A castle made of snow

[rotting sea cow]

I was about to post in the thread "Things I've never noticed before" but it may get easily buried and it seems quite important and I've never read before about it.

We all know this prophesy
 

Quote

 

"I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his grief," the dwarf woman was saying. "I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow." She turned her head sharply and smiled through the gloom, right at Arya. "You cannot hide from me, child. Come closer, now."

Arya VIII, ASOS

 

that maid is of course Sansa, who will slay a savage giant (Littlefinger? UnGregor? another?) in a castle built of snow. The castle is though to be Winterfell (some people have argued it might be Harrenhal) and there is foreshadowing:

 

Quote

 

"Winterfell?" Robert was small for eight, a stick of a boy with splotchy skin and eyes that were always runny. Under one arm he clutched the threadbare cloth doll he carried everywhere.

"Winterfell is the seat of House Stark," Sansa told her husband-to-be. "The great castle of the north."

"It's not so great." The boy knelt before the gatehouse. "Look, here comes a giant to knock it down." He stood his doll in the snow and moved it jerkily. "Tromp tromp I'm a giant, I'm a giant," he chanted. "Ho ho ho, open your gates or I'll mash them and smash them." Swinging the doll by the legs, he knocked the top off one gatehouse tower and then the other.

...

They led the boy away. My lord husband, Sansa thought, as she contemplated the ruins of Winterfell. The snow had stopped, and it was colder than before. She wondered if Lord Robert would shake all through their wedding. At least Joffrey was sound of body. A mad rage seized hold of her. She picked up a broken branch and smashed the torn doll's head down on top of it, then pushed it down atop the shattered gatehouse of her snow castle.

Sansa VII, ASOS

 

But I found this piece in AFFC (i.e. after the killing of the 5 year gap)

Quote

They began to descend, by jerks and starts at first, then more smoothly. Robert's face was pale and his eyes puffy, but his hands were still. The Eyrie shrank above them. The sky cells on the lower levels made the castle look something like a honeycomb from below. A honeycomb made of ice, Alayne thought, a castle made of snow. She could hear the wind whistling round the bucket.

Alyane II, AFFC.

It might be that castle is actually the Eyrie??

[Impbread]

30 minutes ago, rotting sea cow said:

I was about to post in the thread "Things I've never noticed before" but it may get easily buried and it seems quite important and I've never read before about it.

We all know this prophesy
 

that maid is of course Sansa, who will slay a savage giant (Littlefinger? UnGregor? another?) in a castle built of snow. The castle is though to be Winterfell (some people have argued it might be Harrenhal) and there is foreshadowing:

 

But I found this piece in AFFC (i.e. after the killing of the 5 year gap)

It might be that castle is actually the Eyrie??

I dont think it is the Eyrie only because of the weather. I dont think they are going to be able to get back up there. Could be wrong but i think it was  stated that they had to move down from the Eyrie because the paths were too treacherous in winter. It is going to be Winterfell in my opinion. Baelish is a Bael figure with a Stark maid. He is going to do something to lose his head in the North.

[Legitimate_Bastard]

6 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

I was about to post in the thread "Things I've never noticed before" but it may get easily buried and it seems quite important and I've never read before about it.

We all know this prophesy
 

that maid is of course Sansa, who will slay a savage giant (Littlefinger? UnGregor? another?) in a castle built of snow. The castle is though to be Winterfell (some people have argued it might be Harrenhal) and there is foreshadowing:

 

But I found this piece in AFFC (i.e. after the killing of the 5 year gap)

It might be that castle is actually the Eyrie??

I'm leaning toward Winterfell. LF is the giant, methinks.

[Impbread]

10 minutes ago, Legitimate_Bastard said:

I'm leaning toward Winterfell. LF is the giant, methinks.

Yeah he is def. the giant. Not going to miss him either.

[Rose of Red Lake]

I think that is one of George's red herrings. Castle made of snow, as in the the one she built in the snow (or with Jon Snow).

I think the giant will come in three's:

1. Sweetrobin's doll

2. Littlefinger

3. Tyrion - "giant of Lannister" is mentioned a total of nine times across the books

[Legitimate_Bastard]

1 hour ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

3. Tyrion - "giant of Lannister" is mentioned a total of nine times across the books

If I had a second guess - that would be it.

I don't think Sansa hates Tyrion though....

Although I remember something about GRRM saying he was the main antagonist - or something. Maybe he turns bad? Or mad? Depends who his daddy is I suppose. LOL

[John Suburbs]

Mayhaps it's an actual giant? Wun Wun anybody?

