Heresy 219 and a whisper of Winter

[Melifeather]

2 hours ago, lalt said:

Take for istance ASOS's prologue: no one dies. Not in that chapter.

Chett, Mormont etc... will die later on. But still - in that prologue - you have Chett speaking/thinking of slying Sam's throat.

Technically Chet does die in that prologue...strangled by an Other. It's off the page, so to speak, because we don't have him as a POV anymore, and two Jon POVs later (chapter 14) is the aftermath of the Watch's defeat at the Fist of the First Men. Then in the next Samwell chapter (17) Sam is stumbling along with the survivors. Ironically he keeps repeating "mercy":

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He had wrapped his scarf over his nose and mouth, but it was covered with snot now, and so stiff he feared it must be frozen to his face. Even breathing was hard, and the air was so cold it hurt to swallow it. “Mother have mercy,” he muttered in a hushed husky voice beneath the frozen mask. “Mother have mercy, Mother have mercy, Mother have mercy.” With each prayer he took another step, dragging his legs through the snow. “Mother have mercy, Mother have mercy, Mother have mercy.”

Sam recalls seeing Chett:

 

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When the horns blew Sam had been sleeping. He thought he was dreaming them at first, but when he opened his eyes snow was falling on the camp and the black brothers were all grabbing bows and spears and running toward the ringwall. Chett was the only one nearby, Maester Aemon’s old steward with the face full of boils and the big wen on his neck. Sam had never seen so much fear on a man’s face as he saw on Chett’s when that third blast came moaning through the trees. “Help me get the birds off,” he pleaded, but the other steward had turned and run off, dagger in hand. He has the dogs to care for, Sam remembered. Probably the Lord Commander had given him some orders as well.

Chett died during the battle at the Fist, because the next time Sam sees him, he's a wight:

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She stood with her back against the weirwood, the boy in her arms. The wights were all around her. There were a dozen of them, a score, more… some had been wildlings once, and still wore skins and hides… but more had been his brothers. Sam saw Lark the Sisterman, Softfoot, Ryles. The wen on Chett’s neck was black, his boils covered with a thin film of ice. And that one looked like Hake, though it was hard to know for certain with half his head missing. They had torn the poor garron apart, and were pulling out her entrails with dripping red hands. Pale steam rose from her belly.

 

2 hours ago, lalt said:

More importantly you have at least one throat cut or strangled (as something actually happening, as a memory, a plan, one way or another) in each one of the 5 prologues.

But that is only one of the connections between the 5 prologues. There are many more.

So I am starting to believe that all these connections/dots are the pieces of a puzzle that foreshadows something particularly important.

And I beleive, that is something tied to the endgame. My main guess is that it has to do with the Weirwood Trees and/or the creation of the Others (to what they what, who they are/were, etc...)
And if not to them, to something equally important in the great scheme of things.

 

When I read this my gut told me you are right that these clues are hints for a greater scheme or reveal, but I don't think it has anything to do with the weirwoods or Others...at least not at the moment. Right now I think they are clues pointing at what really happened to Lyanna. IMO she was raped multiple times, strangled but not to death, wounded by a spear or sword, and was found suffering from all her injuries. One thing that isn't working for me yet that I haven't puzzled out yet is why the dead mother imagery is connected to Lyanna, because I don't believe she was ever pregnant. I continue to believe that Jon was Ashara's child. That being said there might be a way that the weirwoods are connected if a certain, specific event befell Lyanna that was supposed to happen to someone else. I think Lyanna was supposed to be the "mother direwolf", but an interception caused someone else to become pregnant. The "mother direwolf" became split in two like two "sisters".  Lyanna and Ashara became like sisters, and their modern day parallels are Arya and Sansa.

2 hours ago, lalt said:

And..."Mercy" is another piece of this puzzle:

I agree "mercy" is an important piece of the puzzle. The "mother direwolf" needed to be sacrificed, and Ned unwittingly cooperated by giving his sister the gift of mercy to end her suffering. The other half "sister" is pretending to be dead, but the "white wolf", who was born first, is home where "the weirwoods" needed him to be.

