Night's Watch vows and the truth of history.

[The Fattest Leech]

17 hours ago, bemused said:

I think it probably did start off ... Night gathers, and now my watch begins. ... continuing with... I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.

In the pre-Andal days, when the oath would always have been sworn before a heart tree, whether or not the tree could speak, I can't  help but think of the Black Gate, and "Who are you?".. so the question is implied, to me and perhaps equally to the earliest NW brothers. Each man replies with the list of roles and ideals he promises to embody and ends with the simple but profound.. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.

Yeah, the opening of the vows with "Night gathers and now my watch begins" has stood out to me for a long, long time. Aside from that, and re-reading your post here, this reminds me of the practice (in some way) of old men in the north to go out "hunting" when resources get scarce.

We do see a few instances where to swearing to the trees is discouraged:

 

[Jon] "If the gods are good, we won't encounter any wildlings. I'll want the grey gelding."

Word spread fast at Castle Black. Edd was still saddling the grey when Bowen Marsh stomped across the yard to confront Jon at the stables. "My lord, I wish you would reconsider. The new men can take their vows in the sept as easily."

"The sept is home to the new gods. The old gods live in the wood, and those who honor them say their words amongst the weirwoods. You know that as well as I."

"Satin comes from Oldtown, and Arron and Emrick from the westerlands. The old gods are not their gods."

"I do not tell men which god to worship. They were free to choose the Seven or the red woman's Lord of Light. They chose the trees instead, with all the peril that entails."

A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII, where Bowen Marsh, a northerner, encourages the sept/Faith of Seven

 

"No more than you?" mocked Ser Alliser.

Septon Cellador cleared his throat. "Lord Slynt," he said, "this boy [Jon] refused to swear his vows properly in the sept, but went beyond the Wall to say his words before a heart tree. His father's gods, he said, but they are wildling gods as well."

"They are the gods of the north, Septon." Maester Aemon was courteous, but firm. "My lords, when Donal Noye was slain, it was this young man Jon Snow who took the Wall and held it, against all the fury of the north. He has proved himself valiant, loyal, and resourceful. Were it not for him, you would have found Mance Rayder sitting here when you arrived, Lord Slynt. You are doing him a great wrong. Jon Snow was Lord Mormont's own steward and squire. He was chosen for that duty because the Lord Commander saw much promise in him. As do I."

A Storm of Swords - Jon IX, again we see a Faith of the Seven interference

 

Songs speak to us through the years of the Fall of Maidenpool and the death of its boy king, Florian the Brave, Fifth of That Name; of the Widow's Ford, where three sons of Lord Darry held back the Andal warlord Vorian Vypren and his knights for a day and a night, slaying hundreds before they fell themselves; of the night in the White Wood, where supposedly the children of the forest emerged from beneath a hollow hill to send hundreds of wolves against an Andal camp, tearing hundreds of men apart beneath the light of a crescent moon; of the great Battle of Bitter River, where the Brackens of Stone Hedge and the Blackwoods of Raventree Hall made common cause against the invaders, only to be shattered by the charge of 777 Andal knights and seven septons, bearing the seven-pointed star of the Faith upon their shields.

The seven-pointed star went everywhere the Andals went, borne before them on shields and banners, embroidered on their surcoats, sometimes incised into their very flesh. In their zeal for the Seven, the conquerors looked upon the old gods of the First Men and the children of the forest as little more than demons, and fell upon the weirwood groves sacred to them with steel and fire, destroying the great white trees wherever they found them and hacking out their carved faces.

The great hill called High Heart was especially holy to the First Men, as it had been to the children of the forest before them. Crowned by a grove of giant weirwoods, ancient as any that had been seen in the Seven Kingdoms, High Heart was still the abode of the children and their greenseers. When the Andal king Erreg the Kinslayer surrounded the hill, the children emerged to defend it, calling down clouds of ravens and armies of wolves...or so the legend tells us. Yet neither tooth nor talon was a match for the steel axes of the Andals, who slaughtered the greenseers, the beasts, and the First Men alike, and raised beside the High Heart a hill of corpses half again as high...or so the singers would have us believe.

The World of Ice and Fire - The Riverlands

17 hours ago, bemused said:

 

 

 

 

 

"For all the nights to come" is forever , as long as I live. So, "It shall not end until my death" and "I shall live and die at my post." are redundant. That there are two repetitions of the idea seems a bit heavy handed and doom laden. They're both stated in very forbidding terms compared to the earnest and idealistic "I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch for this night and all the nights to come." ... Maybe the repetitions were deemed to be necessary as the quota of prisoners making up the Watch gradually increased over the years.

I think having all the additions - holding no lands , fathering no children, etc- baked into the oath was a bad idea (though it may have seemed like a good idea at the time, to some). It made it inevitable that eventually some Lords would cease to hold up their end of the bargain ... and if it worked for some , others would follow... after all, they would suffer no consequences for their lack of support.

Without all that stuff, the oath is poetic, like stories and myths that have been passed down orally, and very FM. I am the sword, the horn the shield, etc., for me, resonates with Tormund's many honorifics... again, very FM, and I believe,in some cases, tied to the old gods.

Aside: Jon letting Tormund's people through made me think of the people who flock to WF and it's winter town in harsh times... same thing but on a bigger scale? (Recalling that the other forts once had gates and people once remembered the Others better, was this once standard practice, come winter ?)

 

To the bold- YES! That is a great point.

17 hours ago, bemused said:

I like this, but Ramsay or Roose? It's possible Roose killed Domeric (I'm still in the process of updating a thread that touches onthis, in part) .... or that Roose sacrificed Dom to Ramsay ... or that Ramsay sacrificed Dom, thus earning Roose's blessing.  ...I suspect bad things regarding Dom's dead brothers under the Dreadfort.... Roose would have killed Ramsay but for his eyes...  Roose projects Ramsay will kill Walda's babies (but Roose likes to deflect blame).

In any case, it creeped me out when, at fArya's wedding...

God, singular ? Not the way a northman should speak, methinks....  what can it mean?.. Maybe it's because it's one weirwood, one heart tree, one god (I kinda doubt it) ...  I think it should still be the gods, or the old gods.

Do I need talking down ?

Keep me in mind when you get a thread going. I happen to like mumbling about my ideas with others.

[The Fattest Leech]

10 hours ago, Seams said:

I was going to bring up Jon's journey to the fist - it is preceded by ritualistic details and it shares elements with arcs of other major characters when they make important transitions.

First, Mormont seems in a big hurry to get to their camp site at the old ring fort. My surmise was that this had to be accomplished in order to get Jon Snow and Ghost into position during a full moon but while the comet is still visible in the sky. I think there is a specific magical moment when Jon can find that bundle at the Fist, like the old Celtic idea that the barrier between this world and the underworld is thinnest on one night of the year (Samhain). Ghost had been unable or unwilling to enter the campground of the ranging party but suddenly Jon finds the wolf at this side and urging him to follow on what turns out to be the path to the cache.

Great suggestions, many I had never thought of before. I am definitely going to re-read that chapter tomorrow (it is late again ) This cache is for sure a hot warm button of discussion in the scheme of things.

Ok, just to speculate and doing so without having re-read the chapter, could this special light be needed for Ghost to "see" the cache to lead Jon to? GRRM uses the "silent shout" idea in at least three other stories I can think of at the moment, and they are all used in a way that means the sound is on the edge of hearing, and/or more specifically a sound that is only meant for a specific character to hear. Could this idea be similar? Or not?

10 hours ago, Seams said:

Then there are weird details such as Jon preparing mulled wine to Mormonts exacting specifications. Jon is hungry but he gives his bowl of stew to Grenn. (I believe Grenn is a manifestation of some aspect of Jon. Probably his "inner warrior." So maybe Jon is fortifying his inner warrior for the mission on which he is about to embark. Or maybe the idea is that Jon cannot eat the root vegetables in the stew - roots associated with the underworld - but his doppelganger can.) I have these out of order, I know, but there is also a strangely disembodied conversation with Sam Tarly in which Sam indirectly says, "Farewell" to Jon. I don't know what all of these details mean, but they are clearly very deliberate. Maybe Sam has an extra special role in opening doors - we see it again at the Black Gate with Bran and his traveling companions - and he is bestowing some magic on Jon at this moment.

In Dreamsongs Martin goes in to detail at one point in his bio which he describes his college years in Dubuque where he and his friends would go to their professors place to discuss the discussables such as old tales and Norse myth, etc. It was there that his professor taught him how to make mulled wine and was specific with the details. Well, you can probably see where I am headed with this... that I sometimes tend to think that Jon, Samwell, Grenn, Pyp, etc are the freshmen going through their college days in the Dubuque winter. That the NW experience is a learning experience and Jon is George (in some ways).

Not sure about the root vegetables, but I see where you are headed. I need to re-read this part to be sure.

I am going to have to reply to the second part later. My quoter is acting up again. I don't know if it's the time of evening on the forum, or my connection, or ???

 

[Ygrain]

 

15 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Of course, this would technically be possible, but nothing in the text indicates anything of that sort. Instead, then NW is repeatedly shown to be an institution with a long and unchanged tradition, an institution that preserves and keeps ancient knowledge, even if the men there can no longer make use of it - there are books and records at CB that are older than the books anywhere else, and they also have forbidden/banned books like Barth's Unnatural History.

This is hilarious. An institution whose members don't know a fuck about who their true enemy is and how to fight them and whose ancient books are rotting in the cellars is as far from keeping and preserving ancient knowledge as it gets, bar perhaps using the said books in the privy.

[Julia H.]

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The Black Gate is magical, not the words. They just serve as a password. One should ask why such a gate can talk, not why the words make it open its mouth. There is no mystery about the thing at the gate - the gate asks who Sam is, and then answers with those parts of the vow which explain what he is as a man of the Watch. That night also gathers and that the watch of Sam is not ending before his death doesn't really fit when you are asked who are you, or does it?

