread slowly -- it's not like they have newspapers or the Web)... and that his baby/sheep sacrifices would never have kept him or his people safe at all.  

You can ask yourself what the Popsicle that Sam killed would have done, given the option.  

Would it, for instance, have murdered Sam and then strolled off, leaving Gilly unharmed because after all she was one of Craster's people?  I doubt it.  I don't think it has any idea who she is, or who Craster is, or who any of the wives are.  

And I don't think Craster ever cut a deal with the Popsicles, nor had the means to do so whether we're talking about a common language or physical proximity or interest on the part of the Popsicles.  

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2 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

 I base my theory about the lost lands of the wildlings on Ygritte. Her description of kings with crowns and steel swords sound Andal to me: 

The thing is ... if you can't own land within the opinion of the Wildlings, how can they conquer some land like the Gift  ? All they can do is say "we do not kneel" and fight against anyone who wants to make them kneel. The entire idea of a preemptive attack against Northerners somehow works against their own belief system. How can they attack someone, if he hasn't done anything yet ? Would't an attack deny them the land ? 

 

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On 6/11/2018 at 10:57 AM, Brad Stark said:

Craster obviously didn't start giving his first sons to his sons, since they didn't exist yet.  So he could have given them to other Others, but my bet is he originally gave them to whatever human is controlling the Others.

This is an excellent point. If the source of the current white walkers are Craster's sons, how did the very first sacrifice work? 

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30 minutes ago, SirArthur said:

The thing is ... if you can't own land within the opinion of the Wildlings, how can they conquer some land like the Gift  ? All they can do is say "we do not kneel" and fight against anyone who wants to make them kneel. The entire idea of a preemptive attack against Northerners somehow works against their own belief system. How can they attack someone, if he hasn't done anything yet ? Would't an attack deny them the land ? 

 

Ygritte said if some people wanted the land badly enough, they should have stayed and fought for it. But her comments weren't so much as the position of a lord with a holdfast, but to the common people who aren't allowed to own land. In a medieval system the kings allow the nobility to hold lands, and reward certain loyal subjects by allowing them to be "land owners", but they don't truly own the land. Only the king does. The general populous is not allowed to own or hold lands. They can live under the protection of a lord to raise crops or tend livestock, but they're not allowed to fish in the streams and lakes, nor to hunt in any of the woods. This was her true objection - that only lords or people allowed by kings should get to hold land. The only person that lawfully owns the land (kingdom) is the king.

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50 minutes ago, JNR said:

You have to ignore quite a few obvious logical problems to believe R+L=J (example: "How could Ned know at the TOJ that Jon would never grow up to resemble his incredibly recognizable father Rhaegar and thus get them both killed?") but it can't be ruled out either.  Not quite yet.

My theory is both Jon and Dany played as babies together in the pools in Dorne we saw at the start of AFFC.  Ned likely didn't go straight from TOJ to Winterfell, we know he returned Dawn to Starfall, he may have stayed a while. 

But what would Ned do if Jon started looking Targaryen?  If he promised Lyanna on her deathbed to protect Jon, he isn't going to turn Jon over to Robert just because protecting him just got harder.   We'd probably see another shaved head like Varys and Egg, and someone probably would figure it out,  but Ned would still take Jon to Winterfell and try his best.

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1 hour ago, Feather Crystal said:

This is an excellent point. If the source of the current white walkers are Craster's sons, how did the very first sacrifice work? 

Ice preserves. Craster's sons are replenishing their number, not initiating the process. We don't know how far back the curse extends.

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1 hour ago, Feather Crystal said:

Ygritte said if some people wanted the land badly enough, they should have stayed and fought for it. But her comments weren't so much as the position of a lord with a holdfast, but to the common people who aren't allowed to own land. In a medieval system the kings allow the nobility to hold lands, and reward certain loyal subjects by allowing them to be "land owners", but they don't truly own the land. Only the king does. The general populous is not allowed to own or hold lands. They can live under the protection of a lord to raise crops or tend livestock, but they're not allowed to fish in the streams and lakes, nor to hunt in any of the woods. This was her true objection - that only lords or people allowed by kings should get to hold land. The only person that lawfully owns the land (kingdom) is the king.

I think we have left the discussion about WW as a Wildling charade to get land south of the Wall. 

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42 minutes ago, SirArthur said:

I think we have left the discussion about WW as a Wildling charade to get land south of the Wall. 

