It's like poetry, it rhymes

[2uenten]

I noticed some interesting things in Fire and Blood about Dalton Greyjoy, the Red Kraken, the leader or the Iron Islands around the time of the Dance of the Dragons. 

-He ignores orders from the Iron Throne and instead renews Ironborn reaving on the coast, Lannisport and Fair Isle in particular, during a tumultuous time in Westeros. (Balon)
-He takes the daughters of a conquered Lord (Farman, of Fair Isle) as wives. Did he make them serve him and his men naked at a feast while the highborn watched? (Euron)
-He "gives" one of the daughters to his brother for a wife. Unclear if this is before or after he had his fun with her. The brother's name was even "Veron." (Euron/Victarion?)
-He dies suspiciously on the eve of battle with the winners of the Dance, his murderer killing herself immediately afterwards. (Balon)

Are the Greyjoys just doomed to repeat their mistakes over and over again? The last point is especially interesting to me, and I think speculated on in FaB, about whether there might have been some Faceless influence in his death, and it did prevent a bloody battle. It did take place on Far Isle, the home of a Targaryean for many years. 
 

 

[M_Tootles]

It is a "song", after all.

https://asongoficeandtootles.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/returning-to-four-and-forty-44/

I don't think the rhyming is about perfect cycling/repetition. I think it's about a system of metatextual clues and using the past (TWOIAF, F&B, D&E) to figure out the mysterious or seemingly "missing" motifs in the "present", which aren't always gonna bear the same relationship to the other related motifs they did/do in the other settings. (ASOIAF) I just really, really hope the kicker at the end of everything is some promise that the quasi-cycling has been broken.

[GloubieBoulga]

4 hours ago, M_Tootles said:

It is a "song", after all.

https://asongoficeandtootles.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/returning-to-four-and-forty-44/

I don't think the rhyming is about perfect cycling/repetition. I think it's about a system of metatextual clues and using the past (TWOIAF, F&B, D&E) to figure out the mysterious or seemingly "missing" motifs in the "present", which aren't always gonna bear the same relationship to the other related motifs they did/do in the other settings. (ASOIAF) I just really, really hope the kicker at the end of everything is some promise that the quasi-cycling has been broken.

Thanks for reading this. I didn't know the Mark Twain's stuff and totally missed the number 44, but I observed same litterar phenomenon as you and called it "theme and variations", and we, readers, have to find the "original theme" throw the endless variations, an "original theme" which has no end or which has not the true end he should have had, long time ago in Westeros' history.

[ravenous reader]

19 hours ago, M_Tootles said:

It is a "song", after all.

https://asongoficeandtootles.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/returning-to-four-and-forty-44/

I really enjoyed reading this piece of yours, when @Crowfood's Daughter shared it with us the other day.

Are you familiar with this thread..?

19 hours ago, M_Tootles said:

I don't think the rhyming is about perfect cycling/repetition. I think it's about a system of metatextual clues and using the past (TWOIAF, F&B, D&E) to figure out the mysterious or seemingly "missing" motifs in the "present", which aren't always gonna bear the same relationship to the other related motifs they did/do in the other settings. (ASOIAF) I just really, really hope the kicker at the end of everything is some promise that the quasi-cycling has been broken.

@Kingmonkey said something similar:

Quote

The Dunk & Egg stories act as a kind of microcosm of the world of fire and ice; vignettes that inform and give background. They are a way GRRM can explore the world he created in parallel, mirroring but not interfering with his overarching novel plot. If Dunk is a puppet, are all the players of the Song as well? It's a mummer's show, GRRM is so very fond of telling us. Maybe he's telling us more than we think.

What follows is not so much a theory as it is an observation. There is a pattern of events that can be found repeated in ASOIAF, and whatever it means, it seems to be connected to the core mysteries of the series. I suspect it is the core mystery of the series. These echoes may be a purely literary device, a use of paralleling to bring together shared ideas. It may be something rather more. A ritual that people stumble upon, more or less accidentally, more or less knowingly. Or it may be one of these events created magical ripples in the river of time, making the event replay as echoes before and after. Or perhaps it's a story desperate to be told, leaking out into the narratives of many characters and shaping their stories to its own. Perhaps it's a mixture of these. Each time we see these events echoed, some of the details are shared, and some changed. It's as if the story is struggling to be completed, the ritual never quite being fulfilled. Amidst the personal struggles of the characters we read about is a greater struggle they are fighting unaware, a fate that tugs their puppet strings and makes them dance to the song of ice and fire.
 