To me the password to a magical gate seems magical enough. You seem to be saying the vow is not magical, it only serves as the password to something magical. Do we really want to go into fine details like that?

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Sure, but is the line up there actually proof that George knew he would make Cat into an undead nicknamed Lady Stoneheart, or did he remember that line when he created the name Lady Stoneheart? We don't know.

Is it relevant though? I'm not into exploring what thought process the author has in mind while he is creating the story. There are other examples like the above, and with regard to the outcome it doesn't matter whether the author thought of the connection from the beginning or created it at a later point. What interests me is the existence of the connection.

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I don't see much plot relevance to a potential change in the NW vows. But there certainly are things like the Others, the War for the Dawn, and the founding of the NW that are likely going to be explained. I don't expect much revelations and twists in the latter, though. Interesting story-telling and details, sure, but I actually do expect that the Watch always wore black and that guarded the Wall from the very day they started building it.

Others might see some though. It depends on how much you are interested in details.

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

There are definitions of text that emphasize that it is a written text. But then, I'm not a native speaker and I do not always pick the proper terms.

That would be in the sense of a literary text for literary analysis (what we are doing now), but we aren't arguing whether the NW vow counts as a piece of literature in world. From a linguistic viewpoint, however, it has all the necessary characteristics of a text, regardless of whether it has been written down or not. (I would find it weird if no one had ever written it down, but it's beside the point.)

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Considering that the Watch operates at the edge of the known world and does stuff nobody but the Watch gives a rat's ass about, it is actually not that unlikely that they didn't change all that much. I mean, why would they change? And in what way? They started protecting the Wall, and continue to do so till this day. And they never truly forgot the Others. They still remember what three horn blows mean.

They remember a few things (some of the Watch anyway), but it is a major point in their storyline how the Watch should remember in a much better way, how they have forgotten vital information (like how to fight the Others), how the Watch has changed from a respected institution to a penal colony, yes, a penal colony, maybe not in name but in practice, how the strength of the Watch has dwindled in every possible way (number of manned castles, number and quality of soldiers, general resources etc.). It is in the books that some of the history of the Watch is quite literally lost from known records. We know from actual history that there have been changes imposed on the Watch from outside as recently as during the Targaryen era. Their loss of prestige in the realm is a change in itself, which affects them in many ways. But you ignore all the evidence Martin has written (the above is only a few examples) and say that nothing has changed since the beginning of the Watch. 

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

And Jon does only join some cosmetic things about the Watch. The Others were always their true enemy, and it is not true that the wildlings weren't their enemy in the recent time. The great Mance tried to kill them all - for pretty much no reason. Nobody ever asked the question why Mance never approached Mormont or even Ned/Robert about the Others when he knew about them and tried to find a way to keep his people safe.

Tell this to the characters who criticize him. Please.

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

That seems to be a summary of the other stuff, if you ask me. Life and honor can't be split up between multiple spheres, can they? If the life and honor of a watchman belongs to the Watch, then this could be seen as entailing the whole part about wives and children, no glory and no crowns.

Not exactly. It can also be a question of priorities. You have to defend the realm and lay down your life if necessary, but you can still have a wife and kids, like so many other soldiers in this world and in the real one. 

The "crown" part is irrelevant in most cases, but it must have come in handy when a defeated king's sons or other male relatives were sent to the Wall instead of being killed. (It was also convenient that they gave up having children.)

As for the glory, in the case of knights it is actually used as motivation - I don't see why the Watchmen must give it up entirely (why there can't be songs about their heroic deeds, for example), though I see why it should not be their primary goal, but that's the same in the case of all soldiers. Take the Kingsguard, for example. They also have to give up a lot, but glory they get, as much as they can take (as well as all sorts of creature comforts), and no one thinks that it's bad for the service. 

Denying the Watchmen not only the crowns and the comfort of a family, along with the continuation of their lines, but also glory in every sense of the word reinforces the punitive nature of the service. It suggests that either you do not deserve recognition even if you die to save the realm (perhaps because you do it as atonement for something?) or your name must be erased from history (perhaps because you belong to a defeated dynasty, whose glory would be inconvenient for the victors even in this form). It also makes the sacrifice (if voluntary) almost superhuman. 

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Not to mention that 'honor' has a strong Andalish/modern vibe to it if you ask me. The wildlings don't care about honor all that much, do they?

Some of them do, others don't. And that's exactly how it is with people all over the Seven Kingdoms. But we see that a strong sense of honour works splendidly with all sorts of First Men values and traditions (see Ned). The belief that you can't lie in front of a heart tree also tells a lot about the importance of honour in First Men religion.

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The Watch isn't a place of punishment. The lords and kings of the Seven Kingdoms use it as such, but that has nothing to do with the Watch itself. More with how the institution is seen by the outsiders who support it.

Except that it has everything to do with the Watch itself. 

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The fact that criminals are sent to the Wall is in no way reflected by the vows. And that's something that's done by both the North and the Andal kingdoms. The North supports the Watch with provisions and such much more than any other kingdom, but their men don't fall over each other in an effort to take the black.

As I said above, the restrictions have a punitive feeling to them, but I would guess they reflect more the status of  a defeated enemy than that of actual criminals. (Using the Watch as a landing place for ordinary criminals may have been a later development, following the use of the Watch to get rid of political rivals). No, the vow does not explicitly say that the Watch is or should be used as a penal colony, and I never said it did. The current penal colony status (or use) of the Watch is as far from its originally intended purpose as it can be. That's a major change, and not the only one. 

On a slightly different note, I have just reread Mormont's official "welcome speech" to the recruits who are going to take the vows, and it very honestly describes the current situation.

Mormont stood before the altar, the rainbow shining on his broad bald head. "You came to us outlaws," he began, "poachers, rapers, debtors, killers, and thieves. You came to us children. You came to us alone, in chains, with neither friends nor honor. You came to us rich, and you came to us poor. Some of you bear the names of proud houses. Others have only bastards' names, or no names at all. It makes no matter. All that is past now. On the Wall, we are all one house.

Interesting...

8 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

And in customs and traditions there are only cosmetic differences between the Northmen and the rest of the Seven Kingdoms whereas it is quite clear that the Northmen and the wildlings have no common customs aside from their gods - never mind that they are all First Men by blood (everybody has First Men ancestors in Westeros).

A shared religion is a very strong unifying force, which affects many different aspects of life, while religious differences have led to all sorts of further differences in real societies (and I don't even mean religious wars here), so I wouldn't call such a difference "cosmetic" - though only you know what exactly you mean by that. Most of the wildlings can speak the Common Tongue, while First Men at least seem to remember that the Old Tongue used to be theirs as well. A lack of language boundaries can go a long way, especially when a shared religion also exists. In my opinion, First Men and the wildlings have some of the most important things in common from a cultural viewpoint. But I think this is off topic and also a question that would deserve its own thread. 

[Lord Varys]

8 hours ago, The Fattest Leech said:

When you compare the legends the maesters write about, and how they are deliberately incorrect, omitted, or exaggerated, and even what Old Nan tries to scare Bran with, with what we are being shown on page through the actions of the characters, the reader should be able to see what's going on (even if the answer is not fully revealed yet).

Where are the hints that those legends are 'deliberately incorrect'? The maesters don't know the distant past, and they interpret the evidence they have in a certain way. But they don't insist that an apple is an orange when they realize it is an apple.

What we see there is that time doesn't really preserve knowledge all that well if you don't have a greenseer. Not that people maliciously twist the truth.

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The words are a key. Why?

The why is the gate only asking/curious/testing about who the person is? Not just anyone can pass. And as mentioned earlier in the thread, the fact that these words were said in front of someone like Bran, Meera, Jojen, Hodor (who may need them later), and a rather large character theme in the story is to remember who you are, and the wall being the largest mirror on the planet. This is story telling, not just ink on a page.

Why is the black gate not asking," what is your mission?", "What have you sworn?", "Are you a sworn brother?", "Do you have a "creed"? Tell me then." (and so on)

Because George wanted Sam to say the coolest parts of the vows? Nobody doubts that the best part is the part about what the men of the NW are.

And by the way - I'm inclined to believe that it was crucial there that Sam swore his vows before a heart tree because if hadn't done it the Black Gate might not have recognized him as a man of the NW. Not Meera and Jojen or Bran could have said whatever the hell they wanted they wouldn't have been allowed to pass. Just as wights in black clothing knowing the right words can't.

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We do know, per the author.

If he has confirmed that we do know. Has he confirmed that he already had the name in mind when he wrote AGoT?

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Yes, they do.

Not the same way the people of the Seven Kingdoms do. They have no knights, no proper lords, no men who pledge their lives and honor to the defense of the weak and innocent. Their culture is completely different from that of the Seven Kingdoms since they have no feudalism.

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Weirwoods, anti-incest, guest right, the "stubborn desire to rule themselves", etc... Just as the First Men in the Mountains of the Moon were repressed and pushed back by the Andals.

The First Men of the North don't have 'the stubborn desire to rule themselves'. They all bent the knees to the Starks. They are as much kneelers as the men of the other Seven Kingdoms. The only place which is somewhat more egalitarian are the Iron Islands (where every captain is a king) and Dorne. The Andals all have godswoods, too, in their castles, have they not? And they also keep guest right - it is not that important to them than to the First Men but they know it and usually keep it. It is the same with incest - that's not practiced both by the First Men and the Andals (although only the Faith is as intolerant as to try to force their kings to stick to their rules - the Starks and the other Northmen apparently didn't care who the Targaryens married their children to) and presumably by many cultures of Essos, either. We don't see the Qartheen or Dothraki marry their sisters, no?

The First Men of the North call the First Men from beyond the Wall wildlings, too, and they don't like when they steal their women or raid their lands.