I answer your question and you tell me I’m off topic??? Lol

Heresy typically doesn’t stick to one topic anyways, but allows the discussion to develop organically.

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3 hours ago, JNR said:

What you think of as plausible, I think of as a rather flimsy cover story (red herring) that GRRM drummed up. 

These are not necessarily opposing ideas, though--when I assess a theory as "plausible" I do not mean that as a byword for flawless or "likely true," I mean "this is a concept that proceeds from the text, and reasonably could be expanded upon by the author in a future volume." Regardless of what one subjectively feels about the strength of the foundation, the foundation unquestionably exists within the text, it is not just some fans' wild speculation.

I call "Crasters Sons" plausible because it's not even an imaginative interpretation of the text, it is just taking the contents of ASOIAF at face value, which could also imply that said text is a red herring, but the red herring as a literary technique is contingent upon the expectation that the "red herring" will be treated plausibly by the reader to distract from the clues that are pointing to the real truth.

Thus, we return to the wives: their words are not, at this point in an incomplete story, demonstrably true or demonstrably false; they are unverified.
_____

These assessments of whether or not the truth (or cover story) is satisfactory or "believable" are, to my mind, too subjective to rise to the level of refutation--as said previously, we are at the mercy of however it is that GRRM is defining believable, and the extent to which he is taking it on faith that the reader will suspend some disbelief ("put away the ruler and stopwatch, and enjoy the story") for the sake of what GRRM might consider the most interesting story he could tell.

The unreliability of personal incredulity as a standard is made immediately apparent within just the sample size of this thread, where several different readers have read the same passage, and come to different conclusions as to what is and is not believable or "makes sense" regarding those passages, as I attempted to elaborate with the example of the wildlings' behavior in a scenario where nothing is happening at Craster's Keep.

I mean, to a certain type of reader, ASOIAF itself presents a world that is too inherently silly and cartoonish for them to ever believe in the first place--eg, an 8,000 year old dynasty that lives in a place called the Dreadfort, depicts torture on their house sigil, references their propensity for torture in their house words, and is represented presently by a patriarch and heir who are uncharismatic sociopaths.

 

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7 hours ago, JNR said:

If you ask yourself simple questions such as "Where did the first Popsicle come from?" or "Why is is that the entire rest of the free folk doesn't agree with or believe Craster (hence joining Mance) and instead (per Ygritte) considers Craster to be bearing a heavy curse?" no persuasive answer presents itself.  Craster looks instead like an isolated nutjob.

As to the first question, I don't see what you mean. Possibilities immediately present themselves:

-The Others have "masters" responsible for creating new white walkers from the tributes taken from Craster's Keep; the CotF, a human sorcerer (as Val is often speculated to be), or some distinct unrevealed race (as per Voice's interpretation) being just a few proposals

-Alternately, regardless of whatever ritual and circumstances created the Others in ancient times, they now perpetuate themselves; accordingly, the "first Others" are those made in antiquity, some of which either survived by hiding in the heart of winter and have returned because their magic has strengthened, or were magically bound and recently unleashed, and have begun perpetuating themselves again

As to the latter, the question raised seems to be built upon an assumption that I wouldn't take as a given. We don't actually have insight into the entire Free Folk--we have insight into Craster's Keep (because it was visited by POV characters), and insight into the wildlings who joined Mance (because they interacted with POV characters). For all we know, there are several wildlings scattered in the Frostfangs, the Frozen Shore, etc. who chose to "get right with the gods" instead of joining Mance.

As to why one would find Mance's pitch to fight the WWs - as expressed by Osha - appealing, as opposed to living like Craster, I think that's straightforward: if being right with the gods means living huddling, terrified in your hovel during a multi-year winter, kinslaying, hoping you can stay right with the gods by giving offerings when you run short on sons...better to take Mance's gambit, IMO.

I would also personally add that I think the wildlings are, especially after 8,000 years, only slightly less ignorant of their foe than the Watch, and I definitely don't think any of them knows what happens to Craster's sons, assuming the theory of the sons is correct; rather, I think they 'know' the Others can be appeased, without understanding the consequences of appeasement.

 

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13 hours ago, alienarea said:

About Craster: his mother is from Whitetree. We have compared the White Walkers to trees now and then. Are they hybrids of heart trees and boys with an obsidian spell?

