Do You Think Sam Will Forge His Chain?

[John Suburbs]

On 3/19/2019 at 8:20 AM, Three-Fingered Pete said:

 

 

Something just occurred to me. This would be a fundamental shift of GRRM's narrative style to date. Could you explain how this would work narratively since that would mean one of our POV characters is dead, but still active in the story? Would we get POV chapters of this FM playing Sam or would we have a first in the form of a character that we have known before suddenly becoming a secondary antagonist only known to the reader?

We may already have seen this. Remember:

Quote

The next he knew the sun was up, and he lay upon a stony strand beneath a spire of naked stone, with the empty bay all around and a broken mast, a burned sail, and a swollen corpse beside him. The mast, the sail, and the dead man vanished with the next high tide, leaving Davos alone on his rock amidst the spears of the merling king.

Followed by this:

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"The bones help," said Melisandre. "The bones remember. The strongest of glamors are built of such things. A dead man's boots, a hank of hair, a bag of fingerbones. With whispered words and prayer, a man's shadow can be drawn forth from such and draped about another like a cloak. The wearer's essence does not change, only his seeming."

Could our beloved Onion Knight be a corpse glamored to look like the living man, unbeknownst to himself?

[the trees have eyes]

Yes but not in the timeline of ASOIAF - Like the Stark children growing to adulthood there is not enough room or time for that in the story itself.  I doubt we'll get a detailed LOTR-style epilogue outlining the subsequent lives of the main characters but I think there will be something of the fates of the surviving characters and enough to make clear that Sam will become / becomes a maester.

I think Randyl and Dickon Tarly are in for the chop and that Gilly's babe will end up inheriting Horn Hill.  I can't see Sam inheriting (he would be a fish out of water and hate it)  and whether or not the NW endures at the end of the series he is likely to be buried in books, either at Castle Black or the Citadel in Oldtown.

[Three-Fingered Pete]

21 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Could our beloved Onion Knight be a corpse glamored to look like the living man, unbeknownst to himself?

 

That seems like an overly convoluted plot device... for what exactly? And Davos lost his finger bones; which would mean he would have had to lose illusionary finger bones in order to keep the glamor going since his real finger bones would be required to maintain it.

[John Suburbs]

18 minutes ago, Three-Fingered Pete said:

 

That seems like an overly convoluted plot device... for what exactly? And Davos lost his finger bones; which would mean he would have had to lose illusionary finger bones in order to keep the glamor going since his real finger bones would be required to maintain it.

Unless Mel swiped his fingerbones before he left Dragonstone and replaced them with something else.

Yes, it's convoluted, and I can't say what import it would have to the broader story, but it's just one of those things that makes me go hmmmmm. . .

[The Mother of The Others]

It is glaring, the inclusion of finger bone bags in the "random" list of ingredients she rattled off as if it was a common item.  Or simply a fresh example in her mind after having recently been used to cast spells on Davos' bag.   He got a second wind after the wreck in the bay, bouncing back from the edge of death.  and maybe had that second wind sent to him on the wind.   Can she do that?   Voodoo monitoring of items and people she's enspelled.   Vectoring a wakeup call to Davos like a distant shock to the heart you might get from those electric paddles in the hospital. 

  I'd rather that.  (So he's not a dead thing but was mystically attended to and is now strangely indebted to the witch.)   An immortal would eventually tire of losing the rare stalwart companions she valued, and might use the magics to give them... extra chances.    Davos sounds entirely himself in the POV regardless, so it's not a dead brain talking.  There's probably nothing to this, but the disquieting thought it gives you while considering it is definitely worth a nickel.