2 hours ago, St Daga said:

Sorry, I am just catching up. I would agree about Jon Arryn or the bulk of his army not being at Stoney Sept, at least based on the text we have. The idea about Whitewalls is interesting, but it is on the east side of the Gods Eye, I think, Also, didn't Bloodraven say that the castle at Whitewalls would be pulled down and there would no be a trace of it left for people to pay homage to this second Blackfyre rebellion, since people still flocked to the Red Grass Field to pay homage to the spot Daemon Blackfyre died. Perhaps the reason it's not on any maps is because it was eradicated, from the land and all maps, so people would not come there as a tribute?

Brynden Rivers did say to Ambrose Butterwell:

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I mean to pull it down stone by stone and sow the ground that it stands upon with salt. In twenty years, no one will remember it existed. Old fools and young malcontents still make pilgrimages to the Redgrass Field to plant flowers on the spot where Daemon Blackfyre fell. I will not suffer Whitewalls to become another monument to the Black Dragon.

If the towers of Whitewall are "long fallen", Ned didn't have to do the pulling. He only needed to gather the stones, but he could have pulled down some remaining parts of towers if he needed more stones for the cairns.

I found Jaime's threat:

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Let them hear, Jaime thought. Let the world hear. It makes no matter. He forced himself to smile, “You’ve seen our numbers, Edmure. You’ve seen the ladders, the towers, the trebuchets, the rams. If I speak the command, my coz will bridge your moat and break your gate. Hundreds will die, most of them your own. Your former bannermen will make up the first wave of attackers, so you’ll start your day by killing the fathers and brothers of men who died for you at the Twins. The second wave will be Freys, I have no lack of those. My westermen will follow when your archers are short of arrows and your knights so weary they can hardly lift their blades. When the castle falls, all those inside will be put to the sword. Your herds will be butchered, your godswood will be felled, your keeps and towers will burn. I’ll pull your walls down, and divert the Tumblestone over the ruins. By the time I’m done no man will ever know that a castle once stood here.” Jaime got to his feet. “Your wife may whelp before that. You’ll want your child, I expect. I’ll send him to you when he’s born. With a trebuchet.”

 

2 hours ago, St Daga said:

As to claims, Ned says that Robert had the better claim. Of course, over the years, I have tried to drum up tinfoil in regards to the Stark's having some Targaryen blood and therefore a claim to the throne. I even had a nice theory about Aerea Targaryen, that wild little minx, but F&B took some wind out of those sails, although,,, the real Aerea was still in Oldtown at the end of that story. And Aerea sounds just like Arya! Anyway, back to Ned's claim... a good claim, but Robert's claim was better. I think there is plenty yet to be revealed about the rebellion, both activity and politics, and how it all played out.

I thought Robert's Targaryen blood was unnecessary. They were rising up in rebellion. They can make their own rules and take the throne by conquest just like Aegon the Conqueror did. There was no united king of the seven before him, so why should there be after the last Targaryen king? Ned Stark didn't have to have Targaryen blood to be a consideration for the crown. His sister's abduction and death along with his father's and Brandon's executions should have been reason enough to understand why Ned would want to take the throne by conquest. Even Jaime was wondering who would claim the throne and sat on it to see who would show up first.

I think Hoster and Jon Arryn would have never rose up in rebellion had it only been about the Starks. Robert was always a puppet put forth by Tywin. Hoster and Jon were always guided by Tywin's hand.

 

 

[SirArthur]

So ... are dragons magic for Ned or not ? Is the wall magic for Ned ? How about the seasons ? 

[Melifeather]

I think @lalt 's idea about the weirwoods being involved with an over-arcing scheme has merit. I keep thinking about my thoughts of how the "mother direwolf" got split into two halves: Lyanna and Ashara. Immediately afterward my thoughts went to lightning strikes - and there are a few examples in the books.