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And the Free Folk/First Men in the North, especially those north of the wall, are the ones with almost no Andal blood, whereas down in the southron kingdoms- minus most of Dorne- it is very mixed.

And what point are you trying to make there? That it is better to be of purer First Men descent? What kind of argument is that? And what indicates that it is great to have 'pure' First Men lineage? The Starks most definitely have no such lineage thanks to their intermarriage with the Manderlys, the Royces, the Blackwoods, and the Tullys. Not to mention Jon Snow with his Targaryen ancestry.

5 hours ago, Ygrain said:

This is hilarious. An institution whose members don't know a fuck about who their true enemy is and how to fight them and whose ancient books are rotting in the cellars is as far from keeping and preserving ancient knowledge as it gets, bar perhaps using the said books in the privy.

LOL! They still guard the Wall, right? And they still remember that three horn blows mean Others, right? They have forgotten a lot, but they immediately realize that the Wall and Watch are there to keep the Others out of the Realm as soon as they realize that the Others are a thing.

The wildlings want to destroy the Wall and the Watch - led by a turncloak black brother, no less - in an attempt to flee the Others. They have no knowledge to fight them and are either too stupid or too evil to actually try to ask the Watch to grant them refuge in exchange for information on the Others. Why don't they capture wights and show them to the rangers? Why doesn't Mance try to talk to Qhorin or Mormont or anyone?

It is Mance who is to blame for the most recent hatred between the Watch and the wildlings because he sent the fucking Weeper to the fucking Bridge of Skulls to kill his brothers there, and he sent the fucking Magnar of Thenn to CB to butcher everybody there. He only came out with the fact that he and his people were fleeing when he had basically no other choice. What he truly wanted was to destroy the NW and he was even willing to risk destroying the Wall in the process of it.

Nobody doubts the Watch cannot make use of much of the preserved knowledge they have - that their fossil of a maester happens to be blind expresses this fact very well. But that doesn't change the fact that they have a lot of knowledge up there. And the state of the Watch is not the fault of the Watch. They don't breed those cravens and criminals that make up most of their ranks. The Seven Kingdoms sent them those people. It is not their fault.

I mean, you see it with Jon and Waymar. They came there thinking the Watch was a place where they could honorably serve. Such men still exist. It is not their fault that the rest are lowborn scum and criminals, right?

29 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

To me the password to a magical gate seems magical enough. You seem to be saying the vow is not magical, it only serves as the password to something magical. Do we really want to go into fine details like that?

It creates the wrong impression that the vows are more than just words. They are not magical in any real sense of the words. A magical vow in a fantasy world could be unbreakable, etc.

29 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

Is it relevant though? I'm not into exploring what thought process the author has in mind while he is creating the story. There are other examples like the above, and with regard to the outcome it doesn't matter whether the author thought of the connection from the beginning or created it at a later point. What interests me is the existence of the connection.

It certainly is when you are looking for clues to confirm a theory you already have - that the vows of the Watch changed in a very specific manner. If you just make connections where there are none intended then you are piecing things together that aren't really there and you get an impression of the text that's not intended by the author.

That is fine when you interpret a completed work, but not when we are discussing things on the inside and speculate about future plot elements and revelations - and it is pretty clear that you and all the others looking for such clues expect or hope that your ideas are later going to be confirmed implicitly or explicitly.

If there was a real clue - like Bloodraven making a reference to the days where the NW still stood true, or something of that sort - I'd immediately think in your direction (although not really on the focus of the Watch being allowed to have families and children). Rather that they forgot or changed something really important.

29 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

They remember a few things (some of the Watch anyway), but it is a major point in their storyline how the Watch should remember in a much better way, how they have forgotten vital information (like how to fight the Others), how the Watch has changed from a respected institution to a penal colony, yes, a penal colony, maybe not in name but in practice, how the strength of the Watch has dwindled in every possible way (number of manned castles, number and quality of soldiers, general resources etc.). It is in the books that some of the history of the Watch is quite literally lost from known records. We know from actual history that there have been changes imposed on the Watch from outside as recently as during the Targaryen era. Their loss of prestige in the realm is a change in itself, which affects them in many ways. But you ignore all the evidence Martin has written (the above is only a few examples) and say that nothing has changed since the beginning of the Watch. 

Well, the First Men would be to blamed for most of that stuff, no? I mean, they are the ones who had no parchment and paper and were not keeping any records. They just wrote runes on stones, presumably, so it is actually quite likely that most knowledge about the Others and wights and the Long Night was lost before the Andals came.

In addition - a thing people deliberately ignore/don't want to hear anything about - where the hell are the Children and greenseers of the North? Or at the Wall? If they had one such they wouldn't forget anything!

Why was the Pact not upheld in the North where the Andals never ruled? Why don't the Starks have a greenseer beneath their godswood? Why don't they no longer believe in the Others?

They haven't been 'poisoned' by Andal culture, and no Andal warlord ever burned down their sacred weirwood groves and slaughtered their Children/greenseers.

The true twist there, in my opinion, is that the First Men - all the First Men, everywhere in Westeros - broke the Pact some time after it was made, and that's when the Others came - to finally cleanse Westeros of those untrustworthy, lying, short-lived vermin.

We hear about very early Storm Kings and Starks war with the Children of the Forest even after the Long Night. They don't care about what their ancestors promised them even then - which is doubly insidious, dishonorable, and evil if you ask me since the Children apparently were crucial in helping the Last Hero to defeat the Others.

It is also very telling that Mance and all his people do actually not know where the Children and Bloodraven live, nor do they have contact with them or forge an alliance with them. Why is that?

I'm pretty sure we'll that the reason why the First Men don't remember is that they have a very selective memory. They might have all known back in the day why the Others came, and that they even deserved to be exterminated for what they did - but they did not want their children and grandchildren to know that. They did not want to be seen as the villains of the story. And that's why they only told the fancy tale of the Pact and how there was peace afterwards - yet nobody ever asked why there are no Children of the Forest in the North. Why doesn't the Wolfswood still belong to the Children (as it would have, after the Pact, when it was still much larger, presumably)? Or the Rainwood - in its case we do know the answer: the First Men kings of House Durrandon took it away from the Children.

29 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

Tell this to the characters who criticize him. Please.

I assume they know that, too. They are just not willing to wear new makeup. And it is not that Marsh kills Jon before he can bring the wildlings through the Wall, or does he?

29 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

Not exactly. It can also be a question of priorities. You have to defend the realm and lay down your life if necessary, but you can still have a wife and kids, like so many other soldiers in this world and in the real one. 

The Watch are not 'so many soldiers' - they have sworn very special vows and made a very special commitment. There is no indication a duty such as theirs - especially when they have to fight the Others! - would be fulfilled to the degree they are supposed to do (die for it, even if nobody ever learns what they did) if they had family and friends to care about. What would they do if they had to choose between fighting the Others at point A and protecting their family at point B?

There is a very obvious reason and motivation for the Watch to have been set up the way they are since the beginning. Especially since back then people would have actually known and remembered what it had taken to beat the Others back and how dangerous they could be.

29 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

The "crown" part is irrelevant in most cases, but it must have come in handy when a defeated king's sons or other male relatives were sent to the Wall instead of being killed. (It was also convenient that they gave up having children.)

As for the glory, in the case of knights it is actually used as motivation - I don't see why the Watchmen must give it up entirely (why there can't be songs about their heroic deeds, for example), though I see why it should not be their primary goal, but that's the same in the case of all soldiers. Take the Kingsguard, for example. They also have to give up a lot, but glory they get, as much as they can take (as well as all sorts of creature comforts), and no one thinks that it's bad for the service.

Actually, Queen Visenya did think just that. The Kingsguard should not strive for glory as such, just defend the life of their king with their own. That's why their vows are modeled on those of the NW. The NW is a prestigious calling because you give up yourself and your ambitions to protect and save mankind. That's why this is a great calling. It should also be the same with the KG but it is not always so because people aren't perfect.

Even Jon looked more to the glory part ('a bastard can rise high in the Watch') than the sacrifice part. Taking the black is a sacrifice, and you ennobled and praised because you make that sacrifice.

The Watch is also not an institution you go to excel as an individual. For that you can become a tourney knight. At the Watch the collective duty and mission of the institution counts. You are just one little cell in a large organism. Qhorin tries to teach Jon that.

29 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

Denying the Watchmen not only the crowns and the comfort of a family, along with the continuation of their lines, but also glory in every sense of the word reinforces the punitive nature of the service. It suggests that either you do not deserve recognition even if you die to save the realm (perhaps because you do it as atonement for something?) or your name must be erased from history (perhaps because you belong to a defeated dynasty, whose glory would be inconvenient for the victors even in this form). It also makes the sacrifice (if voluntary) almost superhuman.

Not really. It is just like joining a monastic order and living in some monastery or cloister. People in medieval settings do that all the time (and even today people do stuff like that, no?). You pay with your individual freedom and the joy of a family and spouse but you get 'a larger reward' in the knowledge that you serve a great cause, etc.

I can imagine that the whole desertion thing and leaving the Wall without permission became an ever greater issue the more criminals were up there, but the reason why you sent up rival kings and the like up the Wall is because tradition decreed that you don't come back from there. Else somebody like Nymeria would have never sent any kings to the Wall. I mean, if she couldn't be sure that there was consensus in all the Seven Kingdoms that they would not come back or raise armies up there she would have rather killed them than risk they would not stay there. 

And the idea that such a change - that people cannot possibly leave the Wall - would have come from one kingdom at first, etc. makes no sense at all. Because any rival kingdom would have actually gained a huge advantage by inviting a man of note being sent to the Wall by a rival in his kingdom to join him at his kingdom so that they can together raise an army against the rival.

In that sense, it seems clear to me that you serve for life at the Wall and never go back home in any meaningful way (i.e. a way you permanently leave the Watch) was universally accepted from the start.

