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Night's Watch vows and the truth of history.


The Fattest Leech

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Welcome, @Lady Laena !

 

11 hours ago, Lady Laena said:

An additional thought RE the Night’s King might prove that the NW has lost its original scope.

Totally. The Jedi NW have become complacent and waste their time fighting for the Republic the Wildlings while the Sith Great Other prepares his return :D

 

11 hours ago, Lady Laena said:

It is also interesting how easy the NW abandoned the Nightfort under the reign of Jaehaerys. It means that they probably had already forgot how important this site may be, a notion which seems to be clear to Melisandre and Stannis instead.

I wonder if all the creepy stories taking place at Nightfort might be an echo of its former magical powers? - Which, in turn, begs question: was it creepy even before the Nightking starting dabbling in whatever it was with his Nightqueen?

 

11 hours ago, Lady Laena said:

I saw you compared Ramsey to the Night’s King. I have always thought about him as an Other, especially if we think about his favourite sport (chasing girls with dogs) which reminds me of Old Nan's tale to Bran about the Others hunting girls in the haunted forest.

Now that's a good catch. I just wonder: those pale, colourless eyes that the Boltons have, don't look anything like that unnatural, prominent blue characteristic for the Others. However: we also know that the blue is a sign of their magic, which turns blue the eyes of those who have been wightified - so, what colour would be their eyes without that magic? The eyes of creatures who are like Seidhe made of ice...

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WOW! Thank you everybody for the warm welcome!

Let me answer to your comments.

13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

I agree with this sentiment, and my basis is this quote below, which means just what it says: live your life, but get out of line and the snow will fall on ya' :

A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII

"The spearwives will be so happy. You might do well to bestow a castle on the Magnar."

Jon's smile died. "I might if I could trust him. Sigorn blames me for his father's death, I fear. Worse, he was bred and trained to give orders, not to take them. Do not confuse the Thenns with free folk. Magnar means lord in the Old Tongue, I am told, but Styr was closer to a god to his people, and his son is cut from the same skin. I do not require men to kneel, but they do need to obey."

"Aye, m'lord, but you had best do something with the Magnar. You'll have trouble with the Thenns if you ignore them."

Jon understands the live or die threat and is totally committed to leave.

That's a very nice quote I did not recall and we can say that later on he also manage not to ignore the Magnar and make him a little bit more manageable through Alys.

13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

My take is that there is a quote somewhere (Ygritte?) that explains some of the free folk didn't want to move, that was their established homes, and maybe in the early days the wall was freely passable by folk free to move at will. It was only as time passed and the focus changed that it became impassable for folk to move freely. 

(sorry for the slight puns ;))

Don't worry!

That's a perspective I haven't thought about which may be right considering that the villages of the free folk are quite different from those of the rest of Westeros. However, it is a strong move to decide to go back to their lands knowing that they would leave pretty close to the defeated remaining Others. Since they are coming back in current ASOIAF time, it is clear that they were not totally defeated, and I think that the old legends about the Long Night point at that: the need of building a Wall, the legend of the Rhoynar, and the Legend from Yi-Ti about the woman with the monkey tail.

I am with you also on the notion that once the Wall was freely passable. I think somebody mentioned it in the previous pages of discussion: beside being built by Brandon the Builder, there are similarities between the foundations of the Wall of Winterfell and the Wall itself, suggesting that both constructions started as many single ringforts and at some point were joint together (I'll try to add the specific quotes from TWOIAF/ASOIAF later on).

 

13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Craster is a strained "friend" to say the least. But just to add a very small extra bit, even Mormont was willing to escort Craster south, so I guess not all "wildlings" are exempt? The saving of humans in all realms truly starts with Mormont in the series, Jon's poppa bear when he gets to the Night's Watch, his next in line father.

A Clash of Kings - Jon III

Craster gave a shrug. "Happens I have better things to do than tend to the comings and goings of crows." He drank a pull of beer and set the cup aside. "Had no good southron wine up here for a bear's night. I could use me some wine, and a new axe. Mine's lost its bite, can't have that, I got me women to protect." He gazed around at his scurrying wives.

"You are few here, and isolated," Mormont said. "If you like, I'll detail some men to escort you south to the Wall."

The raven seemed to like the notion. "Wall," it screamed, spreading black wings like a high collar behind Mormont's head.

Mormont is the first one who understands the threat they are facing indeed. Considering your quote is very interesting that he kinda starts bringing the free folk south starting with Craster: he would take away some potential zombies, plus prevent Craster sacrificing to his Gods. In addition, it would also be a good start to make the rest of NW accept other free folk (if he ever thought about that, we'll never know).

 

13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

And speaking of bringing free folk south, have you read Fire & Blood? This part about a free folkian is interesting...