I can't justify it, but one of the theories of the Others I have goes along these lines: the walkers are not the "spirits" of Craster's sons transferred to a walker body, but the inverse--the sons are used to make the ice body, and the ice body used to house foreign spirits. For example, I think they were originally made to house the spirits of the weirwood, though I think they can also house the spirits of the Winterfell crypts (which, themselves, might be essentially the same thing as the idea of the old gods/spirits going into the trees, stones, and earth).

I acknowledge up front that there's no chance of me persuading anyone else toward something so speculative, but Asha presents a legend that I think was an allusion to the magic in play:

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The woods were on the move, creeping toward the castle like a slow green tide. She thought back to a tale she had heard as a child, about the children of the forest and their battles with the First Men, when the greenseers turned the trees to warriors.

The more earthly interpretation is that this is just a bastardized reference to wood dancers, but I find the inclusion of the greenseers gives the tale an added layer of magical potential--IMO, this legend either relates to the creation of the WWs, the creation of the Green Men, or perhaps a little of both.

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1 hour ago, Matthew. said:

I can't justify it, but one of the theories of the Others I have goes along these lines: the walkers are not the "spirits" of Craster's sons transferred to a walker body, but the inverse--the sons are used to make the ice body, and the ice body used to house foreign spirits. For example, I think they were originally made to house the spirits of the weirwood, though I think they can also house the spirits of the Winterfell crypts (which, themselves, might be essentially the same thing as the idea of the old gods/spirits going into the trees, stones, and earth).

I acknowledge up front that there's no chance of me persuading anyone else toward something so speculative, but Asha presents a legend that I think was an allusion to the magic in play:

The more earthly interpretation is that this is just a bastardized reference to wood dancers, but I find the inclusion of the greenseers gives the tale an added layer of magical potential--IMO, this legend either relates to the creation of the WWs, the creation of the Green Men, or perhaps a little of both.

It's interesting that it's the green wood that is on the move rather than the white weirwood.  Soldier pines and sentinel trees come to mind.

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The current topic seems to have run out of steam, so I propose a new subject. I've been rereading Dunk and Egg stories and came across Duncan's dream, which has some very similar elements to Ned's Fever Dream, as well as nods to the Harrenhal Tourney, the Knight of the Laughing Tree, and even King Robert's death by goring. I've got my own opinions about it, but I'd like to save them for now and hear other ideas for why its so similar, and any other thoughts you have about it. 

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  Egg was asleep by the time Dunk reached the roof. He lay on his back with his hands behind his head and stared up at the sky. The stars were everywhere, thousands and thousands of them. It reminded him of a night at Ashford Meadow, before the tourney started. He had seen a falling star that night. Falling stars were supposed to bring you luck, so he’d told Tanselle to paint it on his shield, but Ashford had been anything but lucky for him. Before the tourney ended, he had almost lost a hand and a foot, and three good men had lost their lives. I gained a squire, though. Egg was with me when I rode away from Ashford. That was the only good thing to come of all that happened. He hoped that no stars fell tonight.

  There were red mountains in the distance and white sands beneath his feet. Dunk was digging, plunging a spade into the hot, dry earth and flinging the fine sand back over his shoulder. He was making a hole. A grave, he thought, a grave for hope. A trio of Dornish knights stood watching, making mock of him in quiet voices. Farther off the merchants waited with their mules and wayns and sand sledges. They wanted to be off, but he could not leave until he’d buried Chestnut. He would not leave his old friend to the snakes and scorpions and sand dogs.

  The stot had died on the long, thirsty crossing between the Prince’s Pass and Vaith, with Egg upon his back. His front legs just seemed to fold up under him, and he knelt right down, rolled onto his side, and died. His carcass sprawled beside the hole. Already it was stiff. Soon it would begin to smell.

  Dunk was weeping as he dug, to the amusement of the Dornish knights. “Water is precious in the waste,” one said, “you ought not to waste it, ser.” The other chuckled and said, “Why do you weep? It was only a horse, and a poor one.”

  Chestnut, Dunk thought, digging, his name was Chestnut, and he bore me on his back for years, and never bucked or bit. The old stot had looked a sorry thing beside the sleek sand steeds that the Dornishmen were riding, with their elegant heads, long necks, and flowing manes, but he had given all he had to give.

  “Weeping for a swaybacked stot?” Ser Arlan said, in his old man’s voice. “Why, lad, you never wept for me, who put you on his back.” He gave a little laugh, to show he meant no harm by the reproach. “That’s Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall.”