Else, the Starks would have been the greatest morons alive if they had not used any River Kings or lords sent up by their rivals as pawns to help them cut out a chunk of the Riverlands for themselves. They have immediate access to the Wall and could offer any man who was forced to take the black refuge at Winterfell.

29 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

Some of them do, others don't. And that's exactly how it is with people all over the Seven Kingdoms. But we see that a strong sense of honour works splendidly with all sorts of First Men values and traditions (see Ned). The belief that you can't lie in front of a heart tree also tells a lot about the importance of honour in First Men religion.

Ned isn't a wildling. He is a lord from a very prestigious royal line, a line based on hereditary rule, a principle the wildlings neither know nor recognize. He has literally nothing in common with people who allow anyone a voice in council or who only follow strength. He is Stark of Winterfell, an aristocrat to the bone. And that's what's part of his honor.

As for the lying thing - I imagine that's not religious conviction originally but simply the truth. The First Men knew the weirwoods spied on them, and since you can see pretty much everything about the present and past via the trees if you a greenseer, any greenseer speaking to a man through a tree would know it when that person lied. Because he would know everything about that person.

Greenseers are basically omniscient if they care to find everything out about a person they interact with.

29 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

Except that it has everything to do with the Watch itself. 

As I said above, the restrictions have a punitive feeling to them, but I would guess they reflect more the status of  a defeated enemy than that of actual criminals. (Using the Watch as a landing place for ordinary criminals may have been a later development, following the use of the Watch to get rid of political rivals). No, the vow does not explicitly say that the Watch is or should be used as a penal colony, and I never said it did. The current penal colony status (or use) of the Watch is as far from its originally intended purpose as it can be. That's a major change, and not the only one. 

On a slightly different note, I have just reread Mormont's official "welcome speech" to the recruits who are going to take the vows, and it very honestly describes the current situation.

Mormont stood before the altar, the rainbow shining on his broad bald head. "You came to us outlaws," he began, "poachers, rapers, debtors, killers, and thieves. You came to us children. You came to us alone, in chains, with neither friends nor honor. You came to us rich, and you came to us poor. Some of you bear the names of proud houses. Others have only bastards' names, or no names at all. It makes no matter. All that is past now. On the Wall, we are all one house.

Interesting...

Mormont's speech reflects the current sad state of the recruits, but the washing away of the past of a recruit is not a bad thing. It is a sign that the commitment to take the black was universally deemed to be such a great calling that you could do it no matter what you had done before. It is a testament that this is the greatest sacrifice you could make and it is thus only proper that anyone being willing to make it is allowed to do so.

It is also quite clear you actually have to accept to go to the Wall. People are not just forced to go there against their will. Criminals can choose between regular punishment and Watch.

29 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

A shared religion is a very strong unifying force, which affects many different aspects of life, while religious differences have led to all sorts of further differences in real societies (and I don't even mean religious wars here), so I wouldn't call such a difference "cosmetic" - though only you know what exactly you mean by that. Most of the wildlings can speak the Common Tongue, while First Men at least seem to remember that the Old Tongue used to be theirs as well. A lack of language boundaries can go a long way, especially when a shared religion also exists. In my opinion, First Men and the wildlings have some of the most important things in common from a cultural viewpoint. But I think this is off topic and also a question that would deserve its own thread. 

The wildlings do not all follow the old gods, nor does it seem the Northmen do the kind of silly stuff the wildlings do (like painting faces all the trees in their area). The Northmen also no longer hang entrails in their heart trees or water them with blood. The wildlings might still do that.

Religion isn't as much of a dividing force in Westeros than it is in the real world - especially not between the old gods and the new. They are, more or less, on common ground and get along with each other. Outside religions are another matter. There are some extremists, to be sure, but even the High Sparrow is right now not rambling about burning godswoods or converting everybody to the Seven. 

On a cultural level the wildlings couldn't be farther away from the Northmen. There is a reason why those people have been mortal enemies for thousands of years.

It is not the Watch the wildlings were at odds with, it was the Northmen. They never wanted to conquer the Watch or steal women from the black brothers. Their kings led them to raids and conquest into the North. The Gift was part of that as well, but also the North.

[sweetsunray]

On 7/31/2018 at 5:35 AM, Hugorfonics said:

m also confused on one line in the original, the horn that wakes the sleepers. Giants? Theyre like the NW servents? Or dragons. Probably not. But Others. Now theyre the ones that are sleeping. Now i feel like im speaking heresy

This touches upon a question some of my bear essays try to answer at the moment (only draft).

Which creature sleeps during the long night or "winter"... which animal "hibernates"? Bears den during winter, but the long night = long winter. In folklore bear characters are protectors, guardians, but also strong, powerful and vengeful. Now, Jeor Mormont is an obvious bear character, but there are many other brothers of the Night's Watch that are tied to key-words and concepts that make it possible to regard them as a bearlike character, though they have no such obvious sigil. It's not just in the NIght's Watch, but there are significantly more "bearlike" characters there than any other region or group of people.

So, the "sleepers" could mean the night's watch brothers. Note how the wight attack on Jeor happened at night, while he was "sleeping". The attack at the Fist same thing: Jon finds a horn there, then there's a plot to kill the Old Bear and Samwell (who is one of those hidden bear characters) in the aSoS prologue, Chett's about to kill the sleeping Sam just as the horns blow thrice and the camp is attacked by the wights and a giant of a viciously angry snowbear.

It could also mean "giants", since Jon observes that giants are "bearlike". Another hidden bear character I like to use as an example here is Tyrion: Aemon (who has a bearskin to keep warm) calls Tyrion a Giant (who kept the bearskin that Benjen gave him), while Jon thinks of Tyrion as a small bear when he comes up the wall huddled in that bearskin. Another characters that matches giants to bears is Tormund: there's his story of crawling into the belly of a giant to survive a harsh winter, and once she wakes she suckles him believing him to be her child. It's basically the story of bearcubs being born in the dead of winter in the den, and until a few decades ago people still believed that cubs were born to a bear mom while she was asleep. Meanwhile his second story again references hibernation concept when Tormund went looking for this woman he desired, who was a she-bear.. It's a winter snowstorm when he goes looking for her, at night, but when he wakes it's warm, aka that was a bear's night (as Craster calls it), or not 1 night, but a whole season of nights, until spring.

Finally it could mean "mountains": a horn that can cause earthquakes or something. Mountains are geographical giants. The largest man in the books, of whom Ned thinks as a 'giant' is nicknamed 'The Mountain that Rides', and Jaime compares the black bear that Brienne has to fight to the Mountain (paraphrasing: "a bear without a pelt")

So, you have the combo of words or characters or features that George puts together: bears, giants, mountains... who need to be woken from their wintersleep.

IMO the horn that wakes the sleepers means that they have to remain watchful and wake up those that tend to go sleep at night or nod off in winter, the bearlike characters who are warriors and guardians, but can't help becoming sleepy when it's cold.

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Mormont stroked the bird's black feathers, and stifled a sudden yawn with the back of his hand. "I will forsake supper, I believe. Rest will serve me better. Wake me at first light."
"Sleep well, my lord." Jon gathered up the empty cups and stepped outside. ...[snip]... A great blaze was crackling in the center of the camp, and he could smell stew cooking. The Old Bear might not be hungry, but Jon was. He drifted over toward the fire.
Dywen was holding forth, spoon in hand. "I know this wood as well as any man alive, and I tell you, I wouldn't care to ride through it alone tonight. Can't you smell it?" ...[snip]... The forester sucked on his spoon a moment. He had taken out his teeth. His face was leathery and wrinkled, his hands gnarled as old roots. "Seems to me like it smells . . . well . . . cold." (aCoK, Jon IV)

 

[Julia H.]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

It creates the wrong impression that the vows are more than just words. They are not magical in any real sense of the words. A magical vow in a fantasy world could be unbreakable, etc.

You must be running out of arguments if you want to debate what exactly counts as magical and what doesn't. Being the password to a magical gate makes the vow special enough, more than "just words". (Words are wind and they do not open a magical gate.) Saying that the words are not magical, they just do something magical is splitting hairs.

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It certainly is when you are looking for clues to confirm a theory you already have - that the vows of the Watch changed in a very specific manner. If you just make connections where there are none intended then you are piecing things together that aren't really there and you get an impression of the text that's not intended by the author.

Now that's a shift from what we were talking about. We were talking about whether the author had intended a given connection from the beginning or just put it in somewhere along the way. (You know the example was the heart turned into stone.)  I said that is irrelevant because ultimately the connection is there, it is irrelevant how and when the author decided to include it.

On the other hand, If I make connections where none is intended, well, then either the book makes it clear that there is no connection, or the perceived connection simply does not go anywhere (the analysis might still hold water within the text, even without the author's intention, even if only by accident). That's all we can find out, when the series is completed, because we still won't be able to see into the author's head (unless someone specifically asks him this question). That's a risk of analysing an incomplete work of literature, and I'm happy to take it.

What is more, for most works of literature we simply cannot find out what the author's intentions were and yet, we can analyse them and draw our conclusions. What comes through is much more relevant than what the author thought or intended because we simply cannot know the latter (and what if the author intended one thing but what he/she wrote evolved into something else?). 

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That is fine when you interpret a completed work, 1) but not when we are discussing things on the inside and speculate about future plot elements and revelations - and 2) it is pretty clear that you and all the others looking for such clues expect or hope that your ideas are later going to be confirmed implicitly or explicitly.

1) And who are you to tell us what is and what is not right to analyse in the text? And if this is your opinion,  then why on Planetos are you still reading our posts? To tell us to stop?

2) Speaking for myself, I, personally, very rarely make predictions on what is going or not going to happen in the coming books (with regard to either new events or revelations). However, I find such explorations into NW history fascinating even if we might not get any explicit revelations in the books. A lot of things are discussed on these forums that won't ever be explained in the books - so what? I wouldn't be here if I were only interested in what is sure to happen.