A few years back on HoBaW, @WeaselPie theorized that Bran was a timelord - rather a time traveler, and if I remember correctly, weirwood trees that were struck by lightning were indications of places used to jump from one life to another. His theory included that all the Brans and Brandons are actually the same person living in different times throughout the ages.

 And then I read this in the Mercy chapter:

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The long way also took her across the Bridge of Eyes with its carved stone faces. From the top of its span, she could look through the arches and see all the city: the green copper domes of the Hall of Truth, the masts rising like a forest from the Purple Harbor, the tall towers of the mighty, the golden thunderbolt turning on its spire atop the Sealord’s Palace…

Recall that I have theorized that the Sealord's Palace is a parallel to Winterfell, because the Lord of Winterfell is the Sealord of the great northern sea. Why is there imagery of a golden thunderbolt turning on a spire at the very top of Winterfell?

[dialt]

1 hour ago, Feather Crystal said:

Technically Chet does die in that prologue...strangled by an Other. It's off the page, so to speak, because we don't have him as a POV anymore, and two Jon POVs later (chapter 14) is the aftermath of the Watch's defeat at the Fist of the First Men. Then in the next Samwell chapter (17) Sam is stumbling along with the survivors. Ironically he keeps repeating "mercy":

Ok, let me explain. In short, I believe that GRRM put some “entries” in every prologue. 

 Slaying or strangling a throat (one way or another) is one of them.

Now, from this standpoint, it doesn’t really matter how Chett dies... off pages. Because in that chapter that “entry” is inserted, regardless.

But I see your point. And one reasoning doesn’t exclude/debunk the other.

The patter about the locations, the deaths, the masters/someone else/ sequence is not denied by this other kind of observations.

At all.

Same for the “big” mystery all of this may help unveil.

In fact, let’s pretende for the sake of the argument, that I am right and that “the great scheme of things” hid is about the Others and/or the Weirwood Trees... I don’t doubt that wathever happened to Lyanna for real, is another version, a most recent one of the same scheme. At the very least... partially. That’s why these (them all) are the biggest mysteries of the serie. Because one speaks about the other.

Finaly, I must admit that at the moment I am putting aside on purpose what’s left off pages, just to see how that idea of the “entries” goes.

But I highly suspect that if I have to consider what’s left off pages (but known) or what we know will come next, then it works even better.

Chett for instance, as a white, will get a pair of blue eyes. We know that, because of his meeting later on with Sam. And... interesting enough AFFC prologue is the only one among 5 without an entry about blue eye/eyes. But... taking into account what we know will happen next, then we have it.  

[dialt]

1 hour ago, Feather Crystal said:

I keep thinking about my thoughts of how the "mother direwolf" got split into two halves: Lyanna and Ashara. Immediately afterward my thoughts went to lightning strikes - and there are a few examples in the books.

 

Well....I’d like to read about it. That because, yes: things split in two halves in every prologue. 

[Melifeather]

6 minutes ago, lalt said:

Well....I’d like to read about it. That because, yes: things split in two halves in every prologue. 

I haven’t written about this idea before. It only came to me after reading your observations. Tell me more about the split halves that you’ve noticed.

[dialt]

17 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

I haven’t written about this idea before. It only came to me after reading your observations. Tell me more about the split halves that you’ve noticed.

AGOT

- The lordling seemed not to hear him. He studied the deepening twilight in that half-bored, half-distracted way he had
- The stars began to come out. A half-moon rose. Will was grateful for the light

ACOK

- "Surely half a kingdom is better than none," Cressen said
- how he might win half a kingdom if he goes to the Starks on his knees and sells our daughter to Lysa Arryn?"
- Stannis nodded. "The Starks seek to steal half my kingdom,...

- the sea had taken that power from him, along with half his wits and all his memory.

-  Ser Davos's cup was before him, still half-full of sour red. 

ASOS

- "The axe that split your skull. Is it true that half your wits leaked out on the ground and your dogs ate them?"