  “He shed no tears for me, either,” said Baelor Breakspear from the grave, “though I was his prince, the hope of Westeros. The gods never meant for me to die so young.”

  “My father was only nine-and-thirty,” said Prince Valarr. “He had it in him to be a great king, the greatest since Aegon the Dragon.” He looked at Dunk with cool blue eyes. “Why would the gods take him, and leave you?” The Young Prince had his father’s light brown hair, but a streak of silver-gold ran through it.

  You are dead, Dunk wanted to scream, you are all three dead, why won’t you leave me be? Ser Arlan had died of a chill, Prince Baelor of the blow his brother dealt him during Dunk’s trial of seven, his son Valarr during the Great Spring Sickness. I am not to blame for that. We were in Dorne, we never even knew.

  “You are mad,” the old man told him. “We will dig no hole for you, when you kill yourself with this folly. In the deep sands a man must hoard his water.”

  “Begone with you, Ser Duncan,” Valarr said. “Begone.”

  Egg helped him with the digging. The boy had no spade, only his hands, and the sand flowed back into the grave as fast as they could fling it out. It was like trying to dig a hole in the sea. I have to keep digging, Dunk told himself, though his back and shoulders ached from the effort. I have to bury him down deep where the sand dogs cannot find him. I have to…

  … die?” said Big Rob the simpleton from the bottom of the grave. Lying there, so still and cold, with a ragged red wound gaping in his belly, he did not look very big at all.

  Dunk stopped and stared at him. “You’re not dead. You’re down sleeping in the cellar.” He looked to Ser Arlan for help. “Tell him, ser,” he pleaded, “tell him to get out of the grave.”

  Only it was not Ser Arlan of Pennytree standing over him at all, it was Ser Bennis of the Brown Shield. The brown knight only cackled. “Dunk the lunk,” he said, “gutting’s slow, but certain. Never knew a man to live with his entrails hanging out.” Red froth bubbled on his lips. He turned and spat, and the white sands drank it down. Treb was standing behind him with an arrow in his eye, weeping slow, red tears. And there was Wet Wat too, his head cut near in half, with old Lem and red-eyed Pate and all the rest. They had all been chewing sourleaf with Bennis, Dunk thought at first, but then he realized that it was blood trickling from their mouths. Dead, he thought, all dead, and the brown knight brayed. “Aye, so best get busy. You’ve more graves to dig, lunk. Eight for them and one for me and one for old Ser Useless, and one last one for your baldhead boy.”

  The spade slipped from Dunk’s hands. “Egg,” he cried, “run! We have to run!” But the sands were giving way beneath their feet. When the boy tried to scramble from the hole, its crumbling sides gave way and collapsed. Dunk saw the sands wash over Egg, burying him as he opened his mouth to shout. He tried to fight his way to him, but the sands were rising all around him, pulling him down into the grave, filling his mouth, his nose, his eyes…

 

 

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It is also quite similar to Jamie's fever dream:

Quote

He peered into the gloom until he saw it too. Something was moving through the darkness, he could not quite make it out . . .

“A man on a horse. No, two. Two riders, side by side.”

“Down here, beneath the Rock?” It made no sense. Yet there came two riders on pale horses, men and mounts both armored. The destriers emerged from the blackness at a slow walk. They make no sound, Jaime realized. No splashing, no clink of mail nor clop of hoof. He remembered Eddard Stark, riding the length of Aerys’s throne room wrapped in silence. Only his eyes had spoken; a lord’s eyes, cold and grey and full of judgment.

“Is it you, Stark?” Jaime called. “Come ahead. I never feared you living, I do not fear you dead.”

Brienne touched his arm. “There are more.”

He saw them too. They were armored all in snow, it seemed to him, and ribbons of mist swirled back from their shoulders. The visors of their helms were closed, but Jaime Lannister did not need to look upon their faces to know them.

Five had been his brothers. Oswell Whent and Jon Darry. Lewyn Martell, a prince of Dorne. The White Bull, Gerold Hightower. Ser Arthur Dayne, Sword of the Morning. And beside them, crowned in mist and grief with his long hair streaming behind him, rode Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone and rightful heir to the Iron Throne.

“You don’t frighten me,” he called, turning as they split to either side of him. He did not know which way to face. “I will fight you one by one or all together. But who is there for the wench to duel? She gets cross when you leave her out.”