  Reveal hidden contents

I devoured it while waiting for TWOW! XD

Your quote is a very interesting catch. I need to think about that a little bit more but talking about who's more savage. When I used to reread with some friends, I liked to highlight to my male counterparts - in connection to Jon's period beyond the Wall - how the women condition are quite poor south of the Wall compared to North in a way. Cersei's belief about women considered no more than breeding mares in current ASOIAF is not so wrong. But I am going OT.

 

13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

The Night's Watch was literally distracted by shiny things! :rolleyes:

But seriously, Alysanne was up to no good from the second she met Alaric Stark. She made him warm to her, she made the NW warm to her, all before she ripped key components out from under their feet. She cut off magics and the indigenous when she offered her jewels. That was 200 years ago (in current timeline). Between the direwolves returning, the gold paint at Queenscrown flaking away, and some northern houses till practicing first night rites (which that one is dubious- but maybe with reason), the efforts of the fire-people against the icey ones may be dwindling as we return to a balance (after the Long Night 2.0)

A Game of Thrones - Bran I

"It's no freak," Jon said calmly. "That's a direwolf. They grow larger than the other kind."

Theon Greyjoy said, "There's not been a direwolf sighted south of the Wall in two hundred years."

"I see one now," Jon replied.

This quote from Theon really strucks me. We may assume he said 200 years ago just to say a long time ago. However, this 200 hundred may also be a hint to the reader. You make me want to check also some Cat POV in AGOT as she also was quite in line with this mystic subject.

I tend to think that the NW forgot their scope much more time before Alysanne convinced them to leave the Nightfort, but both hypothesis may be valid.

13 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

Which brings me to Melisandre... hell yes that fire woman knows what's up with Nighfort, and that is why she wants to get there! Ack! I have tons of ideas about this... but maybe later...

At first thought, I would say that she and Stannis may repeat the history of the Night's King and his corpse Queen. However, it is never made clear if the corpse queen is an Other, or if she is from the Barrow Kings. And the description of Val when she leaves for her mission, makes me think of a potential Night's Queen, if connected with the notion that the original Night's King was a Stark, brother to Brandon the Breaker:

The light half-moon turned Val's honey-blond hair a pale silver and left her cheeks as white as snow.

Unless this is a foreshadowing of a meeting with somebody else and I am overinterpreting unexisting clues.

 

I'll go on later on when I have some more time to analyse all your inputs. Thank you again for this discussion! I was missing this dives into the ASOIAF world! Looking for some more spare time! XD

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2 hours ago, Lady Laena said:

At first thought, I would say that she and Stannis may repeat the history of the Night's King and his corpse Queen. However, it is never made clear if the corpse queen is an Other, or if she is from the Barrow Kings.

It is indeed never made clear, but if you put her side by side with Mel, they look like fire-ice inversions and use the same means - pale/red eyes/hot to touch versus pale/blue eyes/cold to touch, and gain power through a king's seed. Mel gave birth to a shadow baby, we don't know what, or if, the Night Queen, gave birth to. Given that the Others are referred to as "white shadows", nothing can be ruled out just yet, I suppose.

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@Lady Laena and @The Fattest Leech,

about the Wall and the FF moving freely: I cannot help but believe it was very easy for the FF to move back and forth in the [distant] past.  Martin brings up the fact that it took hundreds of yrs for the Wall to be built, and thousands for it to reach its current height. That’s significant in many different ways. And IMO one of those is exactly to make it clear that no one was “trapped” north of the Wall, nothing even close to that can have ever happened. And given the length of the Wall (is it 300mi? Or 300 leagues? 300 whatever unit), and the fact that there were significantly fewer people... of course there was plenty of moment in both directions. Right? Also the idea we discussed a few pages and a number of months back, about there being small villages/settlements along the Wall while it was being built - hundreds of years! 

The other point, about the NW failing, not being true to its purpose anymore. I agree they got distracted by “shiny things” as Leechie puts it. But I think the start of the distraction was when the Andals started to join. Alysanne, regardless of her motivations and intentions, ended up weakening the Watch further. 

There are a few other interesting points but it will have to wait a bit. 

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17 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

I think this is the right place to ask it; are there any Coldhands = NK theories?

There are some old threads but I don’t have a link handy. Will post if I come across any. 

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20 hours ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Thanks! I really believe there’s more to the story of NK and he wasn’t actually evil. 

Based on the (wonderful) weirdo spin we get from maesters in both the World book and now Fire & Blood (backed up by Ran), yeah, I am expecting a lot on in-world tropes to be flipped on their shiny silver coin asses as well.

I found a few topics that you may want to peruse. I have not read them in detail, but it seems as though @Black Crow mentions there could be some discussion somewhere in heresy as well.

and this one from Reddit...

https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/1iift6/spoilers_all_coldhands_the_nights_king_and_brans/

ADDING: I tend to think that Coldhands is something a little more basic like a Raven's Teeth (Tooth?) that followed Bloodraven to the wall (I know! Boring, boring, boring)

*Forgot a part. Nevermind.

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