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Well, the First Men would be to blamed for most of that stuff, no? I mean, they are the ones who had no parchment and paper and were not keeping any records. They just wrote runes on stones, presumably, so it is actually quite likely that most knowledge about the Others and wights and the Long Night was lost before the Andals came.

In addition - a thing people deliberately ignore/don't want to hear anything about - where the hell are the Children and greenseers of the North? Or at the Wall? If they had one such they wouldn't forget anything!

Why was the Pact not upheld in the North where the Andals never ruled? Why don't the Starks have a greenseer beneath their godswood? Why don't they no longer believe in the Others?

They haven't been 'poisoned' by Andal culture, and no Andal warlord ever burned down their sacred weirwood groves and slaughtered their Children/greenseers.

The true twist there, in my opinion, is that the First Men - all the First Men, everywhere in Westeros - broke the Pact some time after it was made, and that's when the Others came - to finally cleanse Westeros of those untrustworthy, lying, short-lived vermin.

We hear about very early Storm Kings and Starks war with the Children of the Forest even after the Long Night. They don't care about what their ancestors promised them even then - which is doubly insidious, dishonorable, and evil if you ask me since the Children apparently were crucial in helping the Last Hero to defeat the Others.

It is also very telling that Mance and all his people do actually not know where the Children and Bloodraven live, nor do they have contact with them or forge an alliance with them. Why is that?

I'm pretty sure we'll that the reason why the First Men don't remember is that they have a very selective memory. They might have all known back in the day why the Others came, and that they even deserved to be exterminated for what they did - but they did not want their children and grandchildren to know that. They did not want to be seen as the villains of the story. And that's why they only told the fancy tale of the Pact and how there was peace afterwards - yet nobody ever asked why there are no Children of the Forest in the North. Why doesn't the Wolfswood still belong to the Children (as it would have, after the Pact, when it was still much larger, presumably)? Or the Rainwood - in its case we do know the answer: the First Men kings of House Durrandon took it away from the Children.

Interesting stuff. It's good to see you also speculate on some things.  

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The Watch are not 'so many soldiers' - they have sworn very special vows and made a very special commitment. There is no indication a duty such as theirs - especially when they have to fight the Others! - would be fulfilled to the degree they are supposed to do (die for it, even if nobody ever learns what they did) if they had family and friends to care about. What would they do if they had to choose between fighting the Others at point A and protecting their family at point B?

There is a very obvious reason and motivation for the Watch to have been set up the way they are since the beginning. Especially since back then people would have actually known and remembered what it had taken to beat the Others back and how dangerous they could be.

To me it seems that the original idea was that the Men of the Night's Watch would undertake that duty voluntarily, out of a sense of vocation, based on the understanding of the importance of their task, which may have even be regarded as sacred. While that is so, you don't really have to swear to give up everything else. If you don't have this sense of vocation though, if you have been perchance forced to take the black in one way or another, then all those prohibitions become necessary - and futile at the same time because even if you don't get married, you still have parents, sisters and brothers, people you love, you may even have children already (cf. Mormont), and that's not so easy to forget just because you have made a promise, especially if you don't have this sense of a noble calling.  

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Actually, Queen Visenya did think just that. The Kingsguard should not strive for glory as such, just defend the life of their king with their own. That's why their vows are modeled on those of the NW. The NW is a prestigious calling because you give up yourself and your ambitions to protect and save mankind. That's why this is a great calling. It should also be the same with the KG but it is not always so because people aren't perfect.

Yet, the deeds of the Kingsguard are recorded in the White Book, they take part in fancy tournaments, which they can win, they can be famous all over the country, like Barristan, and so on, there are probably songs and legends about them. 

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Even Jon looked more to the glory part ('a bastard can rise high in the Watch') than the sacrifice part. Taking the black is a sacrifice, and you ennobled and praised because you make that sacrifice.

Yes, he looked to the glory part. It's natural. Everyone wants recognition. So why must the vow deny it to them altogether?

They would deserve praise, at least those who voluntarily joined the NW, but they are not getting it, not these days, and again, if they want to absolutely keep the vow, then they must not expect or even accept any recognition. It is a lot to demand, and such a demand can also be counterproductive in certain situations.  

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The Watch is also not an institution you go to excel as an individual. For that you can become a tourney knight. At the Watch the collective duty and mission of the institution counts. You are just one little cell in a large organism. Qhorin tries to teach Jon that.

True enough. 

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Not really. It is just like joining a monastic order and living in some monastery or cloister. People in medieval settings do that all the time (and even today people do stuff like that, no?). You pay with your individual freedom and the joy of a family and spouse but you get 'a larger reward' in the knowledge that you serve a great cause, etc.

As long as you choose it yourself, it's fine. And, of course, the Watch is different from a monastic order in the sense that your job is to perhaps face the most frightening possible enemy in this world and to die in battle, which monks rarely do. It also entails a much greater responsibility. 

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I can imagine that the whole desertion thing and leaving the Wall without permission became an ever greater issue the more criminals were up there, but the reason why you sent up rival kings and the like up the Wall is because tradition decreed that you don't come back from there. Else somebody like Nymeria would have never sent any kings to the Wall. I mean, if she couldn't be sure that there was consensus in all the Seven Kingdoms that they would not come back or raise armies up there she would have rather killed them than risk they would not stay there. 

And the idea that such a change - that people cannot possibly leave the Wall - would have come from one kingdom at first, etc. makes no sense at all. Because any rival kingdom would have actually gained a huge advantage by inviting a man of note being sent to the Wall by a rival in his kingdom to join him at his kingdom so that they can together raise an army against the rival.

In that sense, it seems clear to me that you serve for life at the Wall and never go back home in any meaningful way (i.e. a way you permanently leave the Watch) was universally accepted from the start.

I agree that the "service for life" practice must have predated that. "For all the nights to come". The specific restrictions listed in the vow though - especially the "crowns" part - give me pause. 

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Ned isn't a wildling. He is a lord from a very prestigious royal line, a line based on hereditary rule, a principle the wildlings neither know nor recognize. He has literally nothing in common with people who allow anyone a voice in council or who only follow strength. He is Stark of Winterfell, an aristocrat to the bone. And that's what's part of his honor.

I didn't say Ned was a wildling. Nor is he an Andal. You said honour was an Andal thing and mentioned wildings. I supposed you were referring to wildlings as First Men. But Ned is proud of his First Men origin, follows First Men traditions and none of that interferes with his sense of honour. If you just want to compare Andals and wildlings for some reason, tell me so. But if you mean Andals versus First Men, then Northerners cannot be discounted. Nothing suggests that Andals have a monopoly on honour. 

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As for the lying thing - I imagine that's not religious conviction originally but simply the truth. The First Men knew the weirwoods spied on them, and since you can see pretty much everything about the present and past via the trees if you a greenseer, any greenseer speaking to a man through a tree would know it when that person lied. Because he would know everything about that person.

Greenseers are basically omniscient if they care to find everything out about a person they interact with.

Why would that stop ordinarly humans from lying to each other in front of a weirwood if lying wasn't considered morally wrong, something that the Old Gods don't approve of? You can't deceive the Old Gods, but why do they care if you deceive someone else? It is simply that lying is not honourable and you don't want to make a bad impression on your Gods. 

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Mormont's speech reflects the current sad state of the recruits, but the washing away of the past of a recruit is not a bad thing. It is a sign that the commitment to take the black was universally deemed to be such a great calling that you could do it no matter what you had done before. It is a testament that this is the greatest sacrifice you could make and it is thus only proper that anyone being willing to make it is allowed to do so.

The washing away of the sins is not a bad thing, of course, and I also said that Mormont's speech reflected the current state. That is the current state. A far cry from the past, where someone thought that including the "crowns" as a realistic sacrifice in the vows was necessary.

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It is also quite clear you actually have to accept to go to the Wall. People are not just forced to go there against their will. Criminals can choose between regular punishment and Watch.

Sure. Just as every slave chooses to be a slave, as per Tyrion. Because they could also choose death or some other horrible fate. In this sense they all have a choice. Even Janos Slynt could have jumped into the sea, I suppose, when he was sent North by Tyrion. 

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The wildlings do not all follow the old gods, nor does it seem the Northmen do the kind of silly stuff the wildlings do (like painting faces all the trees in their area). The Northmen also no longer hang entrails in their heart trees or water them with blood. The wildlings might still do that.

There are differences, for sure. 

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Religion isn't as much of a dividing force in Westeros than it is in the real world - especially not between the old gods and the new. They are, more or less, on common ground and get along with each other. Outside religions are another matter. There are some extremists, to be sure, but even the High Sparrow is right now not rambling about burning godswoods or converting everybody to the Seven. 

For the moment, perhaps. But it would take some analysis and textual proof on both sides for me to be convinced. 

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On a cultural level the wildlings couldn't be farther away from the Northmen. There is a reason why those people have been mortal enemies for thousands of years.

Thy could be much farther, actually. They have been enemies because the Northerners have possessions the wildlings don't have but desire. But the wildlings themselves are not a homogeneous group, and we can't say that they all have (or not) exactly the same things in common with Northerners. 

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It is not the Watch the wildlings were at odds with, it was the Northmen. They never wanted to conquer the Watch or steal women from the black brothers. Their kings led them to raids and conquest into the North. The Gift was part of that as well, but also the North.

They didn't want to steal women from the Watch, right? How come? LOL.

Sure, the possessions they crave are not primarily the possessions of the Watch. The Watch (the Wall) simply has helped to keep them out of the kingdom. Well... how exactly is this relevant?   

 

[sweetsunray]

On 7/31/2018 at 6:37 PM, The Fattest Leech said:

Sorry to quote this same post twice, but this to me sounds so like the old ways returning, which brought to mind a few other quotes I found interesting.