“I swore an oath to keep him safe,” she said to Rhaegar’s shade. “I swore a holy oath.”

“We all swore oaths,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, so sadly.

The shades dismounted from their ghostly horses. When they drew their longswords, it made not a sound. “He was going to burn the city,” Jaime said. “To leave Robert only ashes.”

“He was your king,” said Darry.

“You swore to keep him safe,” said Whent.

“And the children, them as well,” said Prince Lewyn.

Prince Rhaegar burned with a cold light, now white, now red, now dark. “I left my wife and children in your hands.”

“I never thought he’d hurt them.” Jaime’s sword was burning less brightly now. “I was with the king . . .”

“Killing the king,” said Ser Arthur.

“Cutting his throat,” said Prince Lewyn.

“The king you had sworn to die for,” said the White Bull.

The fires that ran along the blade were guttering out, and Jaime remembered what Cersei had said. No. Terror closed a hand about his throat. Then his sword went dark, and only Brienne’s burned, as the ghosts came rushing in.

“No,” he said, “no, no, no. Nooooooooo!”

BTW, does the part I bolded give us a strong hint at the nature of the WW: ghosts + mist + ice armor?

 

 

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Somehow it also reminds me of this Theon not-a-dream sequence:

Quote

Snow was falling on the godswood too, melting when it touched the ground. Beneath the white-cloaked trees the earth had turned to mud. Tendrils of mist hung in the air like ghostly ribbons. Why did I come here? These are not my gods. This is not my place. The heart tree stood before him, a pale giant with a carved face and leaves like bloody hands.

A thin film of ice covered the surface of the pool beneath the weirwood. Theon sank to his knees beside it. "Please," he murmured through his broken teeth, "I never meant …" The words caught in his throat. "Save me," he finally managed. "Give me …" What? Strength? Courage? Mercy? Snow fell around him, pale and silent, keeping its own counsel. The only sound was a faint soft sobbing. Jeyne, he thought. It is her, sobbing in her bridal bed. Who else could it be? Gods do not weep. Or do they?

The sound was too painful to endure. Theon grabbed hold of a branch and pulled himself back to his feet, knocked the snow off his legs, and limped back toward the lights. There are ghosts in Winterfell, he thought, and I am one of them.

Can I bet on Theon becoming a WW after his sacrifice beneath the island's weirwood?

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1 hour ago, Tucu said:

It is also quite similar to Jamie's fever dream:

Dunk's dream has several elements beginning with a tourney, nearly losing a hand and a foot which I think parallels Ned's loss of brother and father. The mention of a falling star is perhaps an echo for Rhaegar, while his painted shield nods toward the knight of the laughing tree. The loss of three good men could be the three Kingsguard. The fact that Dunk gained Egg as a squire makes me wonder if Howland was Ned's squire after Harrenhal Tourney?

The elements of the red mountains and sands of Dorne are of course the same, as well as the mention of the Prince's Pass. The trio of Dornish knights are more readily recognized this time as the Kingsguard. The grave digging echoes the cairns that Ned made, while the description of the death of Chestnut seems like it could be Lyanna. Why compare Lyanna to a horse? The text says she was a centaur, an excellent horse rider, and there was a discussion awhile back regarding the identity of the KotLT as being an incident of skinchanging where Pretty Pig thought Lyanna skin changed into Howland's horse. Ned allows Arya's sword training, because we suspect Lyanna died partly due to a lack of fighting skills. The men in Dunk's dream mock him for crying over a horse. This could go a few ways. It could be an indication that no-one knew Lyanna was inside that horse, or even when Ned buried her no one knew he was burying his sister.

The couple mentions about not wanting to waste water in the desert seems like its supposed to have a double meaning. Anyone have any ideas?

I think Big Rob the simpleton's appearance in the grave with the gaping wound in his belly is Robert Baratheon - gored by the bore.

Lastly, Egg being buried alive in the grave seems to hint that Howland is now a greenseer.

 

1 hour ago, Tucu said:

A man on a horse. No, two. Two riders, side by side.”

“Down here, beneath the Rock?” It made no sense. Yet there came two riders on pale horses, men and mounts both armored. The destriers emerged from the blackness at a slow walk. They make no sound, Jaime realized. No splashing, no clink of mail nor clop of hoof. He remembered Eddard Stark, riding the length of Aerys’s throne room wrapped in silence. Only his eyes had spoken; a lord’s eyes, cold and grey and full of judgment.