[Rose of Red Lake]

5 minutes ago, Legitimate_Bastard said:

I don't think Sansa hates Tyrion though....

 Although I remember something about GRRM saying he was the main antagonist - or something. Maybe he turns bad? Or mad? Depends who his daddy is I suppose. LOL

There's still a lot of plot for him to do something to earn that death.

He was supposed to burn down WF in the original outline. That was given to Theon but I think it could happen still.

Tyrion snaps and does violent things, like with Shae. It wouldnt be turning bad. It would be like, he's been bad before and good before so what will he decide to do at this point? 

[Legitimate_Bastard]

6 minutes ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

Tyrion snaps and does violent things, like with Shae. It wouldnt be turning bad. It would be like, he's been bad before and good before so what will he decide to do at this point? 

Sort of a Targaryen trait. No?

I guess he will just be grey.

[Lost Melnibonean]

Arya, not Sansa, is the maid that will slay Littlefinger, the savage giant. I do agree that the where could be the Eyrie, but with it now being inaccessible, I am not sure how that would work. Wherever it does take place, I have a feeling the deed might be done at a wedding reception. The George likes his threes. 

Quote

"I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his grief," the dwarf woman was saying. "I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow."

Since the first two events involved wedding receptions, shouldn't the third? And aren't we expecting a wedding for Alyane arranged by Petyr? Perhaps "No One" will come...

 

[Lollygag]

GRRM often leaves clues in proximity if one reads closely. Just a few pages before the castle made of snow in the preceding Jon chapter:

ASOS Jon XII

He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me. It was a hunger inside him, sharp as a dragonglass blade. A hunger . . . he could feel it. It was food he needed, prey, a red deer that stank of fear or a great elk proud and defiant. He needed to kill and fill his belly with fresh meat and hot dark blood. His mouth began to water with the thought.

It was a long moment before he understood what was happening. When he did, he bolted to his feet. "Ghost?" He turned toward the wood, and there he came, padding silently out of the green dusk, the breath coming warm and white from his open jaws. "Ghost!" he shouted, and the direwolf broke into a run. He was leaner than he had been, but bigger as well, and the only sound he made was the soft crunch of dead leaves beneath his paws. When he reached Jon he leapt, and they wrestled amidst brown grass and long shadows as the stars came out above them. "Gods, wolf, where have you been?" Jon said when Ghost stopped worrying at his forearm. "I thought you'd died on me, like Robb and Ygritte and all the rest. I've had no sense of you, not since I climbed the Wall, not even in dreams." The direwolf had no answer, but he licked Jon's face with a tongue like a wet rasp, and his eyes caught the last light and shone like two great red suns.

Red eyes, Jon realized, but not like Melisandre's. He had a weirwood's eyes. Red eyes, red mouth, white fur. Blood and bone, like a heart tree. He belongs to the old gods, this one. And he alone of all the direwolves was white. Six pups they'd found in the late summer snows, him and Robb; five that were grey and black and brown, for the five Starks, and one white, as white as Snow.

He had his answer then.

 

This is only time in the books that Jon connects his name with actual snow and we're told to equate snow to Snow. We flip a few pages and Sansa comes across snow and mentions that it falls in "ghostly silence". She’s in white fur calling to mind Ghost. Sansa has red hair and white skin/fur and thinks about the old gods. Like Jon, she's also thinking about Winterfell quite intensely. Again like Jon, she brings up the importance of the heart tree. 

I really like the Eyrie connection though. Just don't see how it could happen. It's strongly connected to ice and snow elsewhere, too. 

[Springwatch]

On 2/15/2019 at 11:38 AM, rotting sea cow said:

It might be that castle is actually the Eyrie?? 

I think it is the Eyrie.

Chekhov's Eyrie for a start - it's so, so impregnable but no one has tried to break in, and it has dragon-sized portions of meat but no visit from a dragon.

And something else, less easy to pin down. The Eyrie is one of those strangely life-like castles, like Dragonstone, like Winterfell. Also like those very 'alive' swords, and even more 'alive' trees. Trapped spirits, perhaps? If castles are 'haunted' they may need to be managed, ruled; especially now magic has come back into the world in a big way. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell, but it's also a norm that a king's castle must be ruled by a queen. The Eyrie was a king's castle, and Sansa may have to learn how to make it hers.