One, that when Jon sends Sam to the Citadel with Gilly and baby Battleborn in tow, that Jon proposes Sam claim baby Battleborn as his own bastard. This seems to call back to the idea that maybe the NW men did openly have children, that maybe it is not the vow-sin it is made out to be, because if so, Sam would be at risk and he isn't. Also, that bastards really aren't tainted as they are just humans.

The second is how the first thing Jon does when he is chosen as LC is to reinstate Raven's Teeth archery training, and even though Sam hates it, it is required that Sam practice and Sam does.

*There is a quote that I am looking for and will add that has Jon describing how archery is more important to the Watch, and the sword was a later addition that came with the southron knights (or something), which to me adds to the idea that these new "puritanical" vows are Andal influence.

Update: Found it and added it below.

A Dance with Dragons - Jon II

"Dareon will join you at Eastwatch. My hope is that his songs will win some men for us in the south. The Blackbird will deliver you to Braavos. From there, you'll arrange your own passage to Oldtown. If you still mean to claim Gilly's babe as your bastard, send her and the child on to Horn Hill. Elsewise, Aemon will find a servant's place for her at the Citadel."

 

"My b-b-bastard. Yes, I … my mother and my sisters will help Gilly with the child. Dareon could see her to Oldtown just as well as me. I'm … I've been working at my archery every afternoon with Ulmer, as you commanded … well, except when I'm in the vaults, but you told me to find out about the Others. The longbow makes my shoulders ache and raises blisters on my fingers." He showed Jon his hand. "I still do it, though. I can hit the target more often than not now, but I'm still the worst archer who ever bent a bow. I like Ulmer's stories, though. Someone needs to write them down and put them in a book."

 

"You do it. They have parchment and ink at the Citadel, as well as longbows. I will expect you to continue with your practice. Sam, the Night's Watch has hundreds of men who can loose an arrow, but only a handful who can read or write. I need you to become my new maester."

 

A Feast for Crows - Samwell I

"Where's your longbow, Sam?" asked Grenn. Ser Alliser used to call him Aurochs, and every day he seemed to grow into the name a little more. He had come to the Wall big but slow, thick of neck, thick of waist, red of face, and clumsy. Though his neck still reddened when Pyp twisted him around into some folly, hours of work with sword and shield had flattened his belly, hardened his arms, broadened his chest. He was strong, and shaggy as an aurochs too. "Ulmer was expecting you at the butts."

 

"Ulmer," Sam said, abashed. Almost the first thing Jon Snow had done as Lord Commander was institute daily archery drill for the entire garrison, even stewards and cooks. The Watch had been placing too much emphasis on the sword and too little on the bow, he had said, a relic of the days when one brother in every ten had been a knight, instead of one in every hundred. Sam saw the sense in the decree, but he hated longbow practice almost as much as he hated climbing steps. When he wore his gloves he could never hit anything, but when he took them off he got blisters on his fingers. Those bows were dangerous. Satin had torn off half his thumbnail on a bowstring. "I forgot."

 

"You broke the heart of the wildling princess, Slayer," said Pyp. Of late, Val had taken to watching them from the window of her chamber in the King's Tower. "She was looking for you."

This touches on the bear stuff too (sorry ;-) ). The typical weapon to "properly" kill a bear is either bow and arrow or spear, and thus bearlike characters despise the former weapon (it could be the weapon they're hunted with). Meanwhile, the folklore mythological baer characters are smiths and gifters of magical swords. George used the last trope with Jeor Mormont gifting Jon the sword Longclaw to do great deeds with.

Now at the Fist George starts to play with the hunter or hunted theme. In the prologue of aSoS, Chett's supposed to hunt down a bear, because Dywen had noticed bear tracks. As they are "hunting" this unseen bear, they talk about "killing the Old Bear". They decide to not further pursue the snowbear hunt, but instead return to witness Samwell's efforts at shooting arrows at a tree. Now Samwell gets bear references: when Jon first sees him he thinks he looks ready to "hibernate", he loves sweets and anything with "honey", and Gilly's mother tells Sam to take dead Jeor's pelt for his own, Jeor's sword and run with Gilly before "the sons" arrive. So, in that image we have a bearlike character who hates the bow and arrows, hates hunting in general, trying to practice hunting himself. And at night, the wights attack the Fist, with the wighted snowbear (that Chett had been unwittingly tracking at the start) hunting the Night's Watch.

Now since "winter is coming", the "hunted NW" (hunted by wights and Others north of the wall) need to learn to become hunters themselves, and thus learn to wield bow and arrow, not just swords.

That's why I find this thread you started so interesting: it's touching on the essential of the NW that I find again and am working at in a draft of a bar essay about the NW.

You seem to imply or ponder whether the sword is a "later Andal addition". I don't think the swords is a southrun addition. After all the legends of the Last Hero and Azor Ahai speak of swords. The sword has always been important, and is part of the creed and part of the vows used at the Black Gate: I am the sword in the darkness. Why else woudl the Others be wary of Royce's steel initially otherwise? They have been confronted with a deadly sword before. Also, Jon's use of the words "knights" is not just completely unprecedented in the North. Other northmen use the word "knight" at times, despite the fact they mean a "warrior" and keep to the First Gods. Whether annointed or not by the Andal faith, a knight is a professional fighter who was trained since boyhood to fight with a sword and to hunt. From the get go, the NW would have been manned with professional fighters of noble families, even in the earliest days, before the Andals, and they would have carried swords. You only get an increase of commoners once it became a penal colony, and yes these would have likely been put to bow and arrow training to be useful on top of the wall. It's because the Children were believed to be long dead, and the NW weren't given obsidian arrows anymore, and Others were also believed to be fairytales, that they forgot about the need for bow and arrow. I'd say that once the barrier was chosen, and walls started to be built, that you had two important armed factions: the men on the walls with bow and obsidian arrows, the rangers venturing into territory of the Others with dragonsteel swords to confront an Other at close range.

But after the threat of the Others was forgotten or laid at rest in the minds of the NW and instead only perceived humans as their enemies (wildings), that they put the bow and arrow down. The wall had become so high, you can barely aim at just one small tiny human target, and the Starks took such great care of the North for so many thousand years that the NW barely had to fear an attack from the South to defend themselves from with bows and arrows. But now they know who they have to fight from the Wall, and the only material known to the NW (at present) that can kill Others is the little bit of obsidian. Making an obsidian sword seems absurd, but distributing the stash of obsidian they have and chipping it in tiny pieces to make arrowheads of is an economical and practical necessity.

[The Fattest Leech]

22 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

This touches on the bear stuff too (sorry ;-) ).

Somehow I don’t think you are sorry 

I will respond a little later in regards to swords and getting back to basics. This could also possibly be because of another reason as well. 

So good to see you here. 

@Julia H. great insights as well. A few points I also want to expand Ina little later when back at my computer. 

 

 

[Ygrain]

 

Quote

Tell this to the characters who criticize him. Please.

The first character of Westeros offed for cosmetic changes.

Quote

The "crown" part is irrelevant in most cases, but it must have come in handy when a defeated king's sons or other male relatives were sent to the Wall instead of being killed. (It was also convenient that they gave up having children.)

I'm afraid I've got lost in the thread a bit, but I presume the potential connection of this part to the Night King was certainly mentioned? One then wonders if the part about no wife and children might have something to do with his pale cold queen and whatever it was that the two conceived.

[The Fattest Leech]

2 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

 

The first character of Westeros to be offed for cosmetic changes.

I'm afraid I've got lost in the thread a bit, but I presume the potential connection of this part to the Night King was certainly mentioned? One then wonders if the part about no wife and children might have something to do with his pale cold queen and whatever it was that the two conceived.

One idea that I briefly, briefly mentioned a page or two back is about the Night’s King. That IF we are indeed witnessing  a reset/replay/repeat/whatever of history, then we will see a Night’s King replay as well... but not to expect it to be just as the tales of tales tell it. 

Still not at my computer to delve deeper, but I am following along as best as I can until then. 

[Julia H.]

32 minutes ago, Ygrain said:

 

The first character of Westeros to be offed for cosmetic changes.

I'm afraid I've got lost in the thread a bit, but I presume the potential connection of this part to the Night King was certainly mentioned? One then wonders if the part about no wife and children might have something to do with his pale cold queen and whatever it was that the two conceived.

That's a very good point. It would be a major concern to stop history repeating itself with another Night's King. (Could any ordinary brother become a Night's King?) But now I'm curious about the plural form of crowns. Ordinary kings can have several crowns if they conquer several kingdoms, but the Night's King? Also, does the "hold no lands" part fit in this context? 

[The Fattest Leech]

35 minutes ago, Julia H. said:

That's a very good point. It would be a major concern to stop history repeating itself with another Night's King. (Could any ordinary brother become a Night's King?) But now I'm curious about the plural form of crowns. Ordinary kings can have several crowns if they conquer several kingdoms, but the Night's King? Also, does the "hold no lands" part fit in this context? 

Holy Schmitt! I’m now very curious about the plural crowns as well. 

I wonder, I wonder???

[Lord Varys]

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

You must be running out of arguments if you want to debate what exactly counts as magical and what doesn't. Being the password to a magical gate makes the vow special enough, more than "just words". (Words are wind and they do not open a magical gate.) Saying that the words are not magical, they just do something magical is splitting hairs.

I think this is a meaningful difference. I would also complain if you called Stannis' Lightbringer 'a magical sword' just because a glamor makes it shine. There is no magic to the sword as such, just as there is no indication that the vows of the NW are magical.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Now that's a shift from what we were talking about. We were talking about whether the author had intended a given connection from the beginning or just put it in somewhere along the way. (You know the example was the heart turned into stone.)  I said that is irrelevant because ultimately the connection is there, it is irrelevant how and when the author decided to include it.

It makes a difference. One indicates authorial intent and presupposes that there is a grand plan - that is how @Lost Melnibonean used to argue for a long time about a lot of things, because he genuinely believed George had a lot of things figured out very early in the conception of the series.