- Half them wives were as old and ugly as Craster, but that didn't matter. The old ones Chett could put to work cooking and cleaning for him, pulling carrots and slopping pigs, while the young ones warmed his bed and bore his children

- "—Others." Chett made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob 

AFFC

- The arrow caught the apple as it began to fall and sliced it clean in two. One half landed on a turret roof, tumbled to a lower roof, bounced, and missed Armen by a foot. "

- If I hit him in the mouth with my tankard, I could knock out half his teeth, Pate thought.

ADDW

- The axe crashed into the middle of the old dog's skull, and inside the hovel the boy let out a scream.

 

[Melifeather]

17 minutes ago, lalt said:

AGOT

- The lordling seemed not to hear him. He studied the deepening twilight in that half-bored, half-distracted way he had
- The stars began to come out. A half-moon rose. Will was grateful for the light

ACOK

- "Surely half a kingdom is better than none," Cressen said
- how he might win half a kingdom if he goes to the Starks on his knees and sells our daughter to Lysa Arryn?"
- Stannis nodded. "The Starks seek to steal half my kingdom,...

- the sea had taken that power from him, along with half his wits and all his memory.

-  Ser Davos's cup was before him, still half-full of sour red. 

ASOS

- "The axe that split your skull. Is it true that half your wits leaked out on the ground and your dogs ate them?"

- Half them wives were as old and ugly as Craster, but that didn't matter. The old ones Chett could put to work cooking and cleaning for him, pulling carrots and slopping pigs, while the young ones warmed his bed and bore his children

- "—Others." Chett made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob 

AFFC

- The arrow caught the apple as it began to fall and sliced it clean in two. One half landed on a turret roof, tumbled to a lower roof, bounced, and missed Armen by a foot. "

- If I hit him in the mouth with my tankard, I could knock out half his teeth, Pate thought.

ADDW

- The axe crashed into the middle of the old dog's skull, and inside the hovel the boy let out a scream.

 

 I think we are really onto something!

To reiterate, the five prologues have the following themes in common:

One person suffers or dies of wounds by sword or spear

One person suffers or dies from strangulation

Begging for mercy

Blue eyes

Things that are split into halves

Anything else?

[dialt]

8 minutes ago, Feather Crystal said:

Anything else?

Sure. Like I said I am working on this, but it's taking too long.

I think I'll end up posting something quite soon and adding up updates.

[Melifeather]

28 minutes ago, lalt said:

Sure. Like I said I am working on this, but it's taking too long.

I think I'll end up posting something quite soon and adding up updates.

What’s too long? I’ve been working on the titled chapters for three years and I’m only about a third of the way through!

[Mullocose]

9 hours ago, JNR said:

 Actually, I see no evidence Ned ever believed wights existed at any time in his life -- or for that matter, that he believed in magic as a whole (since wights require magic to work). 

 

Good point...

[alienarea]

13 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

 I think we are really onto something!

To reiterate, the five prologues have the following themes in common:

One person suffers or dies of wounds by sword or spear

One person suffers or dies from strangulation

Begging for mercy

Blue eyes

Things that are split into halves

Anything else?

Except that Rickard does not die from sword or spear I immediately thought of Rickard and Brandon being executed in KL.

Which brings me back to my question of the previous heresy, House Targaryen and the old gods.

If Torrhen bending the knee doesn't count for the old gods, i.e. he's still considered king, so are Rickard and Brandon. Assuming Rickard died first, both died being king (in the North). Did that raise the White Walkers again?

Adding to this: one of the Brandon Stark's of old went missing (the shipwrecked one?), is he the founder of house Targaryen? What I'm aiming at is Starks and Targaryens being two halves.

A bit unrelated, maybe for another heresy: did we ever discuss that the red door and the lemon tree Daenerys remembers could be glass gardens?

[Melifeather]

55 minutes ago, alienarea said:

Except that Rickard does not die from sword or spear I immediately thought of Rickard and Brandon being executed in KL.

Which brings me back to my question of the previous heresy, House Targaryen and the old gods.