Quote

The High Hall had been closed since Lady Lysa's fall, and it gave Sansa a chill to enter it again. The hall was long and grand and beautiful, she supposed, but she did not like it here. It was a pale cold place at the best of times. The slender pillars looked like fingerbones, and the blue veins in the white marble brought to mind the veins in an old crone's legs....
[AFFC - SANSA I]

The doors to the Great Hall were set in the mouth of a stone dragon.... Leaning heavily on his cane, Cressen climbed the last few steps and hobbled beneath the gateway teeth. A pair of guardsmen opened the heavy red doors before him, unleashing a sudden blast of noise and light. Cressen stepped down into the dragon's maw.
[ACOK - PROLOGUE]

The castle had been built over natural hot springs, and the scalding waters rushed through its walls and chambers like blood through a man's body, driving the chill from the stone halls, filling the glass gardens with a moist warmth, keeping the earth from freezing. Open pools smoked day and night in a dozen small courtyards. That was a little thing, in summer; in winter, it was the difference between life and death. Catelyn's bath was always hot and steaming, and her walls warm to the touch.
[AGOT - CATELYN II]

 

[Aside: The Winterfell quote: that last sentence almost seems to identify the castle with Catelyn. Catelyn's walls. A Stark by marriage, not birth, but she could be its queen.]

[Lollygag]

 

20 minutes ago, Springwatch said:

I think it is the Eyrie.

Chekhov's Eyrie for a start - it's so, so impregnable but no one has tried to break in, and it has dragon-sized portions of meat but no visit from a dragon.

And something else, less easy to pin down. The Eyrie is one of those strangely life-like castles, like Dragonstone, like Winterfell. Also like those very 'alive' swords, and even more 'alive' trees. Trapped spirits, perhaps? If castles are 'haunted' they may need to be managed, ruled; especially now magic has come back into the world in a big way. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell, but it's also a norm that a king's castle must be ruled by a queen. The Eyrie was a king's castle, and Sansa may have to learn how to make it hers.

 

[Aside: The Winterfell quote: that last sentence almost seems to identify the castle with Catelyn. Catelyn's walls. A Stark by marriage, not birth, but she could be its queen.]

There's also the weirwood doors and throne. 

[Dofs]

Don't expect anything to happen with this prophecy anymore.

[Nevets]

Two more possibilities:

An Umber.  Their badge is a savage giant

Gregor Clegane.  He is a giant, and definitely savage.

I think the Eyrie is out though.  Too inaccessible at this point.

 

[Lollygag]

The only way back to the Eyrie that I can think of is Dany’s dragons which brings another possible candidate for a giant onto the scene.

I agree with those who think Dany and Tyrion will come back to Westeros through the Vale after leaving Braavos. Guessing Arya will be along (dragon stuff in her arc, only Stark to no yet have a positive connection to Tyrion, and as a FM, skinchanger, and Stark, is an ideal kill switch should Dany go off the rails or lose control of the other two dragons).*  I don’t think Sansa will kill or contribute to Tyrion’s death, though. Just interesting to play with.

*Ok, I just think about everyone will end up in the Vale. Think Jaime and Brienne, maybe Stoneheart, will end up there. See the Hound there, too. Likely very, very wrong. 

 

 

 

[BRANDON GREYSTARK]

The Bankers of Bravos .

[Wolfkin]

Sansa and castles - seems like a pattern is forming
 

Quote

There were clouds massing in the eastern sky, pierced by shafts of sunlight. They look like two huge castles afloat in the morning sky. Sansa could see their walls of tumbled stone, their mighty keeps and barbicans. Wispy banners swirled from atop their towers and reached for the fast-fading stars. The sun was coming up behind them, and she watched them go from black to grey to a thousand shades of rose and gold and crimson. Soon the wind mushed them together, and there was only one castle where there had been two.

She heard the door open as her maids brought the hot water for her bath. They were both new to her service; Tyrion said the women who'd tended to her previously had all been Cersei's spies, just as Sansa had suspected. "Come see," she told them. "There's a castle in the sky."

They came to have a look. "It's made of gold." Shae had short dark hair and bold eyes. She did all that was asked of her, but sometimes she gave Sansa the most insolent looks. "A castle all of gold, there's a sight I'd like to see."

"A castle, is it?" Brella had to squint. "That tower's tumbling over, looks like. It's all ruins, that is."

Sansa did not want to hear about falling towers and ruined castles. She closed the shutters and said, "We are expected at the queen's breakfast. Is my lord husband in the solar?"

aSoS - Sansa IV

Two castles - in the east (maybe the Vale)
in fire colors-rose, gold, crimson become one castle. Melting together? Eyrie + Gates of the Moon?
Then the towers tumble and it's all ruins.