But there is ample evidence that this is not the case.

The other allows the author to just use things that are already there and fool people into believe he is a genius who has planned everything from the start. George told us that there is twist in TWoW that he did not plan but realized he could do because everything fits together perfectly.

When looking at the work one would differentiate between planned things and accidental things - at least when one cares to do the author and the work justice.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

What is more, for most works of literature we simply cannot find out what the author's intentions were and yet, we can analyse them and draw our conclusions. What comes through is much more relevant than what the author thought or intended because we simply cannot know the latter (and what if the author intended one thing but what he/she wrote evolved into something else?). 

Sure, that's all true, but with this series we are not at that point yet. The author is still alive and answers questions about what he intended to do at this or that time in development of the books.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

1) And who are you to tell us what is and what is not right to analyse in the text? And if this is your opinion,  then why on Planetos are you still reading our posts? To tell us to stop?

Oh, it is just about that I'd like to see actual evidence pointing in that direction rather than mostly wishful thinking.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

2) Speaking for myself, I, personally, very rarely make predictions on what is going or not going to happen in the coming books (with regard to either new events or revelations). However, I find such explorations into NW history fascinating even if we might not get any explicit revelations in the books. A lot of things are discussed on these forums that won't ever be explained in the books - so what? I wouldn't be here if I were only interested in what is sure to happen.

I honestly think the NW is one of the most underdeveloped institutions in the series. We know pretty much nothing about their history, not even the relatively well-known history (which should stretch back at least a thousand years).

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Interesting stuff. It's good to see you also speculate on some things.

Sure, and I think I've a very good reason for that speculation because it is very odd that there are no greenseers and Children left in the North, no? The Andals never came there, and Winterfell's godswood would be the perfect spot for some greenseer basis, no? Why don't the Starks have any left, if they and the other First Men were so great buddies of the Children? Why is there no alliance or interaction between Bloodraven and the Children and the wildlings? What is it what cut off the First Men of the North (and beyond the Wall) from the Children and their greenseers?

Those are very crucial unanswered questions, and the answers are not likely the kind of many people want to hear.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

To me it seems that the original idea was that the Men of the Night's Watch would undertake that duty voluntarily, out of a sense of vocation, based on the understanding of the importance of their task, which may have even be regarded as sacred. While that is so, you don't really have to swear to give up everything else. If you don't have this sense of vocation though, if you have been perchance forced to take the black in one way or another, then all those prohibitions become necessary - and futile at the same time because even if you don't get married, you still have parents, sisters and brothers, people you love, you may even have children already (cf. Mormont), and that's not so easy to forget just because you have made a promise, especially if you don't have this sense of a noble calling.  

That kind of reasoning doesn't convince me. The Long Night and the War for the Dawn was devastating. It wasn't something people could forget. They still remember it - in stories and tales, but they do remember it. And when the war was over they were capable of founding an order which was collectively maintained and supported by hundred kingdoms and the people there.

This is such a huge deal that it is pretty obvious that this may have been set up in a way to ensure that peace at the Wall was kept (neutrality; complete cut with your kingdom, lordship, house, family, friends, etc.) as well as that you don't confuse your own allegiances by creating new families.

The Watch had a singular purpose - what would be the point of having people from Dorne or the Reach bring their entire families up north to settle in the Gift and eat the food the black brothers would need in winter? Why would an entire family want to move from Dorne to the Wall? What would be the point of that? And Northmen families could easily enough visit their brothers or fathers at the Wall, they don't have to move there to be relatively close to them?

I mean, if families could live there, then the Watch would quickly be dominated by Northmen and their families who can get there more easily (the Watch is still not dominated by Northmen, by the way) and the Gift would eventually be claimed by the families of leading officers of the NW because they would want to ensure that their children and grandchildren do prosper.

People who have to care about wives and children do act differently then men who don't. They can give themselves over completely to their task (and whore around when they have urges, and ignore the offspring that comes from that).

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Yet, the deeds of the Kingsguard are recorded in the White Book, they take part in fancy tournaments, which they can win, they can be famous all over the country, like Barristan, and so on, there are probably songs and legends about them.

But that's all done for the glory of the king and his Kingsguard, not for the personal fame of this or that KG. They are famous by virtue of becoming Kingsguard already.

And the KG has two purposes - defend the king and be a shining example for the greatness of the knights serving the king. And there are certainly some such who care more about the latter (or their personal fame) than the other things. But one also has to note that a KG doesn't do anything without his king's leave and is not exactly free to hire singers and storytellers to spread his fame. That sort of happen, just as there might be songs sung about great black brothers who never actually asked singers to do that.

I mean, Jaime the KG is a complete sham considering he joins them to continue to fuck his sister.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Yes, he looked to the glory part. It's natural. Everyone wants recognition. So why must the vow deny it to them altogether?

Why not? Jon is foolish boy when he takes the black. A properly educated and prepared man would have known what it meant and would have either not searched glory at the Wall or he would have chosen to take the black because he understood what sacrifice he made. I'm not of the opinion that boys his age should make such decisions - but they are not the standard.

Do you think Aemon Targaryen or Jeor Mormont or Denys Mallister didn't know what it meant to take the black? Do we believe they searched glory up there?

I mean, would you say it is a great idea to become a catholic priest if your main motivation is to wear fancy dresses? Or to take a spouse because you want his/her money?

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

They would deserve praise, at least those who voluntarily joined the NW, but they are not getting it, not these days, and again, if they want to absolutely keep the vow, then they must not expect or even accept any recognition. It is a lot to demand, and such a demand can also be counterproductive in certain situations.  

If people praise them, they cannot stop that. 'Win no glory' should be understand as 'try not to win glory/I do not strive to win glory' not as 'I won't ever win glory and always belittle my own achievements'.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

As long as you choose it yourself, it's fine. And, of course, the Watch is different from a monastic order in the sense that your job is to perhaps face the most frightening possible enemy in this world and to die in battle, which monks rarely do. It also entails a much greater responsibility. 

That is why I informally refer to them as 'warrior monks'. They have an important duty, but they also live in seclusion and care mostly about themselves without interacting much with the outsiders they actually protect.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

I didn't say Ned was a wildling. Nor is he an Andal. You said honour was an Andal thing and mentioned wildings. I supposed you were referring to wildlings as First Men. But Ned is proud of his First Men origin, follows First Men traditions and none of that interferes with his sense of honour. If you just want to compare Andals and wildlings for some reason, tell me so. But if you mean Andals versus First Men, then Northerners cannot be discounted. Nothing suggests that Andals have a monopoly on honour. 

I meant that the talk about 'honor' at the end of vow sounds odd if we imagine this to have been there in the days the Watch was founded. Back then the Age of Heroes had just ended. The First Men then would have been more or less like the wildlings of the present, and one doesn't see them pledging their honor to anything. That is speech I actually expect to be from another, later era - when feudalism and lords and kings were a thing the way we know them today.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Why would that stop ordinarly humans from lying to each other in front of a weirwood if lying wasn't considered morally wrong, something that the Old Gods don't approve of? You can't deceive the Old Gods, but why do they care if you deceive someone else? It is simply that lying is not honourable and you don't want to make a bad impression on your Gods. 

We don't know whether the original meaning is to not lie to somebody else or to the tree. And of course a greenseer could also intervene and chastise somebody who actually lies to somebody in front of a heart tree. The 'old gods' are not exactly personal deities who 'care' about people. They are the forces of nature and the greenseers.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

The washing away of the sins is not a bad thing, of course, and I also said that Mormont's speech reflected the current state. That is the current state. A far cry from the past, where someone thought that including the "crowns" as a realistic sacrifice in the vows was necessary.

Sure, everybody might have aspired to wear a crown in the days of the Hundred Kingdoms. The field in your backyard might have been 'a kingdom' in those days.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Sure. Just as every slave chooses to be a slave, as per Tyrion. Because they could also choose death or some other horrible fate. In this sense they all have a choice. Even Janos Slynt could have jumped into the sea, I suppose, when he was sent North by Tyrion.

It is not always a life or death situation, but yes, that's how it goes.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Thy could be much farther, actually. They have been enemies because the Northerners have possessions the wildlings don't have but desire. But the wildlings themselves are not a homogeneous group, and we can't say that they all have (or not) exactly the same things in common with Northerners. 

Their entire way of life is different. The Northmen are all kneelers who proudly follow this or that 'lord' with this or that animal on their breast, and bow to kings they don't even know whereas the wildlings (aside from the Thenns) don't do such things.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

They didn't want to steal women from the Watch, right? How come? LOL.

That was a joke.

3 hours ago, Julia H. said:

Sure, the possessions they crave are not primarily the possessions of the Watch. The Watch (the Wall) simply has helped to keep them out of the kingdom. Well... how exactly is this relevant?   

It is relevant because the men of the NW who see the wildlings as their traditional enemies are not wrong. Jon has the sugar-coated view of them, not Marsh and his guys. He was never there when Ygritte and her friends tortured and maimed and killed 'crows'.

[Lost Melnibonean]

1 minute ago, Lord Varys said:

I think this is a meaningful difference. I would also complain if you called Stannis' Lightbringer 'a magical sword' just because a glamor makes it shine. There is no magic to the sword as such, just as there is no indication that the vows of the NW are magical.

It makes a difference. One indicates authorial intent and presupposes that there is a grand plan - that is how @Lost Melnibonean used to argue for a long time about a lot of things, because he genuinely believed George had a lot of things figured out very early in the conception of the series.

But there is ample evidence that this is not the case.

Right. For the record, though, I am guessing that the George always intended for Aegon to be an imposter,, and that Aegon and Daenerys would dance, and as he finished Clash, I think he had a good idea of who that imposter would be. 