“Is it you, Stark?” Jaime called. “Come ahead. I never feared you living, I do not fear you dead.”

I agree that it seems as if Ned and Howland showed up in Jaime's dream.

1 hour ago, Tucu said:

Brienne touched his arm. “There are more.”

He saw them too. They were armored all in snow, it seemed to him, and ribbons of mist swirled back from their shoulders. The visors of their helms were closed, but Jaime Lannister did not need to look upon their faces to know them.

Five had been his brothers. Oswell Whent and Jon Darry. Lewyn Martell, a prince of Dorne. The White Bull, Gerold Hightower. Ser Arthur Dayne, Sword of the Morning. And beside them, crowned in mist and grief with his long hair streaming behind him, rode Rhaegar Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone and rightful heir to the Iron Throne.

I think the numbers add up. In Ned's fever dream wasn't it seven against three? In Jaime's dream its seven against two, but Ned's men were wraiths just as Jaime's Kingsguard brothers were armored in snow (death).

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I read the below passage today and thought it was applicable to not just Dunk's dream, but ASOIAF as a whole. It brought to mind the dead mother direwolf scene, which according to GRRM was the inspiration for the entire series of ASOIAF. Its not the opening of AGoT, because the prologue about Ser Waymar Royce meeting the white walkers is, but technically it is the first chapter.

The quote is from a professional screenwriter:

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One of the secrets to writing a coherent story is to realize that the beginning of any great story is really the setup for the ending. When you read a great beginning, the ending is always foreshadowed in it. A story may take a lot of turns but it always leads in only one direction . It's what professional screenwriters sometimes call, “The Necessary Scene”; and this concept is not at all that hard to grasp.

A beginning is like the eruption of a wound. Kramer's wife, Joanna, leaves him. E.T is abandoned. Little Miguel in Coco, is prohibited from playing music; and so on. The events that start a story (the inciting incident) is like a wound; and in order for that wound to be resolved, the story must end with the closure of that wound - if it is to come full circle.

So, of course, Joanna will return; as will E. T; and Miguel will end his story by playing music and be accepted for it. That's a given.

The ending is never in question; it’s how the characters will get there that is. Great writers always know this. They know that writing a screenplay is similar to planning a road trip. The real trick is knowing your final destination before you decide where to start.

 

The beginning is a literal wound taken by a dead mother direwolf - the cause of death a broken antler from a stag in its throat. Symbolically its the death of House Stark by House Baratheon. You can disagree with my assessment, but it seems plain to me. Duncan's dream of seeing Big Rob the simpleton in the grave with a wound to his belly also appears to be a straightforward condensation of what Robert Baratheon did. In a nutshell, I believe it will come to light that King Bob:

1) Conspired with Cersei and Tywin in order to become king

2) Participated in Lyanna's kidnapping dressed in armor that looked like Rhaegar's

3) I don't think he purposely intended to kill Lyanna, but he did feel possessive towards her. 

4) The three broken tines represent each Baratheon brother. All three end up causing harm to House Stark even if unintended.

5) The resolution of the story will include a Baratheon helping to restore House Stark.

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I disagree with your assessment about the death of House Stark by House Baratheon.  I think it is simply the death of an individual Stark (Ned) by an individual Baratheon (Rob).  

House Stark isn't dead in the first book.  One could argue the events set in motion by Robert will eventually lead to the end of House Stark by the end of the series.   Bran may not be able to have children,  Sansa, Arya and Jon might not be able to carry on the House even if they do.   Not only would Rickon and Benjen need to die, but their deaths would have to tie back to House Baratheon somehow.   And then their is a cadet branch of House Stark Martin has talked about.   Seems unlikely. 

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I've been puzzling for over half a decade over the three prologues (AGOT prologue, Bran I and Dany I). If anything reassembles a classic prologue, it is Dany I. Dany I may not have Dune level of prologue predictions, but it is the chapter, that predicts the most out of the three chapters. Bran I is a good starting scene, it is however not a prologue. It is more of a character introduction, while Dany I is the prologue. And the AGOT Prologue itself is just puzzling. If anything, it has to be the bigger pricture outside the series. 

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4 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

 

4) The three broken tines represent each Baratheon brother. All three end up causing harm to House Stark even if unintended.

 

Where did the three broken tines come from? The text only references "a foot of shattered antler, the tines broken off"

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