It all seemed so familiar, like mummer show that he had seen before. Only the mummers had changed.

ADwD, A Ghost in Winterfell

 

[M_Tootles]

24 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

I really enjoyed reading this piece of yours, when @Crowfood's Daughter shared it with us the other day.

Are you familiar with this thread..?

@Kingmonkey said something similar:

 

When/where did @Crowfood's Daughter share it?

I am not. It looks juicy as hell.

Yeah, once you grok it it's not hard to see that this shit is just an insanely densely packed 3-D web of inter and intrareferentiality. Once you get that, you COMPLETELY understand why the books take longer and longer with each passing book. It's sad that 99% of the people who read them will never pick up on this shit and just read STORY SEX DRAGONZZZ.

[chrisdaw]

Rather flat foreshadowing. I guess it makes sense as he gets closer to his reveals to foreshadow them more bluntly. Really got to finish it, like the rest of my chores.

[Crowfood's Daughter]

On ‎12‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 5:14 PM, M_Tootles said:

When/where did @Crowfood's Daughter share it?

 

I shared it in the dark web ... twitter DMs.  Really enjoyed this post, very insightful work!!

[M_Tootles]

2 hours ago, Crowfood's Daughter said:

I shared it in the dark web ... twitter DMs.  Really enjoyed this post, very insightful work!!

Ahhh. Well gee, thanks!

Lots more shit on my site. Posting the product of the last 3 years of work a couple things a week. If you like the concept of "44" and the rhyming check out this one, especially the second half:  https://asongoficeandtootles.wordpress.com/2018/12/20/ser-byron-the-beauty-and-the-beast-sandor-clegane/

NOTHING but rhyming between the Vale plot and The Mystery Knight (and a little Hedge Knight/Sworn Sword for good measure).

[M_Tootles]

Wow. Doing a re-read and I finally realized what's going on with the odd story about Nan being Bran's wetnurse. It's rhyming shit/motif-scrambling.

Quote

Nan had come to the castle as a wet nurse for a Brandon Stark whose mother had died birthing him. He had been an older brother of Lord Rickard, Bran's grandfather, or perhaps a younger brother, or a brother to Lord Rickard's father. Sometimes Old Nan told it one way and sometimes another. In all the stories the little boy died at three of a summer chill, but Old Nan stayed on at Winterfell with her own children. She had lost both her sons to the war when King Robert won the throne, and her grandson was killed on the walls of Pyke during Balon Greyjoy's rebellion. (GOT B IV)

Look at those motifs.

• A wet nurse, which is what we're told Jon's mother was in ASOS.
• Brandon Stark, which immediately reminds us of Ned's brother Brandon.
• A mother dying in child birth, which immediately reminds us of Lyanna and thus of the conventional RLJ idea.
• An older brother of Lord Stark, which is a strange concept (since the oldest brother would normally BE the lord) which obviously brings to mind Ned ruling even though Brandon was the older brother.
• Death of a chill, inverting Lyanna's death by fever.
• And in invocation of Robert's rebellion and the death of two male relatives, which reminds us of the deaths of Rickard (mentioned) and Brandon (quasi-mentioned) and the backdrop to Jon's birth.

This is a scrambling of the motifs of Jon's birth, to be sure, but one which puts Brandon (and his death!) weirdly in the middle of it all. Which makes perfect sense if Brandon is Jon's father.

For good measure, on the next page Bran remembers being promised "he would ride a real horse to King's Landing", which is what led to Brandon's death. And then he thinks of how Robb is growing closer to others:

Quote

Even when he was home at Winterfell, Robb the Lord seemed to have more time for Hallis Mollen and Theon Greyjoy than he ever did for his brothers.

It's plain Brandon and Ned were not particularly close, and we know that Brandon assembled an entourage of proxy brothers, as well.
 

Quote

 

"He rode into the Red Keep with a few companions, shouting for Prince Rhaegar to come out and die. But Rhaegar wasn't there. Aerys sent his guards to arrest them all for plotting his son's murder. The others were lords' sons too, it seems to me."

"Ethan Glover was Brandon's squire," Catelyn said. "He was the only one to survive. The others were Jeffory Mallister, Kyle Royce, and Elbert Arryn, Jon Arryn's nephew and heir." (COK C VII)

 

I've written and will someday post reams of shit on the parallels between Robb and Brandon and the deep, poignant irony this entails.