[Lord Varys]

12 minutes ago, Lost Melnibonean said:

Right. For the record, though, I am guessing that the George always intended for Aegon to be an imposter,, and that Aegon and Daenerys would dance, and as he finished Clash, I think he had a good idea of who that imposter would be. 

That goes without saying. I'd say he even know something was afoot there with the cheesemonger and the eunuch when he wrote that scene in AGoT. But that's not the place to discuss this... ;-).

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

It is relevant because the men of the NW who see the wildlings as their traditional enemies are not wrong. Jon has the sugar-coated view of them, not Marsh and his guys. He was never there when Ygritte and her friends tortured and maimed and killed 'crows'.

I'm given the impression Jon understands somewhat the dark side of wildlings(the kidnaping of women to rape, the abuse of the weak, t etc). In his words A Storm of Swords - Jon II Small wonder that the Seven Kingdoms thought the free folk scarcely human. They have no laws, no honor, not even simple decency. They steal endlessly from each other, breed like beasts, prefer rape to marriage, and fill the world with baseborn children.

 

[Julia H.]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I think this is a meaningful difference. I would also complain if you called Stannis' Lightbringer 'a magical sword' just because a glamor makes it shine. There is no magic to the sword as such, just as there is no indication that the vows of the NW are magical.

'Lightbringer' is not magical in the way it is claimed to be by Melisandre. But the glamor is magic too, only a different kind.

The NW vow opens the magical gate, which cannot be denied. The rest is semantics. 

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

When looking at the work one would differentiate between planned things and accidental things - at least when one cares to do the author and the work justice.

Sure, that's all true, but with this series we are not at that point yet. The author is still alive and answers questions about what he intended to do at this or that time in development of the books.

Fine. Ask him this question then. I will be reading the books. 

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, it is just about that I'd like to see actual evidence pointing in that direction rather than mostly wishful thinking.

I'm not here to serve you the kind of evidence that you demand. I'm here to analyse the text and discuss a certain aspect of it, using what is available and sharing my thoughts with those who are interested in the same aspect of the books. If you don't like it, just avoid my posts. I have had lots of discussions with you, and they have convinced me that you are not interested in my thoughts, so I don't know why I'm getting all this attention from you. 

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I honestly think the NW is one of the most underdeveloped institutions in the series. We know pretty much nothing about their history, not even the relatively well-known history (which should stretch back at least a thousand years).

So? Are we not allowed to talk about it? No one is compelled to read posts on topics they find irrelevant or uninteresting.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Sure, and I think I've a very good reason for that speculation because it is very odd that there are no greenseers and Children left in the North, no? The Andals never came there, and Winterfell's godswood would be the perfect spot for some greenseer basis, no? Why don't the Starks have any left, if they and the other First Men were so great buddies of the Children? Why is there no alliance or interaction between Bloodraven and the Children and the wildlings? What is it what cut off the First Men of the North (and beyond the Wall) from the Children and their greenseers?

Those are very crucial unanswered questions, and the answers are not likely the kind of many people want to hear.

Go on speculating by all means (maybe on a different thread). Just don't forget the textual evidence.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

That kind of reasoning doesn't convince me.

No, I wouldn't expect it to.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

The Watch had a singular purpose - what would be the point of having people from Dorne or the Reach bring their entire families up north to settle in the Gift and eat the food the black brothers would need in winter? Why would an entire family want to move from Dorne to the Wall? What would be the point of that? And Northmen families could easily enough visit their brothers or fathers at the Wall, they don't have to move there to be relatively close to them?

I mean, if families could live there, then the Watch would quickly be dominated by Northmen and their families who can get there more easily (the Watch is still not dominated by Northmen, by the way) and the Gift would eventually be claimed by the families of leading officers of the NW because they would want to ensure that their children and grandchildren do prosper.

No, but, thanks to the celibacy, it is clearly dominated by Dornishmen and men of the Reach who joined voluntarily. (No.) 

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

People who have to care about wives and children do act differently then men who don't. They can give themselves over completely to their task (and whore around when they have urges, and ignore the offspring that comes from that).

Are you sure you read the post you are replying to? I have already pointed out that even men who don't have wives can have families. Parents, sisters, etc. And, as we see, the NW will accept men who have already been married and have (grown-up) children (though their wives have died). What is more, if they send criminals and political opponents to the Wall, don't you think that many of them have wives and children, too? They may promise never to get married or start a family in future, but they already are married and have a family.

It's very difficult to make a large army based entirely on people who have no one they care for.

In addition, a person who truly does not have anyone to love in this world may have fewer worries but I don't think it's the best person to understand what it means to sacrifice one's life for a country, for other people.  

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But that's all done for the glory of the king and his Kingsguard, not for the personal fame of this or that KG. They are famous by virtue of becoming Kingsguard already.

Whatever the purpose, the Kingsguard is a glorified group of bodyguards. (I'm not discussing to what extent they deserve the glory.) My point is that no one in world seems to think that fame and glory are bad for the organization or that it lowers the level of their service. 

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Why not? Jon is foolish boy when he takes the black. A properly educated and prepared man would have known what it meant and would have either not searched glory at the Wall or he would have chosen to take the black because he understood what sacrifice he made. I'm not of the opinion that boys his age should make such decisions - but they are not the standard.

Do you think Aemon Targaryen or Jeor Mormont or Denys Mallister didn't know what it meant to take the black? Do we believe they searched glory up there?

I don't see your point here. Where do I say that everyone takes the black for the glory or that it's a good reason to take it? Of course it's not. That's a fact. My point is that taking away even the chance of recognition after asking so much sacrifice sounds like a punitive measure. No one who can make an informed decision will take the black for the glory of it in the actual circumstances, obviously. But winning glory and honour could be a motivating force (as we see with Jon), which could win over more men, for example, and even if not, giving them recognition for their heroic deeds wouldn't hurt anyone.  

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I mean, would you say it is a great idea to become a catholic priest if your main motivation is to wear fancy dresses? Or to take a spouse because you want his/her money?

Huh?

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

If people praise them, they cannot stop that. 'Win no glory' should be understand as 'try not to win glory/I do not strive to win glory' not as 'I won't ever win glory and always belittle my own achievements'.

Well, taking such a vow can be pretty deterministic in itself. Besides, leaving them without praise seems to be the actual case as per Mormont's speech to Jon in Clash. ".. your greatest deeds all go unsung"

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

I meant that the talk about 'honor' at the end of vow sounds odd if we imagine this to have been there in the days the Watch was founded. Back then the Age of Heroes had just ended. The First Men then would have been more or less like the wildlings of the present, and one doesn't see them pledging their honor to anything. That is speech I actually expect to be from another, later era - when feudalism and lords and kings were a thing the way we know them today.

But where is the hard evidence that the vow has ever been changed during the history of the NW? Where did GRRM say that? Who would have dared to insert another word into the vow and by what right and what was the occasion?

Another question is if the First Men don't have honour they could pledge to anything, how can you expect them to answer a noble calling and take a voluntary sacrifice of such a great scale for others? Just for the fun of it?

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

We don't know whether the original meaning is to not lie to somebody else or to the tree. And of course a greenseer could also intervene and chastise somebody who actually lies to somebody in front of a heart tree. The 'old gods' are not exactly personal deities who 'care' about people. They are the forces of nature and the greenseers.

But why do they expect the greenseers or the Old Gods or anyone to chastise them for lying if they don't have the concept of lying being dishonourable? If you can't deceive the Gods anyway, then they cannot be hurt by your lying - so why do they have a problem with it? It is because the concept of honour exists in this culture, in the people's minds.  

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Their entire way of life is different. The Northmen are all kneelers who proudly follow this or that 'lord' with this or that animal on their breast, and bow to kings they don't even know whereas the wildlings (aside from the Thenns) don't do such things.

Yes, their way of life is different. Yet, there are cultural ties between them and a sense of a shared origin.

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

It is relevant because the men of the NW who see the wildlings as their traditional enemies are not wrong. Jon has the sugar-coated view of them, not Marsh and his guys. He was never there when Ygritte and her friends tortured and maimed and killed 'crows'.

Jon sees their faults all right, but they are still human beings, unlike the Others.

This still seems to be off topic to me. 

[The Fattest Leech]

Isn’t there another quote somewhere in the books that describes or explains why the castles on he wall were no true castles (except maybe Nightfort). I thought there was, but could only find this one. 

A  Game of Thrones- Jon III

When they finally spied Castle Black, its timbered keeps and stone towers looked like nothing more than a handful of toy blocks scattered on the snow, beneath the vast wall of ice. The ancient stronghold of the black brothers was no Winterfell, no true castle at all. Lacking walls, it could not be defended, not from the south, or east, or west; but it was only the north that concerned the Night's Watch, and to the north loomed the Wall. Almost seven hundred feet high it stood, three times the height of the tallest tower in the stronghold it sheltered. His uncle said the top was wide enough for a dozen armored knights to ride abreast. The gaunt outlines of huge catapults and monstrous wooden cranes stood sentry up there, like the skeletons of great birds, and among them walked men in black as small as ants.

The Wall... It was older than the Seven Kingdoms, and when he stood beneath it and looked up, it made Jon dizzy. He could feel the great weight of all that ice pressing down on him, as if it were about to topple, and somehow Jon knew that if it fell, the world fell with it.

[AlaskanSandman]

On 7/30/2018 at 6:20 PM, The Fattest Leech said:

 

 

Do you think the switch in vows is in any way tied to the switch in where the L.C. is stationed at? Assuming the Nightfort is 8000 years old and as old as the wall, then Castle Black is only 4000 years old. Was the switch when Castle Black was built, or after? And is it tied to when the watch switched up the vows? Separating the L.C. from the Night Fort and more importantly, the Black Gate, i find interesting.  I assume the Night King Lord Commander was using the BlackGate to sacrifice to the Others. When did they stop using it? Cause the Watch was happy to leave the Nightfort in Alysanne's time suggesting at least by then, no one was using the Blackgate for sacrificing.