If Torrhen bending the knee doesn't count for the old gods, i.e. he's still considered king, so are Rickard and Brandon. Assuming Rickard died first, both died being king (in the North). Did that raise the White Walkers again?

Adding to this: one of the Brandon Stark's of old went missing (the shipwrecked one?), is he the founder of house Targaryen? What I'm aiming at is Starks and Targaryens being two halves.

A bit unrelated, maybe for another heresy: did we ever discuss that the red door and the lemon tree Daenerys remembers could be glass gardens?

We were only looking at the prologues of each book.

There is an overall arc of dualities throughout the books, but thats different than splitting something in half. Ice and Fire are dualities, but cutting a skull in half is splitting something that once was whole. 

There has to be an explanation for parallels and inversions. I had once tried to explain the phenomenon as the wheel of time rolling backwards, but even then there had to have been an event of some kind that stopped the forward rotation. The tourney at Harrenhal seems to be ground zero for when the forward rotation of the wheel stopped, and then began rolling in reverse. It's the reason behind the two month long spring.

 

[Melifeather]

13 hours ago, lalt said:

Sure. Like I said I am working on this, but it's taking too long.

I think I'll end up posting something quite soon and adding up updates.

Check for things struck by lighting or imagery that suggests it was struck by lighting. 

[TheMiddleHero]

14 hours ago, Feather Crystal said:

Check for things struck by lighting or imagery that suggests it was struck by lighting. 

There are many examples. For one, Ser Waymar's sword hilt after his fight with our first Other.

[The Chequered Raven]

On 3/28/2019 at 6:41 PM, lalt said:

I remember that... and If there's a pattern - and I believe there is one - we can surely bet or try to predict what's going to happen in the next prologue.

But I am more inclined to think that these details are there - mainly - to foreshadow/unveil something else. 

Take for istance ASOS's prologue: no one dies. Not in that chapter.

Chett, Mormont etc... will die later on. But still - in that prologue - you have Chett speaking/thinking of slying Sam's throat.

More importantly you have at least one throat cut or strangled (as something actually happening, as a memory, a plan, one way or another) in each one of the 5 prologues.

But that is only one of the connections between the 5 prologues. There are many more.

So I am starting to believe that all these connections/dots are the pieces of a puzzle that foreshadows something particularly important.

And I beleive, that is something tied to the endgame. My main guess is that it has to do with the Weirwood Trees and/or the creation of the Others (to what they what, who they are/were, etc...)
And if not to them, to something equally important in the great scheme of things.

I also believe, that AGOT BRAN I and all the BRAN povs of ADWD are tied to this puzzle.

For istance... Beside this one (about a dead frozen mother, with a cut throat):  

"There's something in the throat," Robb told him, proud to have found the answer before his father even asked. "There, just under the jaw."

.AGOT BRAN I

“Born with the dead,” another man put in. “Worse luck.”
“No matter,” said Hullen. “They be dead soon enough too.”
Bran gave a wordless cry of dismay. 
“The sooner the better,” Theon Greyjoy agreed. He drew his sword. “Give the beast here, Bran.”
The little thing squirmed against him, as if it heard and understood. “No!” Bran cried out fiercely. “It’s mine.”

Compare it to the following:

ADWD PROLOGUE - (Varamyr trying to save the dogs)

"No, Father, please", he tried to say, but dogs cannot speak the tongues of men, so all that emerged was a piteous whine.

ADWD BRAN III

"No," said Bran, "no, don't," but they could not hear him, no more than his father had. The woman grabbed the captive by the hair, hooked the sickle round his throat, and slashed. 

And..."Mercy" is another piece of this puzzle:

AGOT- BRAN I

"You cannot do that, boy," said Harwin, who was Hullen's son.
"It be a mercy to kill them," Hullen said.
Bran looked to his lord father for rescue, but got only a frown, a furrowed brow. "Hullen speaks truly, son. Better a swift death than a hard one from cold and starvation."

ACOK - Cressen had "mercy" for Patchface... (or not?)

