Danny Flint=Corpse Queen

[jrlonergan]

With all the talk of the Night’s King and how the books are clearly building towards a climactic confrontation between the Others and the realms of man, a question that has been somewhat overlooked is the question of who the “corpse queen” that the Night’s King gave his seed and his soul to really was…and I put forth that her name is known to history (and song) as Danny Flint.

                                                Brave Danny Flint

Hear you now the sad lament of brave young Danny Flint

Whose parents died of sickness when she was naught but ten

So off young Danny went to live with her wicked uncle

Who one night stole her maidenhead so into the North she fled

Oh Danny Flint you’ll never escape

The fate the Gods have written

And life must seem the cruelest jape

Oh brave young Danny Flint

North she fled to take the black and leave her troubled past

She cut her hair and changed her name to Danny Flint the Brave!

At the Nightfort Danny took the oath

Thought a boy by all

And she hoped to live forever as a brother upon the Wall

Oh Danny Flint you’ll never escape the Fate the Gods have written

And life must seem the cruelest jape

Oh brave young Danny Flint

Now Danny was so diligent to keep from watchful stares

But one night as she bathed her brothers saw her body bare

These men were quick to break their vows as they threw her to the ground

They took her honor then her life while Danny made not a sound

Oh Danny Flint there’s no escape the Fate the Gods have written

And life does seem the cruelest jape

Oh brave young Danny Flint

It’s said Young Danny still yet walks the Nightfort’s shadowy halls

A pale form singing sorrowfully the loneliest saddest song

 

                                Curse of the Barrow King

In the World of Ice and Fire, there is a theory put forth by the maesters that the corpse queen may have been a daughter of one of the Barrow Kings, both because of their association with graves and corpses and the so-called Curse of the Barrow King, which according to Maester Kennett in his Passages of the Dead weakens and makes pale and corpselike anyone who pretends to the title of the First King of the First Men. The description of the corpse queen “with skin as white as the moon “ and “skin as cold as ice” can easily be someone who is corpselike and pale from this curse. The last stanza of the song mentions her pale form wandering the halls of the Nightfort, which during the time of the Night’s King would have been a full on fortress with a much shorter wall for him to have seen her. Also if she was already cursed maybe the attack didn’t kill her but convinced her to hide and only come out at night.

                                Danny Flint, House Flint, Rodrik Flint, and the Night’s King

Was Danny originally a Flint? To me this is a no brainer: no. A quick look at the map of the North shows that most of the Flint lands were close enough to the Wall that if she fled North it wouldn’t have taken much to find her. So what do the Flints have to do with it? Well according to Old Nan when she named off the Houses that may have given us the Night’s King, the Flints are close to the top of the list. Why is this detail important?

In a Storm of Swords we have a mention by Jon Snow of Rodrik Flint, who is commonly considered one of the worst Lord Commanders of all time because he attempted to use the Night’s Watch to make himself King-Beyond-The-Wall. Now while this isn’t the Night’s King, It does show how slippery the earlier commanders were, and also being a Flint, maybe they had family legends of the Night’s King that weren’t negative? After all, the Flints were kings again after the Long Night from Breakstone Hall before they were thrown down by the Starks as Kings of Winter. Maybe having tasted the power of having to be thrown down by Brandon the Breaker in Winterfell AND Joramun as the King-Beyond-The-Wall was too much to turn down, especially considering that after Joramun there weren’t many powerful Kings-Beyond-The-Wall mentioned for hundreds of years. The time was ripe.

                                So who is Danny Flint really?

So we have maester beliefs that the Night’s King married a daughter of the Barrow King….but who were they?

The Barrow Kings reigned from Barrowton just north of the Neck, in what are now the Dustin lands. Barrow Hall is actually built on top of the Great Barrow and the Dustins claim descent from both the First King and the Barrow Kings. If Danny was the only heir of her parents when they died, an uncle claiming her as a way to take over her birthright makes a lot of sense due to the politics of marriage at the time. She flees to the  North (both the direction and the region, as we don’t know what the Barrow Kings called their realm), gets attacked, the Night’s King (a Flint as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch) sees her and loves her thinking she can bring the Barrow King troops to her side, gives up his soul to the Barrow King curse, sacrifices to the Others and is forgotten by history. Where does she go? Maybe even further north-as a white walker…….