"The wretch is mad, and in pain, and no use to anyone, least of all himself," declared old Ser Harbert, the castellan of Storm's End in those years. "The kindest thing you could do for that one is fill his cup with the milk of the poppy. A painless sleep, and there's an end to it. He'd bless you if he had the wit for it." But Cressen had refused, and in the end he had won. Whether Patchface had gotten any joy of that victory he could not say, not even today, so many years later.

ASOS -  Small Paul and Mormont's raven

"The Old Bear's raven," Small Paul said. "If we kill him, who's going to feed his bird?" [same poit made by Hullen, more or less, about the direwolves pupps] 
"Who bloody well cares? Kill the bird too if you like."

"I don't want to hurt no bird," the big man said. "But that's a talking bird. What if it tells what we did?"
(...) "Paul," said Chett, before the big man got too angry, "when they find the old man lying in a pool of blood with his throat slit, they won't need no bird to tell them someone killed him."
Small Paul chewed on that a moment. "That's true," he allowed. "Can I keep the bird, then? I like that bird."

ADWD - PROLOGUE

That was as a wolf, though. He had never eaten the meat of men with human teeth. He would not grudge his pack their feast, however. The wolves were as famished as he was, gaunt and cold and hungry, and the prey … two men and a woman, a babe in arms, fleeing from defeat to death. They would have perished soon in any case, from exposure or starvation. This way was better, quicker. A mercy. 

I haven't found anything 100% explicit in AFFC prologue. But let's look at this one... 

I ought to kill you, Pate thought, but he was not near drunk enough to throw away his life. Leo had been trained to arms, and was known to be deadly with bravo's blade and dagger.

So, Leo is deadly in a duel. People know it, he has to know it too. However, later on:

Pate: "Leave Rosey be," he said, by way of parting. "Just leave her be, or I may kill you."
Leo Tyrell flicked the hair back from his eye. "I do not fight duels with pig boys. Go away."

Now, if Leo knows how good he is in... slaying people, there's a chance that here, he's having "mercy" of poor Pate.

But however... these are the kind of things I am working on...

Interesting food for thoughts...
Thanks!

[JNR]

On 3/28/2019 at 3:08 PM, SirArthur said:

So ... are dragons magic for Ned or not ? Is the wall magic for Ned ? How about the seasons ?

The same could be asked of every southron character. 

Tyrion, for instance.  He personally visits the Wall, and is personally fascinated with dragons, and has lived through the quirky seasons all his life. 

Yet Tyrion shows no sign of believing in magic at any time in canon.  His position on such topics is just as deeply skeptical as Ned's:

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Sullen peasants, debtors, poachers, rapers, thieves, and bastards like you all wind up on the Wall, watching for grumkins and snarks and all the other monsters your wet nurse warned you about. The good part is there are no grumkins or snarks, so it's scarcely dangerous work.

So we can be sure Tyrion would be shocked out of his mind if you put a wight or Popsicle in front of him, and I think Ned would have been as well. 

[SirArthur]

9 minutes ago, JNR said:

His position on such topics is just as deeply skeptical as Ned's:

Yet Ned's position is not that they never were. His position is that they are extinct or at least have not been seen for 8 thousand years. That's like finding a saber-toothed cat nowadays. Impossible, implausible, maybe not explainable but comprehensible. 

I don't know if it is worth discussing if the things out there are magic or not in Ned's eyes. For us they are, for Ned they might just be as old as Winterfell or the Wall and irrelevant at the moment. 

[JNR]

1 hour ago, SirArthur said:

His position is that they are extinct or at least have not been seen for 8 thousand years.

If so, then Ned himself certainly did not see a wight (Lyanna) only fifteen years before.

[Black Crow]

On 3/28/2019 at 8:08 PM, SirArthur said:

So ... are dragons magic for Ned or not ? Is the wall magic for Ned ? How about the seasons ? 

I would say no to all of those and more. These are things that are, not things that are performed by the casting of spells. That isn't the same as saying that magic doesn't exist but that isn't the same as believing in it.